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I know all of you can hear the kids in the background right now. I just want you as parents who went on the ladies retreat as women that all your husbands did for two days is just shake your kid up, right? So they’re they’re about ready to explode. I told Marissa this morning. Marissa. Dads, I don’t know if they did a good enough job, so take them when you teach them this morning and get them ready. All right. So that is that is for you as parents. I knew when you came today, if you went to the ladies retreat, you’re going to come tired and it’s just going to get you on edge. Right now your nerves are just shaking. I can feel it. Oh no. What’s the house going to look like when you get home? Right? Well, it’s good news for you. Before that happens, we’re going to look at God’s word. Yeah. Let’s calm our souls. Right. If you brought a Bible with you this morning, I want to encourage you to turn to the book of First Peter. Actually, whatever was beyond encouragement, do that. If you brought a Bible, open up to First Peter. Um, it’s good for us as people, one, to discover where these books of the Bible are and to make notes. It is not illegal to write in your Bible, right? Amen. In fact, it’s important to understand God’s Word. If you don’t have a Bible with you and you’re interested in following along, I know we have it up on the screen, which makes it convenient.
You can also pull out a Bible from the back of the chair in front of you. It’s on page 180 in the New Testament and be able to find that book. Peter writes the book of First Peter to a group of believers facing a bit of persecution in their lives. And by a bit, I mean a lot, a lot of persecution that will, in the end, ultimately cost many of them their lives. In fact, Peter is writing both his books of first First Peter and second Peter towards the end of his life, within a year before he is crucified upside down, and he’s looking at a church that’s being heavily persecuted, and he just wants to encourage them and continue to encourage them in their faith. And we said, as we’ve come to know Jesus, it’s one thing to die for Christ. And sometimes it’s easier to die for Christ. And in fact it is to live for Christ. Because living for Christ, especially if you come from an environment or a background where it’s not encouraged in this world, it can very much rob you of your joy and walking with Jesus. And so Peter writes this book to the believers, spread about throughout. It tells us in Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia he just refers to this group of Christians being persecuted as aliens.
They realized that this world is not their home one because they’ve been driven from their homes being Christian, and two because now their home resides with Christ in heaven and he wants them to to look towards that hope that they have in Jesus. Because this world, if you put your hope in it, will ultimately disappoint you. Amen. And so he says in verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope. It’s a hope that does not fade. It is a hope that is promised. It is a hope that endures because it tells us in verse three, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, this hope is given to us. And just as Jesus conquered Satan, sin and death, so he gives you the promise of an eternity with the same joy in which he experiences. In verse six, he reminds us that even for a little while talking about this life, we may endure these trials. Verse seven, he tells us that our faith is more precious than gold. And today, as we dive into this passage of Scripture, we’re going to pick up in verse 13. Peter starts this phrase with an interesting word, therefore. I love it when the Bible has the word therefore, because it tells me it’s about to get real simple and practical for me.
And I appreciate those moments when I read God’s Word. Amen. Paul is about to write to us as a group of believers, and he says, based on the therefore, it is referring to the first 12 verses, he’s reaching a conclusive moment in what he’s writing to you as believers. And so he says, Christians, if this is you, you’ve placed your hope in Jesus. You realize this world is not your home, but your faith is so precious and you have a living hope. There’s something that God has called you to do if you’re clinging to Christ. So he says, therefore, remember everything that we’ve discussed together in the first 12 verses, because I’m going to call you to do something in the verses ahead. Peter is asking us to live out our life in Christ. You know what happens in a world where we often become discouraged? We get immobile. We don’t like to do things. You ever been in a point in your life where you’ve been depressed, and count the moments that you’ve just sat as a couch potato? You just didn’t feel good that day. You didn’t want to get up, you didn’t feel motivated to move forward. And I think in many ways, Peter is writing to a group of believers experiencing those sort of internal trials emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally. They’re just being persecuted.
And so he’s saying to these believers, guys, listen, you’re facing a difficult moment in your life. But this is what we need to understand is Jesus is so much greater, and your hope needs to be there because this world will disappoint. And as you look to Jesus and as you face Jesus in this world, there’s something that God has called you to that is so much greater. And so he says, therefore, Peter’s going to give us in this list ahead four things in our lives, four areas of our lives. He’s going to call us to action. The first is this he says to you, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Fixing our minds on God is a very, fairly easy way to recognize how we could do that as believers. It’s just a matter of doing it. He tells us in verse 25 of this passage and in the chapter one, the first three verses, or chapter two, excuse me, the first three verses, Peter writes to us that the Word of God is important. And so we talk to ourselves. We say to ourselves as individuals, you know, I really want to know God. How can I know God? Well, the answer is very simple open up God’s word. God wrote us a book to reveal to us who he is.
