It is hard to love God. It is hard to love Jesus. I am not talking in the formal sense. I am talking in the difficulty of being human sense. We are too flawed and too self-seeking and we have too many things pulling at our desires. We know we don’t love Jesus as we should, and sometimes we don’t love Him at all. Ouch.

Here are the hardest words from 1 Peter 1

Though you have not seen him, you love him. (see verse 8)

If we read that honestly we know we fall far short of it. Ouch.

Why would Peter write such a sentence when he himself was confronted about his own love for Jesus (See John 21:15-19)? And how could Peter really know them (a LOT of people in FIVE geographical areas, see verse 1), and know all their private thoughts and desires?

No one has an answer to those questions.

But the difficulty of the words points us somewhere. We are to love Jesus and He should be our greatest desire and our greatest pleasure. Or said differently, we all know, when the moments hit us, that there is NOTHING better or more pleasurable than loving God. It is the greatest pleasure we know.

1 Peter 1:6-7 can be read negatively. That is, it can be read in such a way that it is discouraging. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

For a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It can read as an encouragement. Why? Because we alone are not in charge of or solely responsible for the growth and strength of our faith.

How so? Hebrews 12:2 tell us that Jesus is the perfecter of our faith. Philippians 1:6 says that God will complete what he started in us. And take a peek at Psalms 57:2 and 138:8 and 1 Corinthians 1:7-8.

Trust, no matter what, that God is at work in you today, all through your day.

First, I want to invite you to Men’s Fellowship this coming Monday, November 18th, at 6:30pm!

The first chapter of 1 Peter is a historically beloved chapter. It is full of sweet and helpful and encouraging truths.

Here’s one of them.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. 1 Peter 1:3-4

And it is one of the Bible verses where a conservancy of words can be seen. What that means is, each sentence is so well worded that each word is packed with truth. It’s even hard to determine what the most important part of the verse is.

Let such sentences sink in. Read and reread. By the way, it’s also our memory verse for this month.

Last, Men’s Fellowship is always an encouraging evening. It is good for men to spend time together. Hope to see you there. 

The first two verses of 1 Peter 1 contain three helpful pieces of information.

The words exile and dispersion are rightly read in two ways, literally and figuratively. Every Christian has two homes, earth and heaven (see Philippians 3:20). And every Christian will always feel that earth is not our home.

The word foreknowledge reminds us that God knows everything. Every single word ever spoken, both past and future. Every event of every day. Every thought of every mind. Every gift He gives. Every temptation we fall into. This is no small thing. It is one of things that makes God god.

The trinity appears in verse two. It is good to notice when the trinity is spelled out like this. It is not that common. We make the mistake of thinking of God in the singular. He is three in one.

Below is a map so you can see the places mentioned in verse 1.

Try this. Read 1 Peter slowly looking for

-repeated words, such as Jesus, and Christ, and God, and you/your, and faith/believe, and born again, and hope, etc.,

-the main emphasis in each paragraph,

-commands,

-promises.

The reward for this is knowing 1 Peter 1 in a deeper, more spiritual, and more thoughtful way.

This is a really good (and short) article about one of the superpowers both believers and unbelievers have. Notice though, that this God-given superpower can be flawed.

“When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” Luke 7:13

“The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Luke 7:15

The story of the raising of the widow’s son is brief and might only have one point. Jesus is God in the flesh and Jesus once again shows that God is a God of compassion. The Old Testament folks knew this…

You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Psalm 86:15

…but with Jesus they see the compassion of God and they hear it in His voice. Wow!

It would have been good to have been there. To stop and think about what we had just witnessed. To play it and replay it in our mind, over and over again. A dead man, raised back to life, given back to his mother.

It’s a metaphor of sorts. Every Christian was dead once. Every Christian has been raised back to life. Every Christian has been given back to his Father.

(To see these three things in Scripture read Ephesians 2:1-5, John 3:1-8, & Romans 8:15.)

“I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Luke 7:9

Jesus’ words seem like they cannot be true. Surely, there had to have been some mature saint in Israel, part of the remnant (see Romans 9:27-29, quoting Isaiah 10:22-23 and Romans 11:15), that God promised to maintain for Himself through the ages, who had had deeper faith.

