1 Peter Chapter Two - Growth & Godliness - video Dailymotion

Chartridge Mission Church

#1 Peter #Series #chapter #two #bibleteaching #growth #Godliness #history #christianity #christian #God #doctrine #ChartridgeMissionChurch #chesham #Harry Smith #harpenden #thefriendliestfellowship #LearningTheBibleTogether  International preacher Harry Smith tackles the second chapter of 1 Peter, which emphasises growth and godliness. Set to hauntingly beautiful music, this sermon is both a time of learning and reflection on all that Jesus has done for us.   Harry Smith YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeLtfVhcCUFsgphZCMlFYF_n_HmHtL12B  Chartridge Mission Church, a beacon of faith, was founded in 1844 and remains in the village of Chartridge, just outside Chesham, in the picturesque Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, England, UK.  We are a warm and welcoming fellowship and would be delighted to have you visit us in person. Join us for our Sunday service at 6 pm, followed by refreshments.   Our Church is fully accessible, with wheelchair ramps and an accessible toilet, ensuring everyone can participate in our services.     Chartridge Mission Church, Chapel Lane, Chartridge, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, HP5 2TH  The village Church with an international audience.  Support our work at Chartridge Mission Church:  Donations via Stewardship.org.uk:    https://www.stewardship.org.uk/partners/20005300    Cheques can be made payable to Chartridge Mission Church and sent to the above address for the attention of Pastor Barry Kempson.   Recorded on Sunday, 9th November 2025.     Join us for our Sunday service at 6 pm.  www.Chartridge.UK   The Friendliest Fellowship.

Transcript

00:00I will no boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ,

00:20His death and resurrection. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer,

00:40but this I know with all my heart, is once a paid my ransom.

00:57Welcome. And now I've got on here in the order, the reading, which of course is 1 Peter chapter 2. Thank you, Christine.

01:06So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

01:15Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation,

01:23if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men,

01:31but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up

01:39as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God

01:46through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone,

01:55chosen, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. So the honour is for you

02:03who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the

02:10cornerstone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. They stumble because they disobey the word,

02:20as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

02:29a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you

02:36out of darkness into His marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.

02:44Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners

02:53and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct

03:01among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good

03:08deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human

03:16institution, whether it be to the Emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who

03:23do evil and to praise those who do good. But this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put

03:31to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a

03:38cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honour everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honour

03:49the Emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle,

03:56but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while

04:05suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure, but if

04:15when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this

04:23you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might

04:30follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled,

04:38he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself

04:46to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin

04:54and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have

05:02now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. Amen. There are some key things in this

05:09wonderful book and this wonderful chapter that we want to bring out. Peter, of course, as you'll have

05:15seen last week, is towards the end of his life. He wrote two epistles and he's writing, he addresses it

05:22to this first one, to elect exiles. There are people who in the Roman Empire were suffering.

05:33There's a little bit of debate, of course, about when exactly it was written, but we have a clue in the

05:37middle when he says, don't be surprised at the fiery trial. Some of the old versions say that is to come,

05:45but actually in the original, that has come, that is amongst you. These were God's people who had been

05:52forced out for their lives, often we presume with only the clothes they had on their back, fleeing from

05:59persecution for the faith. And of course, it's an epistle largely about suffering, but one of our hope,

06:09our inheritance in Christ Jesus. Peter reminds these people as encouragement. And of course,

06:18we need reminding. We don't have that kind of persecution in this land, but we know that in

06:26other parts of the world, persecution is rife and harsh. And people are being persecuted and are dying

06:38for the Lord. We have links with Western Africa, Southern and Western Africa, and particularly

06:45a dear mission friend, I may have mentioned him before, who goes into Northern Nigeria and from there

06:51into countries around, countries that are dangerous. And Nigeria, I was reading the other day in Open Doors

07:00magazine, and I was shocked. I knew that there were more martyrs known in Nigeria than any other country

07:08at the moment. But the shocking figure was more than they know in all the others added together.

07:15And of course, radical Islam is pressing in on the church and on believers. And we need to remember

07:26these folk in prayer. So Peter, having introduced, of course, his subject, I'm reminded these people that

07:34actually, they are privileged, that they're elect, that they're chosen. God had chosen to set his love

07:41upon them. And that they had got a hope and inheritance that couldn't be taken away by the

07:48authorities, because it was based on faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They're being kept by God's power.

