July 10 2022
1 Peter 5
As I get older, I understand the importance of having a morning ritual. I can remember, as a kid, staying with my Grandma and knowing that the one thing that I could count on was that when I entered the kitchen for breakfast that she would have a big, steaming pot of oatmeal ready and waiting for me. You see, this was my Grandma’s morning ritual; it was as if the day had not properly begun until the oatmeal was made. My morning ritual is to fill the two bird feeders that stand next to the woods. I find that if I get up and move and walk to the garage where the bird seed is and then fill both feeders that by that time the stiffness in my back is at last tolerable enough that I can eat breakfast without too much trouble. My wife Jennifer, as part of her morning ritual, starts her morning with a nice hot cup of mint tea. So, it goes without saying, most people probably have some kind of morning ritual, something that they can do without much thought, because let’s face it, thinking first thing in the morning can be a challenge. Its nice just to wait a little bit to switch on the brain before we tear into the day.
What is interesting is that God knew of the importance of having a morning ritual because when the people of Israel were getting ready to enter into the land that God had promised them, God instructed Moses that every morning and every evening they were to say what is called in the Hebrew language, Shema, which merely means, “hear”. This hearing was the beginning of what they were to recite, a small prayer with which to begin and end their day which as recorded in the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy states, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, or life and with all you have been given.” So, imagine that as you rise and shine that you begin your day saying that you were going to begin this day that you have been given, listening to the words God is speaking. You are going to pay attention to God because you love him. You love him with your heart, the very center of your will, and you love him with your soul, the essence of your life and you love him with all that he has given to you. Can you see how this very small prayer would have a very big impact on how you order your day?
I think that God insisted that his people pray this simple prayer at the beginning and end of their day for the very purpose of bringing order into his creation through those who love him. If we live our lives without a proper love of God then we might say that the world is out of order. If we look around our world we can see how true this statement is. Now, some people might say, well, this was in the Old Testament so this prayer is obsolete yet this is far from the truth,. Jesus states in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew that the greatest commandment in all of the Law is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all of our soul and with all of our strength. So, yes, what we find in Deuteronomy still applies to those of us who follow Jesus. Yet, what is important is that it is Jesus who is the one who makes the possibility of a life fully loving God a reality.
You see, in the first letter of Peter, we read of how the forefathers of Peter and those who were reading his letter, they ended up with a life which did not bear fruit. This empty life is the life which came up empty even though they were people who every morning prayed that they would hear God’s word and then take and love God with their heart and soul and strength. What Peter writes about then in his letter is how Jesus saves us from a life which bears no fruit, the fruit of loving God with all of our heart, with all of our life and all of our strength because even though we are no longer in slavery to sin we still stand in need of knowing just how we can now love God with all of our hearts, and with our life and with all of our resources.
Peter frames his letter by using what is known as the parable of the sower because the parable of the sower is the way Jesus explains just why it is that people failed to love God as they should. The parable of the sower is the story of a farmer who went out to sow some seed as found in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. There we hear Jesus tell his disciples that “a farmer who went out to sow some seed and some seed fell upon the path and the birds came and devoured that seed. Other seed fell upon rocky ground, where there was not much soil, and immediately the seed sprang up since they had no depth of soil but when the sun rose the little seedlings were scorched. The little seedlings had no roots in them so they withered away. Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked the little seedlings. Other seeds though, fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty.” Jesus would go on to explain this story as being a story about those who were faithfully doing the prescribed morning ritual of listening and loving God but failing miserably to end up with a life that bore the fruit of God’s love. Jesus told his disciples that when anyone hears the word of the kingdom, the word of the king, who is God, this word is like a seed. If one hears this word and takes it to heart, loving God with all of their heart but does not understand the word, if they do not understand the plan of God, which is that as our God is one God so there must be one humanity, if this is not understood then the devil, who seeks to steal, kill and destroy, comes along and devours the word. So, when we don’t understand the ways of God then our loving of God with all of our heart is simply not going to happen. Jesus goes on to speak of the seed on rocky ground which represents those who hear God’s word and receive this word with joy yet they have no root in themselves. When these people experience trouble or persecution on account of the word of God they fall away just as fast as they first received God’s word. These are those who fail to love God with their soul or life. They allow their circumstances to be the determining factor as to the faithfulness of God. They fail to anchor their life in the very faithfulness of God, to trust that God will sustain them through any drought and storm and thus fail to love God with their life or soul.