I mean, that is logical. Prepare your mind for action. And so when we talk about God’s Word, there are several ways in which we can mentally prepare ourselves to focus on God’s Word, to identify who he is in our lives and to live that out. The first is hearing God’s Word. We’re doing that today. Well done. The second is reading God’s Word, opening up the book and finding what it’s about. How about this taking reading God’s Word a little bit further and studying God’s Word. That means those of us who spent the money to buy the study Bibles, we look at those footnotes, right. We study and we divulge, and we ask questions about a passage. I have to do this every Sunday before I preach, so I know what I’m talking about. Right? You study God’s Word. You memorize God’s word. How about this coupled with memorizing? Meditate on God’s Word saturated Bible tells us that Jesus’s words bring life and out of us. The wellspring of life springs forth through His Spirit as he speaks to us in His Word. God’s first call to us as believers if we want to really live like Jesus is, our hope is to get to know Jesus. We can never live for a hope of which we have in Christ without understanding the Christ for which we have hope in. Let me say it an easier way you cannot impart what you do not possess.
Meaning. If I don’t understand the God that I claim to know, then I can’t share the God that I claim to know with this world. And I can’t really cling to the hope of this God because I don’t know him. It’s interesting to me sometimes when when not from this church, I’ll say that. How’s this? I’ll take examples from outside. People come and they say, I don’t. I’m not feeling close to God and he feels so distant. And so I start with the very beginning checklist that Peter has here. Are you reading his word? No. When’s the last time you prayed? A couple of years ago. God’s desire is for you to get close to him through sobering our minds, preparing our minds for action. And let me let me be, um, gentle in the way that we understand this because because when we talk about reading, God’s Word is one thing, but we talk about understanding God’s Word as we read it. It’s it’s a totally different topic. Reading God’s Word for many of us can become difficult. Some of us, when we read, we just we just want to give up from the get go. Some of us who think that we are the scholarly type, who see ourselves as intellectuals when we read the Bible, oftentimes it can be very discouraging. We have to learn a whole new idea of vocabulary and understanding.
There’s a there’s a christianese. Have you seen that? If you come to church and you’ve understood and the Christian church, there’s this word language they use that sometimes you’re just unfamiliar with. You read the Bible and all of a sudden you open up and you see this word justification. Like what? What is that? And so the encouragement for us is just to prepare our minds that we we sober our spirit, that we get our minds ready for action for which God has called us, and we cling to the hope that we have in him. Let me share a humorous story with you. I hope if you don’t laugh at the end of this, leave. No, I’m just kidding. I was kidding when I was, I came to know Christ. I was a teenager and it was an older teenager, and I had this persona about me that to become a Christian, you had to also become an idiot. And you had to throw away your intelligence to follow Jesus. That’s what I thought. And I go to this church and I start learning about God’s Word for the first time. I’m 16 years old, and the guy teaching us that day tells us to turn to the book of Job. It’s sweet. So I start looking for the Book of Job, and I didn’t find it. But I did find the Book of job. So I decided since these people weren’t as smart as I was, that I would raise my hand and let the teacher know how he needs to pronounce.
After all, I was from West Virginia. We don’t always pronounce our words right, and I needed to correct that. And so I raised my hand in front of all these, these kids, there’s like 70 kids in this class. And I say, teacher, I appreciate that. You said job took me forever to find it because I was looking for this job. I just want you to know it’s pronounced job. Thinking that I was intellectually right. Smirking at myself, at discrediting this unintellectual teacher. He then gave me a lesson on Hebrew grammar. Hebrew? Oh, the Bible was written in Hebrew. Ha ha! Didn’t know this, but in the Hebrew language, the book of Job is pronounced as yo. Do you see that? L y o w b. And over time, in our English language, oftentimes in in Hebrew when we pronounce the y in Hebrew, we pronounce it as j. The Book of Joshua, for instance, he’s referred to as Yeshua salvation. We just put that English accent on. Give him a J, right. So the book of Job, the L is silent. They replaced the Y with j w silent. So we just pronounce it our English Bible as job. So in the future, you guys looking for job? It’s job. All right. I’ve had that lesson in life.
