EverGrace Church

Dennis White: Today we will have softball after church from 6:00 to 8:00-ish. We'll see how that goes. The weather is better. We're doing it again. We have to get a home run today. We've got gloves, bats, and water. We're all set, so we're going to have fun.

Listen carefully, we're just going to repeat these over and over again, but Backpack Sunday is coming soon. I see people starting to bring some backpack goods in, so keep bringing those in. August 2nd is the deadline because we need to fill the bags. Seventy-two bags are getting filled, so let's fill those bags so we can reach our community. That's why we are here, not to have a cool little powwow here in the morning and talk about the Bible. We're here to reach our community.

Faith Night at the Frederick Keys Stadium is August 15th. I will be texting you a link for you to sign up and get tickets. It will be a great time. The Silver Spring church will be there, so we'll do it again like we did last year. Also, August 16th is our last service here where we will be having Backpack Sunday outside in front of the church. We'll also be having pizza for that service. A lot is going on, and we're really excited.

Yesterday, we were at Asbury United Methodist Church block party on All Saints Street. They cut off the entire 100 block of the street, and there were probably 100 vendors out there. They had gospel music playing, and they were handing out free food and free groceries. We had the opportunity to have a booth and were sharing the Gospel. I would say we handed out probably 100 bracelets and told about 100 kids about the Gospel. It was a sweet time. We're excited to do it again, but bigger, on Frederick in the Streets, which is September 12th. We're staying busy, but this is why we're here.

Let's open our Bibles to 1 Peter 2. We're reading a big chunk of verses today, and we're going to see what God has to say to us. Let's bow our heads before we start. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this day. We thank You for the Word of God. We ask that Your Word will ring true in our hearts. We thank You and we praise You in Jesus' name. Amen.

1 Peter 2, starting in verse 13, and we're going to read basically the rest of the chapter, all the way to 25. I want to keep reminding us that Peter here is starting to talk about some things that are a little bit hard for us to hear. He's beginning to talk about how we function as followers of Christ, how we treat others, and how we treat ourselves. Chapter 3 is going to be a hard sermon because it talks about how husbands treat their wives and how wives treat their husbands. We're getting into some hard things.

This passage here is really interesting, but it speaks to some things that are very culturally relevant to us today. Verse 13 says, "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a veil to do evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust."

"For this is a gracious thing, when mindful of God, one endures sorrow while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued to entrust himself to him who judges justly."

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but now have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls." It's an interesting passage. Again, we see how very cultural this is and how important it is for us to hear this because there are two major things that Peter is dealing with. The first thing is obeying governments. What is our relationship as a church with the government? The second one is less as the church but more about what is my relationship as a human being to my employer.

These two things are huge because we spend many hours with our employers, usually more than with our families. If you take away sleeping hours and work hours, how many hours are left for you and your family? Not so many, meaning that it is very important how we relate to our employer. It is also very important for us how we relate to our governments. When we think of something that is evil, we often think of something that is dark, recognizable, and universally wrong. When we think of evil, we can say that murder is evil. That's not a hard thing for us to say. Or we would say that burning down someone's house is evil. We hear stories and look at people's lives, and our hearts are often broken because their lives are broken and also because they have suffered some great evil.

It's easy for us to say, "Look at that, that thing there is evil." But oftentimes, what happens is that evil is not so obvious, but evil is veiled in light. We see that here in verse 16, where Peter tells the church, "Do not use your freedom as a veil to do evil." Isn't it true that oftentimes things that are done that are evil are often done in the name of freedom? This is very interesting. I want to read this story for you.

At the height of the Atlantic slave trade, which was from 1526 to 1866, there were about 12.5 million slaves that were taken from Africa. This is about the same time that John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace," was a slave trader. He was busy doing this kind of thing for the Atlantic slave trade. 12.5 million people were taken out of Africa and put into slavery. At the height of this, the pro-slavery advocates stood up to defend the horrific torture and buying of human beings. They did not call it evil, but they actually called it liberty. They said, "It is our right to do this because they are our property." They argued with the government saying, "You are interfering with my property. You are infringing on my personal rights. I can do what I want to do with what is rightfully mine."

