1 Peter, 5:12-14

Let's read our passage for today. Ready, go. Through Silvanus, our faithful brother, for so I regard him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings. And so does my son, Mark. Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace be to all you who are in Christ.

Excellent. So we're wrapping things up in 1 Peter. It's been a lot of fun, as we've said a number of times. So much fun to study this together. It's just such a great and powerful book. I mean, there's just no... it seems like there's no rest. It's one verse to the next of action and power. It's just fantastic. It's just fantastic.

You know, there's a lot of personal notes in this, and to me it's kind of like the list that you find in the Old Testament, the list of names and stuff, and it's not necessarily, for the most people in their reading, it's not having a whole lot of power. just because we can track the genealogies, but there's an inherent power in the fact that God keeps names, and that God keeps lists, and that God keeps details, and that people are what's important to Him.

And the same thing here, I just think that Even if we couldn't, which we actually can, draw a whole lot from the greetings and the names, it does draw us to the point of the fact that the apostles weren't just doctrine machines. They weren't just sitting around turning out good doctrine and right doctrine and turning out these things. They were actually involved with a lot of people and touched a lot of lives and loved people very deeply. I think that's something to ponder over. I think a lot of times I get this idea that the apostles in the ivory tower or something, sitting there and writing the books that would later become the New Testament. And the reality is that their feet touched the ground. They were walking around and interacting with people and fighting with people and forgiving and loving and asking for forgiveness and doing the whole deal. So, I just love these portions of the New Testament Scripture that shows us that Paul, the Apostles, all those folks were real people who had real friends and loved and dealt with the whole deal.

So let's go on to 1 Peter 5.12. It says, through Silvanus, our faithful brother, or for so I regard him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. Peter draws our attention to the fact that Silvanus, which is the translation, would you say translation or transliteration, I'm not sure, of Silas, but in any event, we're Very quite sure that that's the Silas that we talked about.

Paul and Silas and all that. So what do we know about Silas? What do we know? Anyone got a story about Silas? Travel with Paul? Absolutely. Travel with Paul. What kind of character, I suppose, old Silas was? It's like you've got cliff notes or something. Faithful brother, absolutely. So Silas shows up quite a lot in scripture and worked alongside both Peter and Paul.

This is more evidence to the fact that we cannot take and divide scripture between Petrine theology, Pauline theology, Johannine theology. We can't just cut the Bible up. I know there's a lot of people in theology thinking, OK, well I like Pauline theology, but I don't like Petrine. I like Paul's writing, but I don't like Peter's. Or I like Peter's, but I don't like John's. Or I don't like James, because that's too this or this or that.

And the reality is that the same people were all working with the apostles, and the separate apostles. So if Silas, who'd spent all this time with Paul, was now spending time with Peter, and Peter said something that Paul said the opposite of earlier, it would have got tossed out, it would have got corrected, it would have got dealt with.

The reality is you don't see that kind of doctrinal disputing. The Apostles were writing about a uniform faith. The Apostles were not in disagreement over these things. And the fact that they worked interchangeably with all the same people shows that they were also working together as well. And what an awesome reality that is. That they were fully informed as to the faith, the fact that they work with the same people and have no apparent conflict about doctrine is evidence of this and of the uniformity of our scripture. And as we've shown time and time again, or as we've seen, I should say, time and time again in 1 Peter, that Peter just assumed all the positional truths that Paul spelled out so clearly. that they weren't in opposition. So many people read James and Romans and think, oh, well, they're just in opposition. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're all on the same page. They're all very much on the same page.

They might have just written from seemingly different point of views, or maybe the translation gets a little bit muddy sometimes. One of the things is that if you look at even one author's writings, they may be focusing on one thing and not touching on another.

