LIVING ON THE EDGE

1 PETER 4:7-11

Delivered at First Church West on November 2003

I have served as a fire fighter for over 25 years. I came up through the ranks until today I am a shift commander at the seaport fire station. It has been a good and rewarding career. I get to play with all sorts of high-tech toys and gadgets, I get to lead a committed group of professional men and women and I get to perform a community service by responding to emergencies and saving lives and property.

There have been those time, especially when I’ve been on my hands and knees in pitch black smoke in the bowels of a ship where I have asked myself, "Why on earth am I doing this?" But over all, it has been a career that has been financially rewarding and which has been fulfilling in every sense of the word.

Because it is a hazardous profession -- a young man’s profession -- it has built into it the potential for an early retirement. When one reaches that stage, you can retire and stay home and they will mail you your retirement check each month.

Earlier this year, I crossed that imaginary line so that I am now eligible to retire. Ever since that time, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. There is an extra bounce to my step. I’ve always enjoyed my job, but that enjoyment factor has gone up a couple of degrees. There is a sense of anticipation.

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions, "When are you going to do it? When are you going to retire?" And my answer has been short of profound: "I don’t know. As long as I want to. Until the Lord opens another door somewhere else. As long as I’m still enjoying it." It could be this year. Or it could be a few more years from now. But it will be soon.

Peter says much the same thing in this chapter. He starts out this section by saying, "The end of all things is at hand" (4:7). Commentators and Bible scholars has wondered what things he might have been talking about.

• Peter might have been talking about the end of his own life. We know from church tradition that he was put to death at the orders of Emperor Nero as a part of the Roman persecutions of the church. Within this same chapter, Peter will go on to speak of the fiery ordeal that Christians are facing in his day (4:12).

• He might have been speaking of the end of the Jewish sacrificial system and its temple that would soon be destroyed by the Romans. We know today that this took place in A.D. 70, but as Peter pens these words, that destruction is still on the horizon.

• He might be speaking of literally the end of all things -- the second coming of Christ and the end of human history.

I tend to think that it is all three that are in view and that "all things" literally means "all things." There is a sense in which the coming of Jesus to the earth ushered in the last days and we have been living in the last days ever since.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter was able to stand up and quote Joel’s prophecy about how it shall be that in the last days God would pour forth His Spirit upon all mankind and he was able to say, "Look, here it is!"

Peter said in his day and we can still say in our own day that the end of all things is at hand. There are no more prophecies that have to be fulfilled. There are no more signs that have to be seen. There is nothing more on the prophetic agenda that has to be checked off.

The end of all things is at hand. It could end today before we complete this sermon. Or it could be another thousand years. The Bible teaches that no one knows the day or the hour. No one knows when Christ is going to return. And that means His coming is at hand. It could take place at any time.

You have no guarantees on life. If there is one thing that I have learned in all of my years as a fire fighter, it is that things happen unexpectedly. You have no guarantees on how long you are going to live. It could well be that, for some of us today, the end of all things is at hand.

If that is true, and Peter says that it is, then there are some practical implications as to how such a truth ought to impact the way that I live today.

You see, prophecy in the Bible isn’t given merely to satisfy my eschatological curiosity. It is not given so that I can draw up all sorts of charts of future history and play the part of a spiritual soothsayer. It is given so that I might be motivated to live in a certain manner today.

Peter says, "The end of all things is at hand and, because the end of all things is at hand, we ought to live in a certain way." Let’s look at it.

Right at the outset, Peter says that we ought to take prayer more seriously. Why does he say this? Because he knows that we all have a tendency to take prayer too lightly. Jesus pointed this out in the Temple when He took up a scourge against those who had made a mockery of the Temple. He said, "My Father’s house is to be a house of prayer."

Jesus didn’t do that because there was a complete absence of prayer within the Temple. But somewhere along the line, prayer had ceased to be a priority. It was merely something that was done at the proper time to fill in between the praise and the preaching. As such, it had come to be taken for granted.

How would that change if you thought that today was indeed your last day upon planet earth? If you were told that before the sun set upon this day, you would stand before your Maker, how serious would you be about prayer?

