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February 26, 2006
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2 Peter
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"God's Goal for You and for Me"
2 Peter 1: 1-4; Acts 4: 1-14
- As we race through the book of 2 Peter, now having arrived at the 4th verse, I wanted us to begin today with a question.
When God made people in that garden oh so long ago, what was His intent? What was God's goal for the man and woman in the garden? What if the woman had not been deceived and the man had not rebelled against God welcoming sin and death into God's magnificent creation?
What if they had followed the direction God had always planned? What had God planned?
From God's concern after the fall it appears that the intent was that through obedience to one command, which was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, God was planning to make the man and woman more and more glorious so that as they ate from the tree of life in the garden they would live forever in glorious harmony with God, ruling over all creation.
They were meant to become more and more like God in character, as they fellowshipped with Him daily, with a depth of meaning and purpose in that garden. They were given something to do and had identity in relationship to the living God and to one another. There was splendor and beauty and meaning and purpose for them.
Truly they were co-regents in that garden, co-tenants, and God intended that His manifold wisdom be displayed through their lives.
But instead they chose sin and death, they ate damnation. In consequence they had to be ousted from the garden or if after they had broken the command, they had eaten from the tree of life, they would have been forever sealed in rebellion, in an increasingly hideous death.
So, God banished them from the garden and away from the tree. They were thus ousted from the heaven established on earth. They were cursed with their sin, no longer were children made in the image of God but from Genesis 5 onward they are born in the image of Adam, in the image of man.
There is a remnant of hope promised that God through the seed of the woman, foreshadowed even in the third chapter, the Messiah would come.
- When Jesus did come it was the new beginning for humanity. He is called the 2nd Adam for Jesus was the one who made a new beginning for us. Through Jesus a way is made back to God's original intent. When we come to faith in Jesus we embark on a new beginning for our lives, a means to become again "made in God's image" a means again to become holy partakers of God's character.
When the apostles are dragged before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 we see that Jesus had rubbed off onto them. They were filled with the Spirit of Jesus and in fulfillment with the prophesy that Jesus had said earlier we heard the Holy Spirit gave them what to say when questioned about their faith in Jesus. But the most amazing note in this passage is the simple statement that the council looked at these men and recognized that they had been with Jesus.
Obviously they knew that these were followers of Jesus, but what this seems to allude to is the fact that what they encountered in them was the presence, the character of Jesus; the face of Jesus in the person of the apostles.
That is what God's desire is for us too to become so close to Him that the character and fullness of Jesus can also shine through our lives.
Has anyone ever told you that you resemble Jesus in how you do something? Or has anyone ever said they can tell you have "been with Jesus"?
[John Towne burst into the room.]
JT: "There you are! I have been looking for you! I have this question about the bible. Remember you said I could come ask you about anything I had a question about?"
B: John, this is hardly the time. I was just in the middle of my message.
JT: You were? Oh is that why all these folk are here? But listen I have to ask you.
B: Now? John, why didn't you just phone me?
JT: I have been trying to phone you all week! But YOU never answer your phone.
B: Did you think of leaving a message so that I could call you back?
JT: You mean talk to one of those machines that go "beep"? Never!
B: Ah ha!
JT: So, I have to ask you. It is just one little question.
B: Alright, alright. Ask your little question. What is it?
JT: I was reading in the Bible and I noticed that we were made in the image of God. Then I noticed that sin destroyed that image but then God restored it through Jesus. So, if I am a child of God, if I am made to reflect God's character, if I am to participate in Him, then, why don't I see this image in my life?
B: That's your little question?
JT: Yes. I mean I look around and I see all kinds of people but no one looks like God to me. And then there are the really nasty people, like Hitler who appear to have been rotten to the core. What about them.
B: Well, in God's original creation we were made in the image of God. But then in the garden people sinned and rebelled and lost that image. There are glimpses of it still there, but for the most part it was broken. What you look around and see often are people living from a "broken image". What must happen is people need to have God's image fully restored through redemption in Jesus. In Jesus what was lost is regained.
JT: You mean that God restores that image as I gave myself to Him through Jesus?
B: Yes. Often we make the mistake of speaking of all people as "God's children" for instance, when becoming a child of God takes new birth; it takes adoption into God's family. But once adopted then that image shows.
JT: So, the Bible says these things?
B: Certainly. There are many places. In Romans 8:29 it says: "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn, among many brothers."
We have been made into the likeness of God's Son (this is the fruit of relationship with the Living God).
Or Ephesians 4:22-24 "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."
Do you hear it there? We are "created to be like God".
JT: So as I look at my life I should see things that have changed since I gave myself to Jesus?
B: Well, things have changed in the years since you have given your heart to Jesus. Can't you find things that have changed? You know places where you can look back and see, "Hey I did something as Jesus would have done it there".
