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1 Peter 2:9-12
9 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. 10 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.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
I'm Thomas, like Dwight said, Thomas Ritchie. I'm an elder here at Redeemer, and I'm coming to preach to you tonight, not as a professional, so bear with my inadequacies. I find that if I stand up I fidget too much, that's why I'm sitting down. We're gonna look tonight at this question of identity that we looked at last week. But before we really jump into the text, I wanna start with the first word that Peter uses.
Speaker 1:Even before we've read the text, he starts out by addressing his readers as beloved, And that that might seem like just some sugary filler. At first, I thought it was kind of a flippant, like, word that he just used to introduce the next passage. But I think about Peter's experiences with Jesus. I don't think that he uses the word beloved lightly. I think the most painful experience of Peter's life is connected intimately with love.
Speaker 1:With Christ's love for him, with Peter's love, of Christ, and with the way that both of them loved the church. Remember that Peter rather famously denied Jesus three times while Jesus is on trial. And that like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe novel, the risen Christ comes back to Peter and confronts him. And 3 times, one for each denial, he asked him, do you love me? I can't think of any words that would have been more wounding or more painful for Peter to hear.
Speaker 1:And 3 times, Peter says, yes, Laura. I love you. And 3 times, Jesus gives some tells him some version of feed my sheep, take care of my church. So when Peter is writing this epistle, he's speaking to this church. He's living out this call that Jesus has given him.
Speaker 1:If you love me, take care of my church. And he calls them his beloved. And I think he says that because he's about to turn the message to a more difficult place. Tonight, we're gonna look at a text in 1st Peter that begins to turn towards very practical application. And frankly, it's difficult.
Speaker 1:Not just this passage, but everything that comes after would have been very hard for the original hearers and listeners to understand. So don't don't have this low view of love. God's love is a huge and terrible, and frankly, it's a wounding thing, But yet, it's the fountain of all joy, and is our only rock in the time of trouble. So this text is hard if the weeks that follow are difficult. Take heart that God loves you, and that his love is all sustaining.
Speaker 1:So with that in mind, let's let's look at God's word. I'm gonna start with more of the text than we're actually going to preach about tonight. I'm gonna start back in verse 9 because I think not only do those words really have a big impact on what Peter is saying in the verses, and we are going to be looking at, but they also, frankly, they're just encouraging to me, and they'll frankly call me down to read something that's so beautiful. So, 1st Peter, chapter 2, verse 9 through 12, 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, and into His marvelous light.
Speaker 1: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. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Please pray with me.
Speaker 1:God, I'm painfully aware of coming up here with empty hands. I come here to give with nothing. God I'm nervous and I'm struggling with the truth of your word. I'm inadequate to express it. And yet God, you you call us to proclaim joyfully the truths that you've that you've expressed to us, that you've given us in your word.
Speaker 1:And more than that, Spirit inside of me you you cry out that I might proclaim the excellencies of Christ who saved me. So God, I fix my eyes on you and I ask that you express your words tonight, not mine. And I pray as as Joel always does, that my words are death and that yours are life. I confess it joyfully. I pray that you will bring life tonight.
Speaker 1:God, guide me and all of us as we hear from you in Christ's name. Amen. Alright. So we're still talking about identity. But it's different than last week.
Speaker 1:Last week, as Ryan preached to us, Peter was telling his readers about their identity in Christ. Frankly, that's what's most important. The text we read last week, as Ryan was actually talking to me a couple weeks back, he's like, man, I'm sorry. I got the best got the best text in the whole book. And he's right, he does.
Speaker 1:This one's clearly playing second fiddle. But it should. I mean, the most important thing is what God does for us, and what we do in response flows out of that, and it's of secondary importance. So, this is a secondary text tonight. It's not this isn't what God's done for us.
Speaker 1:This is, who are we in light of what's what God has done for us. Don't do this. There's a long list of very specific things we're to do and not do that comes later. But Peter starts in these two little transitional verses by giving us more insight into who we are relative to the world around us, relative to a world that doesn't believe who are we, what is our identity. And if we jump straight into it, he says, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles.