Doesn't that sound very similar today in a different context? Maybe not buying a slave or beating a slave, but those words have even come out of our own mouths. They used the sacred, God-given concept of human liberty as a legal and moral shield to protect the industry of human suffering and human slavery. In short, these men and these countries used freedom as a veil for evil. It's an interesting story. Here we are 2,000 years later. Is this topic relevant to us today? I would say yes. We see these questions being answered. How do I relate to the government that I live in? How do I, as a Christian, relate to my employer? And actually, it goes even further down into the next section. Three major sections of our everyday life: how do I, as a Christian, relate to my husband or my wife?

Peter talks specifically about each one, and you can read those passages and understand what Peter is saying. Usually, what will happen in our lives is we'll try to explain some things away and try to raise up new questions. But very simply, Peter answers all these questions in verses 15 through 17. The first thing that Peter says, very simple, he says, "Do good." This idea of good is interesting. I remember doing a word study a long time ago about the English word "good," and the word "good" actually comes from this idea of being like God. Obviously, the context means we can't always use that because I will say the pizza was good or the movie was good. We're not saying it is like God, but in the aspect of our actions, speech, and face, when you say they did a good thing, does that not also represent the heart of God?

When we say they said something to me very encouraging and it was good, are we not saying the thing that they said we could imagine coming from the mouth of God? As Christians, that's how we could think of it. Often, it is the case that we cannot apply the word "good" to be like God in every single thing in our life, but when it comes to morality, when it comes to spirituality, when it comes to our actions, we can actually say that 100% is true. When the line becomes grey in our life between what is good and evil, we don't usually call it evil, and we also do not call it good. What do we say? We say it is our right.

Several years ago, when smoking marijuana and dispensaries were becoming more popular, everyone was arguing, and at the point it wasn't legal yet, so you could argue from one end and the other end, and you're both making your arguments. A Christian could say because of certain things, this is not good. This is not the heart of God. This is not God-like. On the other side, "Well, there are some good things about it." We're not here to argue that specifically, but what happened is now people don't argue if it's good or not good. They say it's legal and it's my right.

This is the thing that Peter is dealing with. He's not dealing specifically with "is everything in your life good?" He's asking, "is everything in your life God-like?" That's very different. When we start asking that question, that grey line all of a sudden disappears. There have been some things in my life recently where there is an extreme tendency for me to look at that line and have it be fuzzy, to have it be grey. Not any specific sin, but just in general. I can look at it and say it could be this or it could be that, it depends on the argument. But we boil it down to one simple thing, and I ask the question, "Is this like God?" With an astounding answer, I can say either yes or no. In my case, I was like, "No, that is not God. That is not God."

Those are the kind of questions that we need to ask in our life. The deeper question here that we need to ask, actually, is if it is like God, where does God-likeness come from? If I look at someone's life and I say they are doing something good, and I mean that in the way that they have done something that is God-like, like worship today—that was good, wasn't it? We don't mean that in a small way, but we mean it in a big way because that worship today was God's likeness. It's like that every week, but it was God's likeness. Where does God's likeness come from?

In my life, what Peter is telling me is how I relate to my government, how I relate in my relationships, and how I relate to my employer. You should be relating to them in such a way where we can say that it is God-like. So therefore, in my life, how do I make these relationships like God? How is that possible? Yesterday, as we're doing the beads and we're asking people what keeps you out of heaven and they say sin, then I ask the question, "What saves us from our sin, or what can we do about our sin?" More often than not, the kids and the parents would say, "Well, we've got to do good. We've got to do good." Okay, well, how much good can I do to wipe out all of my sin? How much good can I do to relate to my government the correct way? Is that good enough to represent the character of God? That's a good question. Is my good good enough to represent the character of God?

