Wednesday, November 16, 2022 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Yes. Good. Is it like a real

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Bible? Is it like a picture Bible? Okay. Just words?

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It's expired? Oh, okay, good. I don't think it expires. They're red. Well, that's great.

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I didn't even have to flip the lights. Hi, everybody. I'm David. So tonight, thank you everybody for being here and I don't know what says church family more than just eating chili dogs.

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I mean those just and Frito -Pie. I walk in I was like I wonder if that's Frito -Pie. Oh yes, yes it was.

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So I am I have the privilege to bring a bring a short lesson tonight and I'll aim for 20 minutes so that we have time for questions and think and things like that.

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So we're gonna be in first Peter first couple of verses and let's start with a the word of prayer.

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Lord God in heaven thank you for this evening thank you for the enormous privilege of standing before my brothers and sisters and just talking about your word that you have given to us to not just help us through this life but to tell us more about who you are.

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Please bless our time together and please bless my words and lesson you know what kind of vessel

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I am and we just pray that on the other side of this that we understand

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Christ just a little bit better and it is in his holy name we pray amen.

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First Peter. I'll go ahead and read this and then we'll talk about why we chose this particular section.

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First Peter chapter 1 verse 1. Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion

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Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

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That's out of the ESV and some of you are going to have slightly different translations and that is that is good.

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So first off who knows where Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia are?

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Somewhere somewhere up here. Yes the smart guy in the back.

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That's right these are provinces. They are in this area here.

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You can kind of describe this as a circular letter, a circular something that was passed.

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So if you kind of look at the if you have maps in your back in the back of your Bible you'll see that Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, it goes

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Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. It goes in a circle. It's just interesting like oh yeah.

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What's another letter that kind of went in a circle? Here's a hint. Seven churches also in a circle.

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Circular letter. You know not just because it's drawn a circle but also because it is passed from church to church.

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That's kind of what that what that means. So who here has done an in -depth study of a book of the

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Bible just on your own? You said you know what I don't I don't understand

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Philippians or I love Ephesians and I'm gonna stay in it for a little bit longer. Who here has done that just on their own?

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Yeah yeah we all have. Some people a little bit longer?

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Yes absolutely. I know what Rhett does. So there are some juicy bits of Romans.

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There are some fun parts of Ephesians. There are some controversial parts of 1st

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Peter and frankly we kind of skip over the introduction. It's helpful.

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It's good. It's like oh well this is Peter. This is who he's talking to. This is the audience. This is the time period.

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Okay let's get to the study. This is the study. So what

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I'm going to encourage you to do when you do an in -depth study of a book of the

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Bible, look at the introduction. Look at those first couple of verses.

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Slow down. If every word is inspired, if everything is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, training, and righteousness, that includes the salutation.

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That includes the you know dear loved ones. So I'm going to have a couple of examples but I'm going to use 1st

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Peter as my example. That's just the one that I happen to be in. This is where I've been spending my time last couple of weeks.

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So I'm going to use this as an example and we'll talk about a couple of extras, a couple of other ones, because I want to encourage you the next time you crack open your 1st

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Timothy or especially the epistles, look at those introductions.

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Don't skip over those. They're written to you. They're not just written to Cappadocia, wherever that is.

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It's in Asia. Okay. It was written to you. 1st

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Peter was written to you. Book of Romans was written to you. Revelation was written to you. Although it is addressed to the churches right there.

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So let's dive in and let's kind of look at what I'm talking about. This is kind of the setup.

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Most of these letters, especially the epistles, New Testament, they identify who's speaking, who's writing, and it tells us something about who you are and who

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God is. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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What's an apostle? I heard it. Sent one.

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One who is sent. It became kind of an unofficial title. Someone who speaks with authority.

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Sent from someone extremely important. Peter is an apostle of who?

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Jesus Christ. Speaks with that authority. Okay.

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So here's another example. This one's not as much fun. Romans 2 .16.

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Here's another example of an apostle speaking with authority.

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Backing up to 15. This is in Romans. You just got done talking about the pagans.

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Now he's talking about the Jews. He's going to kind of move into Romans 3 and says everybody's in trouble.

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But here he's specifically talking about to the Jewish Jewish people. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when according to my gospel,

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God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. According to my gospel,

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God judges. Paul is claiming the authority.

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God is speaking through him. Peter and Paul support each other, declared each other to be apostles.