Speaker 1:He calls us outsiders. And that may seem strange in light of the stuff that we heard last week, in light of the first two verses we read tonight. We've just heard that we are God's chosen people. That once we weren't a people, but now we are. It it seemed odd to me on first reading that Peter would jump right in and saying, now that now that this covenant's been kept, and you are now a people, you're an outsider.
Speaker 1:That seems strange, but it really isn't. Whenever God calls people, we see it throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, they become outsiders. Think back to Abraham. Abraham receives this wonderful promise, but the first thing that he does is he leaves his hometown, he leaves his family, and he drifts off in the wilderness. In fact, in Genesis 23, Abraham calls himself a sojourner in an exile amongst the Hittites.
Speaker 1:And it's not just Abraham. Jacob spent a long time wandering about in the wilderness. Joseph, sold into slavery, travels to Egypt. Then all the Israelites are made slaves in Egypt, away from the promised land. Then Moses, not only is he not in Israel, he gets cast out of of Egypt and meets God in the desert.
Speaker 1:After him, as he leads the Israelites out, they receive the law and encounter the Lord in the wilderness, and they follow God in the wilderness for a generation. We looked just recently, or I guess I'm I'm forgetting. David is anointed as king of Israel, and then shortly thereafter, flees Israel to go live amongst Israel's enemies because Israel's king is out to kill him. Daniel, who we just looked at, spends his entire adult life as an exile in a pagan kingdom. John the Baptist lived in the desert.
Speaker 1:Jesus rejected in his hometown, and when a scribe came to Jesus and said that he wanted to follow him, Jesus said, foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. When Peter reminds us that we're exiles, he says, you believers are in the mainstream of the history of God's redeemed people. God's call comes to you, and it takes you out of the center of your society. It makes you a stranger. It makes you an outsider.
Speaker 1:It makes you different. And that has, I think, really 3 major implications in our lives as we think about identity. 1st and most basically, you're not home here. You are, as we'll look at later, we're called to engage here in our culture, in our city, in the places where we live and work, but it's not where our identity comes from. It's not our root, it's not our source that's found in Christ.
Speaker 1:2nd, outsiders act differently. It's easy to spot somebody who isn't from around here. They talk differently, they dress differently, they act differently. There's any number of tiny little cues, and sometimes great big ones, that will tell you that somebody is an outsider. Although, I worry that my own conduct and a lot of our conducts don't reveal that we are outsiders.
Speaker 1:We live and we strive to to be homogenized with the people that we live around, not to be distinctive. When we do that, we're denying this identity that Christ has given us. He's called us and made us a new people, a new creation. We're not the same as we used to be, and it's kind of foolish to deny that or it's foolish to deny that we've been made new, that we've been made different. Not only that, if our new identity doesn't express itself through concrete action, then you have to wonder, is your identity really in Christ?
Speaker 1:Are you really a new creation? If you don't see any fruit in your life, if you don't see any changes, are you sure that your new identity is real? Look and ask and inquire about these things. Thirdly, I think apart just from actions, our our identity as outsiders in the world should help us to realize that the world doesn't understand what motivates you. If you are a believer, if you claim Christ, you believe something that is frankly incredible and very hard to believe.
Speaker 1:You believe, and you claim, you base your life and your whole identity on the fact that a long time ago, God made the world, and then He became a man in the world. That He lived with no sin. That He was killed all the way dead in the ground for 3 days. And he rose up from the dead and has ascended into heaven. And that because of his life, you can live forever.
Speaker 1:Now, I believe that's true. And I've based my entire life on it. But I don't think that someone is crazy if they don't believe that too. I think they are wrong. And I think that there's much joy in realizing the truth of the gospel.
Speaker 1:But it's not someone's not crazy for saying, wait a second. That flies against everything else that I know that's true. Remember that apart from the enlightening work of the Spirit in your heart, you wouldn't believe the gospel either. You didn't believe the gospel because you're smarter, because you get it, or because you're good. You believe the gospel because God made you alive to believe it.
