Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning. It's great to be here.
[00:00:03] I'm not Sam, clearly, duh, as you've gathered. But what a perfect week for.
[00:00:12] I say perfect in air quotes, but for Sam to fall sick, unfortunately. But he had his place covered this morning, so I'm grateful for that timing. And it wasn't another week, but like Jesse said, my name is Clayton. My. My wife Elisa is here as well, and our two boys, Ezra, who is turning four this Saturday, as well as Ari, who is about to be 17 months old. And you could say that we are family members, extended family members that you might have not have known existed. So we actually belong to Mid Cities Church in Maplewood, which if you know some of your church's history, was planted out of Red Tree Church. So half of your. Your past church merger and we've also gone. Undergone a church merger in recent years as well. So we understand that hard but beautiful process.
[00:01:05] And I was actually part of a Red Tree in late high school, early college. And so it's been awesome seeing some familiar faces. Well, some from high school, but some familiar faces of folks that I walked alongside years ago when I was far less mature in my faith. And they were very gracious to me, I'm sure.
[00:01:26] And so it's great to be here and a privilege to be. Yeah. Become one of your missional partners and to partner with a church that we have history with as well. And so I just want to take this moment to just say thank you for trusting in us. And we're excited to get to know those of you we haven't met and to invite you to play a more tangible role in what's going on on the other side of the world. And so we are missionaries being sent out of Mid Cities Church, but partnering with an organization called abwe, which stands for association of Baptists for World Evangelism.
[00:02:04] And we are kind of the tail end of our support raising time, praise God. We're at 98% of our monthly support. And so, yeah, the Lord has been very kind in this past year since we were appointed. And so we are nearing that and praying that the Lord will provide up and above that, we want to shoot for like 110, just kind of leave some cushion there. And visa stuff we're finding out is very. Our views options are going to be very expensive and so you'd be praying for that. But we are preparing to move to Southeast Asia, as Jesse mentioned, to bring the gospel to an entirely unreached Muslim people group of about 17 million people.
[00:02:48] And they. Yeah, so These are. These are people that.
[00:02:53] Yeah, they've. There's virtually no churches amongst this people group. And there's a great, great need for the gospel there.
[00:03:03] Elisa and I's desires to leverage our respective gifts and passions. So for me, being music and also skateboarding and then for Alis. Yeah. No, seriously.
[00:03:14] Yeah, that's kind of. That's what I really. My main touch point with unbelievers right now is actually more through music or skateboarding than what I've done professionally for years being music. But I'm excited to use those gifts on the field. But Alisa has a huge heart for women's and children's ministry based on some of her background and trials that she's walked through in her lives.
[00:03:34] And so she's going to be wonderful in ministering to women in that regard as well, amongst majority people there. And our hopes is to bring the gospel to them, Lord willing, see them come to faith, see them integrated into the local church. That is honestly not very receptive to them joining the church because it is illegal for them to come to faith and illegal to share the gospel with them. And so we want to pour into the local church there as well to see their responsibility to reach their lost Muslim neighbors and to see these majority people equipped and sent out, Lord willing, to plant their own churches amongst their own people years down the road. It's hard soil working amongst Muslim people groups, but we believe that God can do it, even with our weakness and our feelings of total inadequacy to do anything about such a great spiritual need.
[00:04:28] So before we dive into this morning, I do want to just kind of give you a little bit of backdrop on. So we're going to be walking through a text in First Peter, but I want to just kind of give you a short synopsis of what the Lord used to call Elisa and I to the mission field. So it was about seven years ago in the fall of 2018. I am sitting in South City with some. At a Breadco with some guys from church, a small group we were meeting there and I don't. Honestly don't know what I was eating there. It's probably. If I was going to guess, it was probably an asego cheese bagel with a side of butter because I was too cheap to just buy the cream cheese, you know, so it's like what? It's. It's so. Yeah, yeah, but it's not. It's hardly melted. You gotta, like dig it out of there. It's like hard as a rock, you know, so not convenient at all. But I'm sitting there and we're. We're reading through this, this book by David Platt called Radical, which, ironically, I'd received my copy of by some missionary friends of ours who are also serving in a Muslim context. And at one point in this book, I was introduced to something called the 1040 window by raise of hands. Who's familiar with that term?
