Preached at Las Vegas Presbyterian Church English Ministry
Sunday, July 11, 2021.
I was blessed at a young age to hear about and have faith in Jesus Christ. I came to know my savior at the tender age of 5. When I think about my childhood, I consider it to be particular or interesting to say the least. For example, When others had invisible friends, my friend was invisible, His name was Jesus. At that time and even now, I can say that I’ve never met Jesus face to face. I’ve never held his hand or even heard his audible voice. How then did I get to know Jesus? Well, I heard the good news and believed gospel as taught by my pastors and teachers.
As with most children, there was a tendency to think that I knew everything or at least most of what needs to be known. It’s funny how, the less we know, the more we think we know and the more that we know, the more we realize there is so much to learn. One of my childish misinterpretation of the bible came from a passage that I kept very dearly to my heart. I’m sure many of you have heard it before. It goes like this, “Trust in the Lord with ALL your HEART, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your path.”
He will make straight your path.
When I read this verse, I thought that I unlocked the key to living a prosperous and happy life. This is it! I found it!
If I believe in Jesus Christ with all my heart.
and If I trust in God’s wisdom and not my own.
and and If I give glory to God in all that I do.
then God will bless me and I will be prosperous in all I do.
So that’s what I did, from a young age I didn’t consider my thoughts very important compared to the thoughts of God. I would many times look down at myself and remind myself that God’s ways are higher than my ways. Whenever something good happened, I was quick to acknowledge that God was the reason that any good happened. Whenever anyone came to me to told me that they were blessed by the sermon or they were touched by the spirit, I immediately responded “Glory to God!” I did these things, because I thought if I do this, God will bless me in this life. He will give to me the desires of my heart and all will know that I am blessed by God.
On the surface, some of you may be saying Amen. Yeah, that sounds right. If I live a good life Holy and Pleasing to God, He will make my path straight. All those problems I have in my life, God is going to fix them. Whatever obstacles that may be in the way of my financial blessing, God will demolish them. My life will be a straight path to blessing.
I would say that the problem we Christians face today is that when we think of God making our path straight, it’s as if we met a leprechaun with a rainbow that leads to a pot of gold. What a grave and dangerous error which leads to many false expectations and painful disappointments…hmm
Now, as an older Christian man, with more experience and a clearer understanding of redemptive history, I have come to realize the grave nature of my theological error and embrace the truth of the Gospel.
The straight path of Christian life isn’t about ever increasing personal worth.
The straight path of Christian life isn’t about you getting perfect grades.
The straight path of Christian life isn’t about you getting that promotion.
The straight path of Christian life is about believing in someone you haven’t met.
The straight path of Christian life is about following the footsteps of Christ suffering.
The straight path of Christian life is about finding joy where it is impossible.
The apostle Peter wrote a letter to the churches of Asia Minor. The church was bold for Christ and experienced suffering and persecution. Scholars have concluded that this letter was written to new Jewish converts to the Christian faith, because of the many references to the Old Testament. These new believers were excluded from their families and communities because of their faith. They were suffering from a loss of community and familiarity. They were suffering from a community that turned on them and tried to find ways to entangle them in court. This church was beaten and battered, but still standing and walking.
They followed Christ to the straight path.
The world doesn’t like the straight path. It’s too restrictive and boring. There is nothing to do. Of course, the world will hate the straight path, because it’s core is bent. Sinful nature doesn’t want to be clamped down by morality, rather it would like to have every detour, every exit, every side door, every possibility open for access. The straight path is too narrow, too divisive, too judgmental.
Our passage from 1 Peter 1:8-9 is from the introduction of the letter to the churches of Asia Minor. As we read this introduction, consider the background of what is going on. These are new churches that were planted after Christ’s work on the cross. They never saw Jesus with their own eyes, but they were taught by the Apostles. This change of religion caused a divide and retaliation from within the community. Whether it was the Jewish family members, Jewish friends or even the Romans, no one was on their side. Everyone was against them.
Please follow along as I read from 1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Obtaining the outcome of your faith; The salvation of your souls.”
Off the bat, some similarities we share with the church of Asia Minor are.
- They believed in Jesus, based upon the preaching and writings of the Apostles.
- They were experiencing persecution and suffering.
- They weren’t eye witnesses of Jesus. In fact, they were one of the first few converts that believed in Jesus from preaching and teaching.
Peter makes this point clearly. He writes to them in two different tenses. In the past tense, “You have not seen him.” and in the present tense, “You do not now see him.” When looking at the Greek word to see (Idontes) to go to visit, to experience or to catch a glimpse of. These Christians have never went to visit Jesus, they never experienced Jesus presence in the flesh and no they didn’t see even a glimpse of him. They didn’t have evidence of the existence of Christ. We think that if we just see Jesus Christ in the flesh, everyone will believe.
