Exodus 15:1-21
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
Sermons on Community (Page 2)
As Jesus suffered prior to His death, we’ll also suffer before we die—and that’s okay; it’s purposeful; it’s glorious! As the Holy Spirit applies Christ’s sin-destroying death to us, our lives now truly resemble Jesus’ life: spiritually alive in the body before death, capable of overcoming sin, and capable of enduring suffering and mistreatment from the world as a result of turning away from sin.
While it’s impossible for us to calculate the benefit God receives from worship (since we’re not God), Peter’s point is that worshipers derive maximal benefit—maximal joy, spiritual fulfillment and soul satisfaction—from worshiping God when we give His worship maximal focus through obedience. And the obedience sought in this text is that we “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Nothing says satisfaction more clearly than obedience; and nothing says obedience more clearly than submission. And nothing indicates a worshipful, satisfied, obedient submission to God more impactfully than a community of Christ-followers living out that command together.
The Christians living in Peter’s time faced a challenge that Christians still face today: how to remain hopeful and attune to the scent of Christ in this age while anticipating His substance in the age to come? We do it by living holy; and we do that in community.
It’s not that everyone saddened by the decline of Christianity and the degradation of morality in this country isn’t a genuine (elect) disciple of Jesus—I’m saddened by these things too! But if all a person wants is a Christian America then that person (or that religious community) is flirting with a false gospel, and—unless they repent of that grief mentality and get back in sync with the church’s true gospel dynamic and impulse—they may, in the end, prove to have been just religious, moral, culturally-Christian but non-elect exiles.