God’s chosen people will be alienated from the priorities and values of the culture around them. Though this will inevitably result in suffering, that suffering produces joy.

By virtue of being elect to respond in faith to the gospel, we are at the same time necessarily alienated from the priorities and values of the culture around us. This will inevitably result in suffering.

Few verses are as pregnant with the gospel as 1 Peter 1:3-5. For Week 2 in our Series, ‘Stand Firm,’ we explored the robust idea of our inheritance, our living hope, and our new birth in Christ.

Peter sets up his weighty excursus with an equally weighty greeting, calling his audience “elect exiles of the dispersion.” Give the sermon a listen and dive into this new series with us.

Psalm 12, like many of the Psalms we’ve covered this Summer, is a lament and it teaches us “even when wickedness seems to prevail, God will guard the poor and needy.”

Psalm 11 is short but intense. Read carefully, it can teach us that our confidence in the face of evil is solely in who God is, what he has done, and who that makes us. Check it out.

This week we jumped into Psalm 10 and talked about how God’s people lament that this world does not look like the Kingdom of God and yet trust in His promises that it one day will.

“I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.I will be glad and exult in you;I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.”

Psalm 8 teaches us that truly living into the Story of God and glorifying him means embracing our weakness and finding our supreme satisfaction in him alone.