Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, January 7, 2025. Living a holy life in Babylon.
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and sisters and welcome to Turning on the Lights for Tuesday January 7, 2025.
Today we go back into 1 Peter and talk aboout the reality that every disciples feces – how do we live the holy life we are called to live in the midst of an anti-Christian world? Peter has some words of wisdom that were given to him by the Holy Spirit and we should listen. We do just that today.
I pray that this strengthens and challenges you in your walk with Christ.
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May God bless you and as always, KEEP LOOKING UP!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, January 7, 2025. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, January 7, 2025. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Good morning, good morning my brothers and my sisters. I am really hoping that this broadcast is getting out there. Maybe it has something to do with how many people I tag because I sat right here and the first time I tagged 55 people, regular watchers and broadcast failed, broadcast failed, etc. The last time I think it was 33 or 39. So that was an experiment. So if you like this video, go ahead and hit the share button right now and other people will get to see it. But like I said, I don’t know why. We may, on Sunday, on Sunday Facebook failed us on the broadcast. Facebook shut down after about 20 minutes. Now YouTube did not fail us. And so I’m thinking that maybe it’s time to get a setup here. We tried it once before. Get a setup here. Maybe even buy a new Mevo camera. Maybe we can get a donation or something of that nature for a camera that can be dedicated to turning on the lights. And we can broadcast over YouTube. And I’ll be able to see comments and so forth from YouTube. You ready? Here comes my mug. Be ready. Aye yi yi. Good Tuesday morning everybody. These are just thoughts going through my head. The technology is, especially, I don’t know if it’s winter time. I mean it’s freezing out there. It’s windy and cold and snow drifty and all you weirdos who like this stuff. Actually you need to look in the mirror and face the fact that you are strange. Right? So yeah. So we might, I’ll talk to some people and maybe we can get a, I don’t even know how much they cost. I know we just bought another one for the side there. Maybe we can get one that’s dedicated just to turning on the lights and I can operate it right here from the iPad and we can broadcast solely over YouTube because Facebook just fails and fails and fails and fails time and time again. There you go. All reliable. Good morning everybody and welcome to church town. Feels like the great white north out there. Yesterday was no fun. That was cool. That was cool. That 12 days of Christmas song. It was fun. There is no rule that says you cannot have fun in your worship and in your fellowship and in your singing. Right there is, we’re going to talk about it today. Holiness. There is an absolute reverence for the word of God. There’s an absolute reverence at times in prayer. Most of the time in prayer, although we, you know, when we’re gathered together and we’re praying, there’s a jubilant spirit that just bubbles up and we sang that song, the 12 days of a Christian Christmas, right? Salvation full and free. It was fun. It was really fun and we, you know us, right? We’re not some corporate church here. The associates pastors meet on Tuesday and the band meets on Thursday and practices. We do this all by text message and emails and conversations and the new song singers, they get together in practice, which if you’re a new song singer, we’re going to do that Thursday night because Sunday the new song singers are going to lead and we’re doing a membership service. Six new folks have decided to stand up and say, this is my place. These are my people. And I’m very, very happy about that. So the new song singers will be leading and we will have a service of membership. The following Sunday is kids for our King and the last Sunday is a service of the ordinances. So get your elements ready, get your basin and your towel ready and we will meet you there at the last Sunday of January already talking about the last Sunday of January. What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with us? Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. That’s Steve Miller band. Now they’ll probably ban my video from Facebook because I sang that. So like I said, folks been having a lot of trouble with Facebook. If you were watching on Facebook on Sunday, you got cut off after 20 minutes or so. I think, but YouTube kept on rocking. So we did that whole new Testament read through on YouTube. We’re allowed to broadcast live up to 12 hours. So at 11 and a half hours, we cut it off and then started a new broadcast and it worked out wonderfully. And that was such a unique experience. Like I said to the congregation very honestly, I’m usually, well, I am, I’m very transparent and probably to a fault with the congregation. Like Sunday, I needed some therapy. And so we just sat and we talked and they’re very, very, I’m very, very grateful that we were able to do that. But I was saying, I heard about this idea. I was like, okay, it’s sounds like a great idea, but like what’s the purpose? You know what I mean? Like what’s, you know, maybe somebody around the world will watch it or what, but it was a unique spiritual experience and you could feel it in the church and you could feel it when you were doing it and you can just feel something different, you know, 18 hours or what have you of reading the word of God out loud. Wow. It was neat. You are a church Tonian by proxy. You’re on the church town weekly. You’re a regular member of turning on the lights. We have church