[00:05:40] Okay, so about half of you. No shame to those who have never heard that term before. I hadn't. At least I hadn't up till, like I said, seven years ago. But for those of you who don't know what that is, the 1040 window refers to a geographical corridor of the world that, if you can imagine, stretches from the Middle east through, sorry, North Africa, through the Middle east, into south and Southeast Asia. And it is home, we learned to 97% of the unreached people groups in the world. These are people that will go their entire lives statistically, without ever hearing the gospel, never being befriended by a Christian, never stepping inside a local congregation such as this.
[00:06:20] And so with that, we Learned that only 3%, 3% of all Global missionaries, not just US missionaries, Global, are going to the 1040 window to reach these peoples.
[00:06:35] And the Lord used that to break our hearts and say, why not us?
[00:06:42] And not Only that, only $9 for every $10,000 of Christian giving is being allocated towards reaching at 97%.
[00:06:55] Lord, would you use us? We pray.
[00:06:59] And so I eventually shared this with Elisa. We were still dating at the time. By the way, I cry all the time in our church, so I get to. I lead our music there. And yeah, they're used to me. So welcome to. You know, you didn't ask for this, but I'm giving it to you. So anyways, and I expressed this to Elisa, and the Lord began to work in her heart as well in the coming months. And fast forward seven years later, here I am speaking in front of you as a totally unworthy candidate, just who's reminded of how God simply loved me first.
[00:07:30] And because of his overflow of his love for me, he placed a burden in my heart, my wife's heart, providentially to bring the Gospel to people who've never heard.
[00:07:41] And so, so with that, let me just stop and pray for our time together before we dive into First Peter. And I ask that the Lord would bless that God. Thank youk so much for your word breathed out by youy Holy Spirit, God, that we have more access to than we can even comprehend the words of the living God on Our phones and books, Lord, at our fingertips. Yet there are people who don't even know that you exist.
[00:08:24] They're enslaved to false, false gods, workspace, religion that will never save.
[00:08:33] So, God, thank you once again, we confess for the privilege it is to know you and God. We pray that this morning, God, you would hopefully interpret your word correctly through my lips and rekindle our love for you, our love for our neighbors, Open up our eyes to the.
[00:09:02] The lostness that is in the world and the need for your gospel as the only solution and antidote for that.
[00:09:10] So, God, would you work in our hearts in a way that only you can?
[00:09:14] I can't muster it up for myself or anybody else in this room.
[00:09:19] We thank you so much for your grace toward us in Christ. Amen.
[00:09:24] All right, so if you have your Bible with you, please open up to First Peter, chapter two, verses nine through 12. That's First Peter, chapter two, verses 9 through 12.
[00:09:42] And I'm going to read through this passage one time before we start picking it apart.
[00:09:48] So starting in verse nine, it reads, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
[00:10:05] Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
[00:10:09] Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
[00:10:13] Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.
[00:10:21] Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
[00:10:32] All right, so to give you a bit of a roadmap where we're heading this morning, I've entitled this sermon Royalty, Humility, and Prosperity. So if we could sum up this passage, I think one way would be to say that God uses humble royals to prosper his kingdom.
[00:10:49] The book of First Peter was written to a group of Christians who were exiled through what is now Eastern Europe. They've been persecuted, forced to leave their homes because of their faith. And Peter, being aware of their situation, calls on them in verse nine to remember who they are, to remember their royal identity in Christ.
[00:11:10] He says to them as we read, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for his own possession.
[00:11:19] See, in the midst of a whiplash of culture shock, along with the ridicule, the sufferings that they were experiencing, one can Only imagine the heaviness that would have begun to weigh on their hearts, and it would have been really, really easy for them to begin to question God's goodness, question his presence, and slowly even begin to compromise their faith.
