- Well, I hope you have a Bible with you this morning. We are continuing in our study of 1st Peter. I think I've already lost track, but I think this is the fourth week and our study of 1st Peter will be here in 1st Peter until November-ish, Lord willing. But this morning we're looking at chapter one verses 13 through 21. If you're new to the Bible, the big number is the chapter number, the little number is the verse number. And so I hope you can find 1st Peter chapter one verse 13 will go all the way through the end of verse 21 together, I think it'll be helped if you have it in front of you some way somehow. I'll meet you there in just a minute. If you're like most people at some point this summer, you're going to get away for a bit of vacation. And unless your idea of vacation is, I don't know, like a nice afternoon out in Albemarle, then your vacation is probably going to involve a journey. That might be just a short journey, right? To the coast for a beach weekend, might be a long journey across our country to a national park or some far-flung city. It might even be a farther journey across an ocean. But every journey, no matter how long, no matter how far you're traveling, every journey requires some measure of preparation. And the farther you're going and the longer you're going to be away, the more you need to prepare. So let's just imagine for a minute that someone pulled up outside after the service has done today. And they walked up to you and they offered to you and to your family tickets to travel to and stay in an all-inclusive, like exclusive resort in Fiji, right? All expenses are paid here. All you have to do is get on an airplane and go, and everything's going to be taken care of for you for, I don't know, however long you want to be in Fiji. But then let's imagine that they told you that the trip was off unless you could get on that airplane in 30 minutes. Most of us wouldn't make it if that was the condition of the deal, right? That's a long journey, we aren't ready. We haven't had any time to prepare. Right, if you're going to Fiji, you'd need passports and visas and probably immunizations. You'd need clothing and currency. I don't imagine anyone in the room is familiar with the current exchange rate between Fiji and dollars and US dollars. There are things here that you'd need to make sure we're in order before you left on this journey, right? Someone would need to watch the dog, someone would need to water the plants, check the mail, mow the lawn. If you're traveling that far, if your destination is that far away, that's the kind of journey that takes a lot of preparation. To make that trip to Fiji really work, you need time to plan. Time to make arrangements for the dog and the lawn and the flowers and the mail. Time to get the things that you need, time to get the things that you want. Time to make sure all your travel documents are in order. Time to make sure life here doesn't fall apart while you're gone. But if you had time, if someone pulled up after the service was done today and offered you that trip to Fiji, but you don't leave today, you leave two months from today, well, you'd probably take it. And then you'd spend your free time between now and then preparing, right? Because the trip to Fiji in August changes the way you live in Salisbury in June. Your future destination and the journey to get there, those things, they would impact the way you live in the present. That's the gist of our passage this morning. Peter, he's been telling us we have a future destination. We are exiles now, but we're on a journey home. It's a journey to this inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and unfading. It's a journey to a destination that's being kept in heaven for us. We have a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And this life is merely a journey to that eternal destination. As exiles, we have a home, a far country that the Lord is keeping for us. And eventually the Lord will take us home. We will finish that journey. But in today's passage, Peter, he gives us instructions for the journey. He tells us how to travel. He tells us what life must look like as we make this pilgrimage, not to an earthly city, but to the heavenly one. And Peter teaches us especially how our future destination impacts life in this present moment. He gives us three essential instructions for this journey. He tells us that we must hope fully. We must be holy and we must fear rightly. That's how we make this journey home, Peter says. Let me show you his instructions for us. This is 1 Peter 1, verses 13 to 21. The Apostle Peter writes, "Therefore, preparing your minds for action in being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy." And if you call on him his father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but he was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Church, this is God's word for us, the sworn in the grass, withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Let's pray. Father, give us hearts that are inclined to delight in your word this morning. And give us eyes that are open to the truth, ears that are open to an understanding of who you are, what you've done, and how you call us to journey to our eternal destination. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. All right, so our passage this morning, it starts with a word of great significance, the word therefore, it's a word that links our passage today with what we've studied so far. In other words, we should obey what Peter commands us to do in this passage today because of what he's already taught us in this letter. What's he already taught us? Well, he's been teaching us about our glorious inheritance in heaven. He's been teaching us about God's purpose for us, even in our suffering in this life. He's been teaching us about our privileged position in the history of his people, and he's been teaching us about our new identity in Christ, an identity that's initiated by God, that's secured by God, and that is kept until heaven by God. It's this identity as elect exiles. Peter says, you're born again to a living hope. You're guarded by his power until Christ returns, right? This is an identity that is received, not achieved. We don't earn our privileged place in God's family. We don't merit his mercy. No, those are gifts that come to us that we receive by faith. Our identity is received, it's not achieved. But once that identity is received, it is then expressed through obedience. That's why Peter begins with the word therefore. He's saying, because of your received identity, express that identity by obeying these commands. He gives us three. The first one comes in verse 13. He says, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Hope fully ingraced Peter commands. Now when life gets difficult, and we should remember that Peter's writing this letter to Christians who are perhaps already suffering because of their faith in Jesus, or Christians who he intends to prepare for suffering because of their faith in Jesus. When life gets difficult, it is natural, and it is normal for us to look to something that we can put our hope in, right? Something that can deliver us. Something that can change our circumstance. Something that can relieve the tension and the pressure and the pain that we feel because of whatever hardship we are enduring. And so if you're experiencing financial distress, right, it's natural and normal for you to, I don't know, hope in a new job, or to hope in a significant pay rates. If you have