God's Chosen Pilgrims - 1 Peter 1:1-2

Audio available here (click to stream; right-click to download) or on our iTunes podcast.

How important is your identity? Considering that somewhere around 11 million Americans every year are victims of identity theft, it would seem that one’s identity is perhaps his or her most valuable asset. Think of the limitations we would have to deal with if we did not have any way to validate our identity. It would limit the way we spend money, it would affect transactions we make, it would affect paperwork that we are required to fill out on a regular basis, it would affect the way we travel, and it would affect that conversation that takes place between ourselves and the friendly police officers who are kind enough to let us know that we are travelling in excess of safe speeds. I speak with people almost weekly who find themselves in a severe hardship because their identification has been lost, misplaced, or stolen. One of the saddest events of human life that we witness is when folks are affected by an illness or disorder that causes them to begin to forget who they are. Our identity is crucial to understand.

In one sense, we could look at the opening words of First Peter as a formal letter typed on official letterhead. At the top is the insignia of the sender – Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. A few lines down along the left hand margin would be the recipients address – To the Christians in the various regions of Asia Minor. And then a few lines down, May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure, which is the first century equivalent of, “Dear Friends, … .” Many ancient letters, particularly Christian letters, begin with this or a similar greeting. But, these words indicate far more than just these banal facts and formalities. The opening words of most of the New Testament epistles are filled with a theological richness that rewards the careful student of Scripture. Here in these verses we have more than just an addressed manila envelope that covers the letters more substantive contents. We have here a clear description of the Christian’s identity. And this identity is as important as our driver’s license, Social Security number, last four digits, CVC code, or any other means of validating our identity in the marketplace of our society. In fact, I would say that it is infinitely more valuable even than all of these combined. If we forget, misunderstand, or lose sight of our spiritual identity as Christians, we will be disoriented and frustrated in this life, confused about our relationship with God or the world around us. And some who claim to be Christians who are not actually described by these identifying factors, making them guilty of spiritual identity theft. So, what is our spiritual identity? Two words clarify it for us in these two verses: aliens and chosen. These two terms mark out the Christian as God’s Chosen Pilgrims, and this identity reflects the two primary relationships that define our lives.

I. God’s Chosen Pilgrims are identified by their relationship with the world (v1)

A few years ago, Donia and I were in a coffee shop in Winston-Salem with Geoff and Nicole. Geoff wandered into the restroom and immediately turned around and came back out and asked me to come in with him. Now you understand, guys aren’t like girls … we don’t go to the restroom in groups, so this was a bit unusual. But I went in and saw what had taken him by surprise. There on the wall, someone had drawn an enormous heart on the wall and written inside of it, “Donia and Russ 4-Ever.” Although I’m still not sure that there may not have been some kind of practical joke being played on us, needless to say, I was in shock for days about that. Neither of our names are that common, and it would be hard to imagine that there are many Donias and Russes out there who are together forever in a bond of love. But the geography of it was really puzzling: this graffiti was on a wall in our own hometown. It is still an unsolved mystery, but it serves to illustrate that geography is an important part of identity.

Peter identifies the original audience of his letter as residents of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. This was a vast territory of several regions in Asia Minor which are now encapsulated in the country of Turkey. That is where these Christians to whom Peter was writing lived. But it wasn’t home for them. They had been “scattered” there. The word Peter uses is diasporas, from which we get the English word disperse. But long before, this word had a very technical reference to describe the Jewish people who had been uprooted from their homeland and carried off into Babylon in captivity or scattered abroad by the subsequent occupying powers of Palestine. But Peter wasn’t writing to an exclusively Jewish population. Indications in the letter demonstrate that he was writing to a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, all of whom were now followers of Jesus Christ. But they would have connected with the idea of the Jewish Diaspora, and understood how this term would have applied to them.

Though there are many theories about who these people were, it seems likely to me that they had at one time been residents of Rome, which Peter cryptically refers to as “Babylon” in 5:13, further extending this metaphor. At some point they had been “deported” from Rome to Asia Minor. Around 49 AD, the Roman Emperor Claudius commanded a massive expulsion of Jews and Christians from Rome. This event is mentioned in Acts 18. He is also known to have established Roman colonies across the Empire, including the five provinces listed here. In fact, he is the only Emperor who established colonies in each of these areas, and he was known to populate his colonies with exiles from Rome. Why did he kick out all of these Jews and Christians? The first century historian Seutonius states that it was because of frequent disturbances instigated by “Chrestus.” This was a common Latin misspelling of “Christ,” leading many (myself included) to conclude that it was the preaching and witnessing of Christians (who may have included the Apostle Peter at that time) that caused a disturbance of the peace, and led to the deportations.

So, here they were, living far from the city they had once called home, amidst people who spoke a different language, had different cultural values, different religious ideas and different social customs. And Peter uses their sociopolitical situation to shed light on their spiritual situation and ours. Just as they were foreigners in Asia Minor, so all Christians are aliens in this world. In that sense, it doesn’t matter where we are or how we got there. We are all pilgrims on a journey. This world is not our home. Because of our faith in Christ, our citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Apostle Paul says this very thing in Philippians 3:20.