We've got an elective in Romans going on right now, and Romans, for all its sixteen chapters of wonderful stuff, it never gets the believer off the ground. It doesn't talk about the believer being heavenly. It's not a different theology, it's just a part of what he talked about. Absolutely. So, Vern, for anyone who didn't hear, or for the tape's purpose, said that the different epistles are highlighting different things. Not different theologies, just different points. And the example being that Romans takes 16 chapters of wonderful amazing theology doesn't even get to the point where the believers ascended and seated with Christ. So, it doesn't even get the believer off the ground.

So, marvelous. So, a big purpose statement. I love purpose statements. They're just so purposeful. They're just so clear. Here's our Purpose Statement. I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.

We actually studied this word, exhorting, in 1 Peter 2.11, it was. That word, parakaleo. Can anyone call to mind what we said about that word, parakaleo? Coming alongside. To call alongside.

It continually floors me. Peter, writing on behalf of the Lord, and we'll get later to how he knew, he wasn't just writing a letter to his buddies, he knew that this was something special. Writing on behalf of the Lord doesn't say, and now you're going to do this, and if you don't do this, God's going to come down and hit you. He doesn't write with that kind of angry or authoritarian, but he writes as a brother and as a friend and says, hey, come alongside me. As Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ.

Just, to me, that's endlessly mind-blowing when you're out in the world and out, you know, in different situations and someone has authority, they just so much love to tout it and say, you're going to do this, and you can say, no, I won't, and they'll say, yes, you will, and they're right, you will, because they told you to, and they're in the position of authority, and that's the way the world views authority, and yet, we see in the Bible, using these words that beseech, that call alongside, that are calling people along to Christian maturity, not just commanding them to do these five things or these ten things. To me it just continually blows me away. So he's not simply commanding believers to do the things that he himself is unwilling to practice, but rather calling them alongside himself as he walks in the position that the Lord has given all believers.

The other verb that Peter talks about here is testify. It's also a present active participle, as was the last. That's that ing ending. It's something that's happening right now and continuing. It's also an incredibly intensive verb. It's the usual word for testify plus the prefix epi. Epi means on, over, above. So, when you attach it to something, he's not saying he's standing on top of something and testifying.

He's saying that he's loudly, intensely testifying the things that he's talking about here, the grace of God. So, I believe it was Nelson's illustrated Bible commentary that pointed out how far that Peter had come. From denying Christ in the garden, running away, as Paul writes about in Galatians, sneaking out the back door when someone sees him coming who he doesn't necessarily want to see. I mean, Peter had grown by leaps and bounds, obviously since the crucifixion, throughout his Christian life.

Encouraging, that is, that now he's saying, you know what, I figured it out, none of that matters, but I'm going to strongly testify. I'm not just going to tell people, I'm strongly testifying about this. And that's just a fantastic thing. So, let's see. It shows the amazing change and growth in Peter's character since he denied Christ and fled the crucifixion. Okay. Okay, so what...

What you say is the significance of Peter writing, this is the true grace of God. I've written to you briefly exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. What do you think some of the significance of that would be? Saying, I'm writing to you the true grace of God. What's the significance of that? Absolutely.

It shows to me, at least, I think, pretty clearly that he didn't think he was just writing good advice. You know, you'll probably meet some people, if you haven't already, who say, oh, you know, those letters, those epistles, they never intended them to be scripture. They never knew that they were writing something authoritative. They were just writing letters to their friends, and then people collected them and put them together X amount of years later, or whatever they want to say. I propose that, no, not at all.

Peter knew that he was writing something special, something inspired by God. Inspiration isn't something that happened afterwards, and the inspiration is not something that happens when you read it. It's something that happened as you wrote it, and he knew it. He wasn't unaware of that fact, if you follow. So, I believe it's a powerful testimony to the fact that Peter knew, Paul knew, when they were writing this, they didn't think, oh, I'm just going to throw off another letter to help these people. I'm writing something that, you know, of divine importance.