07:56He goes on, of course, as you saw last week, to having reminded them of that, reminded them they are

08:02called to be a holy people. A people, not like their old lives, people who are commanded to be holy,

08:12because God is holy. And down at the end of the chapter, he talks about the word of God. And as

08:19chapter we're on tonight follows that, the chapter headings weren't, and divisions weren't in the

08:23original, of course. No chapters, no verses. It was written as a straight letter in the way we would

08:30write a long letter. Or in the days when I guess we used to write letters, people would write a long

08:36letter and you'd read it through. So when he starts off with, so put away all malice and deceit and

08:43hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it

08:50you may grow up into salvation. The so follows on from what's gone before. He's reminded them that

08:59they were born, they were born not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. And what was that

09:06imperishable seed? They'd been born again, born anew. The life of God had been revealed in them

09:13through the living and abiding word of God. It's good just to remind ourselves and to remind and

09:22those of you, the many of you who are tuning in, who are watching this, who are listening to this,

09:28wherever you are around the world, to remind ourselves that the word of God is eternal.

09:36It's unchanging. It's the word, the inerrant, infallible, complete and sufficient word of a

09:44God who cannot fail, a God who cannot lie, and a God who has spoken through men he set apart,

09:53men who through his spirit he spoke through and they wrote down the very words which he had given

10:02them. And spiritual life, eternal life comes through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and that comes

10:13through the hearing of God's word. It reminds them the word of God remains forever. Grass withers,

10:21flowers fail, but that is the word that was good news that was preached to you. So because of that,

10:30live in the light of it. Live as we're instructed in scripture to live. Don't be like, and of course one

10:39of the biggest hindrances to the gospel is when folks see people who go into church and in days of old,

10:49so many churches now, people don't carry Bibles. I love to see, and it's lovely to be in a church

10:54like this and to see people with their Bibles open. So often people go without a Bible, especially the

10:59older ones, or they sit with their phone. You're never quite sure whether they're actually following

11:04anything on their phone or whether they're, I don't know, watching Netflix or checking their messages,

11:10their emails or whatever. It's good to actually have and to love the word of God. And of course to put it into

11:20perspective. Yesterday we were at our grandson, one of our grandson's second birthday. Isn't it wonderful to see how

11:30newborn children long for one thing? Milk. And this is what Peter picks up here. He says like newborn infants

11:40long for, or really the thing is crave the pure spiritual milk. They're not interested in anything else

11:48apart from sleeping. They let you know when they're hungry. They want milk. That's how we should long for

11:56God's word. It's so easy if you've been a Christian for a while to have lost that first perspective, to

12:04have lost that first appetite. We need to pray for one another and encourage one another to love God's

12:12word. We've had the joy in recent weeks of, we got hold of a whole lot of Bibles that have been

12:20published. And if you buy them in, I think, 40 at a time, we got them at a very good price. And we've

12:26taken them around to churches we've gone to, particularly churches which you would not know

12:32as evangelical churches, and offered them to folk. And a great joy has been when people have taken

12:37them. And last Sunday morning, one lady, one of the leaders in one of the Methodist churches,

12:44she'd run Christine before and told her how she'd had time to kill taking somebody to hospital. And

12:49she'd read through the Psalms. And it really thrilled her. And when I got there, she said on the door,

12:55we hadn't even got in. She said, I brought it. Will you write something in it for me?

13:00And I said, yes. I said, would you like to just give a short, just tell the congregation to encourage

13:05other people? And she said, delighted. And she did. It's good to try and get, we used to be Gideons,

13:13or I used to be Gideon many years ago, to get God's word into people's hands. The Lord does the rest.

13:20The Holy Spirit picks his time. And it's the word of God that's living and active, of course.

13:28And so Peter's saying here, rather, don't lose that appetite. Go on. If you've tasted that the

13:36Lord is good, then go on. Of course, in Hebrews 5, we have that sad thing where the writer's writing,

13:45and he wants to talk about Melchizedek and deep things and heavy things. And he says, I can't

13:50tell you that. I can't do that. He said, you ought to be ready for spiritual meat now, but you still

13:58need milk. You haven't moved on. You haven't grown. You haven't matured. You see, as I said,

14:06Wilford yesterday, we've watched him develop. He's two now. And of course, he's not, he's going on,

14:12and you're watching his older sister. As they grow, they don't just want milk. They go on to

14:18solid food and they develop. If we saw Wilford in two years' time, and he was still the same size

14:27and the same weight and the same lack of level of immaturity, we'd know there's something wrong.

