Forging the Faithful

This morning we continue in our series, Baptized by Fire. We have heard the perspective of baptism by fire from Luke in the book of Acts, from Paul in Thessalonians, and today we get to hear it from Peter. But in order to do this, you have to know what this guy was like.

Simon was a faithful Jew, as far as we can tell. And when he was out and he was fishing with his fishing buddies, I say that, but they did it for a living, and they couldn't catch anything. So he stuck with it, and he stuck with it, and he stuck with it all night long.

They tried to catch fish and they got nothing. Has anybody ever run into the nothing thing with fishing? And so in the morning, how do you think Simon and his friends felt? Tired. They had exhausted every option.

But along came Jesus and he said, why don't you cast your nets out there? And Simon said, Lord, we're the pros. We've done it all night long and we've caught nothing, but because you say, we'll do it. As in, we'll just do this because you say, but nothing's going to come out of it.

And they went out of there and the fish came and the other fishermen had to come over and help. It started sinking the boat, and Simon came in and fell and said, Lord, you need to leave me. I am a horrible, sinful man.

Now later on, we find out that in the book of Acts that he's never broken the law as far as he could tell. He tried to follow the law, but in the presence of Jesus and knowing that, he knew he needed something else. Now Peter was bold.

Did you ever notice Peter was bold? But sometimes he was scared. He was bold enough to walk on water. And then he got scared with the wind and the waves, so the Lord had to pull him out.

He was bold enough when Jesus said, what do others say about me? And people were, the disciples were going, well, some say you're Elijah. Some say you're John the Baptist reincarnated. Some say you're a prophet.

And Jesus said, but who do you think I am? And Simon said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus said, blessed are you, for you did not learn that from men. You learned that directly from my father in heaven.

And it was so good. He said, your name is now Peter. On this rock, I will build the church.

And then Jesus said, so here's what's going to happen next. Son of man is going to have to be crucified and die for the world. And guess who tried to block those plans of God? The newly announced Peter said, no, Lord, I will never let that happen.

And Jesus said to him, get behind these, and the same Peter then at the last supper said, Lord, even if everybody else falls away, I never will. And Jesus said, Simon, Simon, the devil has asked to sift you like wheat, sift you, to test you. And Peter failed that test.

He denied Jesus three times. But now the same Jesus, the same Peter, this disciple, after Pentecost, realized there was something else. You see, Peter was bold, and we see the way he fished that he was a perfectionist.

He didn't give up. He pushed through, and he tried to make it happen no matter what. But there is a point where even a professional fisherman couldn't catch fish without the hand of God intervening.

And Peter realized, especially after Pentecost, that in his perfectionism, his trying to be so good, his trying to do everything so right, and to just keep working and trying and harding and moving, that there is a difference between doing it yourself and doing it with God. So we fast forward to the book of 1 Peter where he writes it to Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, which are four provinces where we find northern modern Turkey. And so he's telling them they are exiles of the dispersion, that they are people who are aliens in their own land.

And he ties this later to being a Christian in your land doesn't seem to fit, that you feel like an exile. Even if you're of the same nationality, you feel like an exile because following Jesus is so much different than it is, than the culture would be. And I'm not sure if it's that much different today.

In verse 3, verse 3 I could spend the rest of the time and tomorrow talking about just verse 3. I could do a whole series on this, but you guys only like the two hour service is what I was told this morning, right Bruce? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now there's so much in that alone, blessed. That is a way of saying praise be to God, praise God.

The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hinting at because He is our Lord, then God is also our Father. And having God as our Father means something now and it means something later. According to His great mercy, His mercy, it's all about God.

It's what God did through Jesus Christ. He caused us to be born again and saying that we are saved by our own works or our own actions or by being good or whatever we try to do is kind of like saying that a baby saying, yeah I don't give any credit to my parents, I did this all on my own. Well, there's a couple things that have to happen that you might need another talk about for a baby to actually even exist, for it to have that.

And with us, it's when God becomes our Father, when we become disciples of Jesus Christ that there's something that continually happens throughout our lives that we grow closer and closer to God and that fire of the Holy Spirit makes a difference in our life. Peter talks about here, this whole thing he's going into is that once we are saved, we are saved and it's kept and it's secure. But we need to grow into that and do as much as possible.

Now, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That hope is living because Jesus is living. The living hope is because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ so we too are alive in Jesus Christ.