But when we come to God’s Word, it’s about preparing our minds for action. Getting to know the God that we claim to love. As God calls you into this world, to share God with this world, you’re never going to share God for more than you understand them to be. You can communicate his truth to this world as you understand his truth to be. And so, as Peter calls us to share God with others, the first thing that he calls us to do is get to know the God he wants us to share. It’s powerful words, Peter. It’s like you’re equipping a church to do something magnificent for God in this world. He tells us, as we prepare our minds, that we just focus it totally upon Jesus. He calls this in this verse hope. Fixing your hope completely on the grace. I just want to give us an understanding of what hope talks about in the Bible, because I, as a kid, when I when I grew up, hope had one particular meaning. And when I came to Scripture and I started learning about God, and as I matured in him, I realized that Scripture has a totally different word for hope. It says a young kid when mom and dad give me a promise about going to Billy Bob’s, I make the fingers crossed. Promise. Oh, I sure hope so. I sure hope we get to go.
It’s sort of a wishful thinking. You’re kind of anticipating, you hope it works out and you’re in, but you’re you’re really wishing to lucky charms that you get to go. Right. Hope in the Bible is an expectation. It’s a certainty doesn’t carry the wishful thinking that we’ve made it mean in our English language. And so he says to us, we have this certainty that’s coming through Jesus. Why not get to know Jesus? We spend our lives an exuberant amount of ours, on the things of this world that is going to pass away at some point. Why not take time getting to know the Jesus who endures forever? That’s good. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Peter also says this in verse 14. He calls us to honor God through our living. Learn about God through your mind as you learn about God. After all, the Bible says, love the Lord your God with all your mind. To love God, you don’t have to throw away your mind. But then he also calls us. Now that you’ve learned about God, put this this understanding of God into action. And so he says in verse 14, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behaviors, because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.
We talk about the word holiness. Holiness carries the idea of a heart that’s been revealed through action. Holiness literally means separate. It identifies yourself, separate from everything else. And so when we’re talking about the idea of the world and who Jesus is, you separate yourself from all that the world has to offer, and your pursuit now belongs to Christ. You are holy. You are separate. I want to be careful in holiness because holiness is oftentimes misinterpreted and misunderstood. Word in religion cultures. Holiness. If I had to give us one reason or one way, we misconstrue holiness as as there is an understanding in a religious teaching that God only loves you as you are holy, which in fact isn’t true. The truth is that God loves you no matter what, and what he wants you to experience is his love. And the way that we experience his love is through living a holy life. Living a holy life isn’t about, um, excuse me? Living a holy life. It’s about earning his love. It’s about experiencing his love. You understand that God loves us as people no matter what. Bible tells us in Romans five eight, God demonstrates his love to you, in that while you were yet sinners, Christ died for you. Doesn’t mean that God won’t bring his justice upon people for sinning against him. But God loves and God is love. Second, is this wrong way we understand holiness is that we make holiness about behavior modification.
Ultimately, holiness will lead to behavior modification. But religiously we only emphasize holiness in behavior modification. And again, that’s wrong. See, religion tends to emphasize holiness about legalism and a system of rules. Jesus, when he emphasized holiness, is about heart transformation and living that out in community. When we follow Jesus with our lives, we’re considered and and interested in holiness. Because of Jesus. We ask questions like, have you given your heart to God? Have you surrendered your life to God? Are you interested in living the fruits of the spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness. The Bible tells us against such things there is no law. Holiness starts with the attitude of the heart as it’s understood biblically. We look at holiness religiously. The interest becomes in what are you wearing on Sunday? I’m already sinning. I didn’t I didn’t wear my suit. Right. Or what are you even doing on Sunday? Sunday? Sunday is a day we obey rules. We don’t. We don’t do things that are fun. The idea of holiness, religiously speaking, and holiness according to the way Jesus speaks. Jesus is about your heart and religions, about a system of rules. Legalism is filled with a bunch of don’ts, and Jesus is interested in what you do. God wants us to be holy. We be. We are holy in our living because we’re not interested in earning his presence to be loved.
We’re interested in enjoying his presence and experiencing his love. The Bible has called us as believers. Once that you understand God’s Word, that you begin to apply it to your life and you live holy. You allow the Word of God not to change your behavior modification, but allow it to work into you for a heart transformation. And as God changes your heart, he’s going to change your life. Amen. Amen. The Bible goes a little further in talking about our living. He says, if you address as the father the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth. That’s to say this you’re not going to be interested in living a holy life unless you fear God. Proverbs chapter one says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. What do we mean by this word fear? Does God want us to be afraid of him? I mean, we saw in Genesis when Adam and Eve sinned, Adam and Eve ran away from God in fear, and God pursued Adam and Eve in love. And I got to say, I don’t think that’s the way that God desires for us to see him, to run away from him in fear. Because the Bible tells us in first John 418 that perfect love casts out fear, and that God is love.