[00:11:41] Because when our identity isn't firmly rooted in Christ, it leaves the door wide open for lesser things to claim identity over us.
[00:11:50] And at best, these things might be good, but not ultimate, savory, but not satisfying.
[00:11:56] Or they may be comforting, but fail to provide true security.
[00:12:00] You know, it's a lie that goes all the way back to the garden, a lie that says that we can find ultimate love, hope, peace, pleasure in something else or someone else other than God Himself.
[00:12:12] All right, Our source of identity shapes everything that we do. The way, you know, that we spend our time, our money, our resources.
[00:12:20] It drives our thought life. It holds sway over our speech. It impacts the way that we react to the difficulties and inconveniences and uncertainties of life.
[00:12:30] It shapes how we view our work, even ministry work. And most pervasive maybe, being how a misplaced identity can even cause us as Christians to find our identity in what we do for Christ rather than who we are in Christ.
[00:12:46] But if we wish to see God's kingdom prosper, we as believers must remember who the Most High says that we are. And then he says that we are royalty.
[00:13:00] We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, holy nation, and a people for his own possession.
[00:13:10] As you may recognize, Peter's intentionally using all Old Testament language originally given to the nation of Israel and applying it to the New Testament Church. So if we zoom out for a moment and recall Israel's history, we'll see, for example, in Exodus 19, 5, 6, it says, now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my commandment, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
[00:13:41] Deuteronomy 7, 6. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasure possession. Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
[00:13:52] God spoke these words to Israel at Mount Sinai at their nation's founding. Okay, he just delivered them from slavery, out of Egypt. He parted the waves of the Red Sea. He'd fed them bread from heaven, issued water out of a rock in the middle of the barren wilderness. He. And in a sense, he was saying, I want to tell you now.
[00:14:11] So that whatever comes to pass in the future, however crazy, you know how crazy things get down the road. Which they would for Israel, God was willing to say, I love you.
[00:14:23] Don't forget who you are. You are chosen, you are treasured, and you've been set apart for a special purpose. And I'm going to use you to bless the nations of the world.
[00:14:35] And as history proved, Israel regrettably forgot who they were and they broke their marriage covenant with God. They began to adopt the egregious spiritual practices of the nations around them. And as they agreed to God, when they rejected God, he sent them into exile.
[00:14:55] And they watched as their homeland, their place of worship, go up in flames as they were carried off as slaves again to foreign nations.
[00:15:05] And as the years went by, they couldn't help but wonder, where is God?
[00:15:10] That's what half the prophets are about. Where are you, God?
[00:15:15] Has he abandoned us? What about the promises he made to us?
[00:15:19] And it was in this moment, in their lowest moment, when God graciously reminded them what he had spoken to them years and years before. In Isaiah 43, we read, but thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, and you are mine, because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you.
[00:15:45] Everyone who is called by my name, who I created for my glory, whom I formed and made, God was in essence saying, don't forget who you are.
[00:15:55] Though you have been unfaithful, I have been faithful.
[00:16:00] I will fulfill what I have promised. And that's exactly what God did, most immediately in bringing the Jews back from exile and restoring them to their land, as we read about in Ezra and Nehemiah, but most ultimately in God sending His Son into the world, the true Israel, who lived perfectly in all the ways Israel as a nation and humanity as a whole has failed.
[00:16:24] He was innocent in all the ways that we are guilty, honorable in all the ways that we are shameful, was strong in all the ways that we are weak.
[00:16:35] And now, because of his death on the cross in our place, and his victorious resurrection from the grave, his kingly ascension to the throne, and his ongoing reign in heaven, we, through faith in Christ alone, can receive this gift of royal identity entirely by grace, by no merit of our own, solely based on our connection to Jesus as believers in Christ and members of his church, we are a chosen race, Jesus being the new Adam. And because of our connection with him, we are now part of an entirely new human Race a of those who worship the living God in spirit and in truth.