So, in any event, moving on to stand up. Now, my failures of my understanding of textual criticism is definitely stands in the way. I've got two Greek texts and one of them has stand in it as a perfect and the other one a perfect verb and the other one has it as an imperative. So you read this and it translate brings it across as an imperative. I believe Wyss brings it across as an imperative and yet others and oh the Bible Knowledge Commentary, if I'm not mistaken, brings across as imperative. There's a handful of other great writers that bring it across as in the perfect tense. And I think maybe the Gram Chord. Do you have a note to share on that?

I don't know why they're... Yeah, I haven't checked in a couple of things. One is sometimes, once in a great while, there will be no distinction in the text, and so it's a choice. I haven't checked to see if that's the case here. Other times, there may be only one difference in one letter. It makes a difference between how that's spelled out. I haven't checked in this case. So here we are, sadly due to my failings as a teacher, standing between a perfect and an imperative. But I think the point remains pretty much the same. Of course a perfect would be like what the King James translates, wherein you stand.

You're already standing, you stood there in the past and it's lasting effects into the present and on into the future. An imperative encourages us to continue to stand in our position or if you like maybe walk in our in our position rather than our condition. So, the great thing about it is that neither one of them is... I don't know if it's great or bad, because we can't count off either one of them as being theologically unsound or conflicted with the rest of Scripture. And really, at some level, the point remains the same.

I mean, if we're being commanded to stand in our position, that makes sense. That stands to reason. Because to not stand in our position that we've been given is just... a little bit nuts, right? And then if it's saying that you already stand in this, well, that's true also. You've already stood in it, so continue standing, being the beseechment.

So, like I say, I wish I could offer a little bit more clarity to you there. I just couldn't find the proper information. None of the commentaries, I was shocked, because usually really good commentaries, at least one of them will pick something like this out and none of them even touched on it. So, there it is.

Moving on to 1 Peter 5.13, She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my Son. Mark.

The Babylonian Controversy. It's been an issue of much debate for quite a long time over what city Peter is talking about here, using the word Babylon. So does anybody have any idea what the two generally accepted ideas for the city of Rome would be, or city of Babylon would be? Babylon and Rome, there it is! Sure that up pretty quick! Yeah, some people think that it's Rome in this kind of prophetic, and then you know, naturally then we'll read Rome every time they read Babylon in the book of Revelation, and also you've got the Catholic theology or the Catholic ideas saying that Peter's just got to be in Rome, he's got to be in Rome, so naturally he's writing from Rome, and Babylon is a euphemism or a cover-up for that. Let's see. And then, of course, the other option is that he's actually writing from the physical city of Babylon.

Most of the time when you read commentaries and you read things, you find that most of the solid people wind up on the same side of the fence. Often, not always. Like most of the people who you generally tend to agree with, who generally have a good hermeneutic, more often than not wind up on the same side of the fence. This isn't one of those cases. It's just, it was bizarre because usually I tend to side with the people who I more side with. There's just a split right up the middle.

Some people say it's Rome for these five reasons. Some of the church fathers had said it was Rome, and they were obviously closer in chronology to the Apostles, and the tradition at the time would have a better likelihood to be true. Obviously, church tradition has Peter in Rome for the end of his life, and at whatever level we allow that, or take that as being reliable, will obviously influence your idea about whether or not this is Rome or actual literal Babylon. There's another evidence involving the fact that Mark was there with him. Some people had traced out the chronology of the New Testament and said, well, Mark was probably in Rome around the time of the writing of this epistle as well, and so they used that as a possible evidence. All that being true, or all that evidence being not true but very reasonable, I really think there's a greater argument, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum wrote a great article about the the greater likelihood being that he was in actual, literal Babylon.

Literal Babylon wasn't too, too far. It shared linguistic similarity with Jerusalem. So if Peter's outside of Jerusalem, or outside of Israel, which speaks Aramaic, there's also going to be a very similar form of Aramaic spoken in literal Babylon. Not to mention also, I should say, there's this large Jewish community there. And naturally, a Christian community as a result. So there's all this evidence pointing towards Peter would be very comfortable in this area, in the area of literal Babylon.