Speaker 1:He gave you ears to hear. He prepared you as good soil to receive the word. Peter gives us 2 kind of overarching commands that in very general terms phrase the way that we're supposed to live amongst the world that we relate to as outsiders. One of the commands is phrased in positive terms, one in negative terms. First he says, abstain from the passions of the flesh.
Speaker 1:2nd he says, keep your conduct amongst the Gentiles honorable. The first command acts a little bit more subtle, so I'm just gonna set it aside for a minute and look at the second one because it's easier. Keep your conduct amongst the Gentiles honorable. Now, we could really dig in and unpack that phrase, but I don't think we have to. It's really easy to understand.
Speaker 1:I mean, all of us know what honorable conduct is. If you have to be told, then, apparently, you're not old and older than 2, because I think Calvin knows what honorable conduct is, my youngest son. You know, speak kindly. Don't, don't be quick to anger. Keep your promises.
Speaker 1:Admit your mistakes. Work hard. Don't make excuses, don't cheat. These are all very obvious actions. In fact, the commandment to to keep your conduct honorable isn't a particularly Christian commandment.
Speaker 1:And there are people here that don't claim the gospel. They don't they don't believe in Christ. Yeah. They know what honorable conduct is. I I don't think there's any culture anywhere that says, oh yeah, cowardice is better than bravery, or that, you know, free loading is better than working.
Speaker 1:This is kind of a lowest common denominator of moral behavior that Peter is telling the believers they need to keep in the world. Keep your conduct honorable. Well, it's fair to ask, why is he giving such a basic commandment? This is something we're going to look at more in the weeks ahead, but the entire context of this letter is suffering. The church is suffering at the hands of the Roman Empire and is being persecuted.
Speaker 1:And Peter really wants to make sure that the persecution of the church is unfair and is not just. He wants to make sure that the church is acting honorably and is not giving, the surrounding culture a good reason to hate the church, and by extension, to reject Christ. Peter Peter's point here is that the church should be experiencing trouble because the gospel is offensive. When you preach the gospel by your actions and in your life, people are going to respond. Some positively, some very negatively.
Speaker 1:And when they respond to you negatively, don't give them an excuse to slander the gospel. We can see this, I don't think we're gonna take the time to read it because I've got more to say than I've got time to say it. Maybe you look in chapter 4 verses 12 through 16, it really flushes out a lot of this idea. I don't want to steal someone's thunder that's gonna be preaching about this later. But but Peter really expands this idea as you you may suffer as a Christian, delight in that.
Speaker 1:Take joy. You're doing what you're supposed to do when you're suffering as a Christian. But don't suffer as a murderer. Don't suffer as an evildoer. Don't suffer as a meddler.
Speaker 1:Don't give anyone an excuse to hate you. The gospel is excuse enough. Also, notice the order of the words that he uses here in, in verse 11. Now, I flip back to chapter 2, verse 11. I'm sorry, chapter verse 12 of chapter 2.
Speaker 1:Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds. So first, they're going to speak against you as evil doers, and second, they're gonna see your good deeds. The order is important. If they're speak our our good deeds need to be in the face of, and in response to being spoken against as evil doers. When someone is unfair to you, when someone is mean to you, when someone rejects you, when somebody wrongs you, when you were right, then you you must focus on having honorable conduct back to them then.
Speaker 1:You must not return evil for evil, Peter says. But you must love your enemies, you must be kind to them when they're mean to you. You see that this kind of Peter is calling the church into a redemptive engagement with the culture around it. He's saying, you're going to be persecuted. It's going to happen, But your response to that persecution needs to be love and not anger.
Speaker 1:You don't need to be guilty of the things of which you are accused. Be hated for the gospel's sake, not for your sin. And that kind of leads us into this, the negative commandment, the one that we set aside, the one that actually comes first in verse 11. Peter says, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Abstain from the passions of the flesh.
Speaker 1:It's tempting to think that passions of the flesh is really obvious sins. I mean, I read that and I think he's talking about sex. I think he's talking about drunkenness. I think he's talking about gluttony. You know, those kind of sensual sins, but that's not what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:I don't think the the Greek word that's used there, passions of the flesh, we could perhaps translate better as over desires. The words, epithumios, and epi is a prefix that means over, too much. They're saying these are good things that you are too into. They are things you're pursuing beyond their rightful boundary. They're not sinful desires in of themselves, but they become sin when you exalt them above their station, or when you devote too much of your life to them.