As we live for Christ in this world, whether we are in Turkey or America, North Carolina or Eastern Siberia, we are increasingly aware that we are not home. They don’t speak our language here. They don’t share our beliefs and values here. We don’t understand them and they don’t understand us. They will sometimes treat us harshly because of our faith in Christ and our true citizenship. The Christians who received this letter from Peter were experiencing these very realities, as the letter will go on to illustrate. Many of us have traveled or even lived abroad, and can relate to the idea of a longing for home. At first, the foreign customs and culture is intriguing, but over time, the strangeness of it all can become frustrating and we just want to get back to where we belong. But Peter would have these Christians know that that place isn’t Rome, it is heaven, where our true citizenship lies.

C. S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory about “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” For the Christian, there ought to be an increasing longing for home, and that true home is a place we have not yet visited, except we have seen glimpses of it in our worship and service to the Lord. But we want to have the passport stamped at the portal and know that we have finally made it home. This isn’t it. We must never mistake this place for home. When the affairs of politics and society make us increasingly weary, we need to remember that we are just here on a temporary visa. The old gospel song said, “This world is not my home, I’m just a’passin’ through.”

But along the way, we are also ambassadors for our homeland trying to recruit new citizens for it as well. The word Peter uses for “alien” here is a word that could literally be broken down to its component parts meaning “beside the people.” We live in the midst of the people of this world, but we are not one with them. We stand beside of them as God’s own people who represent Him to the world. We are not of the world, but God has placed us, scattered us if you will, throughout the world to tell others that there is a better place to call home and to invite them in. And we know the way to that place: Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).

Our relationship to the world is a key to our spiritual identity. We are scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia; scattered throughout Greensboro, throughout North Carolina, throughout America and every other country and continent of the world. But we are aliens; pilgrims passing through; ambassadors on mission for the King of our True Homeland. And if we ever start to feel too much at home in this world, we are in the midst of a spiritual identity crisis.

II. God’s Chosen Pilgrims are identified by their relationship with the Lord (v2)

Have you ever noticed that some things are defined by negation? That is, it is easier to describe what they are NOT than what they ARE. One example I remember from high school geometry was the oblique triangle. We learned that a right triangle was a triangle that has a 90-degree, or right, angle in it. An oblique triangle is any triangle that is not a right triangle. Well, you can see that definitions by negation may be helpful for distinguishing one thing from another, but they do not help us understand what a thing is in and of itself. So, if we simply identify Christians as those who are not at home in this world, that would be an incomplete definition (not to mention very confusing). There must be something more than a negation in our identity. There must be some positive relationship that marks us as God’s Pilgrims. And that word in our text is the term Chosen. We are not merely identified by our detachment from this world but by our attachment to the Triune God: God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus Christ. And this attachment, this relationship is the result of His divine initiative in which He has chosen us. We are not merely pilgrims in this world, we are His Chosen Pilgrims.

So how, then, are we chosen? Peter says here that we are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. A common misunderstanding of God’s choosing according to foreknowledge would say that God looked down through the corridors of time and saw all of those who would choose to believe in Christ, and elected them to salvation. That sounds attractive to us, but for all the wrong reasons. It violates three very important Scriptural realities. First, it makes man’s sovereignty superior to God’s. By definition, the sovereignty of God means that His will is not subject to the dictates of another. But if we view ourselves as the first actor, and God as a subsequent reactor, then we are making ourselves more sovereign than He is. Second, it undermines grace, for it makes our choice the basis for God’s choice. There is some sense of merit or deservedness and works involved in this, and the Bible says repeatedly that God’s choice of us was based on nothing we did. Third, it assumes that we are able to make this choice in the first place. But we are spiritually dead in sin, and Paul says in Romans 3:11, quoting from the Psalms that “there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” First John 4:10 says it this way: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” God knew us intimately before we were born, and even before the world was created. And in spite of His knowledge of our sinfulness, He marked out some to be His own completely by His love and grace. So there is absolutely no room for boasting, only for worshiping Him in awe of His sovereign glory and grace!

Then notice that we are chosen not only according to the foreknowledge of God the Father but also by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification is related to the idea of consecration, setting something aside for a holy purpose. But it goes beyond this in that it is not merely a designation or a declaration; sanctification actually involves the making of a thing holy. We have not always been aliens in this world. At one time, we were right at home here. Peter will speak later in this letter about “the futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,” and says that in their past they “pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.” But along the way, a change was made. It was more than just the turning over of a new leaf; it was an uprooting and a replanting of a whole new tree! And what began this in our lives was the work of the Holy Spirit. He began to reveal God to us, to convict us of our sinfulness, and to show us that a Savior had been provided in Jesus Christ. And ultimately, He moved upon our hearts to regenerate us – to convert us from our old way of living to an entirely new way of life toward God. He called us out of this world and into the Kingdom of God. And once awakened from the death of sin, we realized that we were made for something more than the satisfaction of our own pleasures. We were made by God, separated from God, and called back to God through the saving work of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the one who caused this change within us by His sanctifying work. God has chosen us according to His foreknowledge, and His Spirit came upon us to make us aware of that fact.
This work of the Spirit brings us to the point of personal commitment of faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Peter uses an Old Testament image here to describe this, saying that we were chosen … to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood. With these words, he transports us back to Mount Sinai, where Exodus 24 records the establishment of the Covenant of the Law with Israel. For no particular reason within themselves, God had graciously and sovereignly chosen Israel out of all the nations to be His own. And Moses had received the Law from God which specified the terms of their covenant relationship with Him. To ratify this covenant, Moses commanded a sacrifice of bulls. Half the blood was sprinkled upon the altar and the rest was put aside momentarily. Then he read the book of God’s Law to the people and they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!” And Moses then took the blood that had been set aside in basins and sprinkled it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” To modern sensitivities, the idea of being splattered with the blood of bulls is rather repulsive, but these people understood precisely what was happening. This blood that was sprinkled on them signified two realities: First, that their sins had been washed away, and two, that they were now bound to God in a covenant relationship. The ancient world was one in which covenant-agreements were common, and they understood that covenants were sealed with blood.
Now, Peter is framing his picture of our relationship to God through Jesus Christ against this background. As the Holy Spirit performs His calling, convicting, converting, consecrating work in our hearts, we are brought, as it were, not to Sinai, but to the foot of the cross of Jesus. And there we see the sacrifice that was made for us – the blood He shed for our sins on Calvary in His death. This is the Word that is proclaimed to us … the Word made flesh and slaughtered for us on the cross. What will we do? What will we say about that? We will say, “Yes, Jesus, You are my Lord!” This is what the Apostle Paul calls “the obedience of faith,” in the book of Romans. It is obeying the inward call of the Spirit to proclaim Christ as Lord and Savior. And instantaneously with that confession of faith in Him, we are sprinkled with blood—yet not the blood of bulls, but the blood of Jesus Himself. At the Last Supper, as He shared the cup with His disciples, He said to them that it represented “My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24 NASB). And so by the sprinkling of this blood, our sins are cleansed and we are bound in a new covenant with God through Jesus Christ. This is what we were chosen for!