But, that isn’t true.
When Jesus came to do ministry on earth, he was performing miracles, signs and wonders. Healing the sick, casting out demons, walking on water, changing water into wine. The Jews and their leaders saw Jesus Christ their messiah in front of them. Something that we should learn here is to stop believing in the false pretense that if Jesus Christ were to show up, everyone would believe in him. What we see is that with a stiff-neck hardened heart people, seeing isn’t believing. “Though he had done so many signs before them, they still didn’t believe.”
This is how hard it is to believe in Jesus Christ.
Not only did they not believe, but they didn’t want anyone to believe in Jesus Christ. The Jews were worried that if everyone were to believe in Jesus than the Romans would side with the Christians and overthrow the Jews. This turned into some kind of cosmic power struggle between Jewish leaders and the son of God. John 11:48 makes this clear, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
So here on a side study with the Jews, we see that even when they saw him, they didn’t believe. On top of that, when they did see his miracles, they were afraid everyone else would believe in him. (Except for themselves of course).
The persecution did not end there. When Jesus Christ was suffering at the cross under Pontius pilot, they mocked him by saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.”
So here we are, The Jews and their leaders, they SAW. They went to go visit. They experienced the presence. They caught a glimpse of Christ. They saw and didn’t believe.
Yet, here we are, brother and sisters in Christ. We find our familiarity, not with the disbelief of the Pharisees and Sadducees, but with the suffering churches of Asia Minor which believe in Jesus without seeing him. The church of Asian Minor, they don’t have any power. They don’t have any influence. They aren’t on the upper hand. They aren’t the elites.
These are ordinary people that if you were to ask of their faith, they should be trembling with fear and denying God, but instead we ask these questions.
“Even though you never seen Jesus, do you love him?”
“Even though you never seen Jesus, do you believe in him?”
They call back with a resound voice as loud as thunder, “YES YES YES!”
But Peter doesn’t stop there.
He writes about rejoicing in Jesus.
He isn’t talking about any type of rejoicing.
He isn’t talking about the, “You hit a home run, the ball is flying out the stadium, run run run!’
He isn’t talking about the, “You got straight A’s, honor roll and suma cum laud”
He isn’t talking about the, “You were first place in the marathon.”
He’s talking about the, “You hit rock bottom, but you keep on walking.”
He’s talking about the, “Devils’ temptations to your left and right.”
He’s talking about the, “Your significant other cheated on you.”
He’s talking about the, “Your children are fighting with each other.”
He’s talking about the, “The world being more and more secular.”
He’s talking about the, “Your parents are fighting.”
Peter describes this kind of joy as aneklaleytos (eklaleo) which means, “not of a nature to be adequately express’ inexpressible, too intense for words, some translations use the word unspeakable. It’s the kind of joy that we find in life during trials and suffering. I like how Peter uses the word inexplicable. It cannot be explained with words.
You may be thinking, what is this joy? What is the source of this joy?
It’s becomes clearer when we read 1 Peter 1:6, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuinsess of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ.
- The trials we go through aren’t meaningless, but meaningful.
- If we pass the test, it will bring praise and glory and honor to God on the day of the Lord.
I have joy in my current trials, for I know as I pass with the strength of Christ, on the day of the Lord, all my pain and suffering will bring glory my Father on High. To know that in my little life, I was able to bring praise and glory and honor to God is a blessing of eternity. It’s a crown of eternity. I’d wear it on my head so joyful and glad that I made it through the impossible. God gave me strength! God is with me!
The passage goes on to say, “Filled with glory.”
We are filled with glory. We are filled with the presence of God and we radiate God to others. As we find joy in the hardest of situations, this isn’t merely an intellectual or emotional exercise. It isn’t that you have mastered the mind and the art of being happy. It’s because God has turned you into His temple, given you a plan and a purpose and it carrying it out to completion in your life. You are being transformed from your state of being deformed.
As we journey as Christians, it’s easy to think that good works = prosperity and success in life, but Christ shows us that this life isn’t marked with prosperity, but with suffering for righteousness which results in the praise and honor and glory of our God.
On the day of the LORD, we will see those who are truly blessed and what it really means to prosper in this life. So many of us have been lied to or even tricked by the media to think that “blessed” or “blessings” is fame, power, money and beauty. This may even confuse us to think that we aren’t blessed, because God didn’t give us these things. Or are lacking in those ways. How feeble the human mind can be. How foolish we are to consider our own wisdom.
The world may have it’s own definition of blessed, but I’ll take Jesus’ definition.
In closing, I leave you with the words of Christ from John 20:26,
“Have you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”