The answer, again, is an astounding, loud, "Absolutely not!" Because I have seen this many times. I have seen people do good, and that goodness was a veil over their evil hearts. I'm sure you guys could remember someone or a story about someone who has done good with the intention of counterbalancing their evil heart. You can see right through it. You can see that their heart was wicked, and they tried to atone for their wickedness by doing something good in the church. It doesn't work that way. There's only one thing that atones, and that is the blood of Jesus. That is why the end of chapter 2 is all about Jesus on the cross. It is all about Him sacrificing Himself for you because that is the answer.

But what makes something God-like? What makes us God-like? I was thinking of three different things, and these are in order intentionally, and they are very important for us to remember. If we're being asked to produce the action of doing something good for our government, for our employer, for our marriage or our family, how in God's name can I do that? Because it says there that my employer is unjust. It says in chapter 3, actually, that husbands are unjust. How do I do that? That is the great secret. Here is the secret.

Genesis 1:27, very simple words, but it comes out of the mouth of God, and He says that man was created in the image of God. God-likeness starts with us being created in God's image. Isn't that amazing? Somewhere inside of us, despite all of our sin, despite our life, despite our ignoring God, there resides this little seed that Peter mentioned earlier that is eternal, that is incorruptible. As soon as we receive Christ, that seed comes alive, and we find ourselves once again living in Christ-likeness.

What's amazing is I was flipping through the Bible and trying to figure out—because we all know Genesis 1 says that we were created in the image of God. It says it again in chapter 2. But it says it elsewhere in the Bible, too. My favorite one was James 3:9. It says the same thing, that you are the image of God. I just want to look at each one of you right now and say that you are in the image of God. You are God-likeness. Isn't that amazing? I don't believe it. I look in the mirror this morning and say there's no way, there is no way. And then driving down the road and getting a little angry and guess what? There is no way I'm in the image of God.

We are in God's goodness, not in intentions, but in commitment, meaning this: that we can't do good, but because of our position in God, we are. The second thing that is really important for us to know is that first, we were created in the image of God, and the second thing that is important is that we are sealed with His person. We know these verses, but Ephesians 1:13 tells us that we have the goodness of God sealed inside of us. This is the launching pad from which we start our Christian walk. We start from the place that we are created in His image and we are actually sealed with the Holy Spirit, with His person.

That is amazing because the next thing is in Matthew 7:17, it says, "A good tree bears good fruit and an evil tree bears evil fruit." What does that mean for my life? We often go to Matthew 7:17 and say, "I have to be good. I have to be good. If I'm good, that is evidence that I am a good tree." But actually, if we follow this list the whole way, if I am a human being, there is a measure of God's goodness in my life. If I am saved, I am sealed with God's goodness in my heart. Therefore, I am standing in the position where I am being satisfied by the goodness of God, so therefore, because I'm standing there, I will produce good fruits.

Good fruits come from good roots. Where are your roots? Are you rooted in your relationship with God? Because if you're not, your relationship with the government is going to be so obscure. Your relationship with your employer is going to be obscure. Your relationship with your wife or your husband or your kids is going to be obscure because you're not rooted in your relationship with God. Therefore, you cannot bear good fruits. You can only bear what is natural. Oftentimes, that is the constant circle that we continue to live in, trying to do good, but we do it out of our own abilities.

When we're unable and we're frustrated with people and with life, we say it is them, they are wrong, and this is a right thing to do. I will be very careful to say this, but sometimes it is the right thing, right? Sometimes justice needs to be served. I understand that. Sometimes there are rights that are horrific, and we wish that they were never there. Those are true facts, I understand that. But today, Peter is not talking about that. He's not talking about you being justified here on earth, you being right, you doing what you think is best. Where does that thought come from?

Judges 17:6 is that famous passage that says everyone did what was right in their own eyes. You could change that word "right" and could say that everyone did what was good in their own eyes. When the Bible says to do good, it is not for us to decide what is good. It is for God to decide what is good. I will never do what is good if I am rooted in my old sin nature, if I am rooted in ambitions, if I am rooted in self-justification, if I am rooted in envy or lust. These kind of things will never produce the goodness of God. That's exactly where I am if I am not rooted in one place, and that is Christ. Amen.

The next thing is in verse 16. First thing is that we do good. The second thing we want to talk about is that we are to live as free but live as servants. The idea of freedom and servanthood often in our lives seems contradictory, doesn't it? I think it's because as Americans, we have taken the idea of freedom and we have taken it to one extreme where it is, as we have already defined it, "I have rights, and you cannot infringe on my rights." These were the same kind of phrases that in the 1800s, these slave traders were saying to the government, "I have rights to have property, and you have no right to infringe on my property."

This is our idea of freedom. No one can tell me what to do. No one can infringe on my rights. But when we open the Bible, we see something very different when the Bible describes freedom. He says it's not freedom to live as you want, but it's freedom actually to be out of sin and to be a servant of God. That's what it says in verse 16, that you have the freedom to not live in your old sin nature anymore. You have the freedom to live in Christ. That is the freedom that you have. How do you exercise that freedom? You don't exercise it as a way to do evil things and cover up the evilness, but you have that freedom and you have that right now to do what is good to those who are evil.

Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us to defend ourselves. If I'm wrong, you can correct me. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us to justify ourselves. The only thing that we're ever told to defend, actually, is the Gospel. What is the Gospel? That a good God died for evil people. That is the only thing we're told to defend, and now we're being told to exemplify it. But I see we've read it already, Judges 17:6, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Proverbs 21:2 says every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart, meaning that we often don't live as servants, but we live and we use our Christian freedom in such a way that we do what we feel is right.

Brothers and sisters, we need to look to Jesus. We can't do that anymore. The word "cover up" here in the ESV means to veil. We veil ourselves. One writer describes it this way: he calls it a false self or your persona. You ever do this? You're in a bad mood, but you have to go to a party. Those are the worst days ever. You're sitting there, you're in the car yelling, grumpy, don't want to go. You pull up to the spot, take a big breath, you let it out, and you put on a fake smile and you go into the party. What are you doing? You're putting on a veil, a fake self, a persona. You're putting on a different kind of version of who you are, and you're hiding what is inside of your heart.

Sometimes psychologists say that this is healthy because it is a way for us to deal with extreme problems in our life. But biblically speaking, Peter is saying that this is not healthy. You're not being your true self. You're not being who God has created you to be, but you're concealing your heart and veiling it with something that you think is good. See, there's two things that we can do with our freedom. We can use it as a license to sin. "I can do this, God's going to forgive me, right?" What does Peter say about that? God forbid! Paul says, "God forbid!" But the other thing that we can do is use our freedom to do good to hide the brokenness that is inside, the idea of doing penance, maybe. "I have to do something to make up for that evil that I have done, and it'll be okay." But it doesn't work like that, does it? Amazing, isn't it?

So very quickly, what do I want you to take home today? I have three things that I want you to take home. Number one: look to Jesus. Chapter 2, verse 21, says that we have been left with the example of Jesus. This word "example" means a series of lines that are designed to teach children how to write. I don't know if you remember when you were a child or your children that you have now and they had these special pieces of paper and you're teaching them to write their name and it has these lines and these dotted lines. This is what the word "example" means. Jesus is like a series of lines, and it is designed in this story here to teach us where the boundaries of our life should be. There is a right and a wrong way, and Jesus lived a life to show us, not only to save us but also to exemplify the way we are to live.

Number two: we are to follow Jesus. Deuteronomy 4:3 says that you should have no other gods before you. Why? Because if you have something before you, the idea is that you're going to follow it. That word "follow" means that we take the same road. We are taking the same road, meaning that if I want to be like God, what do I have to do? I have to be on the path that He has taken. To be like God inside of those lines, it means that also I am following Him, I am doing what He is doing. When it says that you should have no other gods before you, it's because you might follow them and then you'll be, instead of Christ-like, you could be Baal-like.

But God says, "No, you should have only one God before you." Why? "Because I want you to be like me. I want you to take the path that I have taken." That means in verses 22 through 23 that our actions change, our speech changes, and our judgment changes. Why? Because this is what changed in Jesus. He didn't change, but when it came to His humanity, what did we do? We killed each other, we hated each other, we spoke against each other, and we gave false judgments. When Jesus came, what did He do? It says it right there. He acted differently, that when someone spoke against Him, He didn't return the evil for the evil, and He didn't judge and give evil for evil. He did the exact opposite, didn't He? Story after story, we see a broken human being, and aren't we all broken? Not only because of what's being done to us but because of our own nature sometimes, and Jesus over and over again would look and heal and then would say, "Go and sin no more." We could say that He healed them and said, "Now go and be Christ-like. Walk with Me, follow Me."

Last one, number three: we have to trust Jesus. It says Jesus Himself entrusted Himself to someone who is just. Here's Jesus, He's God, and He's sitting on a cross being mocked and being told to do something that He could have done. "If you were the Son of God, why don't you call down some angels to take you off that cross? You saved others, but you cannot save yourself." He could have, but He did not put Himself into His own hands. He did not put Himself into the hands of men, but He put Himself into the hands of a good God.

That's the same thing with us, that in our life, we need to take our hands off the wheel. Give our lives and surrender our life once and wholly and completely to God. Why? Because He is the one that can be entrusted. He is the good God. He is the one who will never let us down. Humanity will let us down over and over again, so if we commit ourselves to them, we will be hurt, and then we'll be forced to say and to act as the world acts. But when we're in the hands of God, He will take care of us. That word "to entrust," paradidomi, actually means to give a good gift. When we lived in China, when you go to someone's house, you always come with a gift. You never show up empty-handed. Usually, it's a bag of fruit. It's the same thing with God. When we come to God, we give Him a good gift. What is a good gift? Your good works? Is a good gift your commitment to Jesus? Nope. Is a good gift you saying, "I'm going to come to church in 2026 every Sunday, I'm never going to miss one"? Nope. Is your good gift to go on evangelism? Nope. Your good gift, listen to this, is your broken soul. It's not actually the goodness that you have that you give God; it's your brokenness that you give to God. That's a good gift. Isn't that amazing?

So we'll end today with one question: will you hand over your life to Christ? We're all saved here, believers in God, yet still there are areas in our life that we are holding onto where we have decided that "I am not going to look at Jesus in this. I am not going to follow Jesus in this. I'm not going to trust Jesus in this. I'm going to hold onto it, and I'm going to entrust myself." But that last question is, will you not hand over your entire life to Christ? Listen to verses 24 through 25 again. He says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep." I think that right there alone is a good enough reason to entrust Jesus today, isn't it? If we can entrust Him with our soul for eternity, I think I can entrust Him for today's problems, this past week's problems, and the troubles that are coming next week. Nothing here is saying it's going to be good, but it's saying that God is. Amen.

Let's close with a prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You so much for today, and we ask that You'll teach us as followers of Christ. This is a hard passage to listen to because it tells us to do things that we don't want to do. We don't want to pay our taxes correctly. Every time the vote goes the way we don't think it should go, we say there was highway robbery, it was planned. Every time our employer docs our check for something that we feel that we didn't do wrong, we want to fight and argue with our employer. When our wife or our husband speaks something evil, we get angry. Lord, there's so many things that are wrong in our life, but today, we don't want to look at all those wrong things. We want to look at the simplicity of what we're being asked to do today. It's not to be a better employee, it's not to be a better husband or wife, it's not to be a better American, but it's very simply those last three things: that we look to Jesus often, we follow Jesus completely, and we trust Jesus wholeheartedly. If we do those three things today, we will find that our life has much joy, even though there can be many injustices. Lord, we thank You for today. We thank You and we praise You in Jesus' name. Amen.