And so Peter reminds his audience, and the Spirit continues to speak to us through these inspired words, that they are God’s Chosen Pilgrims, identified by their relationship with the Triune God: chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; chosen by the sanctifying work of the Spirit; chosen to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood. And all of this is the outworking of God’s grace toward us. By His grace, we who were in rebellion against Him have now been brought into His peace. Colossians 1:20 says that Christ made peace through the blood of His cross. And Peter’s prayerful desire for his readers, which includes today you and me, is that this “grace and peace” would be ours “in the fullest measure.” The grace that brought us to salvation in Jesus Christ continues to work in us, establishing us in the faith and making our lives more like Christ Himself as the Spirit works in us. The obedience of faith that we confessed when we first turned to Christ is becoming in us an obedience of love and hope as we live in gratitude for His grace and the peace that the Cross offers us.

But if it is all a matter of God’s choosing, how then can we know if we have been chosen? Consider what Jesus said in John 6:37 and 6:44, that corresponds exactly with what Peter says here. He said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” And then He said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” “All that the Father gives Me” – that is the sovereign choosing according to the foreknowledge of God. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” – that involves the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. “Will come to Me” – that is the obedience of faith, coming to Him as Lord and Savior of our lives. “I will certainly not cast out,” and “I will raise Him up on the last day” – that is the eternally secure bond of His blood bought covenant. So do you want to know if God has chosen you? We know by the effects of His choosing: Has the Spirit drawn you to Christ? And have you placed your faith and trust in Him? Martin Luther said it this way: “Do you acknowledge that you are by nature a child of wrath, worthy of eternal death and condemnation, from which no creature, neither human nor angelic, can save you? And do you accordingly grasp the promise of God and believe that He is the merciful, true God, who faithfully keeps what He has spoken, moved by pure grace without our work and merit, and has therefore sent Christ, his only Son, in order to make satisfaction for your sins and impute to you His innocence and righteousness, to redeem you finally from all need and from death? Then doubt not, you do belong to the company of the elect.”

So God’s Chosen Pilgrims are known by this identity: we are strangers, aliens, scattered about in this unfriendly world while we make our pilgrimage to our true Homeland; and we are God’s chosen ones, bound to Him through the saving work of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant established by His blood. Cherish this identity; treasure it above all else, and safeguard it in your hearts as if your very life depended on it, for in a very real and eternal sense, it does! Should you feel too much at home in this world, or if you have never come to Christ by faith, then to call yourself a Christian would be to commit identity theft. His people are defined by these very relationships.

This week, we reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross as we move toward Easter Sunday when we celebrate His glorious resurrection from the dead. Friday marks the traditional day that we believe Jesus died on the cross. It has been called by Christian people for centuries “Good Friday.” The late cartoonist Johnny Hart once depicted one of his lovable cavemen in the “B.C.” strip reflecting on Good Friday with these words:
Now, who can call “Good Friday” good?
-A term too oft misunderstood-
You, who were bought by the blood of His cross
You can call “Good Friday” good.

And so we conclude today by asking you to consider His cross. Have you come to this Christ who died for your sins and asked Him to save you and be Lord of your life? If so, then you have been sprinkled by His blood, and are being sanctified by His indwelling Spirit as you progress in obedience, and in His grace and peace. This world is not home for us. We have been made citizens of a greater Kingdom than any that this world has to offer us. But if you have never come to Him as Lord and Savior, then it may be that this very day, the Spirit of God is revealing to you your need for Him. And we would urge you to surrender your life to Him by faith today.

"I Ain't Home Yet"

As I wrap up a busy week today, a few thoughts are on my mind that are somewhat interrelated. I typically take Fridays off to take part in teaching our kids in homeschool and give my wife a little relief. Fridays and Saturdays are sort-of "on-call days" for me, in which I tie up loose ends, meditate on Sunday's message, and respond to needs as they arise, but primarily catch up on lost time with my family through the week. Monday nights, I usually have meetings, Tuesday nights I teach, Wednesday nights I have church, and Thursday nights I stay at the office late until the sermon is finished for Sunday. So that time with Donia and the kids on Fridays and Saturdays is precious and priceless. In a few moments I will leave the office and head home and as I do I am thinking about the words to a song I love.

