1 Peter Chapter 2

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Good morning, everyone. Those of you visiting with us or have just walked through the door for the first time, I'm Pastor Doug. I'm the pastoral team here at Caboolture Baps, and it's my joy to be with you this morning, reflecting on the songs we've just sung. It's been interesting, some words there that just impressed upon my heart what it means to walk with God. And we're going to have a little look at that in a moment. We look at 1 Peter chapter 2. Let's pray. Father, we do, Lord, come before you with humble hearts. Father, knowing you are God, and that, Father, you do, Lord, declare, Father, that you love us, Lord, and you desire for us to walk with you. Father, you also challenge us, Lord, to do that in a way that honors you. And Father, as we read through this passage this morning, Lord, we pray, just reveal your truths to us, Lord. We might be able to apply them to our hearts, Father, apply them to our actions, that we may reflect your glory. You're a good and gracious God, and we thank you, Father, for that in your name. Amen. For a time, we did a bit of traveling in our caravan, and we went out in Western Queensland. We love Western Queensland in winter. The days are nice to be out in, and the nights are cold, and you can snuggle up in your caravan, have a camp. We went through a belt, I suppose, of different geology, and one of those geology belts we went through was opal country. Now, opal country, or the opal seam, seems to run from Coober Pedy all the way through Western Queensland, through Hughenden, Quilpie, and heads up towards Sapphire and Emerald. And when you go into these little towns, they're just brief little stops. You go to a store, and in that store, you can see all the different opals and all the different crystals that they find. And you have piles of dirty rocks, and you have piles of rocks that have been cut open. And inside, they're beautiful. What's exposed inside, when the light hits it, is just phenomenal. Such a wonderful part of our creation. When we got to Quilpie, we were traveling with a couple of people, we got to Quilpie. Outside Quilpie, they have what they call a mullock heap. And you can go out to that mullock heap, and you can dig through all the rocks and see if you can find your own precious gem. It's a great tourist attraction. We did learn earlier, after a little while, that apart from the three million flies we nearly swallowed, that that really is where the locals drive past and laugh at the tourists, because there's nothing in there except a dirty old pile of rocks. And I'm pretty sure the guys in town go, Let's put them out there anyway. And then the irony of it was, the caravan park we stayed in, as you drive in, there's a great big vat of rocks, and we actually found more flashes of opal in there than we did out in the paddock. And because the lady in the caravan park said, Just look beside you. When we read through this passage, there's a challenge in there for us that we can either be a pile of rocks, or we can be precious stones. We could be living stones that reflect the glory of God. And that's what Peter is challenging us with, and that's his illustration, his metaphor that he uses. But he starts off first of all. And a very sort of quite confronting manner in chapter 2. He says, Therefore rid yourselves of all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind, like newborn babies, crave spiritual milk so that you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. Starts off with therefore. And of course, we learnt last week, we asked, what is that therefore? Therefore to reflect upon the previous passage, in this case, that we are God's creation, and therefore we need to reflect God. And it goes through a list then that says that, For all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word that was preached to you. Therefore, get rid of those things. So when we're called on our life to be these living stones, these precious stones reflect the glory of God, the word requires, we understand the world requires options, because we need to have the conduct becoming of a believer. Now we're given options for the Carols event, our outreach for this year here, the big one, and we're going to have five, six and seven as options. And I wonder what option you were sitting there thinking of as the option you would like. I think I'd like the option of the last one. That way I can just go home and someone else can pack up the barbecue trailer. Or you might say, Well, I like the option of the first one because I'm dying to know what they've planned for the program in here. But one of the things we don't have as believers and those who are seeking God, we don't have the option to hang on to things. The world says, Oh, I want to keep hold of these things because it's just part of who my character is, because I prefer to be like this. But Peter says, Cast them off. He says, Get rid of them. Then the list is very explicit, because these are the sins that you hide in your heart. You could walk around any time with any of these in your heart and people wouldn't know, but God does. And so when we're called to be a person who's seeking Him, then we have this understanding. So we have the spite, deception, two-faced, jealousy and lies. They're the things of the world that can be hidden in a Christian's hearts to varying degrees. You might think, Well, that's a bit harsh, Pastor Doug. How dare you think of me like that? So are you being a little bit feisty now with me? Can I challenge you to think and ask if that's something in your heart, is God dealing with it? Peter goes on then and says, Seek sustenance. And the word sustenance in the Greek there means unrestrained—sorry, means unrestrained hunger. It means