And then He says an inheritance. So what happens for a lot of families when their father dies, their parents die? They receive an inheritance and that inheritance is usually property, money, investments, all those kinds of things that you don't get. You have to keep your hands off unless you're somehow the prodigal son and talk your dad into giving you the money early.

Don't do it. It didn't work out very well for him. But in this, our inheritance is not of this earth.

Peter said that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and kept in heaven for you. Now, when we look at this, imperishable means that it never dies. It's eternal.

It is an inheritance that is there today and tomorrow and whenever Jesus comes again. It's undefiled. That means nothing can corrode it or make it fall apart or crumble.

It's not going to rust. It's not going to fade. Undefiled means it remains pure.

Now remember that part because we're going to talk about that soon. And unfading means the power of your salvation is the same as it was the first day you received Jesus as your Savior, kept in heaven for you. It's kept in heaven, not here on earth because anything on earth is going to what? It's going to perish.

It's going to be defiled. It's going to fade. It's going to fall apart.

But our inheritance is kept in heaven, which means until Jesus comes again, we don't receive that. But it's there. It's already there when you have the faith in Jesus.

And then he said, it's kept in heaven for you who, by God's power, who is us, by God's power, this faith is being guarded. The inheritance is being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Okay, so it's a combination of God's power and our what? Faith.

And when we have God's power and our faith, then it grows. And we grow as followers of Jesus Christ. By this power through faith, we have, do you remember last week when we looked at 2 Timothy 1-7 and in there, Paul said to Timothy, God didn't give you a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-discipline or a sound mind.

That he has given you these things. Now, some of the differences we start seeing here that Peter started seeing after Pentecost with the power of God in him is that that power includes love, that it is the love of God that compels us and drives us and helps us to grow, that it's not all about us. For whom the power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

That means being a Christian isn't just about receiving Jesus. It's about growing up into that salvation and growing closer to God. And then he starts talking about something that is so huge here.

He says, in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. How many of you have ever had trials? I didn't say teenagers. I said trials.

Sorry. Thank you for the eye roll. And those trials, and it says if necessary, meaning some things we won't have trials, but we need to have trials.

And by those trials, we are tested. And our faith through that testing produces a genuineness of our faith. I mean, people have said different things like, you know, you don't really know how faithful you are unless you're faithful behind closed doors, just like you are in public.

The genuineness of your faith is what's tested on this earth. Remember what happened to Peter himself? The devil asked to sift him like wheat, like, I can take this guy down, like he did Job, like he tried to test Job. Those tests help our faith.

And it goes on to say that that genuineness of our faith is refined like fire, that it's genuine. Genuine means real, authentic. This is what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary said.

I didn't make this up. It says, being exactly who we claim to be. That is authentic faith, being exactly who we claim to be.

And it just made me think, am I who I claim to be? Are we who we claim to be? Are we disciples of Jesus Christ, even when it's hard? Even when people question us? You see, by the building of our faith, by the sanctification we have in Jesus Christ, sanctification means we are set apart for God. We're set apart and we become more and more like who? Jesus. When we become more and more like Jesus, that means we are more holy.

And it doesn't mean we all of a sudden say we are holier than thou. Well, nobody walks around saying, hey, I'm holier than thou. They walk around looking for flaws in other people.

And that's when holiness is not filled with the love of God, and that holiness is not genuine in the same way. Hope that was still mine. This says, purified water.

How pure is purified water? Anybody know? Most times it's around 99% pure. That's pretty pure. That's pretty good.

It's pretty refreshing. Peter then talks about, we are purified like gold. Wait a minute.

Let me be scriptural on this. Peter says, more precious than gold that perishes, even though it is tested by fire. Now, when gold is refined and you get fine gold, the best, highest quality gold, what percent pure is it? It's 99.9% pure.

And this says, we are more precious. We are more pure. Now, that seems hard to do, to burn all the bad stuff.

Some people have to have more fires of the Holy Spirit than others. To burn all the bad stuff off and become holy and pure in the sight of God. Now, we're protected by grace through Jesus Christ, but it's funny how a lot of times in our lives, we want to be perfectionists like Jesus.

Like, how many of you have ever had a job? How many of you in that job wanted to be as good as you possibly could and even better than you possibly could? You wanted to be perfect, excellence. You poured everything into it. If you didn't know how to do something, what did you do? You learned how.

You trained. You studied. You grew.

