Book of 1 Peter - Ch. 1, Vs. 22-Ch. 2, Vs. 11 (09/29/2002)

Park Meadows Church

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We are at 1 Peter 1, 22. Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the

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Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently.

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Let's take the first part of that. Seeing you have purified your souls.

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And Virg, what does that mean?

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No, you're right. But David, seeing you have purified your souls, what part of you is that?

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All right.

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Your soul is your life. Seeing you have purified your life.

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Now we know that we cannot live a pure life, but we can obey the truth through the

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Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren. We see that people through the

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Spirit. Russell, what spirit is he talking about?

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The Spirit is, uh, talk out,

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Carl. The Spirit in you is with a capital

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S, the Holy Spirit. All right. Does that Holy Spirit live in you?

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What did you say? It lives in me. All right. That's all you can answer for is you.

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Now, it is with this pure life that we obey the

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Holy Spirit and love one another with a pure heart fervently.

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Virg, what does fervently mean? All right.

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The Word of God is a miracle cleanser. Is that right, Joy? The only true miracle cleanser in this world is the

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Word of God. It's the best bar of soap that you can ever get.

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The Word of God will really take spots out. Because a lot of us need our spots taken out.

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Your relationship to the Word of God. Make note of this. Your relationship to the

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Word of God will lead you to a right relationship with believers.

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23. Being born again. Not of uncorruptible, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.

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By the Word of God of which liveth and abideth forever. Being born again.

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David, why did they use the term born again? Because you can't be unborn.

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You can't lose your salvation. You can't control your birth. You can't control life by yourself.

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And you can't save yourself. Many parallels between physical birth and physical death.

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That's right. Now, Russell, it says here that this...

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What? Okay. You threw me off a while ago.

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Well, you all look alike to me. Where were we?

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Peter brings us back to the Word of God again. He's talking now about the subjective

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Word of God in salvation. We have seen that the objective

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Word of God was that Christ died. And that's our redemption, that he died.

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However, if you are to become a child of God, you must be born again.

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Joy, is there some other way that I could become a child of God? Are you sure?

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All right. We need to be born from above. What's that mean,

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David? From above. All right.

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I feel that the work that you do is in the name of the

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Word of God. In other words, the work that I teach you is in the name of this scripture right here.

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It's not of fruit in that world. That's right. Not of works that we have done.

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Not of corruptible seed. But of the incorruptible. By the

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Word of God. Bill, how long does this

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Word of God last? That's right. It had no beginning and no ending.

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You cannot be saved. You cannot be born again apart from the

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Word of God. You have to hear the Word of God.

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If they would only realize, these people, that the thing that really brings a birth within us is the

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Word of God as it reveals Christ in us. Then something tremendous takes place within us and we are born again.

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We've heard that so much that we don't think about it. But that in itself is a miracle of all miracles.

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Verse 24. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.

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The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. I don't want you to ever think, ever begin to think, that there's something in you that God needs.

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But the Word of the Lord endureth forever.

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And this is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto you. They had heard the

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Word, and they reacted to it. We heed the preaching and the teaching of the

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Word of God above everything else. I do not mean to minimize the place of music, place of methods, place of an organization, but there is absolutely no substitute for the

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Word of God today. It endures forever.

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Yes. Yes. We've all had from the beginning that we love one another.

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This is love as we walk on the course of His commandments. This is His commandment that as you have heard, again, you need to walk in it.

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I understand that if you don't have the Word, you don't have the commandments, you don't love the

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Word. Without the truth, you cannot love. That's right.

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Without the Word, you don't have the truth. That's right. So they all, even John ties it in the same way as Peter.

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Without truth, you cannot love God or love all man. Mike, you're doubting this person.

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That's absolutely true. Without the Word of God, this life would be nothing.

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In 2 Peter, the second chapter, 1

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Peter. I don't know why I keep trying to jump over. 1 Peter, the second chapter.

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The suffering of the saints and their suffering of Christ. In chapters 2 and 4,

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Peter deals with the suffering of God's children and the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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In these three chapters, we will see what suffering accomplishes in the lives of believers.

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Virg, are you suffering? Well, just wait.

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You'll get there. Suffering produces

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Christian conduct. Is that right, David? Suffering produces obedience to the will of God.

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Is that right, David? Suffering produces separation.