you are thirsting after it. Could you imagine a church where people are hungering after the Word of God, not just reading the Word of God, not just coming to church, but hungering after God, to worship God, to be in His presence. When we meet outside the doors there on Sunday morning to pray, we pray, the worship team goes out, and then anyone else goes out, the pastors wander out, and we pray as well. Coffee cart guys come out. On my way here this morning, God challenged me with this thought, and I haven't run this past the pastoral team. It's just a thought that could be just Doug thinking. Wouldn't it be great if we actually spent time as a church praying before the service started, confessing to God, getting our hearts right with God, being vulnerable before God, so we don't have any of these things in our life. Or if God points out something, we can deal with it straight away. So when the first song is sung, when you first engage in the start of the worship service, you actually are prepared for worship. You're not fighting the battles with the end, all the things that have happened, or the car park, or something that happened on the street, or in the shop, or even at home trying to get here. You're actually in the presence of God. Perhaps there might be something that's coming later as we come together as a church. As we draw near to God, as we come closer to Him, He points these things out. And He goes on to say that it's about desiring to grow into spiritual maturity. So when you get rid of these things, get rid of deceit, get rid of envy, get rid of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy? Thank you. I wanted to see if someone was awake. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. That's the word we're looking for. As we get rid of those, we come closer to God. And really what happens for us is that we become transformed. We become transformed in the Spirit. And when we become transformed, we start to reflect the person who transforms us. In scriptures, it challenges us. In Romans 12:2, it says, Do not conform to the pattern of this world any longer, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In 2 Corinthians, And all we who have been unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image. When you seek to spiritually grow, you're being transformed. Peter is challenging the church. He's saying, What's happening here? These are the things I've noticed, else I wouldn't have mentioned them, and so I need you to deal with these now. And the reason why is because he wants, he desires, and God desires this of us as well, to be those stones that reflect the glory of God. We read further in Scripture into the next section. As you come to him and drawn to him as living stones rejected by humans but chosen by God, and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For the Scripture says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Now to you who believe this precious stone, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and the stone that has caused people to stumble and the rock that makes them to fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also. Well, they were designed for. When we understand that scripture and have a think about it, Jesus said those words, didn't he? When he was under trial, he was being challenged, and he said, You'll tear down the temple, but be rebuilt in three days. And Peter's referring to the words that Jesus referred to because Jesus was using the words of Isaiah, the prophet. And something about the truth of that stone that struck me. In ancient times, the Masons spent a great deal of time putting the cornerstone in place. The cornerstone actually was set in such a way that all measurements, all dimensions, all weights, everything was set from that cornerstone, which was set and reset until it was perfect. In Scripture, calls Jesus the cornerstone of our faith. He set things in perfect alignment for us. He desires for us to line up with him, to actually compare ourselves to him, to get our eyesight lined up with him. When you're putting in a fence, what you do, you put in a stake one end, a stake the other, and you can align it with your eye. When you put the cornerstone down, all string lines come off this cornerstone. I don't know if there's anyone here who's a brickie. Perhaps the process is still the same today. But you notice in a lot of the older buildings, there's a big stone in the corner that sometimes looks out of place. Jesus is that cornerstone of our life. And this is the stone that people struggle with, the stone that people will reject. They will stumble over it because they don't want to be obedient to God. They want the options. And so we're called to something different. And you'll notice in that passage it says, But you also, like living stones, are being built to the purpose of God. You are the priesthood of believers. You're part of the family of God. Just like the opals that were cut out in Quilpie and Aramanga and those places, there is, when you cut them open, they become a precious stone that reflects God. Peter is seeing the value in the faith in Jesus. He's struggling us, and the question we have is, do you value your faith in Jesus, and how do you portray that? How do you work that out in your life? Because we understand that proximity reveals the extraordinary. When you're in the presence of God, truly in the presence of God, then that something extraordinary thing takes place. And we can do that daily. We can do that minutely. We do that hourly. It's not just a Sunday morning where we come and sing songs and we get into the presence of God. Here, He asks us to be in His presence all through the week, 365 days a year. One of the things, when I was researching about why this terminology was used, was that I