1.
Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our
Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 3rd
Sunday of Easter is taken from 1 Peter 1:17-21.
It’s entitled, “A Reverent Fear,” dear brothers and sisters in
Christ.
2.
St. Peter writes in our Epistle
today that “silver or gold” can’t buy the most important commodity in
life and that the price is more than we can pay. Listen again to what he says from 1 Peter
1:17-21, “17And
if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s
deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18knowing
that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,
not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19but with the
precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20He
was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the
last times for your sake, 21who through him are believers in God,
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope
are in God.”
3.
Having urged us to keep our heavenly
inheritance as the highest priority in life, the Apostle Peter would have us
live our lives in reverent fear. The
Greek word for fear here is phobos.
There are many kinds of fear. Fear
of punishment is maybe the most frequent. The child who misbehaves and the
thief who steals are descendants of a man who said to his Maker, “I was
afraid because I was naked.” Fear
of injury or of death in an accident is also high on the list. Jesus
rebuked his disciples for their lack of faith when they cried out, “Lord,
save us! We’re going to drown!” as a storm engulfed their boat (Mt 8:25). Fear of the unknown frequently
surfaced at the appearance of angels: to Zechariah (Lk 1:11–13); to shepherds
(Lk 2:10); to the women at the empty tomb (Mt 28:5); and certainly to the
soldiers on Easter morning—“The guards were so afraid of him that they shook
and became as dead men” (Mt 28:4).
4.
In spite of this, there’s a “good”
fear that Peter calls “reverent fear.” It’s not the fear of a slave,
but a fear or deep respect born out of love toward our heavenly Father. Because
he has blessed us with undeserved gifts, we want to please him by keeping his
commandments (Jn 14:15; 1 Thess 4:3). Our
Lutheran Confessions help us to understand this reverent fear by
distinguishing between filial fear and servile fear: “Filial
fear can be clearly defined as an anxiety joined with faith, where faith
consoles and sustains the anxious heart, whereas in servile fear faith does not
sustain the anxious heart” (Ap XII, 38). “‘The regenerated do good
works’ . . . not from a fear of punishment, like a slave, but
out of a love of righteousness, like a child (Rom 8:15)” (FC Ep IV, 11–12).
See also FC SD VI, 15–16; An Explanation of the Small Catechism (St.
Louis: Concordia, 1991) 58.
5.
Loving God and living in reverent
fear means that we conduct ourselves as “aliens and strangers in the world”
(2:11), for we are a “people belonging to God” (2:9–10). As such we don’t
become attached to “earthly things” (Col 3:2). C. S. Lewis in his Mere Christianity
gives us this proverb, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’:
aim at earth and you will get neither” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
[New York: Macmillan, 1943] 118).
6.
A reverent fear is an ongoing
rejection of “the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the
boasting of what he has and does” (1 Jn 2:16). Why do Christians so often
live unsanctified lives? Because we don’t think. 1 Peter 1:17-21 helps us to
get our thinking straight, to see things as they really are. He’s so intense that
this whole paragraph in the original Greek pours out all as one sentence.
Think! Remember to whom you’re praying—to your Father! You are connected
to him now, and everything you do reflects on his reputation. Remember that he
judges each one’s work—God cares not only about how we talk but also about what
we do with our lives. Respectful, God-fearing children know that the word
Father isn’t just a magic word to be invoked—it’s a sacred relationship that
calls us to a new way of thinking and living. In John chapter 8, Jesus rebuked
the scribes and Pharisees for their complacency—they called on the Father, but
they weren’t of the Father because their deeds were evil. They weren’t
listening to God’s Word, and their true father was really the devil.
7.