That’s right. So what does the Bible mean by the word fear? Biblically, fear means to give credence or authority to the power over you. It’s as if you take a moment and step back and examine the supernatural power of God, and you submit yourself under that enormous authority. Fear for us can carry two ideas as people. There is a fear that brings us bondage, and there is a fear that brings us reverence. For instance, a police officer, when he walks down the street or drives past your car, you let go of the gas. You have reverence for that authority, and you realize his presence is significant in your life. You do something wrong and you come before that same police officer. You have a fear of bondage because you’re going somewhere. Jail, right? You got that? Our relationship with God is perceived in two different ways. There is a fear of bondage in which we and our relationship, if we come before God and sin, God hates sin. But God has given us freedom in Jesus. And if we’ve trusted in Jesus for what he’s done for our lives on the cross, we come before God not in fear, but in reverence for everything that he is. And we submit ourselves. We give credence to his power and authority over us. Fear carries with it a reverence or respect. We do it all the time in our lives. Snakes.
I have a healthy respect. Amen. Heights in the mountains. Don’t get me too close to the edge. There is a reverence for that. And the Bible is saying to us, we want to take God’s Word, and we want to understand the God that we claim to follow with all of our hearts, be sober and mind fixing our hope completely on Jesus. And and we take that understanding of God and we apply it, and we we live a holy life for him, separate and dedicated to God, not in legalism, but but about heart transformation, allowing God in our holiness to speak to me and change my life. And it begins through having a healthy understanding of fear for who God is. He is awesome. Amen. Amen. His power is true by the voice of the Lord. Everything in this world comes into existence you think about. He has the ability to give life and to take it away. There is a reverence and an awe when we think about God, and in that healthy respect for him, we fear him. And when you fear God, we’ll seek to align your life towards his authority and power. Let me read this again. If you address as father the one who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourself in fear during the time of your stay on earth. It’s as if we’re looking at our lives on earth and we’re saying, you know what? Because of this God who’s ruling over all of us, what we do here really matters.
Conduct yourself in fear in the way that you’re living on earth. The day to day decisions of life are important to God, and so it should be important to me. Let me give you a beautiful picture illustration here. Top left John and Susie Jones. I don’t even know who that is. Retired. They lived the American dream. They lived their life to make money to the point where one day they could eventually retire. They retired, and they went to the beach in Florida, like all people do. And now they’re spending their life collecting seashells. All right. Bottom right is a missionary couple from the Philippines. That is Martin and Gracia Burnham. I was going to Bible college. Martin and Gracia Burnham were kidnapped by the individuals that are behind them. They were serving Jesus in the Philippines. And they actually went away for their honeymoon for a couple of days to spend time together. And these militia men found out that’s what they were doing, and so they kidnapped them. There’s a common belief in that part of the world that if you were to kidnap missionaries, you can hold them for ransom because their people will want them back. By the way, I would encourage you never be. I don’t say little to their little, to their knowledge that most missions agencies, policies that send missionaries around the world won’t pay any ransom for their missionaries.
And the reason is, they know that the moment they pay a ransom for one missionary, and they put all their other missionaries into risk, and they’re going to have to start paying ransom to malicious groups for all of them. So Marcia and Gracia Burnham were kidnapped while I was in college by this group of people wanting money for them. And this story became very close to my heart because here are these people giving their lives for everything. Realizing on this earth every day matters. And while I was in college, there was a brother and sister going to the same college as me, and their parents happened to be roommates with Martin and Gratia while they were being kidnapped. And so I remember every day we would go to class and before class would start, we would pray for Martin and Gratia. God, just let them go. God just makes sure they’re free. God bring them home. They have had kids still in the Philippines waiting on them. Eventually, the Philippine government found them. They stormed the jungle where these people were located in the remote part of the world. And Martin ended up losing his life in the fight and Gracia was rescued. You look at a story like that of someone who understands that every day on this world matters. My first response was just anger.