In the song, "When I Go Home," the Benjy Davis Project sings about life on the road and the joy of coming home. Now, if your sensitivities are easily offended, you may want to bypass this song, because it contains one scatological vulgarity and some drug reference. But what shines through beyond the earthiness of those elements is the love and longing he has for a woman who's waiting for him at home. I get that! My ministry takes me far from home at times, and keeps me away from home more often. I love what I do, and thank God for the calling to serve Him with my life, but I also love being home with the three most precious people in the world to me. I can't tell you how incredible it feels to walk in the door and hear Donia say to the kids, "Daddy's home!" So I resonate with the words that this song repeats as a chorus:

No matter where I go
Baby I ain’t home yet ‘til you open up that door
I can smell you, I can tell you
That I love you even more
Than the last time that I kissed you
It’s been so long, girl, I’ve missed you
You’re the only place I go when I go home

When those words begin to flow through my iPod, I sing them loud, and I long for home. But today, I have also been studying 1 Peter 1:1-2, in which Peter describes the Christians to whom he is writing as "those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." Though we don't live in those regions (unless by chance someone in Turkey is reading this blog), if we are believers in Jesus Christ, we are resident aliens, scattered here in this world. But it isn't home. Our citizenship is in a far better place. Paul says in Philippians 3:20 that our citizenship is in heaven. And that being so, there is no place here in this world that the Christian can truly call home. Some days the homesickness for our true Homeland stabs like a dagger! And so, as long as we are here, we aren't home, but we want to be. So if I could be a little bit of a mystic (which is highly uncharacteristic for me), and with apologies to the Benjy Davis Project, I will paraphrase my deepest homesick longings:

No matter where I go
Jesus I ain’t home yet ‘til You open up that door
There I will see You, and I will tell you
That I love you even more
Than the first time that I met You
It’s been so long, Lord, I've waited
You’re the only place I go when I go home.

That's all for now. I'm off to my favorite place on earth; that place here on earth that I call home, knowing that the joy I find there is just a foretaste of what awaits when I finally get to my real home.

Born Again to a Living Hope Through the Resurrection

Following is my article for the April issue of IBC's Newsletter, "The Messenger":

In the meticulous providence of God, we come to the study of First Peter in the heart of the Easter Season. This is wondrously appropriate, for perhaps no individual in Scripture was so radically transformed by the resurrection power of Jesus than the Apostle Peter. Perhaps best known for his threefold denial of Jesus on the evening of His betrayal and condemnation, Peter's story doesn't end there thankfully. When the women came to the tomb early that Resurrection Sunday morning, an angelic messenger told them to go and tell the disciples AND PETER that the Lord would meet with them in Galilee (Mark 16:6). Frustrated and discouraged, Peter had returned to fishing on the Sea of Galilee when the risen Lord Jesus appeared on the shore and called the disciples to Himself. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, and three times Peter affirmed his love for the Lord, and three times the Lord recommissioned Peter to serve Him by caring for His people; once for each time Peter denied the Lord. As a result of this encounter, Peter was restored to right fellowship with Jesus and His people. Empowered by the Spirit, Peter became the boldest spokesman for Christ in the early church. As he put pen to paper to record the inspired letter we call First Peter, the Apostle wrote to a persecuted band of believers who had been scattered across Asia Minor to encourage and embolden them to persevere in faithfulness to Christ. He begins his pastoral exhortation to them by reminding them that God the Father, "according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Because of Christ's victory over sin and death through His crucifixion and resurrection, we have been granted a new birth and a real and vital hope in Him. Peter's sin and failure had been great, but greater still was God's mercy, Jesus Christ's salvation, and the Holy Spirit's power. What Peter had experienced personally, he tells the original audience of his letter that they could also experience in the midst of their hardship and suffering. And what was true for them is true for us as well. Because of Christ's resurrection we too can be born again through faith in Him, having our sins forgiven and our lives transformed by the indwelling power of the risen Christ through the person of His Spirit. And though life in this fallen world is hard, it is not hopeless. Because Christ conquered death, we have a living hope that in Him we can overcome whatever obstacle is before us, including death itself. His resurrection is the basis of our assurance that we too can experience life beyond the grave with Him. As one modern hymn writer has put it, "No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me." May the reality of Christ's resurrection do for us what it did for Peter and those to whom his first epistle was addressed! May we be ever encouraged and emboldened to face the difficulties of life in His overcoming power knowing that He has granted us new life and a living hope!

A Man Called Peter (1 Peter 1:1a)

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I remember a conversation soon after I entered the ministry with an older Christian who told me that I simply must see the film entitled, “A Man Called Peter.” He said that as a young preacher, I could learn a lot from that movie. He didn’t bother to tell me that the man called Peter was not the apostle but rather Peter Marshall, one time pastor of the historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and chaplain of the United States Senate. So, when the opportunity came for me to see the film, I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting the story of a first-century Galilean fisherman, and found instead the story of a Scotch Presbyterian who influenced the halls of American political power in the middle of the 20th Century. And though certainly, preachers and Christians can learn much from the story of Peter Marshall, there is another man called Peter from whom we stand to learn much more. It is this Peter who puts pen to paper to record for all generations the divinely inspired truths we will explore in coming weeks and months as we dive into the first epistle that bears his name. He identifies himself in the opening words as “an apostle of Jesus Christ.” By the gracious will of God and the work of Christ and His Spirit, this man called Peter became the most prominent character of the New Testament period aside from the Lord Jesus Himself. His name occurs in the Gospels more often than any other name except Jesus. No one aside from Jesus speaks as often in the gospels, and no one is spoken to by Jesus more than Peter.