[00:17:15] We are a royal priesthood. Jesus is our faithful high priest. And because of our connection with him, we are able to offer true sacrifices to God. And we are entrusted, some for some reason, with ministering his presence to the world through his spirit living inside of us.
[00:17:32] And we are a holy nation, a people for his own possession. Jesus being both our king and our Master.
[00:17:39] And unlike the rulers of this world who power use their power in order to domineer and oppress their subjects, Jesus is a good and gracious king who takes the form of a lowly servant, washes our filthy feet and invites us to share in his rule and his inheritance.
[00:18:00] Just as God formed man in the garden and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so God formed Israel has now formed the church. Jesus's body and us individually as members of it.
[00:18:12] So remember who you are.
[00:18:14] You've been given a royal identity in Christ.
[00:18:17] You are loved, you are known and called by name. You are adopted as a child of the king. You are a blood bought member of the royal family.
[00:18:29] So in the second half of verse nine, going into verse ten, we'll move on. Here we see Peter calling his audience not only to remember who they are, but to remember who they they once were. He goes on to say that the reason for God giving them this royal identity is that they may proclaim the excellencies of him who called them out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
[00:18:53] For once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
[00:19:04] So take a moment to think back.
[00:19:06] Before Jesus saved you, what were you like as a person?
[00:19:12] What sin struggles were you enslaved to?
[00:19:17] What false idols did you worship?
[00:19:20] What skeletons did you have in your closet that you would fight tooth and nail to keep from being exposed?
[00:19:28] What sins are you still experiencing the repercussions of even on this side of grace because of that past?
[00:19:36] Ephesians 2:1:9 says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind. And we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
[00:20:01] But God being rich in mercy because of the great love in which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ.
[00:20:13] By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show his immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
[00:20:27] For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
[00:20:38] So God calls humble royals to prosper his kingdom.
[00:20:44] Our royal identity should lead us to humble praise.
[00:20:48] However, as it was for the Jewish people, it's all too easy for us as Christians to allow our royal identity to produce an unhealthy sense of pride in us, where we begin to see ourselves as inherently better than those who are on the outside.
[00:21:05] And when this happens, we are revealing, at least for the moment, that we fundamentally don't understand the Gospel.
[00:21:12] We have forgotten that it is by grace alone, as Ephesians says, that we are saved.
[00:21:18] I want to read Luke chapter 18, a few verses here where Jesus tells this parable to some of those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
[00:21:29] He describes two men went up into the temple to pray, one being a Pharisee and other a tax collector. And the Pharisees standing by himself prayed thus. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulterers, even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.
[00:21:51] Thought really highly of himself.
[00:21:53] But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven.
[00:21:59] But he beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
[00:22:05] I tell you that this man went up to his house, justified rather than the other.
[00:22:10] For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
[00:22:18] Our privileged identity should not lead or sorry. It should lead us to humility, not boasting. It should lead us to praise and not pride, instead of becoming people who boast of our privileged status in God's family. The gospel is intended to form us into people of love and compassion for those who who could be seated next to us at his royal table, but as it stands, are still under the domain of darkness as we once were.
[00:22:47] Love for God without love for people is no love at all.
[00:22:52] To love is to be like our Trinitarian God and to share in the neighborly love that the Father, Son and Spirit have shared between each other for all of eternity.
[00:23:03] To Love, like God, is to lay aside our privileges instead of grasping onto them.
[00:23:09] It's to take the form of a lowly servant and lay our lives down for others, as our Savior did for us.
[00:23:17] We as Christians should be the most grateful people, most humble people on the planet, should we not? In light of what Christ has done for us, it should cause us, as Paul said to the Colossians, to give thanks to the Father who has qualified us.
[00:23:32] He has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
[00:23:47] When our Gospel proclamation comes from a place of pride instead of an overflowing fountain of praise, we shouldn't be surprised when our hearers don't want to listen to what we have to say.