God, why did you have to let him die? God, why didn’t you kill one of those fools that were standing behind him with guns, threatening his life? Why did you spare them? And why did you let him die? Then I began to realize. Now, out of all the people in that moment who was ready to meet Jesus, it was Martin. Amen. And God has spared the life of these individuals to give them the opportunity to see the importance of who he is. The Bible tells us in First Peter that God is long suffering towards us, not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. When we get to a place in our lives, when we realize what Peter has just written to us in verse 17, where he says, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth. And we ask ourselves, when we get to the end of our lives, what do we want to present to God? Seashells. Or a life that’s been dedicated. A life that’s lived in fear and reverence towards the sovereign hand of God over this world and in holiness, seeking to know him with the soberness of our mind, desiring to be close to God. Peter then shares this with us and thinking about the importance of the way that we live our lives. He says that knowing you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers.
Peter begins to talk about a legacy, and he’s saying to a group of people, listen, some of you in this room may not have had a Jesus legacy passed on to you. Your parents may not have talked to you about Christ. And Paul’s saying to this group of believers, your forefathers, they’ve handed you a bunch of nothing. You’ve learned what the American dream is about. You’ve learned the importance of retirement, but you’ve learned all of it without Jesus. And so the question we ask to ourselves is, well, how do I plan on passing on that godly legacy? Because while our forefathers may have handed us something in our lives that may not have been focused on Jesus, it tells us that Jesus has come for you. But with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless with blood, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. While your forefathers may not have been interested in your relationship with God, Jesus is. And it says he’s come in the last time for the sake, for you. For you Jesus has come. And so it puts us in a place in our lives where we can get very embittered and angry at everything that we’ve been passed on, or we can change the course of our lives and do something about it.
Amen. What kind of legacy do you want to live on? How do you plan for that legacy to live on in this world? Comes a point in our lives where we realize everything that we’ve been given hasn’t been all roses, but it’s not an excuse to keep us from everything that God desires for us to experience in him. There comes a point in our lives where we’ve got to make a conscious decision, just to get past the anger and start looking to Jesus. So Peter calls our minds to Soberness, and Peter asks us to live out this legacy in him, in Christ. And so in the end, he says this. Since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring Word of God. He’s taken a step back, as he’s described for us as individuals. And now he looks to the church collectively. What a beautiful picture he paints, because he’s saying of this group of people, guys, we’re not living for things that are dying, but we’re living for things that will not die.
Jesus and his promises to this world are imperishable. And you as a church. And the call that God has placed upon you for all peoples throughout the world is just enormously beautiful. And so he understands something about us as people, and that is that we’re people, which means sometimes we rub each other all. Yeah. Amen to the ladies retreat, nuns. We thought about you guys this morning. All the ladies getting ready in one house. That must have been a feat. But we can rub each other raw in different situations. And Paul recognizes that when you get a group of people together, the fact that all of them will get along perfectly all the time is just a ridiculous assumption, right? And so he tells us as believers, knowing that your goal is imperishable, knowing that goal shouldn’t diminish from from our lives and how significant and important it is, he says. Love one another from the heart. He calls it fervently. It’s like you’re working so hard towards this love and unity. You’re just sweating. It’s gross. Turn the heat up right. Let let’s see what that looks like. When it becomes difficult to love you love all the more. Why? Because. Because the perishable things of this world become highlighted in that. And we forget the perspective of living for eternity and the imperishable things that life is all about.
Typically, in an argument, what we often think about is me, how am I? Feelings have been hurt, how I’ve been wronged, and what you need to do to see justice in that moment, to reconcile. And what Peter says is love. You may be wronged, but work through it and work past it. Because what God has called this church to in this world is so much more important than the perishable things. And can I just say, love isn’t a word that just means tolerance. Sometimes we get to the place in our lives where we say, okay, God, the Bible says love. You know. Love, huh? Well, I’ll sit close to them, but I’m not going to talk. That’s not biblical love. Even when we rejected Jesus, he still went to the cross. The Bible tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. Tolerating someone isn’t love. Forgiving and straining in that relationship to love is love. Let me show you this as a church family. While this is particularly important to us in this moment because as we’re here today, we’re also planning for the future here. Here’s some inspiration for you this morning. Hey. Um, roster. That he’s an artist. Yeah. Who would have thought a bar could look that nice? Happy hour, 10:30 a.m.. Who knows when. Amen. But this is what we’re pushing towards. And the church may not be that collar. I like it, but it may not be that collar.