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Speaking of separation or living for the Lord, there is the danger of adopting one of two extreme viewpoints, both of which

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I consider very much out of line with the Scripture. One of them is thinking that human nature is such that all it needs is merely new direction.

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It needs to be given a purpose and a little reformation. The folk who take this position believe that since there is nothing wrong with human nature, they receive something that is supernatural, which it does, that's true, but then he merely sits on the sidelines while God accomplishes in his life all that needs to be done.

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Folk in this class become very pious. To me, they are like a puffed -up frog.

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They never seem to grow and develop into the loving, normal Christian.

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Now, this second chapter will make it very clear that you and I, through the new birth, born again of incorruptible seed, the

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Word of God, have a new nature, and we are to live in that new nature by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. We have been brought into a loving relationship with one whom, having not seen, we love.

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Simon Peter saw him, and he loved him. So, Greg, you don't have to see someone to love them.

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Where'd Greg go? There he is. And although you and I have not seen him, the

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Holy Spirit can make him real to us. When you were first born again, do you remember, think back, do you remember how sweet and wonderful it was?

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If you're shaking your heads, I can't see them. All right, you do remember.

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Now, do you know what caused that feeling? What was it?

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Well, you know what? I remember when I was, there was a great sense of relief of the guilt and sin that I had.

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It was wonderful. That's wonderful.

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Have you ever felt like that since then? Sometimes when

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I go through great agony and trauma.

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Why don't you feel it as strong? Because I've been corrupted by the world.

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But don't you think, though, if we, and I know it's impossible, but if we repent and truly got back to where we should be, we would have that feeling all the time.

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I'm not saying we, I'm not saying I do that. I'm just saying if we had, if the relationship was gone, and you talk about if we repented of our sin and tried to have that daily walk, and that daily repentance, don't you think, though, we would have that feeling all the time?

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Well, to a degree, yes. Joy? I think that heaven has that.

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All right. Very seldom are there any of us that feel the joy that we did at the very beginning because at the very beginning we had not had time to sin.

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Bill? Everything that I know, before I was saved and after I was saved, was after he made the promise.

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So I sinned up to a certain point in my life, and then

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I live in the world. And while I live in the world, I think some of you are saying that that is the end of all our sin.

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It's not. We continue to sin. And I think we have to continue to ask if it's like this, then we do feel the same euphoria we have in the beginning, maybe seasoned just a little bit with the knowledge that we have sinned before that we will sin again.

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That's all true. Very true. But just remember when you were first saved, when you first knew you were saved, before you drew a breath, you had not had time to sin.

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And that was what you were speaking to. We can feel the very best possible, and I would hope that we can feel that again.

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The work of Christ on the cross settled forever the question of sin.

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The future is bright with the glory of God, and we have been brought into the value of that working relationship, redemption.

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We have been born again, and no one, not even

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Satan or God, can change that. However, however, how are we doing today in our

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Christian lives down here on earth? There's been many go on, some recently.

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I hope it was a time of you checking your relationship with the

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Lord and your fellow man. Verse 1,

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Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.

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Virge, everybody that is born starts out as a baby. That's right.

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You were and you grew out of it, I hope. He has certain things for us to do for ourselves.

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Firstly, there are certain things that we are to lay aside. Paul mentioned these in his letter to the

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Ephesians. It's like taking off a garment or putting on a garment.

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Verse 3, If so be ye have tasted that the

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Lord is gracious. If so be. It should read, since you have tasted.

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You see, at the moment of salvation, a child is born with an appetite for the word of God.

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Now why they don't all retain that, I don't know. But they're just like a newborn infant immediately starts to eat.

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A baby seems to know all about the way to get milk. I don't think we need programs to teach the separate spiritual, to teach the spiritual babes in the

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Christian Christ how to get into the word of God. Instead of programs, we need to give them the word so they can be fed.

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In many, many churches, they have many, many programs to teach you how to get into the word.

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Real separation, we need to note this carefully, is a separation from the works of flesh.

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Too many Christians feel that they must be separated from the world. No, we're in the world.

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To be separated from this world would mean I go someplace else. I heard about a man that had the wrong idea concerning separation.

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He drove around Nashville, Tennessee almost a half of one night looking for a restaurant in which he could eat that did not serve liquor of any kind.

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He finally found one. He went in and got tomato poison.

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You don't need to drink the beer just because you eat the food. Separation from the world does not mean that you cannot go into a restaurant that serves liquor.