Tonians all over the place, man. It’s really awesome. And good morning to my people at round knot or good afternoon or good evening or whenever you’re going to show this teaching or what have you, but round knob is a sister church of church town. And I have loved going up there. I wish it were closer so I could go up there and help you take care of business. Just a wonderful, wonderful place, wonderful people. And we’re very grateful. Father God, we do pray that your word goes out today and we know that when your word goes out, it cannot be caged. The lion is free. We pray that hearts and minds will be changed, that repentance will occur. The kingdom of God will grow at whomever sees this or hears this video podcast dives into the word of God and becomes your son or daughter in Jesus name. Amen. So there we go. Wednesday evening. Good Wednesday evening. And that’s the story behind that. But we’re going to do a Bible study and then we’re looking at first Peter. I’m trying to stay focused here. If you know me, and most of you do, when I’m focused, I’m pinpoint focused. But I am of the mind that that pinpoint and I am on track, on track, on track squirrel. Like what was that? You know, and that’s the way my brain works. And so all of a sudden we’re talking about something that, you know, whatever. And I’m like, that wasn’t a part of the sermon. But we’re going to try here. We’re talking about first Peter. And I wanted to do this throughout January because I think that the flavor, if you will, of the preaching throughout Advent was what are we doing with all of these gifts that we are given? Peace, love, hope, joy. What are we doing with them in an anti-Christian world? So we always talk about Advent that it preaches itself in some ways, of course, because you’re leading up to Christmas Eve and then, of course, Christmas. But the more I think, well, there’s no other facet of these things that I can preach about or no other flavor that I can add, no other perspective or paradigm, then the Lord gives me one. Good morning. And so we were talking about all of those aspects, those gifts that we are given at Christmas time, right, through Advent, peace, love, joy, hope, and how they relate to us, the church, in an anti-Christian world, because things change, right? We’re not having open air Advent services in the middle of our cities anymore, right? The church is different and it’s different in a lot of ways. A lot of it is contaminated by Babylon. A lot of Babylon has moved into the church. Sometimes the church reaches into Babylon and sometimes the church has a very good motive in mind, right? Like we’re going to reach in, we’re just going to look like them so that we can draw them in and share the good news. Paul said, “Be all things to all people.” You better read that in context. But yeah, okay. But even if you have good intent, that is a dangerous tightrope to walk. And it is constant, even if you believe yourself, as we do, to be orthodox, right, to be a church and want to live according to God’s will and what we’re going to talk about today, look different, be different, be holy, as we are called to be holy, you continually have to look in the mirror and evaluate yourself and your congregation and the faith. You have to constantly look in the mirror as individuals, as families, as a church. And are you living, are you truly submitted to the will of God in all things? Even if we think something in this… This is just a little church. If we think something is a really, really good idea, great. We think it’s a great idea. What about God? What does God think? Sometimes the only way that you can find that out is to be very utilitarian. We’ll pray about it and okay, let’s give it a shot. And if there is no fruit of that particular initiative or that particular ministry or what have you, and you’re like, “Okay, we’re shutting it down.” That’s not what he wants. Because we’ve learned here when our doors were almost closed and we couldn’t pay any of the bills that if God wants this place open, he’ll keep it open. And if he wants it closed, he’ll close it. As we’ve opened our hearts to that and we’ve opened our hearts to giving and giving back and taking care of each other and we’ve never looked back. But I do believe if he… So it’s not like, “Okay, we’re committed to this.” And that was five years ago and we pay no attention to it anymore. It is regular. It’s almost daily, if not daily that you’re looking in the mirror saying, “Lord, what be thy will? Lord, where are we going today? Lord, I am yours.” All right. Now this leads into what we’re talking about in 1 Peter. And again, the context is important of 1 Peter because the context really lends the power to the teaching. The context is he is writing to the churches in the Roman Empire that are under severe persecution. Not just like an anti-Christian sentiment. Not just having your words censored. Persecution. Kill the Christians. Kill them for sport. Kill them for fun. Martyr them. Kill them. Do whatever you would like. Take their children and do whatever you would like. Take their men and women and do whatever you would like. Think of the most awful, God awful, and I’m not taking his name in vain, the most wicked, evil, God awful things that human beings can do to each other. That’s the persecution we’re talking about. And Peter’s there in… He says, “I am writing this letter from Babylon.” Babylon being the secular world. And if we want to thin it out at least a little bit, we can say the very worst of the secular world. Because we all live in the secular world and we know that it’s not like that all the time. We know that there are decent people who are not believers and they’re like, “Live and let live, what have you.” But Babylon itself are the structures and the human-driven, greed-driven, socioeconomic, spiritual structures that are naturally, by