Peter says, "You get serious about prayer right now because the end of all things IS at hand." You do not know how much longer you have. You are just a heartbeat away from His presence.

Peter calls you to pray. But that is not all. He also tells you HOW you ought to pray. It is seen in this same verse.

• You are to Pray with Sound Judgment: Be of sound judgment (4:7).

• You are to Pray Seriously: Be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer (4:7).

Notice that this is specifically described as a love that is for one another. You would have thought that Peter would have said that we are to be fervent in our love for the Lord. But Peter had been taught something special about love from the Lord.

Do you remember the incident? It took place after the resurrection. Jesus met His disciples by the Sea of Galilee and repeated a miracle of a miraculous catch of fish. It must have seemed a bit like deja vue to the disciples. Several years earlier, they had been with Jesus on a boat in the Sea of Galilee after fishing all night and catching nothing. At His insistence they had lowered their nets into the sea and had pulled them up tight and full of fish.

Several years have passed and they are back.

After it is all over, they sit with Jesus by the sea as they finish up their meal and Jesus turns to Peter and asks the question: "Do you love me?" Three times the question goes forth and again there is the same sense of deja vue, for Peter had recently been asked on three successive occasions, "Do you know Him? And on three successive occasions Peter had denied His Lord.

But this time it is different. Jesus asks, "Peter, do you love me?" And when Peter answers in the affirmative, Jesus gives a repeated injunction: "Then feed my sheep." Do you see it? Peter is passing on that same command here.

Here is the point. Do you love the Lord? Then show it by loving His people. Show it by keeping fervent in your love for one another.

Be hospitable to one another without complaint. (1 Peter 4:9).

Hospitality. It isn’t a word that we use much within the city. Our English word "hospitality" sounds too much like "hospital" and no one likes to go to a hospital. But the Greek word has a different sound: Philoxenoi -- literally "lovers of strangers." Our English language has coined a different word -- "Xenophobia" -- a fear of strangers. But the Bible says that we ought to be characterized by a love of strangers.

When you live in a big city, everyone becomes a stranger and it’s hard to love everyone. But that it exactly what we are commanded to do. And furthermore, we are called to exercise that hospitality without complaint.

Do you ever complain about the traffic? All of those other people on the road. People you do not know but who are in your way and who are slowing you from getting to your destination. You are called to be hospitable to them and even to that one who cut you off.

But notice that Peter gets specific in this verse. He says to be hospitable toward one another. That is a family phrase. That brings it here into the church. The church is to be a place of hospitality.

When I think of the quality hospitality, my mind goes back over 30 years ago to an elderly couple in a church where Paula and I eventually served as youth directors. Their names were Mr. and Mrs. Bucksbaum and it was likely on our first or second Sunday to that church that they invited us into their home for a small lunch. I don’t recall what they served or what we talked about, but I can remember their hospitality. They loved the Lord and they wanted to share that love with others. So whenever they saw an unfamiliar face in church, they would make it a point to invite that person to their home.

Have you opened your home to strangers who come to the church? Perhaps it could be through the hosting of a small group Bible study. Or it might be something as simple as inviting a visitor to the church to share in a meal.

There are certain words that have both a denotation as well as a connotation. Do you understand the difference?

• A denotation is the basic definition of a word - what that word denotes.
• A connotation is the baggage that comes with that word.

When I say the word stewardship, some of you automatically think I am speaking of giving money. What Peter says includes that, but it is not limited to financial stewardship.

A steward in ancient times was the one who managed a household. More often than not, he was the slave of the master of the house and it was his job to make sure that everything in the house ran properly. The steward did not own the house himself. The care of the house was entrusted to him. We might refer to him as the "housekeeper."

Here is the point. You have been entrusted with being the housekeeper of God’s house. What is His house? It is the church. It is the collected and gathered people whom He has called by His name. You are charged with the upkeep and the care and the growth of that body.

You might think, "Wait a minute, isn’t that why we pay the pastor and staff? Isn’t that their job?" And the answer is no. Their job is to equip you to do your job.

That is the principle that is seen in Ephesians 4.

