Christian friends, listen to these words from our Epistle reading this morning:
“Pastor,” you ask, “does that mean I have to go out and preach?” Notice the passage doesn’t say “go out and preach”, it says “declare the praises of Him Who called you out of the darkness into His wonderful light.”
There are many ways to “declare” praises to Jesus Christ and, yes, some of those ways involve using words. Just telling people about how Jesus has changed your life is one way to “declare” praises to Him. But the most effective way to “declare” praises to the Lord is to live as a person who has been chosen by God to be His child!
“Okay,” you say, “how do we do that?” Peter gives us the answer to that question in our passages from this morning. The very first thing we must do in order to live a life that demonstrates that we have indeed been chosen by God to be His child, His priest, is that we must grow up! After accepting Jesus Christ as our very own Savior and Lord, after being born again, we must grow and learn our Christian walk, just as we had to learn how to walk when we were born into this human existence.
We have to learn what it means to say, “I am a Christian.” We have to learn what is commanded us by God when we become His child. We must come to understand that by His grace, and His grace alone, we are able to do what He commands. According to Jesus Himself, the greatest command is to, “Love the Lord God with all of your heart, mind, body and soul”, and to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That means we are to love sacrificially. That means without crying, moaning, complaining, murmuring, gossiping, threatening, or any of the other negative, tearing-down, self-centered ways we use to manipulate others.
Peter says we Christians need to be strong enough, and mature enough, to withstand the fiery trials and tribulations that the secular world can bring against us. We Christians must cease all of the bickering, infighting and division that is apparent within the Church, all of which is brought on by Satan himself, OR we are doomed to failure in our task of glorifying God.
Peter says, “Grow up!” He doesn’t just leave us to our own devices in order to accomplish that growth however. He gives us some great instructions on how to aid this necessary growth.
First, Peter says we must rid ourselves of, “all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” Understand this; no one is going to grow in their relationship with God unless he or she takes this first step of putting off all of the destructive, negative feelings, emotions and actions in their life.
Just as we remove our dirty clothes in order to put on new, clean clothes, so we must take off old habits and old ways of life and put them away in order to put on the new ways and lifestyle congruent with being a child of God.
Isn’t it awesome that Christ has given us the ability to do just that? That alone should cause Christians to be such joyful people that an unbeliever couldn’t help but notice and want to be like that also. Yet everywhere I go, I see people who profess to be Christians, but have not an ounce of joy emanating from them.
Friends, we Christians do not have to be angry, frustrated, wretched, miserable, complaining, grouchy or joyless people. If we are, it is because we choose to be so. Christ has defeated all of those negatives for us, and He gives us freedom from them if we choose to accept it.
If you, a Christian, are stuck in any of those situations and say that you cannot change, then you do not understand the power of Jesus Christ. For you see, He gives each of us the power to change our ways. If He does not, then this scripture passage makes no sense. Peter reassures that Jesus does indeed give us the ability and power to change. Not only that, Peter then goes on to give us a list of some of the old ways and habits that are part of a pagan lifestyle, which, if left unchanged, will stunt our spiritual growth or cause growth to cease altogether.
We must put them away. “Rid yourself of all malice”. Notice Peter says “all malice”. We must get rid of not some of it, not most of it, but all of it. What is “malice”? It is ill will toward others, a desire to hurt others, a desire to damage others, a desire to bring others down. It has no place in a Christian’s character and Peter says if we want to grow up, we must get rid of all of it.
Peter also says we must get rid of all guile. Guile is a desire to hurt others through trickery or deceit. Guile is detestable in God’s sight. But lack of guile brings praise from God. Remember when Nathanael came to Jesus? Jesus praised him and said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.”
Next, Peter says to rid ourselves of all hypocrisy. The idea is to damage and/or destroy someone by covering up an evil intent with a fake show of righteousness. I have seen people who profess to be followers of Christ hold clandestine meetings in libraries, withhold money from the church offering plate (to quote scripture, “robbing God of their tithes and offerings”) and do all sorts of very un-Christian-like things, all in the name of “righteousness”. Oh, it was “righteousness” all right – self-righteousness. God wants us to rid ourselves of all hypocrisy and all self-righteousness. We can do that by living in the power of His Word.
Another old habit and way of life we must rid ourselves of is that green-eyed monster, envy. An envious person is one who is unhappy at someone else’s good fortune. Envy can creep into every one of our lives if we do not guard against it. We can be envious of just about anything.
The question: When someone gives a testimony about a good experience, do you rejoice with that person, OR do you start complaining? “Why did he get that job and not me? How come they can afford that big house and not me? How come she gets all the breaks and I don’t get any?” If it is difficult for you to rejoice with others about their good fortune, then you are experiencing envy. Peter says, “Get rid of it.”
Finally, Peter says to get rid of all slander. Slander is speech intended to ruin and destroy another’s reputation. Slanderous speech is most often comprised of untruths and half-truths designed to hurt and bring down another person. We Christians are not to engage in such speech. We are to put it off. Scripture tells us that we are to use speech that “builds one another up” and avoid speech that “tears one another down”.
There you have it. Those are some of the major indicators of whether a person is living a life that indicates to the world that that person is indeed a child of God. Are we Christians in the body of the Church, are we Christians right here at Salem UMC, living as the chosen people of God today? Are you living your life as a personally chosen son/daughter and priest/priestess of the Living God?
If you are engaging in those sinful behaviors we have looked at this morning, you must understand that those behaviors not only destroy others, they destroy the one who practices them. If a person grinds his/her teeth in anger at another, it is his/her own teeth being destroyed. If you can’t eat properly, or you lie awake at night thinking about how angry you are at, or how envious you are of, this person or that person, it is your sleep that you are losing; it is your health that you are compromising. If that is the case, you must cleanse your system of these poisons. Praise the Lord, for He has given you the power to do just that, because you have been born again. You have been given new life. You have been given freedom from sin.
If you are not excited about ridding yourself of all of the sinful feelings, emotions and feelings we have talked about today; if you are not excited about the power you have been given to be set free from all of that negative, destructive “stuff”, then it is entirely possible that you have not in fact been truly “born again” of the Spirit. If that is the case, you may need to cry out to God, repent of your sin, and ask Him to forgive and to save you. Jesus told Nicodemus that, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God who has not been born again!” If you have never done so, repent and ask God for salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ, and He will answer your prayer. He will save you. AMEN!