Just, you know, people all times get. I want a purple, you know, who cares? But the point is. The point is, if we can’t get along as a body, we’ll never see that goal. And right now, it’s just a goal. We’re working in all sorts of areas all week long. I’ve been hammering at this for weeks now. For us to be able to buy this building as a church and move into it, and tomorrow somebody could buy it and take it away from us because we don’t own it yet. This is our goal and God, Lord willing, will take a community of people who love him, who are sober in their minds, seeking after him, desiring to live a holy and dedicated life to him, wanting to be a community and passing on a godly legacy. Not not just for our families, but for this community, for generation upon generation. Proclaiming Jesus. Our goal isn’t perishable things, it’s imperishable. You know what it takes to get to a place like this? Sacrifice. Last week, I kicked myself in the bottom after I left because I gave you an announcement last week where I said, there’s two things that we’re being examined right now as we get our loan to buy a building. One is our giving and the second is our attendance. Um, and I made it sound like you should just show up and sit in church and and just keep the status quo of giving and that’s not good enough.
Um, you should look at your relationship with God. And if I sold it this way, I’m. I’m sorry, but you should look at your relationship with God of more than just showing up and filling in the seat. You should look at your relationship with God as something that you do every day. And in living out that relationship, you encourage other people to come, be a part and celebrate God here as well. We don’t want to maintain our attendance. We want to keep growing. Not not because I’m interested in a big church, but what it says is that the church that we have is very healthy, because it’s explaining to other people in this world who that Jesus really is. That’s what we’re about here. If we just said one word about what Alpine Bible Church is in its discipleship, seeking after Jesus in our lives and encouraging others to do the same, we want to make disciples for Jesus and the way that we do that we know. We know that we’re doing that as we’re growing as a family. And the second we talk about giving, um, we don’t talk about that much here as a church. And honestly, I don’t care to talk about it because I don’t I don’t get a paycheck from this church if you’re not giving.
And what does it say about your love for Jesus? If you’ve been following after Jesus, your life with your life, your whole life, and you’re not giving Bible calls, the area of giving financially in our lives, giving to him the first area that God calls us to. When Jesus talks about discipleship and being discipled in the Gospels, he talked about money more than anything in this world. And I’m not telling you to make me rich. We don’t hardly ever talk about giving here at church, but I’m saying to get to a goal like that, it takes sacrifice. And if we’re not willing to sacrifice, we’re not going to make it. And it doesn’t have to be that building. It’s every building. Any building up in Bible Church has to grow both numerically and financially. We do. We crunched our numbers this week what it would cost for us to get into a building like that, the financial budget. If we skimmed our budget down right now to almost nothing, $200 towards ministry, paid all our utilities, insurance and all that $3,600 a month for us to meet. Just the payment there. Just just to float by and from month to month. Right now, our current giving level is somewhere between 3300 to 3500 a month. It’s what we’ve been doing this year. So it says to me, if we want to be in that building right now, according to the donations that we have, some from somewhere, we’ve got to at least increase our giving $100 a month with what we have.
Wow. And so I go back to this reason. I don’t want to sound hard or brash or too bold to this. And if any of that offended you. Never mind. But here’s the point. You come down to verse 23, and you’ve got to get to a place in your life where you realize the imperishable things are far more important than the perishable things. And what you do in this world matters. And it’s not about just the sacrifice. Think about the opportunity. Lehi Utah has never had an existing church building where people have gathered to worship and for that matter, east to west, above us. A Christian church doesn’t exist where there is a freestanding Christian building for people to worship. And so it’s saying to us as believers, listen more than anyone in this world, people, you guys are going to sacrifice the most because you’re in a place where it needs to be done. We’re in a place where we need to scream Jesus and love. So the Bible says this. If that’s overwhelming, let’s get to the simple point. Verse 24. How are we going to get there as a church family? All flesh is like grass and all its glory. Like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls off. But the word of the Lord endures forever.
And this is the word which was preached to you. God’s word is what lasts. If I just simplified all of what we talked about this morning and said, where is step one in this whole process, it’s to pick up God’s Word and realize this is what endures. Sharing this and passing this and dedicating my life to this. This is what endures. It’s God’s word. And so Peter says, this chapter two will end right here. Therefore, here we are. Therefore again, remember everything that we just talked about. And I look forward to this. And he says, put aside all malice and all deceit and all hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Anything that’s going to rip a church apart, let’s just forget about it. Anger, resentment, whatever you’ve got, let’s lay it down right now. It says like newborn babes. Long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. So Peter says this. How do you turn girls into women and boys into men? As newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word Crave to know Jesus in the Bible and as you crave to know God in the Bible, he’ll begin to speak to your heart in holiness and fear of the Lord, transforming your lives to pass on a godly legacy and live in his community for his glory which is imperishable. Amen. Amen. Amen.