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Jun 07, 2020

Strange Beginnings

Strange Beginnings

Passage: 1 Peter 1:1-2

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Strange Faith

Keywords: hope, obedience, born again, inheritance, exiles, sojourners, aliens and strangers

“Alienation—that feeling of not quite belonging—is integral to Christian identity,” says Tara Isabella Burton. Peter’s letter to the churches in Asia Minor begins with the theme of how one is essentially an “exile”--an outsider, an alien, one seen as strange to their surroundings--simply by virtue of believing in Jesus. Anyway you slice it, Christianity is strange. Even where it is the foundation upon which western (and American) culture grew, that strangeness is now increasingly felt. What of that feeling of strangeness? Though we might prefer to minimize it, or otherwise to merely live strangely for the sake of being strange, Peter will show us that ours is to offer that strangeness to the world.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Ephesians 2:4-5,19-20,22
A SMALL LITURGY OF LAMENT AND RESOLVE: Micah 6:3-4, 6-8
PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer
OT READING: Jeremiah 29:4-7
CENTRAL TEXT: 1 Peter 1:1-2
MESSAGE: Strange Beginnings
BENEDICTION: Philippians 1:6,11

Children's Lesson

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: Ephesians 2:4-5,19-20,22
LEADER: 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

ALL: 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

A SMALL LITURGY OF LAMENT AND RESOLVE
Micah 6:3-4, 6-8
O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.

Mic. 6:6 “With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

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.

OT READING: Jeremiah 29:4-7
LEADER: The bible is one complete story; all pointing to the finished work of Christ. As we work through a series each week, we typically offer additional readings throughout the service from the old and new testaments; connecting to the central text for the day and showing the hope and beauty of God’s one continuous Word to us. Our Old Testament reading for today is found in Jeremiah 29 and Micah 6

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
God’s word to us.

CENTRAL TEXT: 1 Peter 1:1-2 ESV
LEADER:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

BENEDICTION: Philippians 1:6,11
LEADER: 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

ALL: 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Leviticus 18:2-4
  • Psalm 137: 1-5
  • Jeremiah 29:4-7
  • Matthew 10:8-10, 16
  • John 1:11-13
  • Philippians 2:12-14; 3:20-21
  • Hebrews 11:13

ILLUSTRATIONS:

InView Media - 6.7.20 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Who were the oddballs in your world when you were younger? (Were you one?) What made them strange to the majority? What might’ve felt like to be thought strange?
  2. What might people who know you but who don’t believe as you do might think you strange (even if they never say so)? How does being known as strange, in whatever sense, affect you (if at all)? Why?
  3. Some might accuse you of arrogance if you believe and live as one who is, according to Scripture, “chosen.” Why might that designation be a cause instead for the most supreme humility? In what ways might that humility express itself?
  4. To be an exile is to reside in a place in which you don’t enjoy full citizenship. In Peter’s meaning here, Christians are by definition, and thus by experience, those who are foreign to wherever they live. How are you to think of your home when it is not your truest home? Your citizenship when it is not your truest citizenship (cf. Philippians 3:20)
  5. The Jews had been dispersed into foreign lands--had experienced their “Diaspora”--on account of the nation’s collective and intractable sin. If these Christians hadn’t been scattered into unfamiliar places for their sin, then why might have Peter used that Jewish word (and experience) to explain their identity?
  6. How is any believer in Christ uniquely commissioned to seek justice and uphold the dignity of every human? How is anyone who believes in Christ uniquely compelled--furnished and empowered--to live into that calling?

QUOTES:

  • Alienation—that feeling of not quite belonging—is integral to Christian identity. Tara Isabella Burton
  • . . .To be exiled is to be vulnerable with the vulnerability of Christ, to live “out of control,” to suffer under a foreign power, to long for the homeland. . . . Douglas Harink
  • I don’t know why it is, how it is, but it’s the authentic, the unique, the different that makes us feel enriched when we encounter it. And it’s this bland, plastic, synthetic, universal can’t-tell-one-brand-of-coffee-from-another-brand-of-coffee that makes life flat, uninteresting, and essentially uncreative. - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
  • To them, a homeland is a foreign country, and a foreign country is a homeland. . . . Never before had there been anything quite like it: a citizenship that was owed not to birth, nor to descent, nor to legal prescriptions, but to belief alone. Tom Holland
  • But now a great thing in the street/seems any human nod / Where shift in strange democracy / The million masks of God. - G.K Chesterton
  • Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victim of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds
  • We live in this world where everyone is at risk… of having to spend the rest of their lives living with our worst joke. . . . . A world in which one of the greatest exertions of ‘power’ is constantly exerted – the power to stand in judgement over, and potentially ruin, the life of another human being for reasons which may or may not be sincere. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds
  • We live in a world where actions can have consequences we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption. We do not know who could offer it, who could accept it, and whether it is a desirable quality compared to an endless cycle of fiery certainty and denunciation.-  Douglas Murray: The Madness of Crowds

BOOKS / DOCS:

“A Citizenship of Nothing but Belief,” including an excerpt from Tom Holland’s Dominion