the fact that they are not of God, are naturally against God. So Peter is writing into that severe situation and in the very beginning, the very opening that we did last Thursday, he says, “Remember who you are. Remember who you are. Remember that everything that you are encountering is a spiritual battle.” We talked about that word on Sunday, the trials, even though you must endure trials for a little while. That word is very difficult. Once I came across it in a commentary and they said, “This word is very difficult to translate.” And then I began to look it up and it’s very difficult to translate as is much of the Greek because it’s just… There’s one word that contains an entire concept that is embedded in the context of maybe not even just the sentence, but the paragraph or the entire writing. And so this is the way God chose to do it. So here we are over 2000 years later, digging into 1 Peter, uncovering what the words mean, uncovering what the meaning is. But those trials, what Peter is saying, “Even though your spirit will be tested and tested and tested, remember who you are. Do not be afraid. The very power of God that raised Christ from the dead lives in you.” And we say, “Okay.” And this was… You’ve got somebody who’s experienced. You want to bring that here into the church and somebody is having an awful experience. They’ve got an awful diagnosis and they’re undergoing dramatic, aggressive treatment. And you say, “Just remember, God loves you.” The power of God lives in you. It seems in our hearts inadequate. It seems kind of like we’re blowing them off. Like we’re not going to counsel them any more deeply than that. But I contend that it is the very context in which the letter is written that gives the power to the simplicity of the teaching. Does that make sense? Remember God loves you. Like all of this garbage is happening outside there and all of this garbage is happening to you. But remember the power of God is within you. If you’re here, you are living out your purposes. And when your purposes are over because God knows the days that you have on this planet, then to leave this broken vessel is to be with the Lord. Win-win. And again, I contend that that simple teaching is given the power when we look at the backdrop of where we are living. We truly are forward operating bases in enemy territory. That’s what the local church is. We’ve got to get ourselves of that mindset too that Peter just talked about in the first part of 1 Peter that everything is spiritual. Your physical trials are intended, right? You have a choice under a physical trial to turn to the cross or away from the cross. Your spirit and God who lives in you, that’s your foundation. Keep it so those who persevere to the end will be saved. Well, for example, Peter wrote a bunch of letters to different churches and sometimes he wrote a couple of letters, this is to answer Rosie’s questions, a couple of letters to the same church. Paul did the same thing. There are lots of Paul’s letters that we don’t have. The ones that we do and have been canonized, we believe we’ve been guided, that the folks were guided by God’s Holy Spirit to canonize them, keep these letters, these teachings. So you see a bunch of letters written to a bunch of different churches and every once in a while he writes the letter. If you read 1 Thessalonians and 2, you will hear the fact, as a matter of fact, that he wrote a letter in between there. There were three written there. Or is that quarant? I think it’s Thessalonians, right? But that’s why, like I didn’t get to see you. I wanted to come and see you. So I’m writing you another letter. That’s the only reason. So here we go. Here’s the power here. We’ve got the power. What does it look like? And this is what Peter is saying in the second part of 1 Peter chapter 1. He says, “You have the power. Remember who you are.” And this is what it looks like. This is what it should look like in an ungodly world. So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of lying to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then, but now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” Wow. We’re supposed to be God. No. No. When you hear the reverent word holy, when you hear in Revelation, when you hear, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” we’re talking about Yahweh. We’re talking about His otherness. We’re talking about Him as eternal. We’re talking about Yahweh whom we cannot look upon until we are redeemed fully. Right? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. That is Yahweh. That is the triune God. That is the God of the universe who allowed Moses to turn his back and walk past Him, and he could just get a reflection of His glory because any more would kill him. Holy, holy, holy. When we take that term from that realm, so to speak, to our realm, we have the same meaning in a different context. We are called to be God’s children, to submit ourselves to His will. And by virtue of the fact that the church is not the world, we will look and sound and behave differently than the world. When an individual enters into a church service, they should be overwhelmed by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. As those people pray and care and love and sing and rejoice, and you hear the Word of God being taught and preached, it should be something that they will not experience elsewhere. That is holy. That is corporate holiness, if you will, as a church. Individually, what does it look like for the individual follower of Christ? Imitate Christ as I imitate Christ. Right? We want to reverently submit ourselves to the will of God, and He gives some very specific examples. And throughout the scriptures, when this is discussed by Paul or John or Peter, very specific examples are given. So give up the ways that you used to behave, the way you used to lie to