14:34Isn't it tragic when so many believers and so many professing believers seem to have made very little

14:40progress and to have very little appetite for God's word? So Peter goes on to say, and then here

14:48he goes into this lovely section about the stone. He says, you've come to him, to Christ, a living

14:56stone rejected by men. Well, we know that, don't we? The word, John 1, became flesh. He came unto his own,

15:04and his own didn't know him. They rejected him. He was rejected by the majority. And here you have,

15:12you've come to him because you've been brought to him, drawn to him by God's spirit. You've come to

15:19him living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. People have often

15:28questioned me over the years on the subject of election and predestination and the sovereignty of

15:32God. People get hot under the colour because it gets twisted into an extreme sense. But the Bible

15:40talks quite clearly, God is sovereign. And we as humans have to hold in tension the sovereignty of

15:50God and the responsibility of man. And the trouble is, when you try and concentrate on one and ignore the

15:57other, I always say it's like a train and railway lines. The railway lines have to be exactly

16:04parallel. If you try and bring them closer together, the train comes off the tracks. If you take them

16:10apart, the train comes off the track. We will never understand and reconcile intellectually sovereignty of

16:18God and our responsibility. God saves. God planned our salvation. God wrote the names of his elect.

16:26In the Lamb's book of life, we're told twice in Revelation, from before the foundation of the world.

16:32The Lord Jesus came to die for, to seek and to save the lost. Who were those lost? The ones who the

16:39Father had given to him, John 6. God's sovereign. Yet we are responsible. We believe. We repent.

16:48We believe. It's like trying to understand intellectually the trinity, or I prefer the

16:55expression triunity. How can God be three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but still one God?

17:02There are many mysteries. I love Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to God. Leave them there.

17:11Concentrate on the things he has revealed. I believe that when we get to heaven, do we think

17:17we're going to know everything immediately? We're going to exhaust God, and we're going to get bored

17:22in heaven through eternity? We're only scratching the surface. Then we're going to find what seem big

17:31mysteries now. We're going to rejoice, and we're going to praise and worship him. We have to remember

17:35the character of God. God is holy. God is perfect. God is pure. He cannot do anything wrong. And so Peter's

17:42saying, remember, he said it right at the introduction. He said, you're elect, you're chosen by God.

17:48And on that basis, God is, his plan cannot fail. But also notice the Lord Jesus was chosen.

17:57Jesus is the cornerstone. In other scriptures, we find he is the foundation.

18:05And obedience to him and submission to him is the foundation of our faith and our salvation.

18:13In the sight of God, the Lord Jesus was chosen and precious. You yourselves are like living stone

18:18being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. Israel of the Old Testament knew

18:25a temple as a building where God in the Holy of Holies met and dwelt amongst his people.

18:35But now, what's Peter saying? That the temple is human beings. It's stones. Jews, Gentiles,

18:44every tongue, every nation, every educational class. The gospel is for all. We are all, if we're

18:50believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are living stones and we're being built. But he is the chief

18:57cornerstone. Behold, I'm laying in Zion, a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious. And whoever believes

19:06in him will not be put to shame. Believing in Christ isn't just believing about him. It's not just

19:15intellectual. It's trusting. It's commitment. It's being united to him, dying to ourselves and being in

19:22him. Peter goes on to say, we're being built up in a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,

19:31to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. There are many references

19:37and we haven't got time to look at sacrifices, but perhaps the best known one is Romans 12.

19:46Paul, in 11 great chapters, has systematically gone through salvation. And now, having talked about,

19:56and in chapters 9 to 11, of course, the thorny problem, the complex problem of God's relationship

20:05with the Jews, God's relationship with the Gentiles, but recognise that all are one in Christ Jesus,

20:12all grafted in, all one church, saved by God's grace, justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

20:22And then he goes on, he says, oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God,

20:26how unsearchable his judgments, how inscrutable his ways. For who's known the mind of the Lord?

20:32Or who's been his counsellor? Or who's given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him,

20:39through him, to him are all things. To God be glory forever. Amen. And then he gets into the

20:45practical chapters. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. On the basis of

20:51this, get the doctrine, but don't just stay on the doctrine. Now it's to be lived out. And we're

20:58going to see Peter saying the same thing in this chapter when he gets to the second half. Live it

21:04out. He says, I appeal to you, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,

21:14God, which is your spiritual worship. Actually, in the original, it's more, it's your logical worship.