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This is who's speaking. This is why you can trust it. He is speaking with the authority that comes from God through his mouthpiece.

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Not everything that Peter ever said was divinely inspired. We heard on Sunday that Peter spoke for how long?

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Like three hours in the temple. And Luke gives us a divinely inspired summary.

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I'm not saying anything that Peter said wasn't true, but if you've ever heard a preacher go on for three hours, maybe you can kind of ramble a little bit.

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Sorry, Michael. No, no. It's the divinely inspired summary is what we have.

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So he's speaking with authority. Okay. That's who he is. All right. Apostle of Jesus Christ, someone speaking with authority.

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Who are you? To those who are the elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

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To the elect exiles or to the pilgrims, to the sojourners who are in this area.

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Elect exiles, this is one of the only places, and one writer that I read said that this is the only place in the

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New Testament where elect is put to exiles or sojourners or strangers.

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It's very unique construction. But exiles isn't necessarily the best translation here.

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Strangers, pilgrims, sojourners. A little bit better. Exiles implies you can't go home.

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You're kicked out. Like when people were exiled to Babylon, they couldn't go home until God said it was time, 70 years.

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But if you're a sojourner, if you're a pilgrim, the idea of this language is that you are temporarily residing in some country.

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But you have a home country. You're just kind of here for a bit. So when

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Peter addresses you as sojourners or pilgrims, to what homeland is he referring?

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I heard eternal. I heard heavenly. Well, Peter, wasn't he a

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Galilean? Isn't that his home? Well, if you want to know what something means in Scripture or you want to interpret

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Scripture with Scripture, look and see where else it's used in the Scriptures. That's the analogy of faith.

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That's the analogy of Scripture. So Hebrews 11 .13 talks about a whole list of people who were aliens and sojourners on earth.

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Hebrews 11 .13. If you want to look up Philippians 3 .20,

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would somebody also look up Philippians 3 .20 and be ready to read that for us? So Hebrews 11 .13

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reads, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

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So no matter where they were, they were, you know, exiles or strangers, sojourners, pilgrims.

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What does Philippians 3 .20 say? Who's got that? Our citizenship is in heaven.

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That's home. So Peter, an apostle, Jesus Christ, addresses the chosen pilgrims whose citizenship is in heaven.

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Of the dispersion. What was the dispersion? I mean, the Greek word here is diaspora. Am I familiar with that term?

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Yeah, dispersion. Scattered. Yes. Also used in the Gospel of John, specifically of the

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Jews. But this is a mixed bag here. This isn't specifically talking about the

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Jewish dispersion. Peter is using it in a non -technical sense.

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One writer wrote that it was...the Greek article is not there. It's a non -technical.

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It's scattered. And he's speaking to a company of probably both

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Jews and Gentiles. Peter is applying something that is specifically

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Jewish, typically Jewish, and is applying it to the entire joint

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Jewish -Gentile body. He does this a lot. This is one of the first instances.

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He does this a lot in the book of 1 Peter. Kingdom of Priests, where do we see that?

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Old Testament, of course. Yes. Applies it to us. Remember, this letter is written to us.

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You are the elect sojourners. You are the strangers. You are the exiles. So that's why you don't want to say exile because you actually are welcome.

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So we are welcome in our home. We are welcome in our own land. Our citizenship has not been revoked. We're temporarily residing here.

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Chosen. That one gets a little bit dicier for some of us. The idea is that you have a mass of unchosen and out of that chosen, pulled out of a giant mass of, well, a basket full of deplorables.

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How about that? I'm sorry. Not everything that pops into my head

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I'm supposed to say. But the idea is that you're scattered but not kicked out.

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Yeah, but not necessarily kicked out of home because our citizenship is in heaven. That's the idea. Scattered for the purpose of spreading the gospel.

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Okay. So this is who Peter is. This is who we are. Elect according to what?

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Chosen by whom? Chosen for what? Peter answers that next question.

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For knowledge of God the Father, the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ was sprinkling with his blood.

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Is there a stronger Trinitarian statement? It's pretty strong.

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This is who God is. This is the one that has sent

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Peter. This is the one that has called out. This is the one that owns the country from which we are only here temporarily.

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This is the one who holds our citizenship. Elect according to foreknowledge of the

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Father. This is our status. Our status as sojourners. We are sojourners and we have the privilege and status as God's chosen, even though they reside in a hostile area.

