Good morning my friends. Welcome back to the morning mindset. It is time for us to get

our minds aligned with the truth of God. We've been doing that most recently by

looking at the book of First Peter. This is a short letter that Peter, the apostle, wrote to a group of believers.

He's writing to encourage them, to instruct them about their faith,

and to give them hope and stability in the world in which they live because their culture

was in many ways like our culture. It was antagonistic toward Christ.

It was resistant to his message. And this book is full of references to the kinds of difficulties we experience as

believers when we live in a place like that. And Peter is giving them very practical instruction.

You see these people in particular lived in a place called Rome, where there were governors

and authorities and rulers who were not from a Christian worldview.

In fact, they were from what's called a polytheistic culture.

They believed in many gods and they actually worshipped many

gods. There were temples all over to the various gods that they worshipped and

among that worship was the emperor the emperor was believed to have been divine in some way and

citizens of Rome were to worship him.

And so the verses that Peter is about to say, the statements he's about to make, are very

strange statements at first when you hear them.

Because you would think Christians would become kind of militant or maybe even hostile toward that kind of

of behavior because it's so opposite of their faith in Jesus Christ, the one true

God.

Let's read it and then you'll see what I mean.

Verse 13 of chapter 2.

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