Surely a Roman Centurion, of all people, didn’t have the greatest faith of all the people in Israel. How could a non-Jew have greater faith than the two to four million Jews that are estimated to be living at that time?

The loophole might be the wording Jesus uses, “I have found.” Which might mean that Jesus is referring to people who he has seen or met or preached to or done miracles for.

Either way, the faith this Centurion possess is extraordinary.

It can be spelled this way… He, a non-jew, has faith that that this man (Jesus), an average looking Jewish man walking through Palestine, can perform a miracle with just his words without having to be present with the person needing the miracle.

But it goes deeper. The Centurion believes if he asks Jesus he will listen to his need and consider the request. This indicates faith in a person’s character (to sincerely listen, to feel compassion, to consider the need and the request), as much as a persons ability (to heal).

It is NOT enough to believe in the power of Jesus. One must believe in the character of Jesus. THAT might well be what sets the man apart. How can we know this? Well, we know through and through that many of the Jews were skeptical of both the power and character of Jesus.

How does this help us? It is not enough for us to be wowed by, and to love and treasure the power of Jesus. We must be know, and be wowed by, and love and treasure his character.

We make the BIG mistake of seeing Jesus in light of what He can did/do for us, and not seeing His person, His character.

That is, do we see Him in light of what makes Him tick, what drives Him, what hurts Him, what He loves and what He hates, what he treasures and desires most, why He promises things, why He commands things, why He taught what He did, why He had compassion, and why He suffered so very much for us?

Jesus uses the word bridegroom in Luke 5:34.

It’s a loaded word in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and New. It is connected to God saying he is a jealous God. See Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 6:15, 32:21, Joshua 24:19, Ezekiel 36:6, and Nahum 1:2.

God see us believers as His bride, both as a church and as individuals, and God as our husband. Believers are married to God and God is married to us. That is the weight and glory and privilege and depth of our relationship with God.

This is simple math. When we humans discover someone who we are in love with is exhibiting love for someone else and gives to another attention, affection, time, intimacy, and tender emotions we find ourselves deeply and painfully jealous.

God is jealous every time we treasure someone or something in competition with him. He sees our straying eyes and thoughts and words and behaviors as adultery.

Our goal should be to never make God jealous by pushing Him aside or attempting to have two lovers (God and anything on earth).

 

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Well said

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As a familiar story we are vulnerable to reading it lightly.

But please, slowly read Luke 5:18 a couple of times. “Leaving everything, he rose and followed him.”

Everything. Who does that? Who can do that? Everything. EVERYTHING.

Two answers. One uncomfortable. One understandable.

It is understandable from the perspective that he might well have found tax collecting more of a grief than a pleasure. After all, sin loses its charm in due time. And taxing your friends and family would make it hard to sleep at night. One would end up hating life and hating themself.

The uncomfortable answer is that he found Jesus so compelling that he left a very lucrative trade. It is uncomfortable because of the rarity of such a person to see Jesus in such a rare way. And it’s uncomfortable because we know we often do not see Jesus as that compelling.

There’s work to be done to reach the maturity where we see Jesus as so compelling that we walk away from anything and everything that we do not serve and enjoy Jesus through.

 

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This is a dark topic, but the logic addressing it is spot on.

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The best advice in the world is to always listen to Jesus and to always obey Him; the all-wise, all-knowing Son of God, and the smartest man to ever walk on earth.

In Luke 5, Peter gets this.

“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”

Peter, against his own intuition and his own logic and his own will, decided to do exactly as Jesus said, regardless of how he saw his effort or time or the outcome.

And Peter is rewarded for it. Look at the outcome.

There is a lesson there for all of us.

Necessary footnote: Sometimes the outcome of listening to Jesus and obeying His words has a difficult outcome, maybe even a bad outcome. Nevertheless, listening to Jesus and obeying Him is what He commands, regardless of outcomes.

 

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I have struggled with this and multiple other instances in the Bible of things similar. This article is helpful for insight and perspective.

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