Sermon Transcript
We’re in 1 Peter. We’ve been doing a series on 1 Peter we’ve titled Between Two Worlds, and today we’re in chapter 1, verse 17 and following. And it’s really a section that we’re going to focus on the matter of fear. Everybody, I think, has fears. I know that there are just like a number of things that people could fear in the world.
You could be claustrophobic, you know, the fear of tight places, confined places, or Ergophobic, the fear of work. Maybe, you know, that’s a real big one in your life. Parents are telling you that all the time, you seem like you’re ergophobic or whatever it is. You could be microphobic, the fear of germs, or nyctophobic, which is the fear of darkness. Ochlophobic, the fear of pain.
I think probably many of us would say I’m a little bit of that for sure. You could be phobophobic, which is just the fear of fear itself. You could be plutophobic, which is the fear of washing or bathing. Hopefully that’s not your problem. But if you go on the internet, you could find all these different lists of, you know, things that we’re afraid of.
You could find these top 10 lists of things that we fear the most. I went on and I found this list here of top 10 things that seems like it’s very common for people to be— to have these fears. The fear of public speaking or heights, insects or bugs, Financial problems, deep water. I have a friend who, she doesn’t want to go across a bridge. If there’s water underneath the bridge, that just freaks her out.
So she’s never gone on a cruise, has no desire to ever go on a cruise. But anyway, sickness, death, lying, loneliness, dogs. That’s just one list. You can maybe identify with some of those matters that are on the list. I identify with the acrophobic part of it, the heights, the fear of heights.
I’m afraid of, you know, really, really tall things. I will never bungee jump. Don’t ask me to do that with you. That’s not gonna happen in my life. For you, it may be another fear, the fear of speaking before others or insects or bugs or whatever it is.
You may look at the list and you say, you know, I think there’s some things that should be on the list that aren’t on the list, like lycanophobia, the fear of vegetables. You’re like, yeah, that’s one of my fears. Especially romaine lettuce right now. We haven’t been buying romaine for a long time because of, you know, what happened in 19 states now and all the rest of that. Or ailurophobia, which is an interesting— the fear of cats, but we probably better, you know, not talk about that because we’ll have different feelings about it.
But fear is just something that’s commonplace in our lives. You know, one of the interesting things about these lists, that what you won’t find on the list is the fear of God. Which is tragic, because the fear of God really should be a part of our fear package, if we got a fear package. You say, really, Dave? I thought that, you know, as a Christian, God comes into your life and He relieves your fears.
I mean, aren’t there verses like Psalm 34:4 that says, I sought the Lord and He answered me, and He delivered me from all of my fears? And what about, you say, Isaiah 41:10, do not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you. For I am your God. Isn’t that what the Scripture teaches us, that we don’t have to live with fears?
And the answer is yes, that’s right. The Scripture does teach us that God relieves our fears, and we’re grateful for that, that we don’t have to be anxious about the things in life, that we don’t need to fear those kind of things. And that’s really good to know. But on the other hand, a relationship with God should not only relieve our fears, it actually should raise fear. It should raise fear.
And so, when you look into the Old and New Testament parts of the Bible, for instance, you go back to the Old Testament. You find many passages like this one in Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 12, where it says, and now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul? And then verse 20, fear the Lord your God and serve Him, kind of a summary statement in that passage. Yes, that’s saying that fear should be an ongoing part of our lives. And you say, well, that was just the Old Testament.
In the passage that we’re gonna come to today, we’re gonna see it. But jump over to chapter 2 and verse 17 in 1 Peter where it says, show proper respect to everyone. And then it says, and love the brotherhood of believers. And then it says, fear God and honor the king. So there you have the fear of God.
It’s a New Testament passage. It’s for today. There you have the fear of God in this passage connected to— actually connected to the love of brotherhood. Just like we would love brothers and sisters in Christ, and just like we Wanna honor the King? We need to live with a fear of God.
Now do you know why? It’s actually different if you’re an unbeliever and a believer. It’s actually different for why we should be living with the fear of God. If you’re an unbeliever, a proper fear of God could keep you from rejecting God, and that would be good. Jesus Himself said, I will show you, Luke chapter 12, verse 5, I will show you whom you should fear.
Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Who’s he talking about? Well, there’s only one person that has the power to cast a person into hell, and that’s God. And if you’re living in a place in your life right now where you have no place in your life for God and his will in your life, really you need some fear.