You asked someone. When you want to become the best at something you do, you keep going. But somehow in Western faith, we forget that we try so hard in so many areas, but in our faith, we ignore Christian perfection, which is entire sanctification.

And we ignore it because we think, I'm not good enough. I can't do that. I've messed up too much.

And the world loves that. That when we take, when the world is able to take our zeal and our boldness of faith away, then the world doesn't know about Jesus Christ. So how many of you have passed 99.9% pure? The truth is, I hear a lot of things like, Christianity is really so simple.

But the truth is, it's not simple. But what we do wrong is we try to do the work of holiness. We try to say, okay, I'm not going to do this.

I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. And we try to make ourselves holy and we fall short.

At least I do. Peter tried so hard to follow the law and do everything, but he kept falling short. He'd sink.

He'd deny. He would try to resist Jesus because he wasn't holy enough. But now he is saying, because of the fires of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit refines us.

And he kept that boldness, even though he has not reached perfection. And he keeps going forward. The fear that we still have, instead of having a fear of power and of love and of a sound, instead of having that fear, and instead of having the spirit of power and love and a sound, we have the fear that we are not perfect enough.

That we are not good ambassadors or good representatives for Jesus. But he wants us in this process of sanctification to be bold in our faith, to share about it. And if somebody says, wait a minute, you're trying to tell me about Jesus and you did this and this and this and this and this.

And you say, all right. I may be going on to perfection, but I'm not perfect yet. You see, the work for us is not to try to be holier.

The work for us is try to submit to God. And for some of us bullheaded people, that is tough. That is tough to say, okay, God, work on me.

Holy Spirit, take over. Change, transform my mind, transform my heart, transform me, move me and change me from these hurts and pains and these loves for the world that keep me from you. That, that's not easy work.

Can we admit that? That is not easy work, but that is our work. Jesus said this when the disciples were talking about their work and we do the work of God. Jesus said in the book of John, this is the work of God, to believe in the one he sent.

So instead of saying, I'm not going to step out on the water because I know I'll sink because I'm not good enough. I'm not Jesus. I'm not perfect.

We step out in faith because we say, I know Jesus is perfect. I know he is working on me. I know I am drawing into his presence.

And then we can do things boldly for God in the name of Jesus Christ. Peter said, even though you don't see him, you love him. Though you did not now see him, you believe in him.

And here's the cool part. We think of being more and more like Jesus, separating more and more from the world, being weirder and weirder, which could be the truth. But Peter says, because you love him, you haven't seen him, because you believe in him, even though you haven't seen him yet, you have this living hope.

So with this hope, you have unspeakable joy. Boy, do we forget that. That the good news is good news because Jesus does good things.

That when we are more and more like Jesus, it is joyful. It is cool to see, wow, God could even do that with me. That joy should be overwhelming.

That joy is what sustains us and helps us grow and helps us when people don't seem to want to hear what we say or want to believe that God could be working on even our hearts. With this inexpressible joy, you are acquiring. The telos, the end, the outcome, the living hope, the goal of your faith, that telos, that end is there.

And because you have that end, you have the joy, which is the end is the salvation of your soul. Now, every author I read is quick to say, not just thinking that that's our soul just plucked out from us, but our whole being. Remember, we have heavenly bodies.

Our whole being is saved. Now, remember, Paul says that whatever we don't have tested by fire here in this life, it'll be like getting into heaven, escaping from fire. Then I'm not talking about this being our salvation.

I'm talking about what we do with our salvation to become as much like Jesus in this life by letting the Holy Spirit purify us, refine us, make us even more precious than silver for eternity. But that is what we do with our faith or that hard work is going to happen when we come before Jesus, which probably have a little bit more work we have to do of letting God be God. But right now, let the Holy Spirit work in you.

It's about trust. It's about submission to the fires of the Holy Spirit. This is God's work.

And God is perfect. And we can trust God for this. Let's pray.

Almighty God, thank you so much for Jesus. Thank you that through his resurrection, we too have a living hope. What in us is not of you? Purify us.

What roadblocks are we putting up to say, no, Lord, not me. I am an unholy person. Help us to submit to you.

What do we value more of this earth than we value of you? May we lay it at the foot of the cross. We thank you that in this walk of life, you are with us. We don't do it alone.

We don't have to try harder to be perfect. We don't have to try harder to be holier. We just need to do the work of trusting you, letting you into our lives, believing your truth, and allowing you to purify us.

In Jesus name, amen. Amen.