get what you want, the way that you used to manipulate people to get what you want, the way that you used to hate. When you look outside, and this is a trap that everybody can fall into, we get upset because it’s an anti-Christian world. And so we look at Babylon and we grow, like, hate this. It’s the enemy. It’s God’s creation, unredeemed. Naturally, it is our enemy, yes. But is hate going to conquer hate? Or is God’s love being demonstrated in that darkness going to serve a better purpose? Good question. I’m going to bank on God’s love. Okay. So does that mean that Christians are doormats and we just do? No, we can have that conversation if you wish about self-defense, about what is appropriate and all of those things. But in general, very down to earth example, you are a Christian and you are, and somebody is just, whether they’re just naturally this way or whether they’re having the worst day ever and they are just, they’ve cut you off in the, they cut in line at Walmart and they cut you off and they look at you and say, “What are you going to do about it?” Whatever the case may be. When you demonstrate God’s love in that particular situation, we’re not talking about Christendom clashing with Babylon. We’re talking about you as a disciple and the way you behave. Maybe just maybe just maybe the love of God that is within you, that individual will look at you and they want to fight you because that’s who they are at that moment and they need that. They think they need that, but you’re like, you’re having a rough day. You’re in a hurry. Feel free. It’s all right. What? Like where’d that come from? Maybe they even asked the question, why aren’t you angry at me? Why won’t you fight me? If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty and holy are his people because they submit themselves to his will and his will is pure and perfect. We are not still. We corrupt that, but we are, as we say, when we are indwelled by God’s Holy Spirit, we are the best version of ourselves as is possible to use the modern language. And remember that the heavenly father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. This is the fruit of your salvation. Not judge or reward you like you’re going to behave and be a good little girl or boy so you can get into heaven. He’s going to, okay, so you say that you love God, you’ve submitted yourself to God. You’ve experienced salvation. If this is true, and this is across the board from all of the apostles, there will be fruit of God’s Holy Spirit within you. If you’re going to do one of those fire insurance sales and try to convince a congregation that they’re all going to hell and if you don’t want to go to hell, put your head down and raise your hand and I’ll say a prayer. Maybe it’s a start. Maybe. Maybe God, you never sell God’s Holy Spirit short, but knowing the depth and the breadth of the full measure of God’s love, salvation, knowing his word and your roots grow deep. That’s a different story. So we’re looking at the fruit of your salvation, which may be evident in the line at Walmart. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as foreigners in the land. Once you become a Christian, you become a foreigner in the land period. You can talk about migrants and the Hebrews moving out of Jerusalem because of the persecution and living in foreign lands literally, but the double entendre here is that once you become a Christian, you are drawn out of Babylon and now you are a foreigner living in a foreign land. You are a redeemed Christian and you are seeking God’s will to live a holy life according to that will. That is not the world. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors and the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days. Through Christ, you have come to trust God, trust in God, and you have placed your faith and hope, there’s those words again, in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. There you go. I mean, there’s the rest of it here. You were cleansed from your sin when you obeyed the truth. So now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart for you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God. As the scriptures say, people are like grass. Their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever and that word is the good news that was preached to you. Boom. Remember who you are. You remember who you are. You know how to behave. How do you know how to behave? Because you’re submitted to the will of God and he knows how to behave. And remember, as we do with all the epistles, they’re written not to unbelievers. They are written to believers. When you read Paul and John and Peter, they’re written to believers. When you read Hebrews, it’s written to believers in Christ Jesus. They’re not evangelical letters in the sense that they’re meant to go out to Babylon and be read. They’re meant to be read and taught in the church. So Christians can actually know what it means to be a follower of Christ and to behave as a disciple of Christ regardless, hear me now, regardless of your circumstances. We’ll leave it at that and we’ll pick that up on Thursday. Regardless of your circumstances. Because your circumstances, just as we taught on Sunday, your circumstances will reveal character, circumstances will reveal faith. Father, we pray that your word will touch the hearts and minds of people everywhere this day. We are grateful for our brothers and sisters in the church. And we pray that we heed your words and love one another as Christ first loved us. It’s in his precious name we pray. Amen. Lord willing and the river don’t rise and no more snow for all you wackos who like snow. I’m in pain today. That’s why I don’t like snow. We’ll see you Thursday. God bless you all. I love you. Thank you. Turning on lights. We’ll see you Thursday.
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