Speaker 1:It's kind of an abstract idea, but it has a lot of really concrete applications in my life. I love my wife. I love my kids. And it's right that I do so. It'd be wrong, it'd be sin if I didn't.
Speaker 1:And yet, if I love them too much, if I base my identity on them, then I've committed idolatry, and I've sinned. I love my job, and I like to work hard. And yet, it's very easy for me to wrap up who I am and my performance at work, and to abandon a lot of other things that also need my attention, other things that I love, like my family, like this church. I I'll sacrifice those things for the good of a job that doesn't have the same opportunities for eternal significance. It's good for all of us to participate in the economy around us.
Speaker 1:It's good for us all to be productive. That's one of the ways that we that God provides for us. It's one of the ways that we seek the welfare of our city. We advance everyone's prosperity when we work hard. And you know, I mean, I very quickly can fall into greed and materialism.
Speaker 1:I see how how near the temptation is to cheat. I know how easy it is to desire to push people out of my way, trying to march up to the top. And I think those experiences are universal. I don't think I'm unique in that regard. It's not that these desires in themselves are sinful desires, they become sinful desires when they transgress their proper boundaries.
Speaker 1:Now that is extremely mushy. It's extremely gray, and I can't draw any sharp lines for you. Again, I think that's Peter's point. These sins of desire, these over these sins of degree, these over desires, they express our identity. When we see everyone around us sprinting after money, and we're merely walking, if we see everyone sprinting after advancement, after comfort, after beauty, after image.
Speaker 1:And we can not walk in that direction at all, or we can walk in that direction more slowly, or however we interact and the numerous interactions of which our life consists. That speaks about where our identity is found, What we go hard after, what we exalt, and what we're willing to let go and not pursue much at all, speaks about where our true identity rests. If you are willing to get behind in your job because you take on blame that you didn't deserve. If you're willing to forego the safest place you could live, the best car you could have, the best clothes you could wear, the the most desirable social circle in which you could place yourself, the most advantageous network. If you're willing to forego some of those things, because they would require you to other things that are more important to you and that are more important to God, then you show that the gospel matters to you more than anything else.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, if you claim Christ, and you are not willing to give up any of those things, And what does that say about how you value the gospel? If you believe that your identity is found and secure in Christ, and that everything has been provided for you, that you can't find anything, that you give up, that that your culture goes hard after. But you're you're willing to say, I don't have to have that. Because of the gospel, I can let that go. So that I can help somebody else.
Speaker 1:So that somebody else can get ahead. So that I can communicate the truth of the gospel to somebody. If there's nothing in your life like that, then why not? Where's your identity? And why would anybody looking at you think that you're an outsider?
Speaker 1:I'm asking these like questions. I hope you know, I'm holding a mirror up in in front of my own face. I actually was practicing this up in a there's an office up over there when no one could hear me, and I was busy kind of basically getting fired up asking myself all these hard questions. So, don't hear me condemning you. I've been yelling at myself all afternoon.
Speaker 1:And there's plenty to yell about. Look, both of these commands, this command to keep your conduct honorable in a world that doesn't like you because of your beliefs, because of the gospel, And the command to abstain from these passions, these over desires that your culture is going hard after. Both of these commandments call you to a really messy, but involved interaction with the culture that we live in. You can't withdraw from the culture and obey these commandments. The presupposition, the basis for these commandments is that you are going to be constantly that surround you.
Speaker 1:It's the context for this. It doesn't make sense apart from I mean, look at the life of Daniel. He's a great example. So he's living in exile, much like we're living in exile. He's a stranger.
Speaker 1:His situation is admittedly a bit more extreme. But he is true to God's Word. He's striving to keep God's law, and he's fully engaged with Babylonian, and later Persian culture. He's learned to be an astrologer, a magician. He advances up the ranks because he does a good job, because he works hard, because he's a good Babylonian magician or whatever.