St. Peter reminds us that, “You
were redeemed.” Not with silver or
gold, which were commonly used to buy slaves. Joseph was sold to Midianite
merchants for 20 shekels of silver (Gen 37:28). Judas sells vital information
leading to the capture of Jesus for 30 silver coins (Mt 26:15). The guards at
the tomb on Easter are paid a large sum of silver money if they say that the
disciples came during the night and stole Jesus’ body (Mt 28:12–13): Not with the empty way of life. Peter is
writing to converts who have come out of heathenism. This way of life they
inherited from their forefathers. It’s “empty” because it’s
unfulfilling—an existence that offers no true satisfaction or joy. A similar
lifestyle is practiced by those who have a “form of godliness” (2 Tim
3:5), an outward expression of religion and religious activity that’s not
Christ-centered nor biblically oriented. While such persons know that God
exists, they don’t give him glory (Rom. 1:21).
Here’s one example of this. A soap manufacturer said to a
minister one day, “What good is all the work the church does? After the
thousands of sermons that have been preached and all the hours spent in Bible
study for two thousand years people still lie and cheat, fight and kill.”
The minister said nothing for a while as they walked together. Soon they saw
some children playing in the mud. Then the minister said, “What good is all
the soap that you make? You say that it makes people clean but look at those
kids. Soap has been around for thousands of years, and those children are still
filthy.” “Oh,” the soap maker
responded, “soap does no good until people use it.” What’s true about
soap is true about Jesus.
8.
The precious blood of Christ makes
us free. In March 1960, the little town of Agidir, Morocco, Africa, was reduced
to rubble by an earthquake. At the time, Lt. Gerald Martin was stationed there
accompanied by his wife, Sue. While he wasn’t harmed, his wife simply couldn’t
be found. Several days of fruitless searching ended when the military people
were told to leave the area as a second earthquake was likely to occur. Lt.
Martin stayed on. After another day he found Sue, still alive, buried under six
feet of debris. What do you think he did?
Scold her for coming there in the first place? Offer advice to her so that she
might free herself? Pass down a survival kit? Cheer her up and console her with
comforting words? Of course not. He got busy, and with his two hands dug away
the rubble until she was free.
9.
So, God dealt with us. Advice or a “do-it-yourself”
salvation kit would do no good. Cheerful words of encouragement couldn’t help
us. Rather, through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, God set
aside the rubble of sin to rescue us. Slaves to sin, we were ransomed from its
guilt, burden, and fearful consequence: Jesus said, “I tell you the truth,
everyone who sins is a slave to sin. . . . If the Son sets you
free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:34, 36)
10.
What we’re going through in this
Covid-19 pandemic is enough to put the fear of God into you and give you a
reverent fear. And, that’s a good thing. Because God is always inviting us to, fear,
love, and trust in Him along above all things. Fear and love find their common ground in
trust. We have a God who has entered our
frail human flesh to sacrifice His life on the cross so that we might
live. This Jesus our Lord and Savior now
invites our trust. Before he emerged in
risen glory Jesus first endured the cross and grave for you. We confess, “He suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.” Jesus
knows exactly what he’s talking about as he stills our human fears and calms
our anxious hearts. God certainly has
caught our attention in this national emergency. And, that’s a good thing. God is inviting us to leave our fears behind
and trust in Him alone. That’s the only
true antidote to anxiety and fear.
11.
As you live your lives, remember
what it cost God to make you his own—the precious blood of Christ. The
Father is that serious about claiming you! The Son is that serious about
rescuing you! The sacrificial lambs of the Old Testament ceremonial laws had to
be outwardly perfect, without defect or blemish (Exodus 12:5). They symbolized
the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. On the cross, outwardly, Jesus didn’t look too
good—as Isaiah said prophetically, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract
us to him (53:2)”—but his was an inward perfection, without defect or
blemish of sin (Hebrews 7:26). The blood of Jesus Christ has done what no other
religion or philosophy in human history could do—remove sinful guilt from human
beings and put in its place God’s own righteousness, and all this as God’s
gift, received by faith. The Father showed that he accepted the Son’s
sacrificial gift by raising him from the dead and glorifying him at his right
hand. This is our faith; this is our hope.
Amen. Now the peace of God
that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until
life everlasting. Amen.
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