found out that, and it makes sense, that just like that belt of opals that ran through Queensland, New South Wales, and up into the central Queensland coalfields, that around Palestine, there were no precious stones. So when people are reading this and understanding it, they're saying, the precious stones, we don't have them. We don't kick them in the dirt like you do at Aramanga or do at Yulara or Quilpie. There is nothing like that. So precious stones in this society has to be bought, and they're very, very expensive. They are purchased at a price. So when the reference is given that you are precious stones, everyone in that room hearing this, being read from the scroll, would suddenly start to have this vision of, Oh wow, this is actually amazing, because it's something we've never seen very often. We can go online now and we can look at photos. I mean, I went online and found the two that I had at the start of the message, and there's multiple, multiple ones, but to have them in real life, they'll be so rare. Precious stones. Jesus is a precious stone. He calls us to be his living precious stones. He calls us to be his people that reflect his glory. In 1 Corinthians 20, it says, You were bought at a price; therefore honour God with your bodies. And one of the—it's interesting, isn't it, that when we look at how stones were bought at a price, then how we were bought at a price. And if you're hearing that for the first time, you might be thinking, Well, no one owns me. I'm a free person. We're going to talk a little bit about that later on in this passage, that you were bought at a price, and the price was Jesus on the cross by his blood. And so Peter was reflecting upon this. We learnt last week that he was one of the disciples in Jesus' teaching. He was there with him for the ups and downs of his ministry, and he could understand quite clearly what it means to stand before the person who died on the cross for him because of the precious blood of Jesus. When we find people who are stumbling over the word of Jesus, it can be frustrating, can't it? Because when we do that, we're trying to share with them, but the words got to bubble out, and they say, Well, I hate God. God doesn't, he lets things into the world. God also sent Jesus to die for your sins. He also said this: You will stumble over me. 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, The message of the cross is foolishness to those who don't believe, but to those who do believe, it's a saving grace of Jesus. We're called to be a royal priesthood because we want to reflect the facets of the special stone. One of the things we noticed when we were cutting, looking at the stones and the shops that were cut, and there was a certain way you had to cut opals to get the best out of them. I didn't know that. I thought you just got a big saw and just crunched into them. But you had to look at the shape of the rock on the outside, and you cut it along so the facets shone or reflected what it meant, you know, the value of the stone inside. And so people could actually cut them wrong, and there were several examples of that. But when we reflect, we're called to be precious stones. We're called to reflect the glory of God. Every person here who's hearing the word, who loves Jesus, Lord and Saviour, is called to reflect the glory of God. Some people have that quite in their, you know, right in their face all the time. They have it in the forefront of their mind. They make sure that what they do reflects the glory of God. Peter challenges us that that facet's going to reflect the glory of God. We need to live a life that's worthy of it. Live a life in such a way, he says. The way that we do live our lives is about enduring accusations and avoiding retaliation. In verse 2. Imagine that. You know, if someone does you wrong, what's the first thing you want to do? Get even. And when we do that, are we reflecting the glory of God? The example is that Christ didn't say anything when he was before the Sanhedrin and before the Pharisees and before Pilate. If we endure accusations and avoid retaliation, we have to ask the question, do our lives silently point to God? Does your life silently point to God? And that's the challenge that I had when I was reading this, that, Lord, you're asking me this question: does my life silently point—what does that mean? And as I thought about it more, it meant that if I'm not mentioning Jesus, do people still know that he's my Lord and Saviour? If I'm not mentioning Jesus out loud, do people still know that he died for them? And how does he know that? Live your life in such a way. Live your life in such a way you don't need to say anything sometimes, because the way that you conduct yourself honorably, not without retaliation, and without trying to get your own payback, and not acting like the world was. That's why that list is so specific. They're all about retaliation and getting the upper hand. One of my favorite authors wrote a book about youth ministry, and this is the quote from one of his books, and it says this. Kids worship God in public how they see their parents worship God at home. Kids see worship God in public how they see their parents worship God at home. Now, if you take that on a broader sense, that's not just about mums and dads and kids. It's about us as well. If we could change that sense a little bit, we might say that people will worship God in public when they see how we worship God in our hearts. Our ministry and our witness will come to the fore. Now, parents, that's something you can note down because if you're, you know, in the struggle of parenthood, and a few of us are, quite a few of us have been there, and we know what it's like to try and keep the kids ready for church on Sunday. I'm sure Kylie would have been such a