While we most commonly refer to him as Peter, others in the New Testament will refer to him as Simon (his birth-name, making him 1 of at least 9 Simons in the NT), Cephas (the Aramaic equivalent to Peter), and Simon Peter. People have characterized him as a quick-tempered man, impulsive, eager, aggressive, bold, and outspoken. MacArthur says of him that he had a “habit of revving his mouth while his brain was in neutral,” and therefore calls him “the apostle with the foot-shaped mouth.” Others have been more generous in assessing Peter. G. Campbell Morgan writes, “I never come to the study of this man without being reminded of something which Henry Drummond said concerning D. L. Moody, namely, that he was the greatest human that he had ever met. This characterization seems to me to apply to Peter.” As in most cases, the truth is somewhere in between these perspectives. I find in Peter a man who is unashamedly real. I don’t mean “real” as opposed to imaginary, but real, as in authentic and genuine, transparent, and thoroughly human. Scripture tells us about his highs and his lows. Few people were used so greatly by God, few people failed the Lord as terribly as Peter. And this is of great encouragement to us. We have a tendency to elevate the apostles to a super-spiritual status, but this would only indicate that we have not studied our Bibles very well. These are real men with real struggles, and Peter is perhaps the most real of them all as we come to know him in Scripture. So today, as we begin to walk through 1 Peter, I want to begin by introducing you to the man who wrote it. I think you will find, as a result, that he is no so much different from you and me.

I. How Peter Met the Master

Here is what we know about Peter’s life before he met Jesus. He had a brother named Andrew, and their father’s name was John or Jonah. They were fishermen. Originally Peter was from the small village of Bethsaida but had moved at some point to Capernaum. We know that he was married, but we do not know if he had children. We also know that his mother-in-law lived at least some of the time with him in Capernaum. Aside from this, we know nothing more about his life before he met Jesus. We know a great deal about Peter compared to other apostles, but almost everything we know about him comes from the time after he came to know Jesus. I wonder, do the people who know us know more about who we were before we became Christians, or do they know more about who we are in our relationship to Jesus? Peter is an example of how we ought to see and be seen by others – our primary identity consists of our relationship to Christ. So, how did Peter come to know Jesus? Compared to some biblical stories, his story may seem rather pedestrian. There was no blinding light on the Damascus Road like with Paul, no burning bush like with Moses. In fact, Peter came to know Jesus very much like most of us did.

Peter’s introduction to Jesus involved the human agency of personal evangelism. Someone introduced him to Jesus. In Peter’s case, that someone was his brother Andrew. John 1:35-42 tells us that Andrew met Jesus through John the Baptist, and soon he went to his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah!” The Bible says that Andrew “brought him to Jesus.” I would imagine that all of us could reflect back and identify the one person who first brought us to Jesus, that person who came to us and told us about the faith they had found in the Messiah. Do you remember who that person was? … And all of us know people who don’t know Jesus. How are they going to find Him? The same way we did, and the same way Peter did. Someone is going to have to tell them and bring them to Him. So why not you? Why is anyone else in the world better qualified than you are to be that person? We all know how difficult it can be to talk to our family members and closest friends about our relationship with the Lord – but aren’t you glad Andrew didn’t say, “I’d like to talk to Simon about Jesus, but you know, it’s just so hard because he’s family.” Who’s to say? Could it be that your brother, your parent, your child, your grandchild, your friend may be the next person God intends to use in great ways like he used Peter? So, perhaps He will use us like He used Andrew, to be that person who will bring the good news of Jesus to them.

Peter’s introduction to Jesus involved the human act of one person sharing his faith in Jesus with another. But it was not merely a human transaction. It never is. Spiritual conversion is never exclusively about one person talking someone else into believing something. There is a divine agency involved. A transformation of the heart must take place, and only God Himself can do that. He certainly uses the words we speak, but ultimately, God calls, God reveals, and God transforms. We see that in Peter’s case. Some time after this initial meeting, Jesus was walking along the shores of Galilee and saw Simon and Andrew fishing. The story is recorded in Matthew 4:18-20. Jesus called out to them and said, “Come, follow Me.” And they did. It was His initiative to draw them into a relationship with Himself. He was inviting them to know Him personally. And over the next three years, He would spend nearly every waking moment of life with them and the others He called. They would hear Him speak and see Him perform miracles as God made Himself known to them in the person of Jesus.

And then came that great day recorded for us in Matthew 16 when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” It was Peter who spoke up to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona (meaning “Son of John”), because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” Saving faith is the result of God doing a work in human hearts to reveal Himself in Jesus and drawing that person by the power of His Spirit to make a confession of personal faith and trust in Him. This was no random decision Peter had made. As we hear about Christ and see the work He is doing in and around our lives and the lives of others, God is making Himself known to us and bringing us to the point of belief where we will be saved in relationship to Jesus. This happened for Peter as He confessed Jesus to be the Christ at Caesarea. It happened for us the moment we realized who Jesus is and that we would be utterly and hopelessly lost without Him, and then placed our faith in Him to save us. It will happen for others as we tell them about who Jesus is and what He has done for them. They will become aware of how Christ is working in our lives and theirs and in the circumstances around them to bring them to that point as well.

