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Sojourners
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-11-08 21:22Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-11-08 21:22Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-1peterpt05.php
This sabbath, a continuation of our series in First Peter. Today, a look at verses 1:17-21. Remember, Peter wrote his epistle to believers who were scattered (1 Peter 1:1). Living in many places, many lands, they were foreigners, sojourners, if you will. How were they to live?
There is something dangerous about not being persecuted, dangerous about living with conveniences and being settled. You may forget that you are a traveller, and that your time here is temporary. You may loose sight of the long vision. Peter does not want that fatal thing to happen. Therefore he first reminds us that we might not forget, that we are not here because of any special goodness that God sees and rewards in us. Rather, we call on a God to whom four is four and eight is eight, who sees through all the fog and who has no illusions about who and what we are.
And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers (1 Peter 1:17, 18).
The Non-manipulable God
Although the Bible says it repeatedly (Deuteronomy 1:17; 16:19; 2 Chronicles 19:7; Proverbs 24:23; 28:21; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25; James 2:1, 9, etc.), we rarely consider the fact that God is not a respecter of persons. That is, He respects people, but He respects them all. He refuses to accept one person as being superior to another on any humanly-manipulable basis. God is non-manipulable. No one can approach Him on the basis of position, personal holiness, wealth, popularity, or any other human metric, and plead for favors.
Peter is a Jew and knows them well. He knows that for long years his countrymen have been taught to appeal to God on the basis of their racial connection to Abraham. But the New Testament over and over drives home that the true Jew is such in his approach to life and not on the basis of genetics (Matthew 12:50; Romans 2:13, 27, 29; Galatians 3:28, 29; 5:6; Philippians 3:3; Revelation 14:4, 5). The question, whatever one’s DNA, is whether he denies or pampers self.
God no more gives preference to us because we are Seventh-day Adventists than He gave preference to Hebrews because they were Jewish. He consistently selects the least of all peoples to represent Him and His work. This humbling fact should be death to any inclination in us to denominational pride.
God does not fall for any of our tricks. You say you have no tricks. But we often have quite a toolbox of them especially for ourselves, and often with but little awareness.
You probably know at least a few of these tricks yourself. “I prayed about it,” “no one at church objected,” things like that. Sometimes the offerings given the church are appeasement for a guilty conscience offered in compensation to God. But He refuses to redeem us with any money. Sin is morally offensive and God cannot be bought off. Nor does He permit us any indulgence in self-atonement. We cannot be saved by our own works. Sincerely offered prayers and offerings are fine. We must have them. We do not oppose them. We just want to beware of those subtle ways we have tried to manipulate God.
God evaluates each person on the basis, not of words only, but of his works. It is true that we will give an account of every idle word that we speak (Matthew 12:36). Our words are a part of our actions. Whether words or actions, what we say or do comes from our heart. The spirit is where the real question is. Is our heart on God’s side of the question or not?
The Gift of Time
Peter warns you to “pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.” We are running on limited time. You have the same amount as I. The clock is ticking. Time is a gift.
What are we doing with this time? We all seem very busy. But we often work hard on something and then our lack of discipline is seen. At the end of the day we “veg-out.” Instead of spending time with God by prayer, Scripture reading, journaling, or some other way, we flop down in front of a television or a computer screen. The sands race through the hourglass while we sit supinely absorbing. We take in things which cannot help us. The junk content of our lingering awake-times is often destructive of character or we are too tired to receive what benefit might actually be present. When you realize that, it is your signal to rest—by sleeping.
The word “sojourning” means “a temporary stay.” Therefore we may read the phrase as “pass the time of your temporary stay here in fear.” Fear may be understood as either fear in the classic sense or in terms of respect. Both meanings are in order. We should live as respecting God in our direct relations with Him as well as in our behavior and witness for Him. At the same time, we should be careful knowing our own tendency to forget Him, and we should have a measure of fear during our lives here.
It is true that love is not perfected in fear (1 John 4:18), but it is also true that we are wise to maintain a sense of God’s presence, and of the judgment in which our lives are scrutinized. Jesus warned us to fear Him who could destroy us (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:5).