good child to come to church on Sunday. I know ours three were. Sometimes we got here and we're going, thank goodness we got through the door. Everyone's still alive and breathing. And the important thing is that when we do things in secret, God knows about. And He's not saying, Declare the things in your heart now that you may be able to reflect my glory, because you are a precious stone. I've trimmed and cut you around. I've put facets on you so that you can shine for the kingdom of heaven, and people will know even without words, you are my disciple. Our consistent intentional walk while growing in faith reflects the glory of God. John 14:26 says, But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything that I have said to you. Sometimes people, when they read that scripture, they stop at the first part that says, I will teach you. But the Holy Spirit reminds us of what it means to be a precious stone of God, reflecting of His glory. And sometimes that comes with conviction. Sometimes that comes with, Stop right now, thank you very much, because what you're doing is not honoring me. I need you to repent of this right now. I need you to stop what you're doing now and fall on your knees, repent to me, confess your sin, and I'll take that sin away. Now, God's a great God. He abhors sin. He's wrathful, it says. I think that's a word. Teachers, don't correct me. But one of the things that He does know is what's in your heart, and He wishes that all, and He prays that all, that we would come into His presence in a real way. If we're consistent and intentional in our walk, then we reflect the glory of God. And then we know there's testing times, because this passage goes straight into those who are under tests. I'm glad we're not under tests, eh? Makes sense? Yeah, we don't need to read the rest. Let's close in prayer. Perhaps not. Verse 11. Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from the sinful desires which wage war against your soul, and live a godly life among the pagans, that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Submit, verse 13. Submit yourselves to the Lord's... For the Lord's sake, to every human authority, whether to the emperor or supreme authority, or to the governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you shall silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people and do not use your freedom to cover up evil. Live as God's slaves. Show proper respect to everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God and honor the emperor. Verse 13 starts off with the understanding that it says submit to God—submit to those, sorry, submit to those in authority over you. The Greek word for that there means is doulos, which is, we understand, is a person who is actually signing on to or becoming invested in, who says, I'm going to be a servant. We're called to be servants of Christ, doulos of Christ. And so we're actually intentionally serving. We're actually signing up to serve, a bit like our volunteer process at church here. You sign up to be part of the body to do a particular function. But the difference is that when we sign up for the heaven, for God, then it's for the Lord's sake, and we honor those above us. That is hard sometimes, particularly when you have a dopey government and they do things, you think, what are they doing? And it doesn't seem to change when you've been around the world, around this earth for sixty-something years like I have. You've seen governments of all different persuasions take control, and they all make similar mistakes because they're human. But when I read this as a young Christian, I struggled because I thought, if we're going to honor the emperor... What does it actually mean? And the challenge for us is this, is that the empress position is bestowed; it's not earned. So that gave me great comfort when I had that revelation. You think, well, that's a bit of a play on words, but think of it this way: that the government is put there by God. They didn't earn it, so they can't claim it as they are the best thing since sliced bread, even though they try to. That underneath the spirituality of it is that God has still placed them in that place. That's why we're called to pray for them and pray that they'll become believers and that their faith will emanate through their decisions. Not just pray that they'll stop the tax on houses, or stop the tax on spare bedrooms, or stop the tax on fuel, but actually pray for them and honour them. God has put them in place, and he can take them away when he's ready at his predetermined time. In the meantime, we know that they're there by his will only, not by what they have done. So their ascendancy is not out of human understanding; it's out of spiritual understanding. Verse 17, we're called to create a community confident in your faith and willing to serve the other people with God's strength. So as precious stones, people watch what you're doing outside you. They look at you and they go, Oh, where's that person? I wonder what they do on a Sunday. I wonder what they do. Your neighbours might be wondering, Where do you go on a Sunday? You get a little bit dressed up, the normal, or sometimes not, and you wander in to—you disappear for a couple of hours. Then you come back, and usually you're happier when you get back than when you went. I'd hope that's the case. Is that depending on morning tea? Or something else. Create a community confident in your faith and willing to serve God in its strength. I believe that's what part of the outreach understanding is for our carols event this year, is a community in our faith, that every person who comes onto the grounds here, this is the grounds that God has gifted this church. Five acres is highly unheard of anymore for any church. It's not all car park. Five