The fear of God’s punishment, the fear of eternal death. But hopefully if that kind of fear begins to, you know, do its work in you, it could drive you to God instead of away from God. I’ve gotta say personally that it was actually the fear of God as a 5th grader that drove me to God. My neighbor down the street told me, Dave, you’re gonna go to hell. That’s what he said to me.
He was in 5th grade too, but he said, you’re gonna go to hell. And I said, I don’t want to go to hell. So I, you know, began to listen carefully about this matter of God, and it ultimately was one of the reasons that I opened up my heart to God. So there is a good place for fear if you’re an unbeliever, absolutely, of God’s punishment or God’s judgment. But if you’re a believer, if you’re a believer, fearing God’s judgment or punishment actually should be something of the past.
Not a fear that we need to live with. Jesus himself said, John 5:24, I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He’s crossed from death to life. So there is no judgment, no punishment that’s going to await a Christ follower, a believer, a person who’s come to put their faith in Christ for salvation. That’s fantastic news.
That’s That’s good news. So we can live without the fear of coming condemnation or punishment. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to be living with fear. Back again to 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 17, just as the passage calls us to respect everyone— and actually what you’ve got there is you’ve got a definition of what it means to fear God. To fear God is to respect God.
As we are called to respect everyone, here specifically the brotherhood of believers, brothers and sisters in Christ, Even honoring the king, showing respect toward the king by honoring the king. Now you say, I don’t know how I feel about those 2 matters. Well, next week we’ll talk about loving each other, and a few weeks from now we’re gonna talk about loving the king. Dan’s gonna handle that one for us, so I’m so grateful. I’m gonna hardly wait to hear what you’ve got to say on that one, Dan.
But right now, this passage connects with this matter in chapter 1 where it says, but we’re to live with fear toward God, and to fear God is to respect God. God, and we respect God when we hold God in high regard, when we honor Him as awesome, as the Creator and the Maker of the universe. So, to respect God is to hold Him in high regard. In other words, it’s going to impact our thinking. We’re gonna think differently about God, about who He is and what He’s done, but we’re also going to treat God differently.
So, if we respect God, we will think differently about Him. And we will treat him differently. We will treat him with high regard. We’ll honor him and esteem him and worship him and defer to him and look to him and believe in him and trust him. You see, all of that is wrapped up in this concept of respect.
This week I apologized to a dear friend of mine. I apologized to him for something that I said to him that was disrespectful toward him. You ever do something like that? I mean, something that you don’t want to do, but it just, like, It slips out and you say, where did that come from? It comes from our flesh or whatever it is.
I was flippant, I was sarcastic, I was demeaning toward a good friend of mine that I absolutely love. Well, we could do that kind of thing. We don’t want to do that kind of thing. Hopefully we don’t do that sort of thing to friends or parents or another kid or a teacher, but we certainly don’t want to do that toward God. We want to show God absolute respect because He’s the King of Kings and He’s the Lord of Lords, and He deserves our fear and our respect.
So Peter gets into that in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 17 and following. He says, since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. If you call on God as your Father, and I think many of us sitting here this morning do, We have a relationship with God through Christ. We, we call God our Heavenly Father. We believe that God is our Maker.
We believe He’s our Provider. We believe He is our life-giver. We believe God has made it possible for us to be here right now. He’s made it possible for us to enjoy life on planet Earth for a limited amount of time. And since it’s only going to be a limited amount of time determined by God Himself, we want to live.
It makes sense, actually, to live. With reverent fear. Now, I like how the New American Standard Bible translates the last part of this verse. It says, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth. Don’t you like that language?
During the time of your stay on earth. In other words, this isn’t going to be very long, but right now, yeah, you got some time to stay here, and, and that’s good. Do you ever use that language, stay? Oh yeah, we use the language all the time. In fact, We used it this week in reference to a nephew and his wife who were staying at our house.
They were there for 3 days, so they weren’t there to stay forever. You say, yeah, we know what that could be like if somebody came and just camped. No, they weren’t there to stay forever. They’re just there to stay for a limited amount of time, and they were here because he’s checking out San Francisco, and he and his wife are checking out San Francisco because he just accepted a job, a brand-new job. In San Francisco.
He’s gonna start there in a couple of weeks, and they’re gonna move from Ventura to San Francisco, and they hope to live in San Francisco. And I promise you, it’s gonna cost a lot more to live in San Francisco than it is to live in Ventura, even though that’s an expensive city too. But they were here, and we were able to host them while they stayed. Their stay was limited. And here what Peter is saying is our time on earth, our stay on planet Earth is is limited.
