Strangers in this World
Sunday, 4 May 2014 - 1 Peter 1:17-25
Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado ☩ www.hclchr.org
Once a man and his wife were taking a trip on a cruise ship and as they were out on the deck, leaning on the rail, romantically gazing out at the ocean. All of a sudden they noticed a thin bearded man on a small desert island they were passing, who was shouting and jumping up and down desperately waving his hands. Noticing the captain was walking nearby, they pointed out they man to him and asked: “Who is that man?” “I have no idea,” the captain replied. “But every year when we pass, he just goes crazy.”
That poor man. There he was a castaway stranded on a desert island, far away from home. He was like a stranger in a strange land, with no one to rescue him. In a way, as Christians we, too, are like strangers in a strange land, far away from our True Home in Heaven. And like that man, we may not always want to be here – especially when we encounter hardship, pain and failure. The big difference is that we know for a fact that someone is going to rescue us. We know that one day our Savior, Jesus Christ, is going to come and rescue us from this sin-fallen world. But until that day comes, St. Peter has some advice for us, and he reminds us of it in our Epistle lesson for today. Instead of going crazy, he encourages us to, “conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.”
But what does that mean for us as Christians? Well, the term that Peter uses means: ‘to take up temporary residence.’ It was used to describe someone who had not been granted the rights of citizenship – like an immigrant or alien. Essentially, it means that they have another Fatherland, another place that they call home. And that’s exactly how it is for you and me. In Philippians 3:20 St. Paul writes:
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
In other words, you and I are actually citizens of heaven, not of earth which means that even though we must dwell here for a time, like exiles or refugees, this is not our true home. That is why it is so important that we never forget who we are, and more importantly whose we are. We are God’s people who are just passing through on our way to our eternal home.
My friends, that kind of witness is just as important today, if not more so, than it was in St. Peter’s day and age. The Christians who lived in that ancient Roman culture encountered sexual immorality wherever they turned. Chastity was all but forgotten as can be clearly seen in their writings. Martial writes of a woman who had married her tenth husband. Juvenal talks about a woman who had eight husbands in five years. And Jerome tells us that in Rome there was a famous woman who was married to her twenty-third husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife. In both ancient Greece and Rome deviant sexual practices were so commonplace that they came to be looked upon as completely natural or normal. Yes indeed, the aim in that ancient pagan world was to find ever new and wild ways to gratify one’s lusts and desires. Does that sounds familiar? It should, because it is exactly the way more and more people think in our own society today. Any suggestion that anyone should curb their lust or control their behavior is met with scorn and derision. “Who do you think you are? You can’t tell me what to do!” They proclaim like spoiled children. I like the way one neighboring pastor put it when I was serving a congregation in New York, “They are having fun to death and you had better not get in their way.”
The Bible and even the non-biblical historical record is quite clear on what happens to societies that jettison their morality. They are destroyed. Sometimes they are conquered by a powerful enemy from without, but more often they just rot and collapse under the weight of their own iniquity, as St. Peter paraphrases Isaiah 40:6-8:
All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.
The temptation for us is to let our witness become clouded and compromised, or even forgotten altogether. We also do not live the godly lives we should or clearly speak the Gospel as God calls us to do and that’s because we are contaminated with the same sinful nature as the unbelieving world. We too, struggle with lust in all its various forms, whether it’s lust for power and wealth, or for pleasure and popularity. Our sinful natures make us strangers to God and aliens to His will and as such we deserve no place in His kingdom. Our rightful inheritance as sinners is not heaven but hell.
The Law of God shows us that. It shows it quite clearly and there is absolutely nothing we ourselves can do to change that! It’s a little bit like the man, who received an expensive parking ticket and testified in court that a uniformed policeman had given his OK for the man to park there. The judge asked the man if he would recognize the officer if he ever saw him again, and the man replied that he would. The judge then said, “Good. When you see the Officer again, tell him he owes you 50 dollars. Next case...”
No matter what excuse he gave, the man could not escape the fact that he was guilty – guilty as charged. And the same is true of you and me. Our sins make us guilty before God. And no amount of haggling with the Judge will get us off the hook. None of our excuses will work to save us. There is no way we can save ourselves. But thankfully the Judge Himself, our gracious God, came up with a way. And that way was His only Son, Jesus Christ, our defense attorney. You know, Jesus came up with the perfect defense strategy. He claimed that He committed the crime. And then He took our place and served our time for us, suffered our punishment, when He died on the cross to release us from our bondage to sin, death and hell, which means that nothing can be held against us anymore, because Jesus already paid the penalty.
In a way, it’s like double jeopardy. Once you’ve paid for a crime, you can’t be convicted for it again, because you’ve already paid the price. And that’s what Jesus did for you and me. He paid the price with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death, so that you and I might be set free. As Peter says in our text: you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
The last part of that verse is a clear reference to the Passover Lamb. The Book of Exodus tells us that the lamb had to be a year-old male, without any spots or flaws. That’s because only a perfect sacrifice was sufficient to pay the price for sin and cancel out the debt of guilt. Here, Peter tells us that on the cross Jesus gave Himself as the perfect final sacrifice. For by His perfect life lived on our behalf and His perfect death in our place, He made full atone for all our sins. He covered them up completely. With the end result, that by faith in Him, all the spots of our guilt and the blemishes of our iniquity have been erased. All our flaws and defects have been made right again through Jesus’ blood.
And what proof do we have that all of this is true? As Peter wrote in verse 21 of our text:
through him [you] are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is our proof that we are forgiven. The fact that God raised and glorified His Son is solid evidence that He is pleased with what Jesus did to save us. And when we believe in Jesus, then God is pleased with us too. So pleased that someday He will raise us up and glorify us as well, which is what he planned all along as Peter writes:
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you…
It is interesting that that is very same thing St. Paul writes about in the beautiful eighth chapter of his epistle to the Romans:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
It reminds me about the story of the pastor was waiting in line to have his car filled with gas before a long holiday weekend. The attendant worked quickly, but there were so many cars that it took him a long time to get to the pastor. Finally, the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump. “Sorry about the delay, Reverend” said the young man. “But it seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip.” The minister chuckled, “I know what you mean. It’s the same in my business.”
Beloved, we too need to be ready for Jesus coming, which can happen at any time. So what can we do but, heed St. Peter’s advice and stay ready is by living our lives in reverent fear here, as exiles and strangers in this world, looking ahead in faith and in trust in our crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. To Him be all glory, honor, power, and might now and forever. Amen.