In fact, it's quite a likelihood that he would have spent a great amount of time there encouraging the brothers as a basis for, you know, a point for writing his letters and all this. It just, it sure stands to reason, awful. awful well. At least that seems like the most likely thing.

The other thing about it is that we have no evidence really of using the word Babylon as a euphemism for Rome in early Christian writing. Until you get all the way to John, we usually date that around the 90s, right? So 90 AD or later. So it's kind of like the idea of him being the genesis of this whole calling Rome Babylon thing is, well, it's questionable evidence at best.

So, I generally tend to lean towards, although I wouldn't, you know, bet my house on it or anything, I do tend to lean towards literal Babylon from what I've read. And, yeah, it just seems like the most reasonable argument. But the beauty part of it is, as you read into the, you know, kind of interpretation, application of the verse, it doesn't matter at all. There's very little theological repercussion for him being in Rome or Babylon. It just seems to me more reasonable. So, if you have another idea about that, you're welcome to it. You're in good company. And if you have the same idea, you're also in good company.

Oh, the she. There are some, I don't know if there are ancient commentators, but there's been some kind of standing idea that he's talking about his wife, that Peter's talking about his wife as she who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends greetings. And so does my son, Mark. Yeah, it could absolutely be his wife, as she was in Babylon, or just someone else who's known to be in Babylon. I think that's a possibility.

I will say that of all the people, there was a big division between those who think that it's the church that exists in Rome, and those who think that it's the church that exists, and the she being the church. And church is ecclesia, it's a feminine noun. So even if it's a whole church of men and there's not one woman in the church, it would be a horrible thing. But even if there was, it would still be feminine.

You'd still say she, the church in Rome, or the church in Babylon, she greets you. So, is it a possibility? Oh, certainly. Absolutely. However, most of the conservative scholars seem to either jump on the side of it being Rome, or the church in Rome, or it being the church in Babylon. Does anyone else have anything to add to that idea? Okay. Yeah, I mean, I can't remember who it was. A lot of the commentators did notate that, that a lot of early people who read it, you know, early in the Catholic period thought, well, you know, it's his wife. Yes?

Along with that same sentence, so does my son Mark. Does Peter have a son by the name of Mark, or is that a spiritual son of Mark? I generally think it's the spiritual son, John Mark. I think, yeah, that's another one of those that was pretty universally. I think an example on that, Paul wrote Timothy and called him his son. And this is the kind of thing that you see written. It's also taken, and this is tradition added to this note here. that in his latter days, Mark was with Peter, and under Peter authored the Gospel of Mark. Oh, absolutely.

So, yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, also the relationship, spiritually speaking, of brother versus the relationship of sonship would be whether or not you were present for that person's belief, for that person's moment of belief. So, when Paul writes to Timothy, a lot of people suggest, well, he led Timothy to Christ. Or, in this case, maybe Peter led John Mark to Christ. Maybe, just, he's older, and he feels more like a spiritual father to him than a spiritual brother, but...

Well, one of the reasons I ask, we know that Peter was married. But he had a mother-in-law. Yeah, that's right! If you had a mother-in-law, you're going to get married. You could have had a son. Certainly. Absolutely. Yeah, it's absolutely a possibility. Named him after Mark, though? It's definitely possible.

When he says there in verse 12 about his testifying that he's telling the truth, It would seem kind of odd for him to go into verse 13 and use veiled language and call Babylon Babylon. He's saying it's the truth, but he would call Babylon Babylon, wouldn't he? Yeah, generally I always lean towards the literal, the simplest, the kiss-it philosophy, which is part of the reason why I like calling Babylon Babylon, but I think that's absolutely right. Why would he start using veiled language now?