When Peter first met Jesus, the Lord told him, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas (which is translated Peter).” Jesus was pointing him forward to the day when he would become something more than what he was at that moment. He would become a rock, which is what the names Cephas and Peter mean. And when Peter finally confessed Christ as Messiah and Lord, Jesus said to him, “I say to you that you are Peter.” Now he had become what Christ had called him to be – a rock. And Jesus said to him, “upon this rock I will build my church.” Now this does not mean that the church is built on Peter. The church is built on Christ. But Peter was the first stone set in place in the building. And every person since Peter who has professed faith in Christ as a result of the drawing, calling, revealing, and transforming work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit becomes a stone that Christ fits together in the building of His church. For this reason, Peter will write in 1 Peter 2:5, “You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house.”

Peter met the Master through the human agency of his brother and the divine agency of Christ calling, revealing, and transforming him. You and I are no different. Our lost friends will be no different. As we share our faith in Christ with them, God will work in their lives, just as He did with Peter and with us.

II. How Peter Followed the Master

Jesus’ first command to Peter was “Follow Me.” And Peter followed. You and I have also been called to follow Jesus; that is what being a disciple is all about. And so we can learn a lot about following Him by looking at one of the first people who did.

Peter followed Jesus immediately. He was fishing with his brother when Jesus called him to come and follow, and Matthew 4:20 says, “Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.” We would perfectly understand if Peter had said, “Yeah, about that … listen, I’m kind of busy right now, got a job to do, but when things slack off a bit, I’ll be happy to come follow you. Leave your card on the beach and I’ll get back to you in a bit.” We would understand that because sometimes that is how we want to follow Jesus – we want to make it a matter of convenience. But following Jesus is a matter of urgency, not convenience. We don’t choose the times or circumstances, He does. And if we say that we will obey later, then we have chosen to disobey now. Some of us are perhaps waiting for a more opportune time to follow Jesus faithfully, but now is the only moment we know we have, so we need to be like Peter and put other matters aside immediately for the sake of following Christ.

Peter also followed Jesus intimately. When Jesus prayerfully chose His disciples, Mark 3:14 says that His purpose was that they might “be with Him,” and that “He might send them out to preach.” But the sending out to preach was secondary to the “being with Him.” His call to follow was a call to fellowship. Multitudes of people flocked to see and hear Jesus, but only 12 were chosen to be with Him all the time. Of those 12, it seems that 3 were a part of a special inner-circle of intimate fellowship with Him: Peter, James and John. These three were among the first to be called by Jesus and were with Him in some very significant moments. They were the only disciples present when Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead in Mark 5; when He was transfigured in the fullness of His glory in Mark 9; when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14; and it was Peter and John whom Jesus sent ahead to prepare for the last Passover meal in Luke 22. These three were granted virtually unlimited access to Jesus and had opportunities to see and hear things that even the other 9 apostles didn’t. Why is this? It is not because they were greater than the others in and of themselves. It was simply a matter of Jesus’ gracious choice to have this kind of intimate fellowship with them. And He has chosen each of us to have that same kind of fellowship and access to Him. Because of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives, we have access and opportunities for intimate fellowship with Jesus at all times. So the real question for us is, “Are we making the most of those opportunities?” Are we following Him intimately? Do we make time for Christ and look for opportunities to be with Him and learn from Him?

Then we should also point out that Peter followed Jesus imperfectly. It seems in the Gospels that for every step forward he makes, he takes at least a step or more backward. And it often seems that the moments of his most significant failures come fast on the heels of his greatest successes. After confessing Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Peter heard Jesus foretell about how He would be crucified, and Peter had the audacity to rebuke Jesus! Matt 16:22 says that Peter said, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” And Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” He had just called him a rock a moment before, and now He calls him Satan because Peter had yet to understand the purposes of God fully. Like Satan, Peter would have Jesus avoid the cross that He came to bear for the salvation of the world. This is but one example of Peter’s imperfect following. In fact, of the apostles, none ever attempted to rebuke Jesus to His face like Peter, and none were rebuked so frequently by the Lord as Peter. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus alternately uses his names Simon and Peter to reflect Peter’s spiritual condition. When he fails the Lord, Peter calls him Simon, as if to say, “You are still acting like the man you were before I called you.” But then there are those moments of greatness when Jesus calls him Peter, as if to say, “Now you are acting like the man I called you to be.”

So Peter is much like us. At our best moments, we are still imperfect followers – sometimes tremendously spiritual, while at other times, tragically carnal. Sometimes we are strong in the Spirit, walking in the new nature Christ has given us, and sometimes looking far too much like the old person who is supposed to be dead to sin now. But thanks be to God, Jesus never gave up on Peter, and this encourages us that He will never give up on us when we falter in our following. Peter learned that in spite of his sinful tendencies and spiritual weakness, the Lord still wanted to use him and would restore and uphold him. Just like Peter, we should follow Jesus immediately, we can follow Him intimately, but we will continue to follow Him imperfectly. But the perfect grace of God will continue to rescue and restore us, even if we have to undergo a season of rebuke and painful correction.