We’re strangers here during our stay, living— and here’s this between-two-worlds concept— living in a foreign land. We’re living in a foreign land. We are strangers. And while we live here, we need to live with reverent fear, acknowledging the fact that we’re only gonna be here for whatever amount of time that God wants us here. We don’t know how much time we have remaining.
We do know this, that it’s shorter today than it was yesterday. We could be sure about that. But we’re only gonna be here for just a short period of time, and so therefore Peter’s saying we need to live with reverent fear. Now what’s reverent fear? You know, what comes to mind when you hear the word reverent fear?
I know what comes to my mind is how some people treat me when I’m on the golf course. Seriously. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, reverence is actually something that I experience from time to time on the golf course after I tell people I’m a pastor. And sometimes, you know, I just don’t want them to know at the very beginning, so I tell them about halfway through the round.
And I can’t tell you how their behavior changes when I tell them I’m a pastor, seriously. Their language gets different. You know, it’s almost like as soon as I use the pastor word, they flip, they flip a switch in their behavior. They go from like the natural man to the, you know, I’m gonna try to be a good person man right now. There’s a whole different behavior, like no cussing and a big smile and complimentary, great shot, Dave.
And Pastor, would you pray for me? I need help, and things like that. You know, it’s like, it’s like this behavior just, just flips because they realize in their minds they’re in the presence of a holy man, a holy man. In fact, I had one guy at the golf course, you know, after he found out I’m a reverend, after he found out I’m a pastor, he started calling me the holy man whenever I— good, good shot, holy man, you know, that sort of thing. What’s interesting to me is that even people out on the golf course can get the reverend thing.
They get the reverend thing. They kind of have a little sense of what the reverend thing means. They know that when you’re in the presence of a reverend, it should change what you say and what you do. Can I just let you in on a little secret? If you and I play golf together, I’m not going to be thinking that at all.
That never even crosses my mind. Personally, I would rather that you would just Be yourself instead of trying to pretend to be something that you’re not, really. But what does cross my mind as I think about this concept is that all of us, all the time, are living in the presence of God. And realizing that we’re living in the presence of God should change the way that we live so that we live in God’s presence with reverent fear, with a sense of awe. With a sense of humility, with a sense of wonder and respect toward the God who made us and saved us.
And notice this in this passage, the God who is judging us, the God who is judging us, verse 17. Simply said, we need to be showing proper respect and reverence toward this God. Why? Because God sees us. And that’s just a simple summary of what he’s saying here.
Is that God sees us. He isn’t divorced from our lives. He’s intentionally watching us, and He is intentionally— get this again, verse 17— He’s intentionally judging us. And why is He judging us? Because He wants us to be rewarded.
He wants to reward us for how we live during our time of stay. During this short time that we live on earth, He wants to reward us. Now, do you ever think about that? We really should be thinking about that, probably more than we think about it. When we’re on the job, we think about that kind of stuff.
We’re aware of the fact that here in my job, I’ve got to please my boss. And so that’s kind of a conscious thing. It’s something that we bring to mind on occasion, or maybe all the time, because our paycheck depends upon whether or not we please our boss. If we don’t pay attention to pleasing our boss, we’re not going to be getting a paycheck very long. We’re gonna be working for another boss.
Well, the same thing happens in a school situation. If you’re a student, you should be, or hopefully are, conscious that your teacher is watching. Your teacher’s watching. The teacher is paying attention to your work. What you do right now matters to your teacher because it’s gonna impact your present grade and it’s also gonna impact your final grade.
Well, in the same way, what we see here is that God sees us and He’s fully aware of how we are living, and He is impartially judging our work. You see that in verse 17? He is the God who judges each man’s work impartially. Have you heard that before? Now, let me ask this.
You say, yeah, I’ve heard it before. Well, how do you feel about it? The impartial Judge is judging our work. It’s present tense, right now. How do you feel about that?
You know, let me tell you how you should feel about that. You should feel good about that. That should be an encouragement to you. That should be something that you even are thankful for. To first of all know that God’s judgment is impartial, that means it’s unbiased.
That means that He’s gonna treat you fairly. You ever been treated unfairly? You ever felt like somebody was biased toward you? You ever get a grade that you feel like didn’t really show what you deserved? You ever get a lack of recognition, that people passed you up, a judgment, evaluation, or performance review that was biased, maybe because it was based on comparison, inappropriate comparison?