It's hard to imagine Peter really scared of what Rome would do if they found out he was writing about them. It just doesn't stand, really. So I think that's another good reason. Yeah, as to the Mark issue, I'd say it's definitely wholly a possibility. Most of the commentators and the writers onward kind of seem to allude to him as being John Mark, but I don't see why that's not at least a possibility.

So, presuming, though, that it is John Mark, what do we know about John Mark? What do we know about his history? Because he's just got such a great story of grace throughout scripture. He's got such a cool... I kind of identify with it. How about you? What do we know about John Mark? Book of Acts. Oh.

Still though, what you're saying, how he presents Christ as a servant? You want to elaborate on that? It's the way that you see Christ at work there in the Book of Mark. He is performing the work of a servant. Watching the disciples be present. So Mark has a special presentation, and also his relationship to Peter in writing his gospel. I think we probably have a big piece of that too, that he's presenting Christ as a servant, doing a servant's work.

Anybody else have any? Remember Mark was the one who went with Barnabas and Paul, and when things got tough in Pamphylia, I believe, he said, I want to go home, and he did. He went home to Mama. He abandoned him in the middle of the journey because it got too dangerous, or too tough, or too scary.

And then as a result, as we read in Acts 15, 36-41, Paul and Barnabas had a split over it too. So does anybody have any slight background on Barnabas? Anybody translate that name out? Barnabas, it says when translated his name means son of encouragement. I believe Acts chapter 4, I thought it was. I don't think I wrote the reference in there and I apologize. Oh, nope, there it is, 436.

So, yeah, you remember it was Barnabas that took a chance on Paul. After Saul had met Christ on the road to Damascus and been converted, and everyone was saying, oh no, he was just killing us, we don't want to take a chance on him, it was Barnabas that said, yeah, you've got to meet this guy. I've met him, he had the courage to meet him, he had the grace to forgive him, and he had this deep understanding of what God's grace is capable of. This deep understanding that God's grace could take a bloodthirsty, prideful murderer and turn him into the apostle of the Gentiles, and turn him into God's servant, God's bondslave. So, Barnabas had this continual knowledge and gracefulness, and he was kind of always rooting for the underdog, as it were.

So, of course, Paul and Barnabas split in the account in Acts 15, 36-41. They split over this issue because Paul didn't want to take John Mark, and Barnabas, of course, did. So Barnabas took John Mark and went his way, and Paul took Silas and went his. And that's the last that we read about Barnabas in the Book of Acts, because she chooses to follow Paul's path.

And yet we read in Colossians 4.10 that Paul and John eventually came back together.

There was restoration there, that grace was still there. You can definitely see both perspectives. Barnabas sitting on the side saying, yep, he made a mistake, but God's grace is big enough. And Paul standing on the other side saying, You know, the job of being an apostolic delegate is a big job, and we don't want anyone who might think about turning back, so love him, great, whatever, but I don't want to necessarily make him my apostolic delegate. So you can understand both sides of the fence, and yet it shows that eventually there was great restoration there. And I just think it shows us that God specializes in doing things with weak people, with people who couldn't do it on their own, with people who, by their natural abilities, wouldn't have made it, would have been conquered by fear. I very much identify with dear John Mark.

Anyway, greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace be to all of you who are in Christ. So, kissing in church. Here's a serious question. When was the last time you kissed anyone in church? If it was at your wedding, you're probably in violation of biblical mandate.

Maybe not. So, let's see, this would seem to be a command that we don't follow very often in our modern American church. J.B. Phillips even goes so far in his paraphrase to translate or to replace, to kind of revise it all out and replace it with handshakes all around as a more culturally palatable idea. So while this interpretation... Oh, sorry.