acres to do something for God's kingdom. And we have an opportunity to be his hands and feet, to be his mouthpiece, to be those who smile when people want to cut in line to get up the climbing wall. It's not my place to say, You fall off there, you might meet Jesus early, but they'll have people in place to look after that. But we'll be able to point people to stand there as part of the crowd and just welcome people and say g'day, and just be a person as the big smiley face. We have people on the train who will race around a great course, people who are at the jumping castle, because we want to reflect the community of faith that we have. And there's so much joy in this room, I can just tell. There's so much joy. I encourage you to keep praying, as Pastor Dave has shared, keep praying about what it means to be a community that's confident in your faith, a community that reflects the glory of God. Find cut stones that say, Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, and this is what it's going to look like in your life as well. We all have the things we struggle with, and we know that, but it is God's strength that gets us through. And we bring honour to God with your freedom in Christ. Paul, again, sorry, Peter, Peter's understanding is that if we honour God. And what we say and do will bring glory and honour to Him. Verse 18 starts off, Slaves, in reverent fear of God, submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing nothing and endure it? What if you suffer for doing good and endure it? This is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth. When they hurled insults at Him, He did not retaliate. He suffered; He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. Wow. When we think we've got it hard done by, then we reflect upon Jesus, and He's calling us to be those people who are under pressure, but our actions reflect the glory of God. The word for slaves in verse 18 there is oiketaios, and that means we revere Christ and serve. And so when you're in that situation, when you're a slave like that, you've got no out. You are just called to be part of the household, and you continue to serve in that regard no matter whether you get praise or not, whether or not you get lifted up or put down. And so that can be harsh and fair, difficult and cruisy all at the same time. And in our humanity, don't we kick back from that so often? We kick back when it gets uncomfortable, kick back when we just don't feel like doing it. We kick back and we say, Lord, I just, I'm rejecting this. I'm not doing that. You want me to do what? There was a person who came to the church many years ago, brilliant young man and a bit of a gifted scholar. He hadn't been here very long, and he said, come up to me and he said, Pastor Doug, I'd like to be on the sermon team, you know, the preaching roster. I said, Oh, that's awesome. I said, Oh, if only been here a few weeks, we don't know much about you. Oh yeah, no, no, no, I've got these credentials and these credentials and these credentials. I said, Oh, great, you can serve. He said, Oh, awesome. So the working bee this Saturday, the toilets need being cleaned. He looked at me and said, Seriously? This guy did not look like a toilet cleaner. I said, No, I'd like you to clean the toilets. And he went and he cleaned the toilets on the working bee. Then he got on the roof and cleaned the gutters before there was workplace health and safety. But the point I'm trying to make is that even though he had this gift, the challenge was, can you serve, truly serve? And so he went and he served. He was humble in his service. And that's where he understood that a slave to Jesus Christ is a slave for all circumstances. It's no matter how good or how bad it gets, it is consistently all the way through. When we have the attitude under pressure, we have to focus on God's conscious and of His presence. We have God in our sights, we have God with us, beside us, and we keep going forward. And I love the words in verse 21. Which I think we should probably write somewhere up, To this you were called. We need people to pick sticks up at the working bee on the 7th of November. To this you were called. We need people to mow the grass. To this you were called. We need people to wash the windows. To this you were called. We need people to eat morning tea with us. To this you were called. We'll probably get more people show up at 10 minutes before morning tea than after. But to this we are called: reflecting the glory of God, to being a beacon on the hill, to being a light on the hill, a city on a hill, that people will see your good works and praise your Father in heaven. Each person before God must give an account, it says in Scripture, of the good and the bad. And that's quite a sobering thought when we think we've got the tick of approval and no one's going to challenge that. How dare he judge me from the pulpit? I believe God is speaking to your heart now. One of the great comforts we have in Scripture is when we think about what it means to be under all sorts of suffering. In Romans 3 just encourages us. It says, Not only so, but we also glory in our suffering, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. We endure to reveal the overcomer. No matter how hard it gets, what are the tough things? That's what God is trying to ask us to do today. And we model in verse 23 and 25. When he hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to those sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds we've been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have been returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your souls. One of the great things that was taught to me early on was that Jesus did not retaliate. When you're raised in a world that has a lot of physical things about