Well, guess what? Not with God. His judgment, His evaluation is impartial. It’s unbiased. It’s not based— and listen— on what others do.
He’s not gonna compare you to others. Do you see that there in verse 17? This isn’t going to be based upon what others do or what others don’t do. It’s going to be based upon your work, not as it compares to others. If you deserve a 10, he’s going to give you a 10.
And you’ve got to also know that his judgment here is not for the purpose of condemnation. Oh, man, write that down. Don’t lose sight of that. His judgment is not for the purpose of condemnation, but it’s for the purpose of commendation. Of commendation.
You heard that before? You know, one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Romans chapter 8, verse 1, where it says this, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
If you’re a Christ follower, all of your sins are forgiven— past, present, and future. They will no longer be taken into account. They were paid by Jesus and taken away. They were removed. Your slate was wiped clean.
So, God is presently not judging or evaluating your life— listen— for a day of reckoning, not at all. It’s not that he’s keeping track because he’s gonna come down on you with all of the bad things someday, and he’s gonna judge you for all of the bad things that you’ve done. There will be no such day. That day was taken off of God’s calendar the day Jesus Christ saved you from your sins.
How’s that feel? The judgment that God is doing right now is a prelude to the judgment that His Son is going to do someday. And what judgment is that? That’s the judgment seat of Christ. Paul wrote about that, and this is a motivating factor in how he spent his time on earth, his stay.
In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul wrote this, verses 9 and 10. So we make it our goal— During our stay, we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. So, whether we’re alive or dead, you know, hey, our goal is just to please God in this life now. We’re going to live to please Him after this life. But then he says this, verse 10.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. He’s talking to believers. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him For the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. What’s he saying? He’s saying there’s a day coming when Jesus is gonna hand out rewards.
And these rewards are going to be based upon the life that we lived during our time of stay. And knowing that, the Apostle Paul is saying, I’m living during this time of stay for God’s good pleasure so that when that day of judgment comes, when I stand before Jesus’ throne, I want my work to count. I want to receive the reward that he wants to give me. Now he says here, and don’t miss this, he says here that not all that we do is going to be rewarded. Some of it will be marked good.
Some of what we do will be marked good, and others of it will be marked bad. Do you see that there? Bad here speaks about unworthy of reward. So, some is marked worthy of reward, and others is going to be marked unworthy of reward. Now, what you don’t have here— and make note of this— what you don’t have here is this good and bad.
This does not refer to moral good or bad. It does not refer to moral good or evil, because morality matters are not going to come up at this judgment, at the bema seat, at the judgment seat of Christ. Morality matters are not gonna come up because those matters were canceled when Jesus died on the cross for us and we received the payment that He had made so that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, now or when we stand before the throne of Jesus. But what Paul is talking about is how we can live differently as we live now on planet Earth. Hopefully, we live in such a way that our actions are ultimately going to result in, listen, eternal value, so that they’re done for the Lord’s glory.
Or said in the context of what we’re talking about here, they were done out of fear of God, out of— and what does that mean? Out of respect and out of reverential awe of God. In other words, did I live or am I living for the fear of God, or am I living for the fear of man? Did I live for God’s glory, or was it all about my glory? Is my life God-centered, or is it man-centered?
Am I building God’s kingdom, or am I building my kingdom? That’s what Peter’s talking about, that there is a judgment coming, and the judgment actually begins now where we are living in the presence of God, and He’s paying attention to how we’re living our lives. But ultimately, this judgment is going to play out in heaven when Jesus looks back at how we lived our life, not just on Sunday morning, not just when you were with the pastor playing golf. Are you kidding? You know, it’s really strange how we can think that if we get the, you know, the reverence and respect thing right here in the worship service, then we’re good.
You know, we kind of like get it checked off of our card You know, our God card, our God card is up to date, and then we’re, you know, like, we’re good to go. We’re good to go for at least another week. But we could just go throughout the week and just forget about God. That’s not the picture here. The picture is, is that this is something for more than just Sunday.
This is something that needs to play out in our lives every day of the week. I like how one church in Texas, when they bring this whole matter into focus, at the end of their worship service, they will say this to their people, have a great week of worship. What are they saying? Hey, we’re going out in the presence of God. Let’s live fearing Him.
