First Baptist Church, Milton, LA

This is the second sermon on 1 Peter 1:22-2:3. In these sermons, we see that those who have been saved by faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ are commanded to have a sincere love for one another - a love which grows as they grow in Christ.
In this sermon, our focus is on 1 Peter 2:1-3, which tells us how we are to live out this difficult command, namely by putting away certain unloving and unlovely sins and by growing up in our faith through the Word of God. 

In 1 Peter 1:22, the focus shifts from our vertical relationship with God to our horizontal relationships with one another. In fact, what we see is that our relationship with God has tremendous effects on our relationships with one another. In verses 22-23, Peter makes this clear by the way he weaves the two relationships together. We are now God’s people, and God’s people relate to each other in certain ways.  
In this sermon, we look at the command to love one another, how the Gospel enables us to love one another, and how this command is at odds with two of our culture's values/mantras about love. 

Our text, 1 Peter 1:20-21, brings up the doctrine of the eternal nature of Jesus Christ.  In this sermon, our goal is to understand and believe the eternal nature of Jesus Christ and then see what it means in the flow of Peter's thought in 1 Peter 1. There are big theological truths covered in this sermon, each of which serve to bolster our hope in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Christians are people who set their hope on the grace that is to come (1 Peter 1:13) AND who conduct themselves with fear because of the judgment of their deeds that is to come (1 Peter 1:17).
 
How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory truths?
 
Listen in to this sermon on 1 Peter 1:17-19 as we seek to answer that question! 

In 1 Peter 1:15-16, Peter calls us to be holy as God the Father is holy. In this sermon, we look at what holiness is, what holiness looks like for us as the children of God, and the place of grace in our pursuit of holiness.  

In this sermon, we look at the first command given in 1 Peter, "set your hope on the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Pastor Matt explains the importance of the indicative/imperative structure of the Scriptures and then shows us that hope is a command and how we can live in obedience to that command. This is so important for us because, when it comes to our hope, we are tempted to either lose hope or to put it in something other than Christ. Listen in and see what steps you can take to keep your hope fixed on Christ. 

We had the privilege of hosting Pastor Kirk Alexander from Christ Church Northside on Sunday, October 16, 2022. We hope you'll listen in and be encouraged as he exhorts us to overcome worldliness, particularly in how we relate to one another as Christians, from James 4:7-12. 

In 1 Peter 1:10-12, Peter shows us that, despite the sufferings and trials of this life, which we talked about last week in verses 6-9, we are living in the best times to live as Christians. We are living in the fulfillment of God’s great plan of salvation. 

Peter is addressing here a common experience for all Christians everywhere, which is the fact that we have this gracious savior, the hope of an imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance, all of these great promises for the life to come, and yet, our experience of life on this earth is filled with trials and hardships. How are we to understand the call to worship God and rejoice in our salvation in the midst of the very real, very difficult circumstances of life? Peter ties all of this together for us in 1 Peter 1:6-9. We hope you'll listen and be encouraged in your faith by God's Word. 

The big idea of 1 Peter 1:3-5 is this: God is worthy of worship, he ought to be praised, because He has saved us from our sin - He has given us new life - with the result that we have hope in this life and in the life to come, and nothing can take that away from us.
In this sermon, we walk through 1 Peter 1:3-5 and see the precious truths of our salvation - that the God who has caused us to be born again will keep us born again, and that these truths give us hope in the midst of all of the troubles and difficulties of this life.