[00:24:00] So the Gospel is already offensive in and of itself without us putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in front of unbelievers.
[00:24:08] And I'll confess for myself, this.
[00:24:11] This has been me for much of my Christian life. I've subtly allowed myself to view unbelievers as projects instead of people.
[00:24:21] I've sought to conform them to my image instead of Christ's, and see them flourish following him rather than myself.
[00:24:30] God uses humble royals to prosper his kingdom, people who remember who they are and who they once were.
[00:24:41] So it begs the question, is our royal identity leading us to humble praise?
[00:24:50] All right, I'm going to throw an outline up on the screen real quick. Just kind of remind us of where we've gone so far. So we've talked about humble royalty, our royal identity in Christ, Julius the humble praise, remembering who we are, who we once were. And this last section, we're going to be talking about that prosperity portion and how through our witness, God's kingdom will prosper for our soul's sake and for our witnesses sake.
[00:25:16] Reading on, in verses 11 and 12, Paul says or sorry, Paul, Peter, the Ps. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.
[00:25:31] Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
[00:25:42] First thing I'd like to note here is how Peter addresses these exiled Christians as beloved.
[00:25:49] It's a really subtle thing you probably just read over, but I personally love this and I think it reveals Peter's pastoral hearts and how really all pastors should view their flock, which you know, Peter would eventually expand upon in First Peter, chapter five.
[00:26:07] But pastors are Jesus's essentially his under shepherds. You know, they are called to protect the flock from impending danger, to reflect the character of the good shepherd being Jesus. And so when the Spirit of Christ, through the words of Peter, calls us beloved and then goes on to warn us about the trappings and compromising effects of sin, we can know that his motive is love and it's for our good.
[00:26:32] Peter's audience, as we had said like, had already been exiled into these surrounding nations and they were operating in total opposition to Christ's kingdom.
[00:26:42] So these believers would have been surrounded with idol worship and all sorts of activities and behaviors that would have undermined God's desire for human flourishing. As time continued to pass, this exposure would have undoubtedly had the same effect on them as it did for Case. Case in point, Abraham's nephew, Lot. If you recall, in Peter's second epistle, he writes this 2 Peter 1:7. He says, Lot was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them, day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over the lawless deeds that he saw and heard.
[00:27:23] And the truth is that, you know, the Christian life is one of sojourning and exile. And by and large, we live in a world that does not know Christ. And until he returns, we will continue to live amongst governments and cultures that do not reflect the values of, of his kingdom, nor acknowledge him as king and ruler over the heavens and the earth.
[00:27:43] And in this life we will face doubts and questions and unmet expectations, just as Israel and Peter's first century audience did. But by remembering who we are and by remembering whose we are, we can rest assured knowing that his promises are yes and amen.
[00:27:59] One of the themes in the book of Peter is, is of the suffering we're promised to experience in the Christian life.
[00:28:05] Unlike other places in the world, for us here in the west, you know, the idea of physical suffering for our faith is widely a foreign concept.
[00:28:13] However, spiritual suffering is something that we do face every day as we're confronted with worldly temptations that sit and crouch at our door, as Scripture says.
[00:28:25] And first Peter, later in the book, five, eight, he says, be sober minded, be watchful.
[00:28:32] Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
[00:28:39] Left unchecked, we will become wide open and vulnerable for the enemy's attacks.
[00:28:45] And so Pastor Peter urges them to abstain from the passions of the flesh, not because he just wants to be a killjoy and ruin our fun, but because he knows that our souls are at stake.
[00:28:57] And it's important for us to remember that our war against our flesh cannot be won by our own strength.
[00:29:04] It's a war that ultimately is won by us abiding in Christ.
[00:29:09] John says for. Or Jesus says in John, for part for me you can do nothing.
[00:29:14] And we have to anchor our efforts in his love for us displayed on Calvary, whereby which he pronounced his victory over death and sin once and for all.
[00:29:26] Galatians 2:20. It says, I have been crucified with Christ.