What a contrast to the feel good message so often heard today emphasizing that we have nothing to fear. We should remember who we are and the time in which we live. We are God’s children at time’s end. We live in the time when His character at last is to be vindicated in His witnesses. We have limited time and a temporary stay. The work of the gospel is not yet concluded. We are to occupy until He comes (Luke 19:13).
Not Redeemed With Money
Peter reminds us that we were not redeemed with money. Slaves were redeemed with money. Slaves hardly were redeemed from any tradition. But actually the Hebrews were redeemed from their vain conversation received by tradition from their fathers. They were not redeemed from poor traditions that God had delivered to them, but from the traditions that their ancestors had interwoven with God’s Word—and from the ill-behavior flowing out of it. God bought them back from the whole of their problem.
Poor doctrine leads to poor behavior, and poor behavior leads to poor doctrine. Either way, God has redeemed His followers from the whole—poor doctrine and tradition.
The believer is redeemed, not with gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. To be redeemed by the blood of Christ, means, of course, to be redeemed by the life of Christ. Not only is His death crucial for us but we must never forget that His life saves us (Romans 5:10).
Jesus is compared to a lamb without blemish and without spot. That is, with a perfect offering. Jesus was a perfect offering. Perfect because His humanity was like our own and so He could legitimately represent us, and perfect in that unlike us, He never sinned. He never became a rebel against the principles of good. Only with these two elements could He be a perfect sacrifice for us.
Jesus, Peter says, was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for us. Before man was created God knew how He would make us and He knew the consequences of making people with free will. Free will meant that His creatures might choose rebellion. The combination of free will and immaturity clearly means a scenario of risk. He could not remove the maturity problem, and to remove man’s free will would counter His whole intention. The risk would have to be run.
Interestingly, it is the last book of the Bible that tells us that Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). Jesus’ foreordination meant that He and the Father and Holy Spirit agreed that if man should sin before attaining to maturity, Jesus stood ready to come and bear the penalty in order that man might yet exercise opportunity for salvation. The plan was put in place. And we know that it was not long before Adam and Eve chose rebellion. In all their immaturity they sinned. In that moment Jesus stepped forward to fulfill His obligation. His promise, if need be, to come and live and die as a man for man, was implemented. Adam and Eve were not destroyed that day. Sacrifice was found. The Physician who had been on call was called. Calvary was scheduled. As soon as there was sin there was a Savior.
Foreordained at the foundation, in these last times, He was manifest for us. “These last times” includes at least the last 2,000 years. If the earth is some 6,000 years old, then the last third of time is the last time. On God’s time-table, we have been in these last times for many generations.
Peter was contemporary with Jesus. He saw Him, knew Him, conversed with Him, and at times offered poor advice (Matthew 16:22; Mark 9:5; John 13:9). But He says that Jesus was manifest in these last times for us. Jesus is a Savior, not from the law, not from the character of God, but from sin, and from the character of rebellion. Jesus changes people. He buys us back from empty behavior. He makes it possible for us through faith to have meaningful behavior. The way we live benefits ourselves and others. It testifies about what God is like and what godliness is like to a world sorely needing the testimony.
Our world is full of skeptics because there is a lot of chatter out there and little of it has any redemption in it. People are jaded. They see through the falsity. That leaves us with marvelous opportunities. All we have to do is be true witnesses for our true Lord. If a jaded skeptic sees us and begins to think that—maybe—there is something quite different going on in our life, something ethical, supernatural, the way is open for Jesus to knock on that person’s door loud enough to be heard above the roar. So each sojourner is very important. Each sojourner is an R.S.V.P. from God to the lost. You may know that RSVP is an acronym from a French phrase. If someone is invited to an event, he may be asked to RSVP—to “please respond” to the invitation. If you are a sojourner with Christ, then you are an RSVP. In you the world has its invitation to Christ.
Never Forget
Finally, verse 21:
Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.
Jesus, ready from the beginning to die for us, in these last days doing so, and now ministering for us, was sacrificed for us. As sojourners we ought never to forget that it is by Him that we believe in God.