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And if you look a little bit further in verse 20, same chapter, speaking of Christ, he was foreknown before the foundation of the world was made manifest in these last times for the sake of you.

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Who through him are believers in God who raised him from the dead? This idea of being chosen before the foundation of the world, specifically applied to Christ and who are in Christ?

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You. So the implication here is that being a sojourner,

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God's chosen, and you're residing in these hostile areas like Galatia and Pontus. This was known before the world began.

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Take comfort. God knows you and knows you intimately.

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And he knew you before you knew you. He knew you before you were you because God is and always was and always will be.

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Sanctification of the spirit. This is a present status. You are being sanctified, have been sanctified, are being sanctified, will be sanctified.

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It's continual. Who does sanctification? The Holy Spirit. The implication here, especially through the rest of Peter, is that their hostile presence or their presence in a hostile world, the suffering that they are enduring is part of that sanctification process.

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So the worship and the fellowship that they have in addition to their suffering is part of that sanctification process.

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For obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Christ. Why all of this?

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For obedience to Christ. And the continual sprinkling of his blood so that when

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God looks at you, he sees the atonement done on your behalf.

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So he actually sees his beloved son. That's one way of looking at it. That's continual.

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That's a status that doesn't change. This is who you are. So we've gone from who Peter is to who you are.

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This is who God is back to you. It's been sprinkled. And he ends it with a very

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Pauline greeting. Grace to you and peace multiplied.

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Or grace and peace multiplied to you. It's almost as if Peter is again joining together an

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Old Testament and a New Testament idea. The idea of blessing, of peace, the shalom.

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Over and over. That's throughout the Old Testament. We don't see it as much charis. We don't see as much grace.

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And we see grace specifically in the New Testament. It's in both places, but the emphasis is in the

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New Testament. So here in these greetings, Paul does this, John does this, and Peter does this.

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Grace and peace multiplied to you. That's why grace and peace are multiplied to you. Because of everything that we just listed.

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That's how 1 Peter starts. It's because of this that the rest of it has an impact.

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If Peter is not sent by God, why should you pay attention? If this letter wasn't written to you, why should you read it?

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If you were elected by someone that doesn't matter, or chosen by someone who is less than, what difference would that make?

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But if you have one sent by God, and you have this God that does a triune act, has elected you for obedience to Christ, and you are sprinkled with His blood, so you have full atonement, can it be?

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Hallelujah, what a Savior. Now pay attention to the rest of the book. That's just the introduction.

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So when you go through some of these books, and obviously there's a lot that can be said.

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But just briefly, Romans chapter 1, Paul called to be an apostle.

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Sent one. We have received grace and apostleship. Actually apostleship, lowercase, there in Romans chapter 1, verse 7.

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Grace and peace to you from God and our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 1, Paul, an apostle, not of men, but of Jesus Christ and God the

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Father, to you, the church, the assembly, and Galatia. Grace and peace to you from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 1, Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ.

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To you, saints, holy ones, sanctified ones, called out ones, separated ones.

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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1 Thessalonians mixes it up a little bit. It says to the church of the Thessalonians in God the

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Does this in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Changes it up a little bit, which is great because he talks about the coming of the

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Lord and why you're going to be raised because he was raised or you will be changed because he comes back because the church is in Christ.

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Changes it up a little bit. Makes sense because of the character of the book. And let me put a nail in this coffin.

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I love how Timothy, excuse me, Titus starts.

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Timothy starts well too. And Titus, listen to this introduction because Paul comes out swinging.

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Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life with which

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God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested his word through the preaching with which

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I have been entrusted by command of God our Savior to Titus, my true child in a common faith, grace and peace from God the

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Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. Strong statement, the sovereignty of God and a strong statement of Paul's authority.

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Hey, Titus, listen up. That's why you pay attention.

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Was this letter written to Titus? Yes, it was. Was it written to you? Yes, it was. Hebrews, a little bit different.

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Starts off all about Jesus. It's not like written to the Hebrews. Grace and peace to you.

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This is Paul. It doesn't say that. It's a little bit different. But that's for a specific purpose.

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It's a book of Hebrews. It talks about the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is about Christ. James 1, to the 12 tribes scattered abroad, the

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Diaspora. James probably was one of the first New Testament books written to a predominantly

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Jewish church. Diaspora typically to the Jewish believers. Expanded, as our understanding expanded.

