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Jul 19, 2020

Living Honor (Click here for Resources)

Passage: 1 Peter 2:13-25

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: 1 Peter

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: holiness, service, submission, sacrifice, humility, leadership, obedience, respect, reverence

As we can see from the beginning of time people are prone to rebel against authority, self-assured that our own way is better and that we ourselves ought to be the rulers of all things, from nation to work to relationships...to all creation. In these next two weeks we will uncover our calling and struggle to be in a humble relationship within the authority structures God has created for us in our country, workplace and relationships. Our calling to “submit” is not because those to whom we submit “deserve” it in themselves but because we trust Him that has created the structure, and because He himself voluntarily submitted himself (Philippians 2) to evil men, to the point of death, so that, in his resurrection, would conquer all things and put all things in subjection to Himself.

7/19/20 GBV Live Service from Grace Brevard on Vimeo.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Philippians 2:5-11

MUSIC: 

  • This Is My Father’s World
  • All the Poor & Powerless
  • Praise to the Lord Almighty
  • Doxology
  • Band: Matthew, Annette, Clara, Matthew James

PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer 

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, 

and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

For Thine is the Kingdom

and the power and the glory

forever and ever Amen.

CENTRAL TEXT:  1 Peter 2:13-25

MESSAGE: Living Honor 

BENEDICTION: Romans 15:5-6 ESV

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Romans 13:1
  • Philippians 2:3-11
  • 1 Corinthians 15:27
  • 2 Corinthians 4:5
  • Hebrews 2:6-9
  • Matthew 6:8-10
  • Mark 10:35-45
  • Acts 16:19-35
  • 1 Corinthians 7:17-24
  • Philemon (in total)

ILLUSTRATIONS:

7.19.20 Album

QUOTES:

  • The liberal idea that if people are free, they’ll be kind seemed to me ridiculously wrong. Tom Holland, author of Dominion
  • A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one. Martin Luther
  • One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • . . .if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate, I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap... by meeting hate with love. Martin Luther King, Jr
  • Evil will become powerless when it finds no opposing object, no resistance, but instead, is willingly borne and suffered. Evil meets an opponent for which it is not a match.  Dietrich Bønhoëffer
  • Whosoever debases others debases himself. James Baldwin
  • At the heart of the cross is Christ’s stance of not letting the other remain an enemy and of creating space in himself for the offender to come in. Miroslav Volf
  • “I got me slaves and slave-girls.” What do you mean? You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on the specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth, and appointed to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes
  • “I got me slaves and slave-girls.” For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes
  • Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! Frederick Douglass
  • Deeply rooted in our religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Our Judeo-Christian tradition refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term “the image of God.” Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. The demon called “Wormwood” in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters
  • The worldwide Anglican Communion was the religious by-product of British imperial expansion. The church may like to tell the story of William Wilberforce and its part in the struggle against slavery. But many of its clergy owned slaves, and one of its largest mission agencies was funded for over a century by a slave plantation in Barbados …So why do I say that this shameful past is something that I have “appreciated” about being a priest in the Church of England? It was a hard word to pick. But Christianity is fundamentally the story of redemption. That is what is so appealing about it to a sinner like me. And redemption doesn’t work by pretending we have a beautiful past. Giles Fraser
  • Why become virtuous? So that you can bear the suffering of life without becoming corrupt. Jordan Peterson
  • Now it is not sufficient for anyone, and does him no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the shame and humility of the cross. In other words, it’s dangerous to try and relate to God as beautiful, majestic, and glorious before you relate to him as crucified. It’s dangerous because there is no reason to suppose that a majestic God would be a friend to sinners such as us. The ancients (quite reasonably) imagined that their gods loved only the noble, well-born, and pious; this is the exact opposite of good news for those of us who don’t measure up. Martin Luther
  • . . .Christians in the latter decades of the twentieth century focused on politics as the best way to enact cultural change, dedicating much time, energy, and money toward that end. It’s not clear, however, that cultural change works the way those Christians assumed it did. Too often, they prioritized politics to the neglect of other formative cultural institutions and the callings of everyday Christians to engage in those institutions. Kristen Deede Johnson, Uncommon Ground

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