Then Jesus speaks of the seeds which fell among the thorns. These are those who hear the word of God but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and the word fails to produce fruit. The abundance that God supplies becomes a false god which is worshiped and served thus separating a person from the very God in whom there is life and life more abundantly.
So, in this story of the sower Jesus is saying that people do not end up loving God with all of their heart because they do not understand God and his ways. When they fail to understand then the devil is able to come along and take the word of God from their heart. You see, if we understood God then we would know that he desires that all of humanity be united in their love of one another and so reflect back to God the very love with which he first loved us. This is what Peter writes about when at the end of the first chapter of his first letter that now that Jesus has cleansed us from all sin we are to have a sincere brotherly love, loving one another earnestly from a pure heart. What Peter goes on to tell us in the second chapter of his letter is that God is building a house, a house where people serve God and give their lives to bring about the purposes of God. This is the right understanding that we were given by Jesus, a right understanding that we must not let the devil take from us. Jesus went to the cross because he refused to follow the ways of the devil, he would not steal, kill or destroy because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Christ shed his precious blood for us upon the cross, because he knew that love is the power which defeats death, the power of sin which destroys God’s good creation. Now that we have been set free from the enslavement of sin we must in love join God in building up, no longer letting what we say and do tear down what God is creating. So, to say that Jesus is our Savior is to say that we have been saved so that we might love one another with abandon. Peter is making it clear that not only is that it is Jesus the one who has redeemed us by his blood but Jesus is the one who has also done everything necessary for us to at last love God with all of our heart.
Peter, uses the parable of the sower, to address just why those who receive God’s word with joy end up withering before their lives can bear fruit. He begins his letter by writing about the foreknowledge of God, his plan, the plan revealed to the prophets who spoke of the coming of Jesus, and of his sufferings and his glory.What was revealed to the prophets is the very good news that is given to us through the Holy Spirit. This good news is that God had a plan to bring salvation to our world, a plan he revealed to the prophets through the Holy Spirit. It is Jesus who came and who suffered just as the prophets foresaw and who rose from the dead just as they also knew. It is because Jesus has risen from the dead that we now know that the power of sin has been defeated, sin no longer reigns. God’s plan to bring about a world where love is the rule has happened just as God said it was going to happen. Through Jesus we have the certainty that God is faithful to his word. Now, we can know that we can trust God with our very life no matter what the circumstances, in our joy or in our sorrow, all because of Jesus. Through Jesus we can know God as our faithful source of life which can sustain us in the worst of times. Can we love God with all of our soul, our life? We absolutely can love God with our life because we know through Jesus that God is the ever certain fountain of life that we can sink our roots deep into and find life eternal.
Well, it should come as no surprise that Peter goes on to speak about how the cares of the world, the anxieties of life and the deception of plenty can choke out the word of God. Peter begins the fourth chapter of his letter by reminding us that now that Christ has redeemed us from sin that no longer should we think that our life is to be one long moment of indulging our desires. What Peter goes on to teach us is that when Christ suffered in the flesh he demonstrated to us how we now are to live in a world where overindulgence is the norm. The security that we seek by always feeding our human passions is to be found instead by yielding our life to God, and in that security, using our time to do his will. This is what we learn from Jesus, who with arms outstretched upon the cross cried out to his Heavenly Father, “Into your hands I commit my spirit!” This is how we now are also to live, knowing that our life is being held secure in the hands of God. No longer do we have to let the cares of this world make us anxious, divided in our loyalty to God. No longer do we have to falsely believe that life is somehow more secure with a stock pile of worldly riches. No, our security is found in the same way that Jesus found his security which is by yielding his life into the arms of his Heavenly Father. So, because of Jesus, because we can know the security found by being held in the arms of our Heavenly Father, we no longer have to allow the abundance that God has supplied us with to become for us a source of idol worship. We can instead take all that God has given to us and use it to glorify him, the one who securely holds our life in his hands.