Let’s fear for His honor and His respect so that, so that what we’ve just experienced in this service, so that it goes with us. It goes with us into our campuses. It goes with us into our homes, and it goes with us into our workplaces and into our communities. So that this fear thing plays out. Bernice and I were just up at Silver Spur.
We love it up there. I know many of you students have been up there. It’s a great place to go. We had a great camp there with a bunch of other people from our association. It was a leadership retreat.
And so anyway, while we were up there, Darrell Delhoussey was there. He did 4 talks that were just outstanding talks. I mean, some of the best retreat talks I’ve heard in years. I mean, it was really amazing what he shared with us. But you know what?
If you go behind the scenes and you were to sit down with Darrell and say, tell me a little bit about your motivation in life and so forth, you know what you’ll find? Darrell fears God. And those talks really came out of a fear of God. They came out of a life that’s being lived for the respect and to reverence— to show reverence and respect toward God, because Darrell has a desire to stand before God someday and hear God say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Not everybody’s gonna hear that, but we want to be people who hear it.
And so Peter is saying to this group of people that he’s writing to, live, live in the fear of God. Present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy, as we talked about last week, holy and acceptable to God, because that’s your spiritual service of worship. He adds a second reason why we should be living with reverent fear. Verse 18, then he says, for you know— so he’s going to connect this to what he just said. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish or defect.
He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him and And so your faith and hope are in God. First reason that we should be living with reverential fear is because God sees us. Second reason, because Jesus saved us. He’s writing to a group of believers who found salvation in Jesus Christ, and he wants to remind them what Christ has done for them.
So he takes them back and he says, look, Jesus paid the highest price for you. It was death on a cross for him. And He did that to redeem you. To redeem you from what? To redeem you, verse 18, from emptiness, from a life of emptiness.
And then he goes on from there, and really what he’s gonna tell us here is that if you just go back and you just remember what Jesus did for you, it should fill your hearts with reverence and respect for God. He redeemed you from, you know, a life without purpose, a life without meaning. Meaning, a life that was passed on to you from those who came before you. Verse 18, some of us identify with that. Some of us identify with how our life before we came to Christ was like, you know, a treadmill.
We were going nowhere. It just seemed like we were going through the motions. We didn’t see any point at all of anything. And he’s going back to that, which was part of their background. And he goes on and he says, but God in His mercy sent Jesus to redeem us.
Verse 18. The word means to buy someone out of bondage by payment of a ransom price. You know, we hear about somebody who’s kidnapped and how a ransom price is paid. Oftentimes a ransom is paid to rescue this person who’s been kidnapped. Well, Jesus paid the ransom price, and the ransom price was what?
It was His precious blood. And notice the contrast in Verse 19, it was not paid by perishable gold and silver, but it was paid by precious blood. There’s the contrast. You might want to note the word precious and contrast it with perishable. We weren’t saved by money.
Money cannot buy our salvation. But what does buy our salvation is what Jesus did when he died on the cross for us. The spotless Lamb, Paul says— or Peter says in verse 19, The sinless Lamb gave up His life, His blood, to save us from our sins. And verse 20 says, and it wasn’t accidental, it was intentional. In fact, he says in verse 20 that God chose Jesus even before sin came into the world.
Can you believe that? Even before sin came into the world, God chose Jesus to come and to redeem people like you and you and you and you and you and all of us, because He wants a relationship with us. He came for, as it says there, for our sake, for our sake, and not just our sake but others’ sake.
He came because He is the way, the truth, and the life. Don’t you love that? And He offers life forever, a relationship with Him that results in faith and hope and What must a person do to be saved? Verse 21 tells us, you must believe. You must believe that God sent Jesus and raised Jesus from the dead and put your faith and hope in God and in His Son and in His redemptive, life-giving, liberating plan.
Have you done that? I mean, if you’ve done that, if you really understand what Jesus has done for you and how He gave the greatest gift of all, life, through His life. If you really understand that, then it only makes sense that we would be living with the fear of God, that we would live with respect and reverence toward the God who saved us, who saved us. Last week we briefly talked about a matter that came up on Southwest Flight 1380, the one on April 17th that was flying from New York to Dallas, had 144 souls on board. And the flight, mid-flight, had an engine failure.
The engine failure damaged the plane. It broke a window that resulted in a loss of cabin pressure and the death of a woman, the woman that was sitting by that window. Fortunately, everybody else made it out of the harrowing situation alive. The pilot who landed the plane safely was Tammie Jo Shults. While passengers were panicked, And flight attendants had sprung into action.