Now we turn to that blackest spot on Peter’s record and consider …

III. How Peter Failed the Master

As Jesus gathered His disciples together for a final meal, He told them what was getting ready to happen. He reminded them that He would be handed over and taken away to be put to death, and He warned them that they would all fall away from Him on that very night. Again Peter rebuked the Lord. Matt 26:33 records that Peter said, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” But Jesus assured Peter that he would in fact deny him three times before the rooster crowed twice. And we all know what happened. Mark tells us in Ch 14 of his Gospel that Peter had followed Jesus to the hall of judgment from a safe distance, and as he observed what was going on, he was warming himself by a charcoal fire with others gathered there. The people began to question Peter about his relationship with Jesus, and Peter denied the Lord, and denied Him again, and denied Him a third time, each time more forcibly than before. And as Peter heard that rooster crow the second time, Luke 22:61 says that Jesus “turned and looked at Peter.” Looking through the mob around him, Jesus’ eyes met Peter’s, and Peter fled weeping from the scene. He had failed the Lord terribly.

Though his failure was terrible, we can give thanks to God that it wasn’t terminal. Jesus knew what Peter would do, He warned Him about it, and He even told him before it happened that He had prayed for him. In Luke 22:31-32, Jesus told Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." This was an assurance that though he would fail away temporarily, he would “turn again,” and Jesus would use him once more. I knew a Christian lady once who said to me, “I have no respect for Peter because of what he did to Jesus!” Perhaps you have been critically judgmental about Peter because of his denials too. But consider these two things: 1) Have you not failed the Lord terribly yourself? I dare say we all have, with some of us denying Him many more than three times. 2) Have you ever thought about the fact that Peter stayed with Jesus that night longer than any of the other disciples? They had all fled long before, disappearing like a vapor into the night. Peter alone had stayed with Jesus all the way to the high priest’s courtyard. And though we would not make excuses for him, we can agree with William Barclay who says of him, “Peter’s failure was the kind of failure that could have happened only to a brave man. He alone was in a position to fail; the others had fled long ago.” And in the same situation, there would be precious few of us with enough courage to stand as long as Peter did!

On the Sunday morning following Jesus’ death, some women had come to the tomb to anoint His body, and they were met by an angelic messenger who reported to them that Jesus had risen from the dead! And the messenger tells them in Mark 16:7, “Go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'” Did you notice that? “His disciples AND PETER!” Jesus had a special message for Peter. He wasn’t finished with him yet. And as Peter and some of the others were out fishing on the Sea of Galilee early one morning, they heard the risen Jesus calling them from the shore. Peter was the first to jump out of the boat and splash through the water to meet Him. In those tender moments recorded for us in John 21, Peter found Jesus cooking fish on “a charcoal fire.” Why that detail? Why “a charcoal fire”? There is only one other time in the NT where this word is used. It is the same kind of fire that Peter was warming himself by when he denied the Lord. Now Jesus confronts him about his denials and says, “Simon, son of John (using his old name), do you love Me more than these?” What did He mean, “more than these?” Remember that when Jesus told the disciples that they would all fall away, Peter brashly asserted, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” I think Jesus was saying to Peter, “Well, now, its all been done, and can you still say that your love for Me is greater than any of the other disciples?” And Peter’s response is, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” But he no longer suggests that his love is greater than the others. Three times the Lord asks Peter if he loves Him. Three times, Peter affirms that he does. Three times Jesus recommissions Peter to serve Him. Once for each time Peter denied Christ. His failure was terrible, but it wasn’t terminal. In grace, in mercy, and in love, Jesus restored Peter to his place of service in the Kingdom. And from that day forward, Peter served the Lord faithfully. Have you failed the Lord? It might have been terrible, but it doesn’t have to be terminal. You can turn again, and Christ will receive you in His grace, restore you, and recommission you to serve Him. If He did it for Peter, you have no reason to doubt that He will do it for you.

And that brings us to the final point.

IV. How Peter Served the Master

From the time of his recommission, Peter stands out as a remarkable servant of Christ. The remainder of the NT shows us that he was a great leader among the earliest generation of Christians in the ancient church. We find him serving the Master with an open mouth. No longer the timid denier of Christ, Peter is transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the boldest preacher of the church. In Acts 2, when the Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, it was Peter who rose to speak to the crowd, and 3,000 were saved. He preaches again at the Jerusalem Temple in Acts 3 and Acts 9 tells us that he ministered far and wide throughout the region. Peter had apparently learned to make the most of every opportunity to serve the Lord with his mouth open for the cause of the gospel.

We see him serving the Master with a courageous heart. Every time he preached in Jerusalem, he had to know that in the crowds of people were many who had cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus. In the middle of his sermon in Acts 3, he was interrupted by the temple guard and Sadducees who imprisoned him along with John. When they commanded the apostles to speak no longer in the name of Jesus, Peter replied in Acts 4:19-20, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” And after receiving more threats and being released, Peter and the others prayed that the Lord would give them even more boldness to speak for Christ. After being arrested once more in Acts 5 for preaching, he and the others were miraculously released from their captivity and returned to preaching yet again. When they were confronted, Peter said defiantly in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.” Courageously, he defied social customs to enter the home of the Gentile Cornelius in Acts 10 and share the Gospel with him and his family. Though Paul would come to be known as the Apostle to the Gentiles, it was Peter who first took the Gospel to the Gentiles as he preached to the household of Cornelius. This paved the way for the church to take the mission of Christ beyond the bounds of Israel to Gentiles all over the world. Following the martyrdom of the Apostle James in Acts 12, Peter was imprisoned once more, this time knowing that he would have faced his own death, had it not been for another miraculous jail break. And then he departed, Acts 12:17 says, and went to “another place.” But he didn’t stop serving Christ courageously. We know, for instance, from 1 Corinthians that he had likely traveled through and perhaps ministered for a while in the wicked city of Corinth. And there is good reason to believe that he was among the first to take the Gospel to the pagan imperial capital city of Rome where legendary accounts demonstrate him serving boldly there in the face of much opposition.