So, yes, Jesus our Savior, who through the shedding of his blood, has redeemed us from a life of being unable to bear the spiritual fruit that God has always created us to have in our lives. But Jesus is more than just our Redeemer because now, because of Jesus we can hear the word of God and love him with all of our heart, with all of our soul and with all of the abundance God has given to us. All of this has to be understood before we can dive into the final words of Peter’s first letter. Peter begins the fifth chapter by speaking about the role of those he calls the elders. Peter is speaking to the elders as an elder, one, as he says, was a witness to the sufferings of Christ and a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed. These words of Peter echo the same words he wrote in the first chapter when he wrote of the prophets who through the Holy Spirit predicted not only the sufferings of God’s anointed one but also his subsequent glories. It seems then that what Peter is speaking about is of the very faithfulness of God, how the plan of God has always been to bring the world back to him through a Savior. Through the one we know as Jesus, through his death upon the cross, God took care of the sins of the past. Through the raising of this servant, God has brought the power of new life into the present so that we might know the faithfulness of God in his giving to us eternal life. This hope of eternal life is what sustains us even if we are called to give our life sacrificially to God.
Peter also instructs those who are elders to exercise their oversight of those who are less mature in their faith not under compulsion, not for worldly gain but rather willingly and eagerly. Then Peter tells them that they are to not be domineering which is very similar that Jesus taught to Peter and his friends. In the tenth chapter of Mark, Jesus says, that those “who are considered rulers of the nations lord it over them and the great ones of the nations exercise authority over their subjects. But it shall not be so among you for whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” So, what Peter is saying in so many words is that those who are elders must consider themselves the servants of those who they are watching over. They were to remember that the way of Jesus, is the way of the servant, the way that Jesus showed his love to his followers as we read in the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel. The elders, then, were to demonstrate that they understood that God’s word demands that all walk in the way of love.
Peter goes on to say that they should all clothe themselves with humility, a word which speaks of knowing the need to rely upon God. You see, it just makes sense that God opposes the proud because it is the proud who are just fine without God. Only as we are willing to admit that we desperately need God, that we need a chief Shepherd to watch over us, to give us the grace of his presence and power, only then are we able to live in peace. What Peter is speaking to here is knowing life as coming not from the power of our hands but rather to humbly know life as only being secure in the hands of God, where we can receive his grace. This is how Peter knows that we can keep ourselves by being overwhelmed by the cares of this world, from being deceived that our souls can find rest only if we just have enough riches to fill up our life.
So, Peter here in his last words, has simply gone over what he has already taught us about Jesus throughout his letter, about how Jesus has made it possible for us to fulfill this call of God to love him with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our strength. And then he does so one last time, I mean are you at last hearing this same framework that he has used throughout his letter? Cast all of your anxieties upon God because he cares for you, do you hear how Peter is once again addressing the problems we have loving God with all that he has given to us? When the anxieties of this world make us into hoarders, Peter says throw those cares of yours onto God, don’t you know that he cares for you, I mean, after all, he has given his very Son for you. Peter continues, be sober-minded, have your wits about you; in other words hang on to your understanding about God’s love and his plan for the world. We have to have our thinking caps on because the devil is roaming around seeking to snatch the word of God from our hearts. And lastly, Peter says be firm in your faith, even if you have to suffer. And how are we able to do this Peter? It is, God, Peter tells us that will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us, through never letting us forget that he is the one who has dominion over this world forever. His plan will happen, you can build you life upon this promise, because Jesus is the yes to all of God’s promises. Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment