T37 - another adventure and a Bible Study

22/10/2009 by paul.

Well this morning I finished my preparations for the Bible study this evening. In the afternoon I went out for a bit of adventure. I needed some fresh air (hard to find a nice crisp English October morning in Taiwan…) so wandered down the Min-Sheng Road, hopped on a bus, got off at Xiang Road and walked North to the Breeze Centre. We have some magazines at the flat from the Breeze Centre, and I thought it was worth a look. Whilst it was not quite as high-class as the 101, this shopping centres discount store was the Louis Vuitton shop, with Jimmy Choo coming a close second. I was looking for two things, and I found them both without too much fuss - the bathroom and then Starbucks. The joy of an ice cold Mocha. After the wander back to the bustop and picking up some groceries and a set of computer speakers tonight, I headed back to the flat to go through my notes once more.

I thought the study went really well tonight. We were continuing to look at 1 Peter, this time chapter 1:13-25. We started by thinking about places we thought were holy, and why they were holy. We then thought about people we thought we were holy and why we thought they were holy. After the novelty of having a discussion wore off people were happy to contribute which made a pleasant change! 1 Peter 1:13-25 is all about being holy. I broke the passage into three section. Firstly we are to be holy by living sinless lives. In verse 14 it says that ‘as obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance’. In verse 13 Peter gives his directives for how to do this. I think v.13 is really interesting, because often, when we talk of sin, we are very quick to look to Jesus. Whilst not wanting to diminish the once-for-all action of Jesus on cross to save me from my sin, here Peter is giving practical life-changing tips on how to be less sinful. He says, prepare your minds for action. God has given you a brain to think about how we live. He says our mind is for action. We are to do something about it. So for example if we know when we may be tempted to sin, what time of day it is, what the circumstances are, who we miught be with - think about it and doing something different to stop yourself. So if you are likely to sin when you meet Mr.X take a friend with you, if you are likely to sin when you are in the house by yourself on a Thursday night at 7.45 - go out, arrange to meet a friend. Think and act. This is what it means to be self-controlled, as it goes on to say. Its funny when you have to think of trying to explain a word or phrase to people who don’t speak English as their first language. Self-controlled. We are not God-controlled, but we are asked to be self-controlled. We take responsibilities for our actions. Yes Jesus has done something which means we can be saved, but we must take control of our livesd ourselves. If we are to become more holy, less sinful in our lives, then we must control our own sinfulness. Then in verse 15 we see the enormity of what we are being asked to, quoting from Leviticus, “Be holy, because I am holy”. Holiness is a characteristic of God. In fact if you are trying to define holiness, you may struggle to do better than to say, ‘it is what God is’.

This lead into our section, be holy by living in reverent fear, faith and hope. In case you were wondering, God is the subject of each of those. Verse 17 says we are to be in reverent fear of God. What does this mean? Usually if we fear something we don’t like it. Jo fears spiders - she doesn’t like them. But this to me is not reverent fear, its just being over-sensitive to creepy crawlies. Reverent fear is like my experience down by the river the other day - seeing the pinnacle of man’s acheivements in flash buildings, seeing the wonderful creation of the hills around and still being able to see that God is much bigger than this - standing amazed, totally over-awed in the presence of the Holy One. If he is truly holy, sinless, pure, perfect, right, true then our attempts to come to him as the same must induce some fear. When I was growing up I was in fear of my parents telling me off - but they loved me and I loved them. Its the same with God just a million times more scary! Peter then goes onto say that we have been redeemed, you could say ransomed by the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish of defect. But what have we been redeemed or ransomed from - our evil desires - to make us holy. We talked about the lamb, and what the symbolism of the lamb is in Biblical history. Starting in Genesis we looked at how Abraham, after waiting so long for God to grant his son, took him, and on God’s command was about to kill him as a sacrifice. God stopped him, because God now knew that Abraham FEARed him. Instead of killing his son, he sacrificed a ram instead - so here we see how the animal was a replacement sacrifice. Then in Exodus we read that the last plague, the Angel of Death passing through Egypt was being sent by God. the Israelites were told to kill a male lamb, one year old, without defect. Eat it and coat their doorframes in blood, and then the angel would pass them by, they would avoid God’s judgement. In Leviticus, the Jewish law, we read how a lamb without defect was to be used as a burnt offering for God. Each time you sinned you would have to take a lamb to the priest, slaughter it in front of him, present it to him, and then the lamb would atone for your sin. Your sin would be written off by God because you had made a sacrifice to him. Then in Isaiah 53 we get the first sign of ONE lamb that would be sacrificed for the sins of MANY. Until now the Jewish people were going through lambs at a rate of knots, but Isaiah said that eventually God would send one lamb whose sacrifice would be sufficient for all our sin. This is then picked up in John’s gospel when John the Baptist sees Jesus walking towards him, right at the start of his ministry and he says, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’ By using the term lamb without defect, Peter is immediately drawing his listeners to contemplate the atonement of sin by the passing over of God’s judgement on us, onto a replacement who stepped in to take punishment we deserve for acting on our evil desires. Jesus on the cross made us holy. And so not only do we have fear of God, but we have faith and hope in God.

Finally we looked at the how we are to be holy by living transformed by the Word of God. In verses 23-25 we read that the Word of God is living, enduring, stands forever and is preached. There is something quite unique about the Bible, about God’s Word - it is enduring - it never changes, will never be silenced or destroyed, yet it is living and can speak to each one of us in a different way. When we say God’s Word is living we mean that if I read this passage, 1 Peter 13-25 tomorrow or the next day, or in a month I may well hear God say something different to me through it - it lives because I am living and the God who speaks through it is alive! It is through reading God’s Word that we learn. We learn of things he has done for us, we learn of Jesus on the cross, we learn what that means for us, we learn how to live holier lives. And as verse 22 says that leads us to love one abother deeply.

So be holy because I am holy, says the Lord - what an awesome command to us, made possible only through Jesus, but don’t think we haven’t got work to do - prepare you mind for action, be self-controlled, set you hope fully on the grace to be given you and engross yourself in God’s Word. That way we might get one step further along the line to being holy. We finished the study by watching this video clip which put in perspective for us the awesomeness and wonder of the task before us…

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