Who has written thank you letters for Christmas presents. How did you start them? Dear Grandma? And how did you finish them, \u201clove from Tim\u201d? <\/p>\n
The Bible reading we\u2019ve just heard was the beginning of letter from Peter, one of Jesus\u2019 friends, to Christians living in a load of different places. In those days they wrote letters slightly differently. Rather than starting with the name of the person they were writing to, and finishing with their own name, they started with their name. In this case, \u201cPeter, an apostle of Jesus Christ\u201d and then greeted the people they were writing to. In this case, \u201cGod\u2019s elect, exiles, scattered in all these different places.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far this morning, we\u2019ve been thinking a bit about being scattered. We might not live in Pontus or Bithynia, but we do live, go to school and work, in different places in and around Wellington, Telford and even wider. We\u2019ve explored the way in which being scattered means that we can meet lots of different people, and share the good news of Jesus in many different places. <\/p>\n
But what about those other two words that Peter uses to describe the people he\u2019s writing to. Exiles and Elect. What do they mean?<\/p>\n
What is an exile? It\u2019s somebody who has had to leave their home and live somewhere else. For many of the people that Peter was writing to that was physically true. They had been living in Jerusalem or Rome, or somewhere else, but they had had to leave their homes because of their Christian faith, or because of famine, and go and live in a different country or city.<\/p>\n
Who has been on holiday to a different country? Did you speak the language? Did you have any food that you weren\u2019t used to? Did you always understand what was happening? It might have been nice as a holiday, but how would you feel about having to go and live somewhere that was completely strange to you? <\/p>\n
We might not be exiles physically, but there is a sense in which everybody who follows Jesus is in exile. A little bit later in the Bible reading, we heard Peter talking about an inheritance that is being kept for us. Where is it being kept? In heaven. If we are friends and followers of Jesus then that is where our true home is. Our true home, the place where we will be completely safe and well, whole and holy, loved and loving, is in heaven with God. <\/p>\n
So, what about Elect. What does that mean? We had a General Election at the end of last year. Is that connected? What does it mean to be elected to parliament? It means to be chosen to be an Member of Parliament. And who does the choosing in a General Election? All the people who have a vote. How did they make the choice about who to vote for? Maybe they read the leaflets, watched the debates, decided who they liked most, – all kinds of reasons. What did they do to indicate their choice? They made a cross on a voting slip. And what are they chosen to do? To sit in the House of Commons, to help make the laws of the country, to help people who live in the area that they represent. <\/p>\n
Now Peter is writing to God\u2019s Elect. So, we\u2019re talking about people who have been chosen. Who have that they have been chosen by? They\u2019ve been chosen by God. How did God make that choice? Peter says that it was according to his foreknowledge. The information and knowledge we have when we make choices is never complete, but God\u2019s knowledge is perfect, God has known all about us since before we were even born. What did God do to indicate that choice? Peter uses the image of Jesus blood being sprinkled on those God chooses. When did Jesus bleed? When he was on the cross. We draw a cross to show who we choose in an election \u2013 Jesus went to the cross to show that he chooses us. And finally, what are we chosen for? What are we chosen to do? <\/p>\n
Peter goes on to praise God for what we are chosen for. We are chosen for a new birth into a living hope. That\u2019s fantastic, but it\u2019s not all. Peter writes that we also chosen to be obedient to Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in one of his letters to the Christians in Corinth, \u201cyou are not your own, you were bought at a price.\u201d There is one more difference between the General Election and God\u2019s election. In the General Election only 650 people can be elected. But in God\u2019s election, I believe that everyone is elected by God, the only question is whether or not we say yes to that election. God chooses all of us, but we don\u2019t all choose God. <\/p>\n
When we do choose God, when we do say yes to that election, then we are agreeing to obey God, even when we don\u2019t feel like it, and even when we don\u2019t understand. We\u2019re also choosing to receive the new life, the new hope, the glorious inheritance that he promises us. We live as exiles on earth now, with the knowledge that we will be at home in heaven, and we scatter, to share the good news, to be the good news, so that more and more people can have the opportunity to say yes to God\u2019s election of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who has written thank you letters for Christmas presents. How did you start them? Dear Grandma? And how did you finish them, \u201clove from Tim\u201d? The Bible reading we\u2019ve just heard was the beginning of letter from Peter, one of Jesus\u2019 friends, to Christians living in a load of different places. In those days they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[1071,212,1072,1074,1073,1075],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellington","tag-1-peter-11-5","tag-chosen","tag-elect","tag-exiles","tag-scattered","tag-strangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}