“What Does It Take?”

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-9

For the next 5 weeks, I will be offering a series from 1 Peter which will focus on what the Church is all about, or rather what the Church should be about. All too often, some people inside the church, as well as most of those who are outside the church, have a mistaken concept of what this “faith-thing” is and how it is supposed to work.
I know – you are thinking that I started with “Church”, and then jumped quite suddenly to “Faith”. So which is it – will the messages be on the Church, or on faith? And my answer is “Yes”! The truth is that neither faith nor the Church can survive for long without the other, and neither will ever grow without the other. Most church members want to define that growth as an increase in church membership, but that is the last thing that our growth should be about.

From Homiletics OnLine:
We should not be concerned with making churches full of people, but with making people full of God.
- Homiletics OnLine
And that, I believe, is what Peter’s first epistle is all about – the business of the Church.

Read 1 Peter 1:3-5

My English teachers - Mrs. Huntington in particular - would not be very happy with this passage – all of them, from elementary school to college, would call it a “run on sentence”. But then, their primary concern would be with the structure of the words, and not as much with the content. The same is true with the church – the structure of the church - our administrative organization, and the order of our worship, and the hymns that we sing, and our doctrine, and our polity - are not our guiding principles. These are not what make us Christian. They are simply the ways that we celebrate and live out our Christian faith.
Peter is establishing the basis for the faith, not the structure, of the fledgling Church. So let’s take a look at what this disciple of Jesus Christ thought about faith.

Peter begins with praise, and not simply praise for the grandeur of Almighty God. As a matter of fact, it isn’t even singular in nature – his praise is multifaceted!
He begins by praising God as the Father of Jesus. The early church realized that, in all things, we had to begin with the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that comes after Jesus must come through him. In Matthew 16:13-20, Peter makes that grand statement of faith, proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and the Lord replies that this will be the foundation of his Church. Faith in him, not the structure.

The second praise is for our Father God’s great mercy. His blessings aren’t given out of obligation, or because of his perfect plan, or even because he knows it’s important. His blessings are offered out of his compassion and love for his created. God, and the Church, live mercy, not obligation.

Third, out of his great mercy, he has birthed us into a new and wonderful life in Christ. For Israel, it was your human birth that determined whether you were a member of the faith community or not, and it had little to do with what you believed or how you lived your life. For the Church, it was also about birth, but not in the conventional sense. It was about choosing the Source of the faith, Jesus Christ, and not the other way around. For Israel, it was about being born into the community, but for the Church, it was about leaving the old community behind so you could begin to live in a new way.
And in this new birth, there was also “new hope”. Hope was no longer earned and it could no longer be taken lightly – it came to us at a terrible price to God. Hope would now exist because of the great sacrifice of Christ on Calvary and his resurrection from the death that it produced. Our “new hope” would now come from the “new birth”, and this hope that lives in us gives new life to these mortal lives. The Church must live and proclaim complete “newness”, not just a makeover of the “old”.

Fourth, along with new birth and new hope, there would also be a new kind of inheritance. When we accept Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, we enter into a new relationship, not just into a community - a life in Christ is a life in the “family” of God. And as with membership in any family, you qualify to receive an inheritance. But this one is unlike any that we will receive here on earth.
I have a few things that were my parents – a couple of Bibles and other books, some tools and utensils, a lot of pictures, and even a little money. But all of these things could disappear in a moment, and I could never replace them. But our Godly birthright can never be destroyed. Peter reminds us that it awaits us in heaven, and that it will never perish, never spoil, never fade, never be stolen. In Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus teaches us that the treasure of heaven, the new hope of life, is heaven based, and therefore the powers of earth can have no effect on them.

And fifth, the salvation that comes – the new life, new birth, new hope, new inheritance – is ours by faith in Jesus Christ. We can’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, we don’t get to define it, we can’t schedule it, it is nontransferable, and to be perfectly honest, we have a difficult time even describing it. But there it is – the gift of God for all who come to Christ in faith.

That is what the Church is about.

Read 1 Peter 1:6-9

The first part of this passage was about the blessings – the joys - that come to us from faith in Jesus Christ. The second is a little different – it’s about the refining, or strengthening, of the faith. Most people think that we are made better, made stronger, are proven in faith by the things we accomplish – our ministry, our missional efforts, our activity in the church. But Peter is telling us something totally different – that the power of our faith, the quality of the Church, is proven and made better by the ways we meet the struggles and trials, as well as the opportunities, that come our way.
But he also cautions us that the process of refining takes a daunting course. He compares the refining of faith with the refining of precious metals. It takes a lot of heat to separate out the impurities in metals, and Peter is telling us that the purifying of our faith, the power, the worthiness, the true value of our faith, is only proven when the going gets real tough. And when it does, how do we respond? Do we cut and run? Do we retreat and hide? Do we throw up our hands and surrender? Or do we stand and fight? Do we look to the Lord for a resolution? Do we continue to praise our Living Lord regardless of what is going on around us? The way we react to the attacks that come from the world is the proof of how strong and focused our faith is. And the stronger the faith, the stronger the church; the more we praise God in times of trial, the stronger the church; the more we give honor to Jesus when the world renews their criticism of us, the stronger the church.

Gordon Cosby, founder and pastor of the Church of our Savior in Washington, D.C., tells about preaching at a Lenten mid-week evening service somewhere in New England. The worship was particularly dull and uninspiring. Nobody sang the hymns; nobody smiled or reacted. The only thing that moved, he said, were the offering plates.
Afterward he and his wife were down, depressed. The church had reserved a room for them in a roadside inn, above a tavern. And they couldn't help compare the sounds of laughter, music and camaraderie beneath with the grim and lifeless exercise in religion they had experienced. He said, “I realized that there was more warmth and fellowship in that tavern than there was in the church. If Jesus of Nazareth had his choice he would probably have come to the tavern rather than to the church we visited.”
- Ernest Campbell, Locked in a Room With Open Doors (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1974), 159).

How joy-filled is the church? How focused are we and what are we focused on? If Jesus walked through the front doors this morning, how would re respond? With joy? Surprise? Fright? Expectation? Would we continue with worship and not even notice him? With the above example before us, would Jesus even want to come to visit?

The Church is a power that the world doesn’t understand, and a power that most of us don’t fully comprehend, either. Today, we have only considered what our faith, within the context of the Church, is for our benefit, and we haven’t even begun to see what the Church can be and do for the world. But maybe we’ll get to that in a few weeks. For now, we see what the glory of Christ, the power of faith in him, what Christian newness and relationship is all about, and how faith works to the good of all who will turn their backs on the world and put their trust and life in Jesus.

What does it take to be the Church? It takes a dedicated faith and trust and commitment to Jesus Christ as our Head – no more and no less.