I thought I heard someone talk. All in my head. Cool. Hearing voices. Love that. Okay. We find that in biblical times, as in the case even today, as is the case even today, or in many cultures, a kiss is a sign of familial love and affection. Obviously, you go to France and people kissing each other all over the place and it's not... It's not bizarre or strange, it's just a part of the culture. We look back, and even currently in a lot of Middle Eastern cultures, there's a kiss that exists usually between family and close friends, and it's usually, as the reading on the cheek, the hand or the forehead. And it's absolutely not tainted by any sort of erotic, romantic feeling or idea.

In fact, even this word for kiss, as we go down, is related to the word phileo, which, of course, is brotherly love, in distinction from eros, which is the romantic love. So, this is a kiss of brotherly love, of familial affection and closeness. So, yeah, at the time it was a sign of love and respect between close friends and family. I think that's probably more what he's getting at than anything else. The word love here, kiss of love, the word love here is agape love, which is a love that looks to God as its source.

It is the truth of the matter that God has united us in a deep connection of love, which the world has no knowledge of. Of course, we know that in Christ our connection, our bond in the Lord as believers is deeper than our fleshly connections to family. It's more lasting. We'll be separated from those who are our fleshly kin who don't believe, eventually, but those who are united in Christ will never be separated from, on into eternity. And that love, our love, our familial love, is based on the fact that we can't get away from them sometimes.

Our love in Christ finds God as its source. Our unity in Christ is sourced from God. Our grace for each other is sourced from God. We're not required to generate this love that we feel for each other. We're not required to generate the grace for one another. We find God, we look to God, we stand in our position, and we're filled with it.

So what would be some more culturally appropriate gestures? We could write this now. We could institute kissing at Holly Hills, but it just might be a little bit weird. What would be another culturally appropriate gesture? Hugging. Absolutely. Hugs are huge. Up front here, you probably would have quite a time counting all the hugs that happen in our service, and I think that's great. I mean, not in the service, before and after the service, not a whole lot. Hey, you look like you need a hug in the middle of the deal, but yeah, hugs are a great one.

Any other? Speaking. How do you mean? It's a family gathering. It's a family gathering, exactly. We use words, we talk in a more familiar way. We're comfortable with each other and we don't use our most professional language, our distant, maybe our work tones. We're here as family. Smiles. Absolutely. Smiling at each other, don't we?

Such a wonderful thing. Such a blessing. I just love that we can read about all this. There's so much of the word, it's like, I really have to apply that. I really have to learn to walk in that. This one, it's like, come here. And we're all about it.

It's such a wonderful thing to know that we're surrounded by this familial love, even if we're not kissing each other all the time. Your Korean friends and all that at the Korean church, how do they greet you? Definitely handshakes and hugs. There's quite a lot of handshake and hugging.

It depends very much how long they've been in the States. If they're second generation, they've kind of moved a little bit away. In Korea, the culture is so much more involved. People are so much less ashamed or less scared to be involved with each other. It's really not uncommon at all to walk down the street and see two friends, two businessmen or two girls holding hands and walking down the street.

I remember I was once sitting with my boss who had a great relationship with my boss. He was just a stellar fellow. We were sitting in a meeting and he put his hand on my thigh, like right on my knee. Not massively comfortable with it, but he's my boss and my friend, so okay.

So there's just not the same physical boundaries that we have. Obviously, you know, we've got our... Yeah, that's definitely true. You don't, just because I told you this story, and you see a Korean businessman around, don't put your hand on his knee. Don't try to hold his hand. Yeah, it's definitely, there's a deeper idea of personal commitment in the Korean culture than we probably have here. Their view of Americans is that we're just saying, I love you all the time.

Oh, I love you. I love you so much. I love you. I love you. I love you. And yet their idea is that if you were to say, I love you, to more than one person in your life, talking about that deep, dedicated marriage kind of love, that you'd be entirely too flippant with your view of that.

And I think there's a lot of validity to that. We just kind of throw those terms around. Their idea of dedication to a friend is more of a lifelong commitment. It's definitely just amazing because the whole core of the culture is growing from a different principle, a different idea. We've got this, you know, everyone's my friend.

