This is a God-saturated letter, and he means for us to experience a God-besotted God-saturated life.

How do you live a God-saturated God-besotted life in an increasingly hostile culture?

That's the question that John Piper answers in our new Light and True Series on First Peter 1 titled,

God-given hope for exiles. The series was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church

in the fall of 1993.

He's writing to people that he calls aliens of the dispersion,

and he identifies them as people who are elect or chosen, and then he qualifies the word

chosen or elect with three phrases in verse 2, 1, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

Number 2, buy the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Number 3, literally,

unto the obedience of Jesus Christ in the sprinkling with His blood, or that you may obey Jesus.

Now, did you notice anything about God in those three phrases?

God the Father, God the Spirit, God the Son, elect by the work of the Trinity,

chosen by the work of the Trinity. So, he begins his letter by saying,

I'm an apostle of Jesus, and you are chosen by God the Father through the work of the Spirit

unto the obedience of the Son. And what I feel when I come to the ends of those two verses is this

a God-saturated man. This is a God-saturated letter, and he means for us to experience a God-besotted

God-saturated life. It's a way he beginning. Now, first thing we have to do is nail down the

connotation or the meaning of the word alien. So, last night, without any coaching, I said Abraham,

what comes to your mind when I say alien? And, of course, he said, what's the context?

And I said, just any context, any context, just what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

And he said, either a green thing or a person from another country. Okay, now I know what I have to do.

It's not the green thing, okay? Alien in this verse is not the little et. It's not the brown thing or

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