21:20It stands to reason. It's reasonable. How can it not be, given what God has, in Christ, has done

21:28for you and in you? The trouble is, one old speaker used to say, and of course, on the old sacri...

21:36in the temple, they had flesh hooks to keep the sacrifices on the sacrifice. He says, yes,

21:43he said, I go on, the problem is, I keep trying to get off the altar. No says, so the writer

21:50of the Hebrews there, that's your reasonable service. The end of Hebrews, we're told that

21:57our sacrifice is the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of our lips. There are various...

22:03basically, our lives are to be sacrificial, recognising that we're not our own. We're bought

22:13with a price. We're to glorify God in our mortal bodies. Then he goes on to say, the builders

22:23rejected a stone. It's the Lord Jesus is the cornerstone. In a building and in the temple,

22:30then the cornerstone was absolutely massive. We marvel that without modern technology and

22:36cranes and equipment and all the rest, these great buildings were built. But the cornerstone

22:44was the keystone in the building. If that was out of alignment, if that was wrong, then the whole

22:53building would be unstable and wouldn't stand. The cornerstone, I understand, actually has a sense

23:00of angles. And of course, it was on the cornerstone, the word for cornerstone, I mean, in the original.

23:05And it was the sense that you had to have the two angles in perfect alignment for the building

23:11to be right. Was it a reference to Jews and now the Gentiles coming in and being aligned

23:17upon the cornerstone of the Lord Jesus Christ? It's very interesting that Spurgeon's first sermon

23:24was when he was 16, apparently. And it was in a little cottage with a few poor people. And he spoke

23:32on 1 Peter 2, 7. I love it in the King James there, and I don't like it in the ESV, because his text

23:39was to those who love him, he is precious. He is precious. And he said, Christ was precious to my soul,

23:49and I was in the flush of youthful love, and I couldn't be silent when a precious Jesus was the subject.

23:58Is Jesus precious to you? Is Jesus precious to me? Is he the one we love more than our closest relatives,

24:08our husband, our wife, our children, our friends, anyone else? It's very easy for that love to fade.

24:16He's precious to God the Father. He must be precious to us. Spurgeon went on to say there that if you

24:25claim to know the Lord Jesus, but he's not precious to you, then he would suggest that your faith is

24:34vain. It's not genuine. You're not a true believer. No, he is precious, says Peter here. God's put the

24:42cornerstone in, and the world's rejected, but you have been blessed. Those unbelievers stumble because

24:52of it. But then we come to one of the great buts, and here we have the middle section. I said to

24:58Christine, I can't remember preaching on this actual passage more than once, and that actually

25:04was when we had our two years in Jamaica, and up above Montego Bay in the hills, there was a little

25:10church, and the pastor there had to go to Kingston for a few weeks, and I'm not sure what it was,

25:17but he asked me if I would in effect pastor his church for the time he was away.

25:21So, and it was amazing. I don't know what would happen in the hurricane now, but at the time,

25:28it only had a very small section of roof, and that was just above, I was okay, above, like here,

25:34where the platform is and where the pulpit is. But the rest of it was open, and in the midweek

25:39Bible study prayer meeting, there was a sudden downpour, and you had this rush of people all

25:45crowding together. We had close fellowship, and I, and it's one of those things that stays in your

25:54mind, but they were lovely folk, not the poor country folk up in the, up out of the towns and

26:00the city, but they loved the Lord. But I often say to people, when there's a but, he's now looked at

26:09those who have stumbled at the gospel. The Jews, of course, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians,

26:16where it, it was a stumbling block. How could the Messiah, how could Christ be crucified? How could he

26:24be cursed by God by hanging on a tree? And to the Gentiles, the Greeks, the Romans, it was just didn't

26:31make sense. It didn't make sense. You're worshipping a criminal, an outcast. The Romans, a Roman citizen

26:40could not be crucified. It was reserved for insurrectionists, runaway slaves, the lowest of

26:46the low. But the world blinded by Satan, the world dead in trespasses and sins, sees no beauty in Christ.