The same principle is seen here in the words of Peter. He doesn’t say, "Go out and hire a senior pastor who will do the work of the ministry while everyone else comes on Sunday morning to watch."

Instead he says that each one of you has received a special gift and that you are to use that special gift in serving one another.

Three times in this passage Peter makes reference to "one another."

• Verse 8 speaks of your love for one another.
• Verse 9 told us to be hospitable to one another.
• Now in verse 10 we are told to employ our gifts in serving one another.

That tells me something about spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts aren’t about me doing something for my own edification or spirituality. They aren’t even about doing something for the Lord. They are about me doing something for you and they are about you doing something for me. They are about serving one another.

That is important for you to know because there is some wrong thinking among Christians today about spiritual gifts. It is easy to spot the wrong thinking. Merely look for the emphasis. If the emphasis is upon my own growth or my own experience or my own effort or my own feelings, then it is a wrong emphasis.

We live in the "me" generation. Comedian George Carlin does an amusing skit in which he points out the way magazine titles have changed in our lifetime. When we were young, there was a magazine called Life. Later on there came a new magazine called People. That is a smaller subsection than "Life." In more recent years there has come a magazine called "Us." I suppose that is as opposed to "them" and certainly doesn’t include all of "people." Someone told me that now there is even a magazine called Self.

This self-centeredness has infected Christianity in America and it has impacted the way in which we view spiritual gifts.

This emphasis is seen today in the way people deal with the issue of tongues. I’m not going to get into the identification of tongues or all of the issues surrounding the modern charismatic movement, but if you look at what the Bible has to say about tongue in the book of Acts and in 1 Corinthians, you will see that the emphasis is upon how this gift was used or in how it is to be used or in how it is not to be used with respect to the service of others in the church.

1. Spiritual Gifts are for One Another: As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another (4:10).

The same thing is taught here in Peter’s epistle. He teaches us that spiritual gifts are for one another. Your spiritual gift has been given for my benefit and my spiritual gift has been given for your benefit. If I ever start to try to focus upon me benefiting from the use of my own spiritual gift, I have moved into an area of gross imbalance.

I know all about imbalance. I was sitting in an elder’s meeting last week and all of a sudden the room started to spin around. It wasn’t the room that was spinning. It was me. I had somehow contracted an inner ear infection and it wrecked havoc with my sense of balance. It felt like I was on one of those spinning, turning, dropping roller coasters and it got worse and worse and it just would not stop. It felt as though the whole world were moving, but in reality, the problem was in me.

Spiritual gifts are a wonderful thing and can greatly benefit the body. But when there is an imbalance that focuses upon the "me" then instead of edification there comes a great sickness and a troubling state of affairs.

People start playing spiritual games:

"My gift is better than your gift."

"If you don’t have my gift, then you are not even a part of the body." Paul actually addresses this problem in 1 Corinthians 12 when he talks about those who think that a certain member of the body is the only part that really counts. To combat such an idea he asks, "What would it be like if the entire body were an eye or an ear?"

This brings us to our next point.

2. Spiritual Gifts are Different: Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God; whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies (4:11).

Peter could have mentioned any number of gifts. Paul gives several lists of the various gifts and each list is different. There is no exhaustive list of the gifts given in the Scriptures. People have tried to collate all of the different lists and put together a "master list" of all of the gifts, but the Bible never tells us that we have to do such a thing.

There is nothing wrong with this sort of study except that you might come away thinking that your particular list is all there is. I don’t believe that to be the case. This list is no exhaustive. It is REPRESENTATIVE. Both Paul and Peter only mention a few of the gifts as a representative sampling.

The point that Peter is making here is that the gifts are different. There are some who speak and there are some who serve. Those are two general categories of gifts.

There are a lot of different ways to use gifts in speaking and there are a lot of different ways to use gifts in serving. Both are good and both have a wide variety of ways in which they can be worked out.

3. The way in which the gift works -- the mechanics of the gift -- is not nearly so important as is the source of the gift -- the One from whom the gift comes: Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God; whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies (4:11).

• Words of encouragement.
• Words of exhortation.
• Words of praise.

1. The Gracious Nature of the Gifts: Each one has received a special gift (4:10).