it, retaliation is second nature because you can't let anyone get ahead of you. When I played football as a young man, we played in a really rough area. The high school was rough. And so human nature taught me to defend myself as aggressively as possible. When I became a Christian, that world was turned upside down because then the aggression had no place before Jesus. And then when I started to live more with him, I had this battle about the aggression that was in me and the aggression that he needed to deal with. When you read the words from Scripture that says he didn't defend himself, he didn't retaliate, he didn't reply. There was no threats. He just absorbed it. And then I read, he absorbed it for me. If you're searching about what God is all about. Look first to Jesus. A lot of people come to church and they say, I just want to find out what God's about. Can I ask you, search Jesus first. Look him up in Scripture. Look him up. If you have to, on a concordance or on a Bible app, or look him up even on Google. You put in Jesus Saviour and you find out what it says. Because even the secular world has to acknowledge the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. But he endured for us. He endured for you and for me. He endured to the point where he had to rely on his heavenly Father, and he died for our sin. As we sing the last song today, the song is God Is Great. I can encourage you that if you're finding out more about Jesus today, and you want to speak to somebody, it's a great song just to sit and listen to. But can I ask you to seek somebody out, someone you know in the church, a pastor, Dave, Pastor Dave, myself, Pastor Dylan, or a discipleship group leader. Jesus entrusted himself to God's right hand in amongst all that was going on. He took our place on the cross, and we were like sheep astray. He wants us to renounce sin and receive righteousness. When I look at this photo, it reminds me of my days as a young man. Someone put this up on the internet, this photo, and said, Don't let obstacles stand in your place. Just break through anywhere you feel like. And then someone else put up there in a comment, Have a closer look, you goose, because that is a gate in the middle. And those 3,000 head of sheep are trying to get through that one narrow gate. What a great illustration of the kingdom of heaven. It'd be great if everyone's crowding up like that to get through the gate, wouldn't it? Have all these people trying to flock in to get into the kingdom of heaven. And they are, probably. We don't know. In their heart of hearts, you might be one of those sheep on the other side of the fence thinking, How do I get into the kingdom of heaven? It is through Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Narrow is the gate, he says. But I love the illustration of sheep. Sheep are easy to love when they're by themselves, but when they want to get that wrong thing in their head, they are hard to love. They're hard to even be nice to. And I can't say too much because we're going live stream. So sheep certainly are a breed. And when I read in Scripture as a young Christian what sheep did and how Jesus loved his sheep, and he laid down his life for his sheep, and he went looking for the lost sheep, and he came back, I thought, man, that's powerful stuff. Like sheep, we'd gone astray. Peter's saying to the church, Look, even if you've gone astray, I still love you. Please draw yourself back to me. When we renounce our sin and receive righteousness, when we truly respond that your sins will be forgiven and you'll be healed before God, and you will never be snapped away if you truly love him. That's the promise from Scripture. If you're searching today, can I encourage you, don't go home today without dealing with it. Can I encourage you to seek him dearly. If you are a person who loves Jesus and struggling with sin in your life, and God has convicted you today, don't leave today until you've dealt with it. If you need to get alongside a brother or sister and say, Look, I'm struggling with this, please help me. Please pray for me. Please give me some guidance. Do so. When we truly do those things, we start to reflect His glory. Worship team, if you'd like to come up, I'm just about to close, and we'll pray. Excuse me. The last slide I've got is a pile of dirty rocks or precious stones. And the wonderful thing about our Creator is that He looks through the dirty outside of the rock and sees what's precious inside. He looks through your life on the outside and looks what's inside. He desires to engage in that precious stone. He wants you to reflect His glory. He desires, as Peter said, for us to be living stones, living stones that do His will and purpose. Let's pray. Father, we thank You, Lord, that You are a God who wishes none of us, Lord, to remain who we are and where we are, but always, Lord, encouraging us, challenging us to walk closer and closer with You. Lord, as we read in Your Word today, Lord, submit to Me. Lord, come to Me. Cast off the things that aren't of Me. Lord, I thank You for those truths, and Father, I pray that You'll truly speak into the hearts of each person here, Father, as they continue to go in their walk with You. For those, Lord, who are just searching, Father, don't give them any rest until they've responded. Father, we know that You desire that for all to come before You in glory. We know all, Lord, to be Your precious stones, Your living stones that do Your will and purpose. Lord, it's just a privilege, Lord, to be in that family. Lord, a privilege to be in a church that loves You. It's a privilege, Lord, to be a child of God. Father, help us to use our freedom as You would desire, and Father, we will live for Your purpose, Lord, for Your kingdom. Lord, in your way, in your strength, amen.