September 16, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
How much did it cost for you to come to church
today? How much did it cost you to start
your car, and drive to worship this morning?
How much did it cost you to prepare your offering envelope which you
will give in just a few short moments?
How much did it cost you to get out of bed, get showered, dressed, and
eat breakfast before coming to worship?
In some ways these are difficult questions to answer, because when it
comes to worshiping the Lord or living as his disciple, these are things that
we don’t often think about. But now
comes a more difficult question: What
costs did you incur this week while you were away from worship? What attacks did you come under? What affect did these attacks have on your
faith? Though we don’t always realize
it, if we are not continually building ourselves up in the Lord our faith can
be worn down by our enemy’s attacks between Sunday worship. Our faith can be burdened by the weight of
this sinful world in which we live. In
short, the longer we keep ourselves away from the Lord and his word, the weaker
our faith can become. This is why Peter
is calling on us to build up ourselves in the Lord our God as he reminds us
just how precious our faith is in the opening verse of our lesson today. He writes, “Simon Peter, a servant and
apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and
Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:” (1 Peter 1:1,
NIV84).
Now, as Peter writes these words, he is telling us
just how precious our faith is; for the faith that we have received through the
righteousness of our God and Savior is the very same faith that he and the
other Apostles had been given and were proclaiming through the Word of
God. In fact, the faith we have today is
the very same that Abraham and all the patriarchs clung to. It is the very same faith that Adam and Eve
received in the Garden of Eden after they had fallen into sin. The only difference is that of tense. For while all the Old Testament believers
were looking forward to a Savior who would come, we look to a Savior who has
come and will come again!
This is how precious our faith truly is! Not only is it the same faith that has
sustained believers throughout the centuries, our faith is the very thing that
connects us to Jesus Christ. For the
truth is our faith is very much like the great heavy chains that connect ships
to their anchors; it is our faith that connects us to Jesus Christ who is our
anchor amidst life’s troubles, tribulations, and temptations. In the same way that a great tanker ship will
let down its anchors to keep it from freely drifting about in the ocean, in the
same way that, that anchor will settle itself on the bottom of the ocean,
digging in to keep the ship from moving, in the same way that the chain that
connects to the anchor will keep the ship from drifting away, is our
faith. For it is Jesus, our Savior, who
has dug himself into the ocean floor of our lives, and it is the chain of our
faith that keeps us from drifting away from him.
This is why Peter is calling on us to build
ourselves up in the Lord. For if we do
not continually maintain our faith with God’s Word, the salt water spray of
false teaching could easily begin to rust through it. If we do not continually strengthen our faith
by regularly gathering for worship and taking time each day for personal
devotions with the Lord, that thick and heavy chain of our faith could easily
be reduced to the size of a slender bach chain that so beautifully adorns a
woman’s neck. But even though a chain
like this might be beautiful, it is of no use to keep a ship connected to its
anchor, and a slight gust of false teachings could easily break us away from
our Savior. This is how precious our
faith truly is. For it is the faith that
was created in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that trusts in Jesus Christ our
Savior. It is that faith, which connects
us to the promises that Jesus has given: the promises of sins forgiven, eternal
life with him forever in heaven, and the resurrection of the dead on the Last
Day. So dear friends, continue to build
yourselves up in the Lord knowing that your faith is truly a precious thing,
and as you do, as you build yourselves up in the Lord, do so remembering that
it is the Lord who has given you all things!
What an amazing truth this is! For not only has our Savior given us the
faith which connects us to himself, he has also given us all that we need for
this life and the life to come. This is
exactly what Peter is telling us as he continues in our text: “Grace and peace
be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His
divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he
has given us his very great and precious promises,” (2 Peter 1:2-4a, NIV84).
Now, when Peter first wrote these words, he was
writing to Christians who were plagued with false teachers that were doing
everything they could to confuse them and pull them away from the true teaching
of God’s Word. Well, the same thing is happening to us today. We too face false prophets who are daily
seeking to rob us of everything the Lord has given us. That is why Peter is urging us to build
ourselves up in the Lord and not to forget that it is the Lord who has given us
all that we need for this life and the life to come. For even though we may not see false prophets
preaching on the street corners, we have them visiting our houses regularly
enough. We have had them sneaking into
our homes without our even realizing it and influencing our very thoughts.
For all we have to do is turn on our television
sets, our radios, or even go on line, and we are confronted by messages that
try to convince us that we can’t possibly be happy until we have purchased the
latest new gismo for our homes. We are
confronted by television shows that use as much foul language as they are
legally able to in a thirty minute show, and craftily do it so we find
ourselves wanting to hear more. We see
other shows that reveal more and more skin each year, and regularly cast scenes
in bedroom settings before or after couples have engaged in intercourse,
regardless of their marital status. But
on top of that, every show on television has an evolutionary mindset. Some are very subtle and nearly undetectable,
while others unashamedly proclaim it as fact. In this way, our enemies are
trying to make us believe that the Lord is holding out on us. They are hoping that we will grow
dissatisfied with what we have, and turn our backs on the Lord as we begin to
think that he hasn’t given us enough.
They are hoping that we will treat the Lord’s great promises as if they
are nothing more than rubbish.
This is why Peter is building us up in the Lord by
reminding us that the Lord has given us all things, and all we have to do is
look around us to know that this is true.
For here we are, worshiping in a beautiful church building that none of
or at least, very few of us, had a hand in building. We all traveled here in one of the vehicles
that we own. We all came from our own
homes that have refrigerators and freezers filled with food, that have closets
filled with clothes, and rooms filled with furniture, books, magazines, and so
many other things that we are constantly cleaning and organizing them. But most importantly, we have our Saviors
greatest and most precious promises. For
we have the promise of sins forgiven. We
have the promise of eternal life in heaven.
We have the promise that Jesus Christ is personally preparing a place
for us. We have the promise that death
is nothing more than a sleep from which we will awake in heaven. We have the promise that on the Last Day
Christ will come to raise our bodies from the dead and take us to be with him
forever. But most incredibly, we have
the promise that Jesus our Savior now dwells within us.
This in itself is a great comfort to us, because it
assures us that not only has our Savior given us all things for this life and
the life to come, he loves us so much that because we are his own, he himself
dwells within us. Peter declares this
very truth as he writes: “Through these he has given us his very great and
precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine
nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (1 Peter
1:4, NIV84)
Now, because our Savior lives in us, we are truly
participants in the divine nature, and by that we are being built up in the
Lord. For now that our Savior lives in
us, we are able to live in him and for him.
We are able to go out and serve him with our lives. We are able to let our love for Christ
reflect in all that we say and do. We
are able to join together in the worship of the Lord and eating and drinking of
our Savior’s body and blood so that we might be built up together. And through these things we are able to
escape the corruption of this evil world. Though we will never fully escape its
corruption until the day we are safely home in heaven, with our Savior living
within us we are able to live for him.
With our Savior living within us we are able to curb our own evil
thoughts and desires. And now, because
our Savior lives within us, we have been given the weapons we need to fight
against our enemy, the devil and all his temptations.
Though there will be times when we fail, though
there will be times when we fall in to sin, our sins and our failures will not
drive our Savior from us. For when we
are unfaithful to him, he is faithful to us, calling us to repentance and
building us up in himself so that we might continue our lives in service to
him. So live for the Lord and build
yourself up in him. Serve him with your
lives! Give to him the first fruits of
your offerings! Build yourself up by
reading and studying his Word, and give thanks to your Savior that he loved you
so much that he now lives within you.
Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