Is there less crime in Korea than there is in the United States? Most certainly. I think probably, and that I think stems from a couple of reasons, that there is less crime, a lot less crime. No weapons, no guns, no firearms are allowed in the whole of Korea.

So that makes it, since they had the historical possibility to institute that, it makes it kind of a safer, it makes it a safer place to be. Whereas, you know, to try to institute that mid-flow in America would be, a nightmare. But they had the ability to take away the right to bear arms early, which has worked out really well because you walk down the street at night and most likely if something bad were to happen, you'd just get punched in the face, which stinks, but it's way better than getting shot. better, maybe social engineering, I don't know what you'd call it, but just more jobs, more housing, and less expensive. Anyway, crime definitely has a big part to do with that.

You can trust people a little bit more when you're not worried about getting knifed. So, anyway... And then there's the Asian equivalent. Well, I don't know about Asian, but I know in the dragon countries, the idea that if you got caught stealing, you'd be dishonored, be shameful. So you don't want to steal just because if you did get caught, your whole family would know. You'd all fall apart at the seams.

Once again, I had a Korean person tell me that You know, we look at our hero in Western cultures, the son who goes away and forges out on his own and says, you know, forget the past, forget my roots, and I'm going to go do my own thing, the hero. And they say their hero, their ideal, their type, their prototype would be the son that stays at home, the dutiful son. And that's the person. So, I mean, when you tell about the story of the prodigal, way more effective, even though the bulk of the story is talking about the son who goes away. Way more sympathy for the elder son, way more identification with the elder son, as he tells those kind of stories. We've gotten massively off the topic and we do have some stuff to talk with once we're through.

So, good, peace. What is the meaning and basis for our peace? What's the meaning and basis for our peace? We have a position in Christ that we don't have to worry about anymore. Exactly. Our position in Christ is the basis for our peace. Christ is our source of peace and of life. The reality is that for the believer there's always peace because of our immovable position.

We don't have to worry about dying today or tomorrow. Most people just live their entire lives trying to ignore the fact that death will happen. They just don't want to think about it, don't want to talk about it, and get really uncomfortable if you're talking about it in a serious way.

We don't have to worry about that, and we don't have to live in a sort of mad delusion about it. There's nothing to that fear for us, because for us, death is gain, it's glory. We don't have anything to fear there. We don't have to worry about fulfilling some sort of divine checklist. We don't have to worry about doing these seven things or these ten things before we go. Heavens, I hope I don't issue some sort of expletive before I run my car into a pole and die, because then I'll have to pay for it. We don't have to live under that fear, that constant concern, that worry.

I believe it was Gandhi. I'm going to miff the quote, but the essential idea is that he said, don't confer on me the title of holy man until I die with the name of Brahma on my lips. He said, basically saying that for him to be a saint in that context, he had to live it up right until the last day.

Forget it, you're there. We're there in Christ already. You don't have to wait until the last day. Look at John Mark, look at all the wonderful examples of grace, look at Paul. God can do amazing things with people who are normal, or sub-average. So anyway, we've got this great source of peace that we are in Christ saints. We are in Christ perfected. We are in Christ. We have that peace. I wrote here in the middle of the paragraph, we have perfect peace because we're in Christ.

In fact, our choice is not to abide in the peace of our position is our own problem. Our choice not to abide in the peace of our position is our own fault, our own problem. It's paramount to spiritual insanity. Us being consumed or worrying or being consumed by anxiety, when we have access to the only real peace in the universe would be equivalent to a man starving to death while clutching a loaf of bread that someone had given to him. It's just insane. It's beyond silly. It's beyond stupid. It's madness. And yet, I mean, a daily affair for me. But still, we're holding the bread of life. So there it is. There it is. Does anyone have any comment? We've got some other things next week to talk about. Gene?