And yet, Peter had the rare ability to combine the prophetic boldness we see in those scenes with a pastoral tenderness that is so necessary in service to Christ’s church. We see it most clearly in the two epistles that bear his name. Addressed to those whom he had perhaps pastored in Rome before they were exiled to Asia Minor under the emperor Claudius, First Peter is called by one NT scholar describes as a “model of a pastoral letter.” He comes along side of his friends in that letter comforting them in the midst of their suffering. He is shepherding the sheep against the attacks of lions from the outside. But in the second letter, he shepherds them against the attacks of wolves on the inside, false teachers who had arisen within the church proclaiming heresy. And Peter, who calls himself in 1 Peter 5 a “fellow elder,” a NT term for a pastor, knows that both of these dangers are destructive. So he does what all great pastors should do by encouraging the believers to be on alert against the attacks that face the church from the outside and inside.

Then finally, we see how Peter served the Lord with persevering faith. In John 21:18, after restoring Peter to right fellowship, Jesus says to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” John had the luxury of looking back on that statement many years later and realizing that Jesus was talking about his death. He writes in John 21:19, “Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me!’” And Peter would follow Jesus in faithful perseverance all the way to his death. The Bible doesn’t record it, but the tradition is virtually uncontested which says that Peter was apprehended by Roman authorities sometime in the 60s AD and put to death under the hand of the maniacal emperor Nero. A lesser known tradition states that Peter was forced to watch his wife put to death first, and that as she died, Peter cried out to her, “Remember the Lord.” Days later, Peter would be crucified like Jesus was. The exception is, according to legend that Peter requested to be crucified upside down, for he felt unworthy to die like Jesus did. He was faithful to the end, following Jesus through much hardship until death brought him together face-to-face with the Lord once more. He had travelled a rough road full of spiritual ups and downs, but he finished well for Christ.

Like Peter, we know that death is coming for us as well. How will we finish? And what will we do with the days we have left? Peter lived out his days in service to the Master, proclaiming the gospel with courage and boldness, serving God’s people in the church, and overcoming all obstacles by his persevering faith. We could never hope to improve on that. The epitaph on Peter’s life is his final words recorded in Scripture: 2 Peter 3:18 “Grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” That’s what Simon Peter did, and it is what each of us should do as well … spend the rest of our days growing in our relationship with Jesus and bringing glory to Him.

More on Patrick of Ireland

I've also spent some time today going back through Greg Tobin's book The Wisdom of St. Patrick. While it is decidedly more Catholic, and acknowledges much of the mythology that surrounds Patrick, it is nonetheless an interesting and rewarding read, and contains in the appendices The Confession, the Letter, the Lorica, and the hymn of Secundinus.

"The Romans had not dared to conquer this wild island by might of arms, but Patrick, a Roman himself, sought his mission and succeeded where no general or statesman ever had: to win the souls of the Irish for Christ, his King."

"He vociferously proclaimed his own imperfection and unworthiness, acknowledged and defended himself against the hatred of accusers in his own country, boasted about the thousands of Irish whom he baptized and brought into the Church of Christ, excommunicated the violators of Christian innocents with ringing, righteous anger, claimed no special miraculous powers that others imputed to him in later times yet saw many visions, and sought the protection and guidance of his Divine Father in a 'mission impossible' about four hundred years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth."

"He must have been an especial reader of St. Paul's epistles, based on the frequency of quotations and similarity of language in Patrick's writing. ... He learned the Scriptures as a handbook for salvation."

"His language, various translators tell us, was imperfect, imprecise, at times almost incomprehensible. He was no rhetorician; he missed that class. So, he speaks from the heart, in a way few, if any, writers of the late classical age (e.g., St. Augustine) did. He could not do otherwise, for, as he tells us in no uncertain terms, he knows only how to speak the truth in blunt, even crude, everyday language."

"St. Patrick's spirituality is simple, direct, practical, as earthy as it is mystical, not so much Roman Catholic as baseline Christian, not so much Irish as truly universal (catholic with a small c)."

"Patrick's language is most often very plain, and at the same time very spiritual, rife with direct and paraphrased quotations from the New Testament. Patrick drew liberally from scriptural passages in his own writing to give voice and validity to his arguments."

"St. Patrick's commitment to Christ, to Church, to fellow Christians, to those who had not yet received the gospel message, was unbreakable. He was ready--and he proclaimed it in no uncertain terms--to lay down his life (though not to squander it trivially, for he knew of its potency) in the cause of truth, as he understood it."

"He is a quintessential Christian missionary whose message and personality seem to flower throughout the generations."

"The kings and druids were by their very nature hostile to Patrick's mission. At the same time, Patrick apparently encountered a willing and generous people who showed their gratitude to him with offers of gifts, which he, on principle, refused."

"He gave much and yet expected nothing in return but their faith."

"He chose to live in this distant and alien but not unfamiliar (to him) land as a demonstration of his commitment to Christ. His mission took him back to the site of his captivity and enslavement, and he vowed never to leave the Irish people again, as long as he lived. To the 'heathens' who were his former captors, he brought the ultimate and most precious gift: the love of God."