[00:29:30] It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, in the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
[00:29:42] Because the Christian life is an invitation to come and die.
[00:29:48] But more fully, it's an invitation to come and die that you may truly live.
[00:29:56] Matthew 16 Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
[00:30:11] For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? And what shall a man give in return for his soul?
[00:30:21] But it's not only our souls that are at stake, it's our witness that's at stake, which means that the souls of those who don't know Christ are at stake.
[00:30:30] So God calls us to be holy and set apart. Because when our holiness suffers, our witness suffers.
[00:30:36] And once again, if we have truly taken tasted the love of God, then we will desire for others to experience his love as well, that our God, who by definition is love, would receive the glory.
[00:30:50] And this is why Peter goes on in, in verse 12 to say, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
[00:31:08] There's always going to be opponents, haters and the like. And in a sense, no matter what we do as Christians, there's always going to be people that ironically judge us without taking the time to get to know us or understand what we truly believe.
[00:31:27] And then there's going to be people that are just simply indifferent and say, hey, teach his own.
[00:31:32] But however, in light of any antagonism we may face, this verse shows the power that our witness can have as we live holy lives marked by supernatural love, looking to a better king, a Better country and a better inheritance.
[00:31:49] And Peter expands on this sentiment beautifully in chapter three of First Peter, a passage many of you are probably familiar with says in verse 14, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness, do it with respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
[00:32:28] For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.
[00:32:35] But if we're familiar with the Gospels, you know that Peter's charge here isn't unique to him. It's one that he learned from the Lord Jesus himself as he followed day after day in the dust of his rabbi for three years.
[00:32:50] See, Jesus says in Matthew 5, he says, you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
[00:32:59] It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
[00:33:04] But you are the light of the world, and a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
[00:33:09] Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to the whole house. And in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
[00:33:24] And the beautiful thing about all this is that God has already revealed and promised what the outcome of history will be.
[00:33:31] That one day on his visitation, the kingdom of God is going to be established in its fullness. Sin and death will be abolished once and for all. And we will see John's vision and revelation take place before our eyes.
[00:33:45] The one that says. And they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals. For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed for God people from. For God from every tribe, language, people and nation.
[00:34:01] And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.
[00:34:09] So in conclusion, let's remember God, Jesus. What kind of royals?
[00:34:15] Humble royals, say humble royals.
[00:34:19] Humble royals to prosper. Whose kingdom?
[00:34:22] His kingdom.
[00:34:24] So our royal identity in Christ should lead us to humble praise that through our witness, God's kingdom would prosper.
[00:34:32] So as we close, I want to take just a few moments to allow the holy Spirit to examine our hearts by asking ourselves just a few questions here.
[00:34:41] Question number one. I don't have these on the screen. I should have. But question number one.
[00:34:46] Is my identity, my identity truly grounded in Christ and Him alone.
[00:34:53] And if it's not, confess to the Lord the false identities you've been seeking to define you. And ask him to sanctify you with the fullness of his love and who he is.
[00:35:05] Question number two.
[00:35:08] Is my royal identity leading me to praise or pride?
[00:35:13] If not praise, confess to him specific ways that you've been prideful.
[00:35:18] And ask him to remind you of the fact that it wasn't you who loved him first, it was him who loves you first.
[00:35:25] It was him who graciously called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
[00:35:31] Ask him to fill you with love and compassion for those who are still entrapped by darkness and in need of his transforming grace.
[00:35:40] And question number three.
[00:35:42] Is the witness of my life aiding or hindering the prosperity of God's kingdom?
[00:35:49] Ask the Lord to conform you further into his image, to give you power to stand against the schemes of the devil and to walk in wisdom towards outsiders so that his grace at work in you would cause a desire for others to follow him, so that all.
[00:36:05] So that he would receive all his rightful glory amongst the nations and the peoples of the earth.
[00:36:12] So let's take a few minutes, moments to mull over those questions and be honest before the Lord. And then I'll close us in in. In prayer.