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Malice, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking, these are the things from which we should be separated.

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Only the Spirit of God working within us will produce that kind of separation.

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And until you and I are willing to give up malice, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking, we will never grow to Christian maturity.

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Four. To whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious.

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Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

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Now, we don't come to a little babe in Bethlehem. He was a little babe in Bethlehem.

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We come as little babes to the living stone. The living stone is

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Christ. After the confession of Simon Peter, the Lord Jesus said,

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Upon this rock I will build my church. Simon Peter makes it very clear here that the living stone is not himself, but that the living stone is

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Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus is the foundation stone.

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And we know that Peter understood it that way because he said, Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.

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Just as Simon Peter was one of the little stones, you are one of the little stones and I'm one of the little stones, which are built up into the spiritual house.

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When we are born again, become children of God, we are put into His building of God.

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Six. Yes. That's right.

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We're built up by something else. By the Holy Spirit living.

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That's right. That's right.

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Absolutely. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture,

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Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

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This is a quotation from Isaiah 28 .16. Unto you, therefore, which believe, he is precious.

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But unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner.

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I think it's so interesting that Simon Peter, the big rugged fisherman, uses the word precious.

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See it? We think of it as a word used in vocabulary of women.

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But whatever Peter speaks of Christ or of His blood or any part about Him, he uses the word precious.

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But unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, rejected, the same is made the head of the corner.

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And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even to them which tremble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed.

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We see here that the unsaved are doing their work.

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They were appointed. We see that the saved are doing their work.

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They were elected. But more than that, Jesus did

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His work, that which He was appointed to do. Now, His own.

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Not a peculiar people. God's people are not supposed to be oddballs or crackpots or ready for the funny farm.

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Some folks seem to think that's what's meant by peculiar. It is more meaningful to use the translation a people of His own.

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We are a chosen generation, folks. That is, an elect race.

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Back in the Old Testament, God chose Israel as His people. And in the

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Scripture, there are two elect groups of people, the nation Israel called an elect nation, and the church called an elect nation and an elect people.

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Now, keep in mind that Peter is writing to his own people,

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Jewish Christians, who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire and even beyond that.

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Why were they scattered, David? Persecution.

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Were they scattered according to the desire of God?

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Then would you say the persecution was of God? But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

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That's talking to you and I. We are a royal priesthood.

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Back in the Old Testament, God first of all chose the entire nation of Israel to be

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His priests. I believe that in the millennium the whole nation of Israel will again be

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His priests of earth. However, they sinned, and so God chose one tribe out of the nation.

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The priests came from this one tribe. Today there is no priesthood on earth which

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God recognizes, except one. Today every believer is in the

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Lord Jesus Christ as a priest. That's you and I. Israel had a priesthood.

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Today the church is that priesthood.

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Ten. Which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God.

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Not a people. What does that mean, Dennis? Alright.

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Which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God.

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What does it mean, not a people, David? Not a people simply meant that you were not a

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Jew. Israelite. Which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

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We didn't belong to God, but we're far from Him. Which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

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There's one gift that you won't want to miss, and the name written on the box is mercy.

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Clarence, is that a large box or a small box? That's right.

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God is rich in mercy, isn't He? If you need some today, you can go to Him for it.

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In fact, that's the only place you can go. Eleven.

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Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

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Here's that word soul again. What does it mean,

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Dennis? Soul. Well, the child of God is to publish

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His praises. In what way? How can we publish the praises of God?

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All right. By singing hymns. Well, if it's all right to do that.

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But there's a better way. By not manifesting the works of the flesh.

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Earlier, Peter has told us that the works of the flesh are malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, slander.

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We publish His praises by displaying our attitude which have been shaped by the word of God.

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Again, we come back to that attitude. Your attitude has been shaped,

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I hope, by the word of God. We need to stop here.

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Anything you would like to touch on or add?

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Or subtract? I have a question for you. All right. We can see here that the soul is within our life.

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Is that not true? And so, therefore, take attention to the world and what they think we should do with war against the soul.

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That's right. We're given the opportunity to live in this life and to grow

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Christlike. Yet it's all controlled by God.

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But I can't look at that. I know it to be a fact. I was thinking last night, laying there in bed, when

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I couldn't sleep. God controls it all.

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What is man that He is even humbled to think of man?

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Nothing. Man is nothing. We're standing.