Speaker 1:And yet, when it comes time, when his beliefs are challenged, when he's put to the test of either keeping God's law or abandoning God's law at great cost to himself, he refuses to abandon God's law. He keeps true to his faith. And he very publicly rejects the secular commandment, even at the potential cost of his life. His friends go through much the same thing. They're radically engaged in the culture, yet they're not compromising.
Speaker 1:They're not saying that it's an either or proposition. Either they have to go live as a monk, or they've gotta be wholly bought in. They're living in tension. We see the same thing pop up and it's a there's a verse in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14. It captures this tension.
Speaker 1:It says, Strive for peace. So work hard, make peace. And and the the this this Jewish notion of of peace isn't just the absence of conflict, it's a presence, it's bring goodwill, bring peace and security. So, work for harmony, Strive for it and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Strive for peace.
Speaker 1:Strive for holiness. If you don't strive for holiness, no one's going to see the Lord. People aren't gonna know the gospel. If you don't strive for peace, you won't be engaged with the world. You'll just be off by yourself being holy.
Speaker 1:There's a tension here that we should feel in our lives. And look, the tension is not just, with you trying to make hard decisions, with me trying to draw lines for, you know, how are we gonna live in a fallen world. The world is talking too, and it's talking back, and it's not being nice about it. As you try to live out the gospel, the world's not going to like it. Your friends likely going to be, at some point, offended.
Speaker 1:They're gonna be put off. They're at least gonna be confused. Your boss might not like it if you're not willing to do everything that it takes to get ahead. And the in innumerable interactions that you have with other people, it's likely that you're going to you're gonna suffer for it. Suffer maybe in small ways, maybe in big ways.
Speaker 1:Like we said earlier, the whole context of this letter is suffering. Peter is is saying, he's writing this letter to people who are suffering and he's telling them, here's how to live in this culture, under this regime that's just keeping you down, frankly threatening your life. So our call is not just to engage platonically or in some some ideological way with the culture. It's to engage relationally with a culture that resists and hates the gospel. And that's hard and it's messy and I I don't have any really great concrete advice this week about how to do it.
Speaker 1:We'll let Jeff give you all the answers about that next week. But I do think that we can back up for a second and say, wait wait a second wait a second. Why? Why should we do that? Why does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Why? What is the reason for us to go engage with a world that hates us? Isn't that the opposite of peacemaking? Aren't we just making conflict? Aren't we just suffering, and we know we're gonna suffer, and nothing good's gonna come of it?
Speaker 1:And Peter anticipates that objection, and he answers it in verse 12. And his answer points us not only to the answer why we suffer and why we engage with the world, but he points us back to the gospel. Peter says, Engage with the culture. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. We engage with the world for the glory of God and in hopes that the world will glorify God too.
Speaker 1:Put simply, God wants you to act in a way that shows the glory of God to other people. Like Ryan said last week, we are the body language of God to the world. There's another thing that Ryan said that I wanna grab onto. And these two texts are closely interrelated, so I'm tempted just to repeat all of Ryan's sermon for this text because it it fits about equally as well. But another idea that Ryan hit on is that this notion of being called we are called to be priests, royal priests, and priests are bridge builders.
Speaker 1:They connect and and they transmit God to the world. So we are a bridge between the gospel and our culture. We are a bridge between God, our friends, and our neighbors, and our workplace. And one implication of being a bridge is perhaps a little bit sobering. And I I I've tried to find a softer way of saying this.
Speaker 1:We live not for our own sakes, but for the sake of God, and for the sake of other people. You, I, I am not the point of my life. I am not the hero in my story, neither am I the main character in my story. Your life as a believer in God is about God and is for God, not for yourself. A large part of who you are, of what you are to do with your life on earth is to build bridges from God to wherever you find yourself.
Speaker 1:And look, a bridge exists to get stepped on. You will be taken advantage of. A bridge exists to be used. And I I wanna continue the analogy a little bit farther. Bridges exist and they connect between divided places.