When I mentioned Christ serving, he did serve in Mark, but he didn't watch the disciples feed in that gospel. That's in John. But he did do quite a bit of healing and serving, and feeding in the 5,000 and 4,000. And certainly see all that service he did, chapter after chapter. And then, of course, there's the genealogy part of the gospel, where the servant doesn't need genealogy. So, these are things we know, so we know.

That's profound. I've never made that connection with the genealogy. I like that. That's really profound. Peter and Paul are fighting the same thing. Look at that last line. All who are in Christ. Isn't that amazing? I had never put that together until we started this study. I definitely thought that if Paul and James met, they'd get in a fight. Or Paul and Peter met that they would disagree about stuff and that's not the case at all. It's so amazing. We are in Christ and Peter knew about his position and talked about that position. Absolutely. Alright.

Does anyone have anything else that they'd like to add to this? I know it was kind of a brief study and that was intentional because I go over it all the time anyway. And we have some extra stuff to talk about. Does anyone have any other comments? Alright, so today we just finished up the final section here, under Suffering of the Believer, Buffeting of Christians, Humility, and finally in this 1-14, Carrying Out Ministry in Suffering. Next Sunday, we'll begin our study of 2 Peter through June. If you remember, when we started this study, we did the introduction for both 1 and 2 Peter, and that was an excellent course and kind of series of courses, because you remember we talked about the regions that Peter was writing to in, was it the fourth week or the third week? We talked about the regions that Peter was writing to. I don't recall. Somewhere in there. So if you want to go back, it's all on the internet. It's all available. The handouts are all available.

And in order to get kind of the fullness of the introduction that Brum presented, you might want to listen in on the first maybe 10 minutes of the next three classes. And you'll get the fullness of introduction that you'd already received. So next week, Gene's going to move right, right, right into 2nd Peter. Some introduction is appealing to you or some review of that introduction.

Like I say, you can see Vern, Nancy, or we'll do whatever we can to get you those resources on CD tape. And of course, it's all available to you on the Internet, just so you're not, you know, shocked, some sort of cold bath to come in here. Oh, and Nancy can get you paper copies of the lesson.

We haven't set the topic, the book topic, for July through September. We're actually going to finish up Second Peter and then we're going to have a lag of that, would you call it a quarter? Yeah, a lag of a quarter before we kind of get to the reset for all the electives. So we've got a couple of options that we'd already talked about and we would love your feedback on these or if you care to suggest your own, nothing's set in stone.

So if you have something, Definitely see Gene or Vern or myself, and we'll put your two cents in. But the things we talked about studying were 1 Timothy, Philemon and Jude, Sermon on the Mount, Ruth or Esther, Hosea, Haggai and Jonah. So we talked about maybe doing some minor prophets. you know, controversy over the Sherman on the Mountain, the dispensational perspective therein, that it would be an enlightening study to do that, to look at that. Obviously Jude is a parallel book to 2 Peter, so that would be a good kind of natural study. for us to move, and we'll cover quite a bit of Jude, and talk about Jude quite a bit as we do 2 Peter. So anyway, does anybody have anything they want to add to this, or add to this list now, that you've been burning to learn about, but only for a quarter? So it can't be like the New Testament, because we only have a quarter.

Okie dokie. Well anyways, if you have those ideas, feel free to email, we're all on email call. We all have phones. It's all good. So we'll get that in. And it will be an exciting time. And come next week, all ready to jump into 2 Peter's year preparations. Shall we pray? All right.

Heavenly Father, we praise you. for your word. Lord, we praise you for the grace that you show us. The grace that was shown in the life of John Mark. Lord, and the grace that was shown in the life of Paul and Peter. And the grace that is alive in our lives now. Lord, give us the wisdom to stand in our position that you have given us. Let us go out being confident of the gift that you've given. We praise you and pray that we could behold you in the coming service, remember your death, remember the position you've given us, and worship you. In Jesus' name. Amen.