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And John. John's just different. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Revelation.

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He's just different. He didn't write his gospel in the synoptic so it lines up.

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You know, for those of us with a very organized analytical mind, I like things to line up, and John does not do that.

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John frustrates me in that respect. My OCD goes a little nuts. So he likes to be different.

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It's a little bit like Hebrews. You know, 1 John sort of just starts, but he hits you immediately.

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And this is what 1 John is about. That which was from the beginning which we heard and which we have seen with our eyes and looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life,

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Christ himself, the life was made manifest and we have seen it to testify to it and proclaim to you eternal life, which was with the

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Father and was made manifest to us. He's talking about Christ in the flesh. Pay attention.

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This is about Jesus. So love, truth.

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That's what 1 John is talking about, but later on he talks about, we write to you that you may have fellowship with us because truly it's with the

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Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, that your joy may be full. So that's why he writes the book, but he starts off with some pretty heavy stuff and pretty heavy doctrinal stuff.

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It does kind of the same thing in Revelation. Revelation written to the seven churches, but the introduction sets it up.

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The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.

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He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John who bore witness to the word of God, to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

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Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. Blessed are those who hear it and keep what is in it for the time is near.

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John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is, who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before the throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, firstborn of the dead, ruler, the kings of the earth.

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Pay attention. This is who's writing this to you. Written to the seven churches, written to you.

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Written to Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, written to you. Written to Corinth, written to you, and on and on.

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So as you go through some of these books, what I hope that this study has done is given you an appreciation for the first couple of verses.

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Who is the original author? Who's the original audience? Under what authority are they telling us how to live?

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Under the authority given to them by God the Father, the

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Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ our Lord. That's why we should pay attention.

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And I hope that you will take a little bit of extra time in some of these introductions, and hopefully you've seen the importance of doing that, and it's actually kind of fun.

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I know we spent the majority of time in 1 Peter and pretty much on the introduction.

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Anybody have any questions or anything? Hayley? Okay, so the question was,

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Peter, being Jewish, speaking to a mixed group, Jewish and Gentile believers, uses terms that have been used traditionally for Jewish people like the diaspora, like kingdom of priests, those kind of Jewish terms.

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Where would you go to find that information? Please.

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Blue Letter Bible. So that is a resource where you can click on different phrases and words, and it gives you a whole bunch of references.

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This is not just a concordance, which gives you the references of the individual words, but actually gives you the study materials.

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In short, it does take a little bit of technical training, and it takes a little bit of time. It's not obvious to us because we're not

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Jewish. We're not steeped in that culture. You can use little words, little phrases.

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When Jesus talked about the abomination of desolation, let the reader understand, his readers, if they were

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Jewish, they understood. But when Luke wrote about that, he didn't do that.

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He was writing to a predominantly Gentile audience who says, so when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, he just translates it so that you can understand the difference.

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So I happen to know the diaspora was Jewish, and I happened to come across a couple of cross -references that says these are

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Old Testament identifications for the chosen people of God, and the whole idea, chosen people of God, that was very much an

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Old Testament phrase, now applied to the church. So it's a very good question, and I don't have an easy answer for you, but I think

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Blue Letter Bible is one example. I use an electronic reference called

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Olive Tree. I can click on individual words, and it gives me links to both

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Strong's Concordance, and all this stuff. I am not that smart. This is all electronic tools that are available at our fingertips.

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The stuff that we have on our phones is like a seminary -level library just a few years ago.

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It's incredible. We have actually more tools than we know what to do with, so you can actually get lost in all of the information, so you have the opposite problem.

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But excellent question, and that's where I go. I would like to check out

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Blue Letter Bible. I've heard about it. I've not used it myself. Thompson Chain Reference Bible, that's an oldie but goodie.

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The great thing about the Matthew Henry commentaries is that it is public domain, so a lot of times you can get it for free.

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There are two versions. There's the complete, then there's the condensed. You can obviously know the difference between the two, but there are two versions out there.

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Not that Matthew Henry rambles, but he's Puritan, so they write a lot, they talk a lot.

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They use a lot of big words, and sometimes they switch to Greek just randomly because they're super smart, and they just expect you to know it because we're country rubes, and we don't.

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Any other questions about study or introductions or any of the things that we talked about today?

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I've gone a little bit over time. I apologize. Okay, well, if that's it, we'll have prayer requests, and Brian said that he would be willing to do that.