JT: What?
B: Well, like the saying says, "What would Jesus do?"
JT: (reacts!) AAARGH! Don't say that! IT is trite! That "What would Jesus do?" that "WWJD" Don't say it!
B: What, what, John?
JT: Well, Jesus died for your sins, right? I don't care how good you are, you won't be dying for my sins.
B: Right.
JT: And Jesus before he was born on earth was the one creating all the galaxies and planets, and you won't be doing that either.
B: True.
JT: So you cannot say "what would Jesus do" and find the answer. The question actually is "what would Jesus want me to do?" or "How can I be obedient to Jesus?"
B: Okay, I hear you there.
JT: Ahha! You have to say it now.
B: Say what?
JT: I have straightened you out.
B: Oh no.
JT: Yes, say it, "John has straightened me out! And I won't say those letters again."
B: "John has straightened me out and I won't say WWJD again!"
JT: OOOO. You said it!
B: You know John although that was a fad to use those letters to symbolize the question, the book from which the phrase was taken written by Charles Sheldon in the early 1900s was not written as a fad, but as a sincere question along the lines of what you said about obedience. People were asking: "How can I more fully obey Jesus in my job as a newspaperman, or singer, or whatever?" And the answers changed their small community for they were seeking to live their lives in obedience to him. And that is the meaning of what we must be doing as followers. In fact in the verse we are looking at today in the message, 2 Peter 1:4, we are told that we are made partakers in the divine nature and one way we participate in God's character and image is to obey what he says.
JT: That is one thing I can see that has changed in me immensely. I want to be obedient to Jesus. We had a situation happen to us just after we had moved to Oregon when some friends involved in a cult movement were coming to Portland as keynote speakers for their movement. They invited us to come, as their friends, and hear them. But Jake and I in good conscience could not go for we believed it would be somehow okaying their beliefs, it would be a sin against their lives for us to validate what they were doing in that manner. It was such a tough obedience but necessary.
B: Some areas of obedience are so difficult but others not so. We can decide to say "no" to something and have it be a "little thing" that bears big fruit in our lives.
JT: I guess I can see how I have discovered that Jesus has given me that desire to be obedient and some places where once obedience was difficult it is not so difficult now.
B: I know worry was an area that was easy to fall into at one time for me, but by practicing taking those worried thoughts to Jesus, by choosing to trust, by praying instead, by seeking Him, eventually he rescued me out of worrying. I guess you could say that my mind and heart changed so that I did not find identity in my worries any longer.
JT: And that points to the other way that God invites us to participate in His nature. I think I am getting this now. It is not just through our obedience to Him but through the transformation of our hearts that God does as we obey him.
B: That is so true. We are changed from within, sometimes without even knowing it is happening.
JT: I think of someone who was an alcoholic. He would choose to "not go to bars" at first for he thus was escaping from what was tempting him. And for years it was a conscience decision to "avoid" such establishments. But after time, he does not see the bar, God had changed his heart.
B: That is a picture of how obedience flows into transformation. I think of David's challenge to Solomon when he told him to obey God so that God could transform him:
"And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever." 1 Chronicles 28:9.
There is both obedience and the promise of transformation in the promise "if you seek Him he will be found by you…" But Solomon did not choose to obey.
JT: Obedience and transformation are two ways in which God allows us to participate in his nature. What a privilege it is to do so. I guess I can see how this all fits together.
B: You know you weren't here for this but what I began with long ago now before you interrupted with your question was the account of God's original intent for the man and the woman in the garden. Obedience was to lead to transformation in their lives. They chose disobedience and ran from God rather then obedience and walking with Him. Their disobedience was eaten in the fruit they had been told not to eat. They took disobedience into their very bodies. They basically ate damnation.
And then in Jesus God gives us restoration. And again there is a meal.
JT: Wait, I think I see where you are going. As they ate damnation in the garden we eat of the tree of life, we eat from Jesus today in the church. And the meal of the church is communion, the body and blood of Jesus, the gifts of redemption for our lives. So, God gives us a way to take into ourselves the transforming meal - to be obedient in taking the meal and transformed through the work of God's Spirit within us.
B: Exactly. That is it. And all this talking about food and drink makes me thirsty. How about we go for a coffee.
JT: Great idea. Let's go to that BJ's place they have great scones. (we began to leave and at the door I say)
B: Wait, John, I cannot go I have to talk!
JT: That's right! I'll just wait here and we can go afterward.
B: So, with some humor and some insights we participate in the divine nature. We do not become God, but we partake of God's greatness, the character of God is worked in and through us by His holy Spirit as we obey - saying no where we need to say no, and as we allow God through His Word, through others "setting us straight" through prayer to transform our hearts.
Amen.
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