Your faith is the story you live from.
We live in a culture that is suspect of stories, but that in itself is a story.
Our culture’s story is that the ultimate good is what feels good to you and doesn’t hurt anyone else and it promotes different ways of achieving that outcome
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.
It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing
– David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
In our world full of objects of worship, how do we live faith?
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
1 Peter 1:1 1
To God’s elect, exiles
These two words are a key to the whole book:
God’s elect: People who have received God’s grace as the result of God’s initiative
Exiles: People who don’t belong to the place where they find themselves. His readers were exiles at four levels…
- probably living away from their home towns and family connections (many from the slave classes)
- excluded from Jewish acceptance
- under Roman occupation and rule
- Believing themselves to be part of a different kind of kingdom.
scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,
1 Peter 1:1 1
Peter had lived into late middle age (probably in his 60’s) and was writing to little churches across a broad region who had been growing organically in the face of antagonism from both Jews and Romans
who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
1 Peter 1:2
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
All of us need the whole work of the Trinitarian God
- God the Father knew you before the world began
- The Holy Spirit is at work to bring you to Jesus and make you like Jesus
- You are saved by Jesus’ blood which he gave on the cross
We now come to one long sentence (ten verses) that starts with the core of our faith…
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
1 Peter 1:3 3
Before you ask questions of how you live faith, you need to name who you are putting your faith in and why
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time
1 Peter 1:4-5
Heaven holds our inheritance, it is not itself our inheritance. There is an exciting future we look forward to, which puts into perspective the horrible stuff we need to walk through this side of eternity
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed..
1 Peter 1:6-7
There is a repeated theme of our faith being refined through suffering and that what we look forward to makes it worth it
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Matthew 16:24 NIV
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:3-4 NIV
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NIV
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11 NIV
Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 2:3 NIV
Peter is writing to people who didn’t get to meet Jesus personally, but who love him.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
1 Peter 1:8
Peter knows that loving Jesus is what it is all about… and the lived benefits of that
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
John 21:15 NIV
Our faith is not only about the future… it is the best story to explain your lived experience now. You are being saved now.
for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:9
Peter assumes that the whole Old Testament found its fulfilment in Jesus, and through him, the newly constituted people of God
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
1 Peter 1:10-12
This is what the prophets had foretold
[31] “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. [32] It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, ” declares the Lord. [33] “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. [34] No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34 NIV
This is what Jesus understood
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Matthew 5:17 NIV
This is what Paul understood
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
2 Corinthians 1:20 NIV
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:26-29 NIV
This is the faith that makes sense of our lives and which we can now live in the real world
Small Group Questions
- When you hear the phrase “Your faith is the story you live from,” what do you think it means in everyday life?
- The sermon suggests that everyone worships something. What do you think people in our culture most commonly “worship,” even if they wouldn’t use that word?
- Which of the things mentioned (money, appearance, power, intellect, comfort, approval) do you feel most drawn to for meaning or security?
- What do you think it means to be both “God’s elect” and “exiles” at the same time? Where do you feel that tension in your own life?
- In what areas of life do you feel most “out of step” with the culture around you because of your faith?
- How does the idea of a “living hope” and future inheritance change the way we face difficult or painful situations now?
- Peter talks about faith being refined through trials. Can you think of a time where something hard in your life actually strengthened your faith?
- What would it look like this week to more intentionally live from the story of Jesus rather than the “default settings” of our culture?