1 Peter
Drawing Today from an Eternal Inheritance
After a Little While
November 20, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 5:6–11
This week, as you sit down to a Thanksgiving feast, give thanks above all that you have received the faith once for all delivered, the truth upon which eternal lives can be built. Give thanks for all God has brought you through. Give thanks that the season of your suffering will not endure forever, maybe not even for much longer. The Father, Son and Spirit himself has undertaken to restore you, confirm you, strengthen and establish you. I will give thanks for you, dear ones. Your faith and love are a shining witness and constant encouragement. And may we all say with Peter, even as the turkey gets carved, “To Christ be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
Shepherd the Flock of God
November 13, 2022 • Barry Phillips • 1 Peter 5:1–5
Peter calls for the disciples to “Shepherd the flock of God.” The church was being persecuted. They needed Godly wisdom and strength and encouragement. Peter’s instruction to the elders was to “Shepherd the flock of God” What does that mean?
Entrusting Yourself to God
October 30, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 4:12–19
We’re going to go through suffering. It may be bodily pain. It may be mental illness. It may be financial setbacks. It may be losing friends because we stand for Christ and the truth of his Word. It may be discrimination at work because of the gospel to which we hold. Whatever the source, we are not to be surprised. This is to be expected. Life is hard, and the way of the Christian harder still. But every suffering can be a link to Christ Jesus. We can know the fellowship of his sufferings. In our pain, we can feel tender towards the pain Jesus bore for us. We can feel our hearts soften toward him. We can know intimate relating to Jesus as we find room in his wounds for our wounds. We share scars. And so, we will be moved to entrust our souls to him. To deposit our lives into his care. Even as we don’t quit but press on. We love God and engage life seeking to do good.
Events That Save
October 23, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 3:18–22
Broken, lost, distorted, venomous sinners like us have come to believe in Jesus and made new. How does that happen? Because Christ Jesus who descended to death for us, keeps doing it. He goes down into the dead hearts and brings us to life. Heart by heart he enters those he saves. Christ has to restore even my ruined capacity to choose him. He has to restore my will in order for my will freely to trust him. So now the triumphant savior does not turn from reaching his holy hands into my sticky guilt. He penetrates the venom sack in my soul and washes it clean with his Spirit. No hell of heart is too stained, too hot, too hard, or too remote for the God who went beyond the ends of the universe of human experience to save us. On this you can rely. On this we must rely, opening our hearts to trust such a savior. Whatever else I Peter 3 means, that much is clear. Christ died for you. Christ rose for you. Christ will come again for you. Trust him with all your heart.
Take a Bow
October 9, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 2:13—3:7
Live as those who are free. Live as servants of God. Endure suffering by entrusting yourself to the God who judges justly. Remember that to this you have been called, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us a pattern of love to follow.
Proclaiming the Excellencies
October 2, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 2:9–17
On your own, you were lost, isolated. In Christ, you are a treasured possession. You have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light. So that . . . So that you can now proclaim his excellencies with affection and joy. There’s no going back to the cave. My name is Lazarus, and I live!
Living Stones
September 25, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 2:4–8
So this is who we are: a spiritual temple built of living stones upon the cornerstone of Christ. Our gathering, our faithfulness comprise the church which the world will see. We are joined to him and one another. When we gather, the music soars and the praises rise. When we disperse, we do not lose our connection. We go out still as living stones, part of the temple of Christ, declaring the news of his arrival in the world until we meet again.
Growing Up
September 25, 2022 • Colton Underwood • 1 Peter 2:4–8
Your being remade into Christ, being called as living stones of the New Temple, priests to God offering spiritual sacrifices, is all of grace. Let that truth sink in and bring humility and compassion for the lost. For those who perhaps have rejected Christ, or even just have desired to sit on the fence and live a good enough life to get into heaven, know this. The Lord is just as able to save you as he is for any person in this room, but there is no middle ground with him. You must either embrace and shelter under the cornerstone or you will, as Jesus himself said in Matthew 21, fall upon it and be crushed. Don’t put him off any longer. Don’t harden your heart anymore. This day, this hour has been given to you to turn to him. Won’t you heed the call to become who you were meant to be? Won’t you grow up into Christ?
Shedding Scales
September 18, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 1:22, 1 Peter 2:1–3
If you are in Christ, he has planted an imperishable seed in you. A new life grows in you. You’ve been born anew into the person you were meant to be. Only Jesus can do that for us. But if you are in Christ, the work of peeling old scales remains. There are things we need to strive to strip: malice, slander, hypocrisy, deceit and envy. For we have been made new for a purpose: to love one another earnestly from the heart. The old life tastes so bitter. But we who are in Christ have tasted how good he is. Live from that sweetness. Share it with others that the world might magnify our savior with us.
Ransomed by Precious Blood
September 11, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 1:13–21
We are the captives. And we are the captors. Our sinful choices have delivered us into permanent bondage to our sinful nature. We’ve enslaved ourselves! But we do not have the power to free ourselves. So God foresaw a plan before the world was made. A man sinned and brought the human race to ruin. A man would have to free the human race. A man would have to arise to break the generational captivity to sin and self. A man would have to come who would be faithful to God’s design his whole life. He would be the obedient child of his loving, just heavenly Father. He would love God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. His faithfulness would make him the first truly free human being since the Garden of Eden. But more, he would have to exhaust the power of captivity to self-centeredness. He would have to go to where our attempting to be our own gods always leads. He would have to go to utter forsakenness and isolation, to the very hell of separation from God and all human communion. The most obedient man would have to take the place of the most disobedient. He who knew no sin would have to be sin. From that position, for it really to work from the root up, from utter dereliction he would have to cry in faith “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”
The LORD Is Our Salvation
September 4, 2022 • Rev. Whitney Alexander • 1 Peter 1:10–12
Though for a little while, you suffer trials. But the suffering is brief in light of eternity we will spend with Christ. Trials, suffering, and hardships are like gold in the refiner’s fire becoming purified. Your faith is proved genuine, and this brings praise, honor, and glory to Jesus.
Sorrowful but Rejoicing
August 28, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 1:3–9
In just a few words, Peter expresses the huge paradox of the Christian life. “In this you greatly rejoice, you exult, even though now for a little while you have been grieved with the heaviness of trials.” Rejoice. Grieve. Leaping up with joy. Bowing down with the heaviness of suffering. Both at once. He sounds just like Paul who told the Corinthian church that we are “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6: 9). How can these two go together?
Living Hope
August 21, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 1 Peter 1:3–5
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s easy to miss what’s going on here. Something happened to Jesus in this world of dust and swiftly passing time. God the Father raised the crucified and buried Jesus to new life. Jesus got up from the dead. Now that historical event that happened to that one particular man still has power to change what you feel in your heart, mind and soul, right now. Today. Jesus rose. The same guy, but made new. Risen Jesus was a new creation, a man no longer mortal. Still a man but outfitted for everlasting life. When someone opens their heart to this news, he or she gets made new on the inside. We become a new creation. It’s like getting born all over again, but into a higher, fuller life.