26:54You see the contrast. But he says, for you, he is precious. You are a chosen race, Jew, Gentile alike,

27:03all one now in Christ Jesus. God has set his love upon you. None of us are here tonight because

27:10we decided that we're wiser than others. No, it's because God has come into our lives. He's heard us

27:20to hear and given us and to be able and enabled us to respond to the gospel, to see our sin and our

27:27need of a saviour. He says you're a royal priesthood. In the Old Testament, royalty and the priesthood

27:33were kept separate. But the Lord Jesus, of course, is God's anointed. Messiah means, same as Christos,

27:41Christ's anointed one, God's anointed prophet, priest and king. But it says you are, we are a chosen race.

27:51We're a royal priesthood. We don't need to go to a human priest to approach God. We have our high

27:57priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have access to the throne of heaven through the Lord Jesus Christ.

28:05We're a people for his own possession. Now, I always remember, as brought up in Brethren Assembly,

28:11and on the morning service, which was always, we're going to break bread later, but every morning

28:16service was a breaking of bread. And we sat in concentric circles with the Lord's table in the

28:23middle. And, of course, they always read from the Old King James there. And it was a peculiar

28:30people. I can remember as a young lad looking around and saying, they're certainly a peculiar mix here.

28:37But, of course, that's not it in the original. It's quoted from Deuteronomy, where God says to

28:44his people there, you're a people for my possession. We talk about the people of God or the children of

28:51God, and we can do it so blithely and not really think, we belong to God. We belong to his son,

29:00Christ. We are his own possession, a people for his possession. What Peter's saying here in this

29:07section is, recognise who and what you are. He's then going to go on, as Paul did in his letters

29:15later, he's going to go on to say, in the light of that, live accordingly. Show by your lives, give

29:22evidence to what, who you are. You're a new creation. Old things have passed away. God's chosen

29:30you. God's made you a royal priesthood. God's made you a holy nation. Holy means, of course,

29:37set apart. In the, I think it's often a shame, and maybe we should have repeated the, not the Lord's

29:45prayer. That's John 17. Jesus could never pray that his sins were forgiven. But I call it the

29:51disciples or the Christian's prayer. And always in these churches, we do that. And, you know, our

29:56Father, literally in the heavens, plural, hallowed, holy, set apart, be your name. And yes, the one who's

30:09called us, it is to be a holy people, a people for his possession. But there's a reason for it,

30:17that we keep it to ourselves. It's often been in one criticism of people who take, and groups have

30:25taken the doctrines of grace and taken the sovereignty of God beyond the scripture, that

30:33they've been told they're the frozen chosen. We are to be witnesses. God doesn't, hasn't sent

30:42angels. They do a much better job than us. We are to testify. We are to, we are to be witnesses.

30:49We're God's ambassadors. 2 Corinthians 5.

30:53So he says here, why has God done all this? Why has God chosen you, set apart, given you

31:06all these blessings in Christ Jesus? That you may proclaim the excellences of him who called

31:16you out of darkness into his marvellous light. It's so easy, again, to lose sight of what we were

31:26and what we would have been, had God not in his mercy met us and come upon us. Once you were not a

31:33people, but now you are God's people. You see the emphasis all the time. We're in Christ. We're part

31:42of the body of Christ, but the picture here is we're here with that body, that temple, that new

31:46building, which is God's people, but with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone, as the foundation of it.

31:55Once you were not a people, now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now

32:00you have received mercy. What's mercy? We use the word. We use it often so casually.

32:05Mercy. Mercy is the opposite of justice. People often say, give me justice. Never, ever ask God

32:16for his justice. Because we'd be wiped out. We'd find ourselves under God's justice in eternal hell.

32:29Justice is giving you what you deserve. I'm told that in Scotland, they used to put outside

32:36the main prison in Glasgow in the days of capital punishment, when somebody was executed, was hung,

32:47on the morning and early in the morning, a notice would go up, Hamish MacDonald or whatever his name

32:52was, today at whatever time, was justified. In other words, he had paid the penalty of his wrongdoing.

33:00He'd taken somebody else's life, his life was taken. And mercy is the opposite. We all, we know that if a judge

33:10in a case like that, think of the worst criminal you can think of, somebody who'd abused young children

33:19and so on, and then killed them. If the judge sat there, and all the evidence was that the guy in the dock

33:26was guilty, and he said, well actually, I'm feeling rather good today. It's my birthday, and I've just won the

33:32lottery, and I'm often a luxury world around cruise, around the world cruise rather, or something. And if he

33:41said so, I know you're guilty, and I know what you deserve, but I think I'm going to let you off.