In the cockpit, Captain Schultz remained calm as she steadied the aircraft and radioed air traffic control and said, without a hint of alarm in her voice, she said, Southwest 1380 has an engine fire, descending. And for the next 40 minutes, she maneuvered the plane toward Philadelphia for an emergency landing. At one point, she radioed again calmly, And she told the air traffic controllers, we have a part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit. So they slowed down a bit. Behind that cockpit, passengers were putting on oxygen masks.
Some of them were sending goodbye text messages to loved ones.
And they were all bracing for impact.
You may know, if you’ve read the reports, that Captain Schultz, before she became a pilot with Southwest Airlines, was a pilot in the United States Navy, that she trained in the military and was one of the first group of women who flew F-18 Hornets. So she had all that training, then she had all the training she’s got over the years with Southwest Airlines, and she was able to safely land the 737 700 airplane. She landed it and then stopped, and she came out of the cockpit, and she walked down the aisle, and she spoke to one passenger after another, and she hugged one passenger after another. Any passenger that wanted a hug, she gave them a hug. One passenger, after seeing Shults hug some other passengers, said, do I get a hug too?
And Shults said, of course, I wouldn’t let you by. Without a hug. Well, not long after that, the social media lit up. It lit up with comments from these passengers. She was heralded as an American hero.
She was said to be a pilot that has nerves of steel. She was thanked for her guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation. In other words, they heaped praise on her. She was grateful too. She said that the Lord was with her.
She said, the Lord was with me. He helped me land the airplane. Now what you’ve got to know is that she is a firm believer in Jesus Christ. She is somebody who sees her job as a pilot as a platform for her to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others. She has said in print, that there’s almost not a day that goes by that I don’t have an opportunity to tell somebody something about my faith.
Now to me, what she said and what she’s continued to say would suggest to me that she is a Christ follower who fears God, who attributes worth to God, who lives with respect and reverence toward the God that she said was ultimately the captain of that But go back to the passengers. Go back to the passengers who were saved by Schultz’s actions. Let me ask you this: do you think those passengers will forever be grateful for what Captain Schultz did? Absolutely. For saving them in a situation that looked like sheer death, those passengers are going to live from that day on throughout the rest of their lives with a sense of respect and reverence for Tammy, Joel, souls.
I mean, that’s like just a natural response, isn’t it? I mean, if a firefighter saves you, are you kidding? You’re gonna praise him or her for their efforts. Or a police officer, a soldier, or a Good Samaritan. Or it could have been a friend who donated a kidney.
Because of their actions, their heroic actions that saved you, you would have died. Well, what Peter is saying here is, listen, people, it follows that a believer or an unbeliever who turns to God through Jesus Christ would respond with fear and respect and reverence toward the God who saved them and would heap praise all the more on God, not just on Sunday, but every day as He extends our stay on planet Earth. One thing is for sure, they surely wouldn’t turn around and be flippant in their faith and be callous and careless and casual toward their relationship with God.
Surely we wouldn’t act that way, but they would be fully aware of the God who sees and the God who saves, and that would change everything, everything with regard to how we live our lives. Let’s pray.
Lord, thanks for helping us see something, hopefully, in this text that could cause us to rejoice all the more in our relationship with you, that you are the God that saves, and that your love is so amazing for us that you would send your Son to give his life. It only makes sense that our response would be one of reverential fear and respect. And so may we not be flippant about our faith. May we not treat you like just another guy on the street, but may it transform how we think about you, how we talk about you, how we treat you. And Lord, my prayer would be if there’s anybody here today that is yet to come into relationship with you, That they would open up their heart to you, to the God who saves, to the God who redeems, not based upon what we’ve done, but based upon what your Son did, and they receive the gift of life through Jesus Christ.
And if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that right now. Just tell him, Lord, save me. I’ve been living as if I’m God. Forgive me.
I’ve got a pile of idols in my life. I’ve worshiped everything but you. Forgive me.
Save me from my sins.
Save me from an eternity of separation from you. God, give me the life that’s found in your Son Jesus. You know, God will hear a prayer like that, and he’ll save you.
He’ll give you a whole different reason for living. He’ll fill up that emptiness that’s inside.
Lord, thank you for this opportunity we have today to be reminded of a matter we don’t talk much about— fearing you. But may this make an impact in us, not just today only, but day after day, week after week, year after year. We thank you that you hear us in Jesus. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.