Our Father is not distant from us. If we have seen Jesus, then we have seen the Father (John 14:9). The Father is not hiding from us. He knew that Jesus would exactly represent to us what He, the Father, was like had He Himself come. And so He sent Jesus. Believing in Jesus is not believing in a different personality than the Father. Jesus and the Father are so very much alike; indeed, they are part of the one same God. If we have Jesus, we have the Father, but to accept the Father without accepting His Son Jesus is to actually reject our Father (John 5:23; 1 John 2:22-24; 2 John 9; Matthew 11:27; Luke 10:22). We should never forget that believing on Jesus is part of the package of believing in God—all of God—Father and Son and Holy Spirit.
Jesus came to point us to the Father, and we come to point others to Jesus to the Father. This is the work of the sojourner.
Jesus Waited Voluntarily
Now another question: Peter says that God raised up Jesus from the dead (1 Peter 1:21). But John says that Jesus had power to raise Himself up from the dead:
Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again (John 10:17, 18).
Jesus had laid aside His glory and at least certain of His divine attributes, but never had He ceased to be God (John 17:5; Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32; Philippians 2:7, 8; John 1:1-3, 14). Again and again Satan provoked Him to take up that which He had laid aside into the keeping of the Father (Matthew 4:1-12; 27:42; Mark 15:30; Luke 23:46; John 14:10). But He would not. He remained faithful until the end. Voluntarily Jesus submitted to the Father, trusted in Him, depended upon Him, lived by Him. The powers of deity were His by right. And yet, He did not do the works that appeared in His ministry, but the Father who indwelt Him did. Jesus came, not to give the obedience of one God to another, but to demonstrate what God could do by His deity in mere humanity. Never once did Jesus reach into His divine pocket, recover supernatural potency, and launch fireballs at Satan. He waited. He trusted in the Father. He lived as we must live. He set the pattern. He showed the way. He took our humanity to the grave and to heaven again. He went victoriously.
When it seems hard for us to voluntarily submit to God’s guidance, we should remember Jesus. Now what is hard is how it was for Him. He trusted Himself to His Father, He was born into our world as a tiny, helpless baby. He relearned at His mother’s knee the very same Scriptures that long ago He Himself had spoken to Israel. He was subject to human father and mother, derided by His contemporaries, viewed as a crazy person, and at last crucified. He was not permitted to see through the portals of the tomb. He had right to the power. He could raise Himself. But He waited for the angel to come down and role away the stone. He waited until it was clear that His Father had accepted His sacrifice. Only then—waiting for the Father’s token of acceptance—did Jesus take back up the life that he had laid down. All this, that our faith and hope might be in God (vs. 21).
You see, we are merely sojourners here. We pass the time of our temporary stay here in fear. We are fragile, clumsy people in a fragile, clumsy world. We need to know Jesus. In His Father’s household there are reserved for us many rooms (John 14:1-3). Although we are His servants, these are not mere servants quarters. We are His sons and His friends. Hear our Lord:
Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you (John 15:15).
As we spend our temporary time here, as we go day by day with Jesus, we get to know Him. We come to know what our Lord is doing; we become intimates. Jesus tells us what the Father tells Him. God’s will, His desires, become our own desires. And so we travel.
Conclusion
Friends, we are to be sojourners. Be careful about putting down roots here and now. The fashion of this world is passing away but Jesus is not passing away. We live a different kind of life. We do not focus on conspiracies, alleged or real. What time do we have for that? Rather we must learn to live with faith and hope. We must come to know personally the object of our faith and our hope. If our faith and hope is not in God, it will be in ourselves or in the state or in the latest celebrity figure. All these things grow hoary and wrinkled with age. Truth is forever true and Jesus is forever young. Somewhere, across the sky, there are scar-prints engraved in the glorified flesh of Jesus. Somewhere even now, even this moment, He intercedes for us. He identifies with us.
While on earth in the midst of sinners He had no where to lay His head. Nor really can we. If we did, our faith and hope would cease to be in Him. That is why we cannot, dare not, become too comfortable here. Our hardships, small though they actually are, are helpful reminders that earth vainly calls us but heaven is our home. That is a good thing. And one day when your eyes see Jesus, what a sparkle there will be as your quickened mind realizes that at last you will forever be with your Lord. May our lives today hasten that day, is our prayer. GCO
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