33:47There'd be outcry. We'd say justice is not done. God is holy. And you see, the whole heart of the

33:55gospel is that God didn't just deny himself and his holiness by ignoring our sins. The sins of his

34:04people were laid on his son, the Lord Jesus. And so he says, you've received mercy. You're no longer

34:12under condemnation, and no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We've received mercy. But

34:19then, what's the practical artwork of this? And we haven't got time to do these in detail. You can read

34:23them for yourselves. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh

34:30which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct amongst the Gentiles honourable, so when they speak

34:36against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

34:43Does that not remind us of what the Lord Jesus said? Let your light so shine before men that they'll

34:51see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. You see, we're not to be hypocrites. The world

34:58watches us. And so many of the problems for the church have been when the world has picked up

35:06people who profess to be believers, and often we don't have to go into names, people in high places

35:10who profess to be believers, and their lives have been dreadful. They've been seen as hypocrites.

35:18No, we're not to. And then, at times going, but we look at the last part very briefly.

35:24For the Lord's sake, be subject to every human institution.

35:30It's recognising here, governors, whether those, whoever's in charge, the Emperor Supreme.

35:37The Emperor was wicked. The Emperor was massacring believers. But he was there because God had put

35:44him there at that time. We have to submit to the authorities. Romans 13, I guess, is the definitive

35:54chapter on that, where rulers are called God's deacons, God's appointees, that we might live

36:02peaceably and so on. It's will, God's will. This is one of the four times, twice in 1 Peter and twice

36:11at the end of 1 Thessalonians, things where we're told this specifically is God's will for you.

36:15In 1 Thessalonians 4, not immorality, your morality. Flee, shun, immorality. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 5,

36:25it's to rejoice at all times, to give thanks at all times, to pray without ceasing. This is the will

36:29of God for you. And here, this is the will of God, that by our lives, by doing good,

36:37we silence the ignorance of foolish people. Therefore, we are to live, we are to pay our

36:47taxes. We are to, we might not like the laws, we might not like what the taxes are spent on,

36:53but that is no excuse to withhold. We are to be model citizens, because we serve a higher authority.

37:01And you have this, he says, if you sin and you suffer for it, what credit is that to you? Zero.

37:11Zero. You deserve it. But if you suffer because of your suffering for the Lord, remember,

37:19you have an example. You've been called to this because Christ suffered for you.

37:23When we break bread and we come around the Lord's table, we'll look at this just slightly,

37:27slightly more. But just remember, he's our example. Fix your eyes on him. Remember that

37:34what he suffered, that we might live, that we might have eternal life.

37:45Jesus Christ is our cornerstone. Of course, this expression is used many times. He's our foundation.

37:53He's our anchor. He's, we're built on, our faith is built, our hope is built on him,

37:59his righteousness. Nothing less, nothing more. And his blood. The cornerstone of Psalm 118

38:07is Jesus. Jesus used this about himself in Matthew 21. It's the stumbling block of Isaiah 8.14,

38:15which Peter's alluded to here. The foundation stone of Isaiah 28.16. The supernatural stone of

38:22Daniel 2.35.40 and 44 and 45. And of course, he's the stone that supernaturally gave water

38:30in the wilderness. 1 Corinthians 10.4. He is everything. He is the base. He is the foundation.

38:38Brothers and sisters, wherever you are in the world, watching this and listening to this,

38:43whatever you're going through, don't lose your hope. Peter was writing to focus. Many of you may

38:52well be suffering. Many of you may be in situations where to name the name of the Lord is dangerous

38:59and is costly. But remember what the Lord Jesus did and gave for you and that our faith is based in

39:07him. He is the cornerstone. He is our rock. He is our anchor. Keep your eyes on him. May the Lord

39:15bless us all.

39:16How deep the Father's love for us, have us beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son to make a wretch

39:37his treasure. How great the painful, searing loss. The Father turns his face away. As wounds which

39:57smile the chosen one. Bring many sons to glory. Behold the man upon a cross. My sin upon his shoulders.

40:21Asshamed, I hear my mocking voice. Call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there,

40:42until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished.

41:02I will not boast in anything. No gifts, no power, no wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

41:24his death and resurrection. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer. But this

41:47I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom.

41:58I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom.

1 Peter Chapter Two - Growth & Godliness

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