Speaker 1:To say that we build bridges between God and our culture is to acknowledge that there's people that we sit with every day, that we know from work, that we're friends with, that live next to us, that don't know the Lord and are separated from Him. When we communicate God's glory to them by our words and by our actions, we do that. We communicate the gospel in the shadow of God's judgment. Look at the end of verse 12. That the Gentiles may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Speaker 1:The day of visitation is this old testament image of the judgment day of God. I mean, it is the it is never a happy thought when it talks about the day of visitation. I think it's Isaiah 10, you know, where will I where will I flee on the day of visitation? It's this terrible notion of judgment, and it puts our conduct amongst the world in a very stark light. The stakes of our actions as believers are high.
Speaker 1:What you view as casual indulgences, as small sins and indiscretions, what you think of as slowly, and yet certainly ever increasing comforts, may very well impede the communication of the gospel in your life. Remember and feel the gaze of the world on you as you make decisions. Ask yourself this question. A friend of mine, years back, told me this is a good idea. I agree.
Speaker 1:This is a great idea. Ask yourself this question. You're faced with making a decision in your life. Ask yourself, does this choice show the world, or my friends, or my neighbors, or whoever, that the gospel matters more to me than anything else? That question will help focus you and act it brings to mind the reality that your actions don't just have results in your own life.
Speaker 1:They communicate something to a watching world. You're the outsider. People are watching you. They want to see what you're doing. Make decisions that communicate the gospel.
Speaker 1:And look, I find myself asking myself this question, and the way that I answer it certainly means that there are times that I give up things that were fine for me to do, or I give up having things that would be fine for me to have. But my purpose isn't to have things. My purpose is not to do stuff for my own comfort. In fact, having things, my desire to do things for my own comfort, that wages war against my soul, Peter says. That's not the gospel.
Speaker 1:If you're desiring after those things, that's war on your soul. Our desire is for the furtherance of the gospel, the glory of God in the lives of the world around him that doesn't know Him, that's perishing on the day of visitation. When we can communicate the Gospel, even if it means we give stuff up unfairly, what joy is there in that? What happiness, what fulfillment, what certainty in our identity. When we act as bridge builders, we follow after our savior.
Speaker 1:He who came from far off to make a way for us. He came to reconcile us to God, like Ryan said last week, that he give gives us the ministry of reconciliation. Because we have been reconciled, we can become reconcilers. Because we were given peace, we can be peacemakers. Because our sins were forgiven on the cross, we can forgive any wrong done against us for the sake of the cross.
Speaker 1:Because He suffered, we can suffer. It's okay. Because he's given us everything and promised that he's always going to take care of us, we can afford to interact with the world in a way that gives us less than we think we deserve. We can get less than we think we need from those people around us. We can be treated unfairly because we believe the gospel is true.
Speaker 1:But look, we we can try to build bridges through our relationships, through our conduct, through our words, but we do all of this because Christ made a bridge for us in His flesh. He did what we could never do. He crossed the divide that we couldn't cross. He loved us with a love that's unimaginable. We follow after Him and we build bridges through His sufficiency.
Speaker 1:Through the work that He's accomplished. We exist now in this world that's fallen to proclaim the work that he's accomplished. Pray with me. God, thank you for the work that you've done. Thank you for giving us an identity in Christ that is found and secure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for making us your people, and forgive us when we don't act like it. When like the Israelites in the desert say, Why can't we just go back to slavery? Why can't we just go back to Egypt? God, we don't desire to build lives that look just like the lives around us. And we don't desire to build lives that are just different for different sake.
Speaker 1:We want to build our lives on the rock of Christ. We wanna be firmly rooted in the truth of Christ so that we can build strong bridges to a perishing world. God establish us. Give us a desire to be rooted in Your word. Give us discipline.
Speaker 1:Give us self awareness as we live among people that, that don't agree with the things that are foundational to us. You give us grace. We might be peacemakers. We might act honorably. Lord, help me.
Speaker 1:Spirit, I pray and I I ask earnestly that you would seal your truth in our hearts. That you would impress on us the glory of God, the all surpassing beauty of our savior. That might motivate us in our actions, that we would be able to give up things like position, like prestige, like image, like wealth. Those things are death, and your words are life. We ask all these things in Christ's name.
Speaker 1:Amen.