been diagnosed with cancer, it's natural and normal for you to put your hope in the right doctor, or the right treatment plan, right? A physician who can prescribe the right medication to cure you of the disease that you're suffering from. If you're suffering from loneliness, maybe a single mom struggling to make ends meet, right, it's natural and normal to hope in a husband, right, a soulmate who can be provider and protector who can care for you, providing for your needs, giving you the compassion and the care that you yearn for. Right, this is natural, this is normal. When we are suffering, we hope in something that will relieve that suffering. And rarely do we hope in things that are sinful things. None of those things that I mentioned, these examples are sinful, a better paying job, cure from a disease, a companion, a helpmate. These are good things, not sinful things, unless they become ultimate things, right? If a new job or a raise or a cure or a husband, or anything like these things, if these become our greatest goal in life, then these things become our functional saviors, right, the things that we believe we need most in order to be truly happy. It's because we're prone to that, that Peter writes to us, and he doesn't say, set your hope on grace. He says, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. See, Peter knows that there are few Christians in the world who will completely ignore the grace that will be ours when Jesus comes again to take us home, to give us the imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance that's kept in heaven for us. Now, we don't ignore God's grace entirely. We just don't naturally set our hope fully on that grace. We hope in that grace, but only in part. Or to say that another way, we hope in grace plus something else. Grace plus a better-paying job. Grace plus a better relationship. Grace plus good health. And that instinct to add something to God's grace, it's actually profoundly dangerous to our souls, because whether we realize it or not, whatever we add to grace ultimately takes the place of grace in our hearts. Right, the thing that we long for, it's never the grace, it's whatever we've added to grace. The thing that we're convinced that we need that will orient our lives around the pursuit of, the thing that will run after with all of our strength, it's not grace, it's whatever we've added to grace. And so this is a profoundly dangerous impulse to us. The plus always and inevitably becomes our true God. The one thing or the one person we've truly put our hope in. And so Peter's command here, when he says hope fully in grace. Right, pray that that word fully, it would be like an arrow with barbs in it, like it's lodged in your heart this morning. That word fully, that's the thrust of his command. When Peter writes, hope fully in grace. He's warning us against something. He's warning us against trusting in Jesus plus anything else. We disregard this warning to our peril. But Peter knows that. And so he writes to help us. Right, he gives us in verse 13, really a two-part strategy that will help us hope fully in God's grace. First, he says we do that. We hope fully in grace by preparing our minds for action. Now, you know this if you're staring at the King James version at this moment, but literally Peter writes there, he writes, "Gird up the loins of your mind." We don't talk like that anymore, for good reason. And as a result, many of us were unaware that our minds even had loins to begin with, right? But Peter says, "Your mind, my mind, they have loins. We better gird them up." What does that mean? Well, we need a picture, right? Like the clothing a man would wear in the ancient world when Peter's writing this. And men in the ancient world, they wore these like long, flowing robes or tunics. And they looked very dignified, but they were completely impractical if you needed to get anything serious done, right? Like if you needed to plow your field or run somewhere or got for a bit, fight a battle, right? That long, flowing robe was in the way. So what would you do? Well, you would gird up your loins. You would take the tail end of that robe or tunic and you would pick it up and you would tuck it into your belt so that you could move freely and without restriction. That way you could run where you needed to run and fight whatever battle you needed to fight. Essentially girding up your loins, it was preparing to do something serious. Today we might say, it's like, "Roll up your sleeves." Like get to work, prepare yourself. And so this is what Peter wants us to do, but I want you to notice he doesn't say, gird up your loins and in general, since he says, "Gird up the loins of your mind," or my translation, "Prepare your mind for action." And then the second thing he tells us, the second part of his strategy, he tells us to be sober-minded. So prepare your minds and be sober-minded. What does it mean to be sober-minded? Perhaps like the easiest way to understand it is to think about what its opposite might be. Typically we think about the opposite of soberness as drunkenness. What's the mind of a drunk man like? Well, he's out of control. He can't see straight. He can't think clearly. He doesn't process information correctly. A drunk man doesn't govern his desires or his actions. He's a danger to himself and to others because he's unpredictable, he's unreliable, he won't listen to reason, he won't be swayed by wise counsel. A drunk man is a ticking time bomb because even if he knows what is best, he's not thinking clearly about what is best. And so Peter, by contrast, he urges us, in our minds, to be self-controlled, to be disciplined, to be single-minded. He wants us focused. He wants us to be disciplined in the ways that we set our mind on what? Well, on grace, on our future inheritance. He wants us to be disciplined in the way that we focus our minds to hope fully in that inheritance. Now, it might be surprising to you the way that Peter is focusing on our minds here. Perhaps you know that the Bible teaches that it is truly the heart and not the mind that's the control center for the human life. In other words, the Bible rightly understands that we are governed and that our lives play out as a result of what we love more than what we think, right? Our desires, our affections. These are the things that live in our hearts. And those are the things that rule us, that drive us and that define who we are and what we do. So shouldn't Peter be talking about our hearts here? Shouldn't he be saying, "Gird up the ones of your heart and be sober-hearted?" If that's a thing? Peter doesn't say that because he rightly understands that the mind is a window into the heart and that whatever your heart loves and desires flows downstream from what your mind is set upon. Let me illustrate this just in a silly way if I can. Let's imagine for a minute that your singular life obsession is the Chick-fil-A milkshake. It's a pretty worthy life obsession. And because you live here in the South, the Lord has highly favored you and you're within 20 minutes of a Chick-fil-A basically at all times. And so you can acquire this life obsession every day of the week if you want to, except Sundays, of course. And maybe, like if you're wise, you can even like fall into some kind of pattern if you're gonna pursue this obsession on a daily basis, right, like chocolate on days that are odd numbers on the calendar, vanilla on days that are even numbers on the calendar, peppermint, all the month of December, just throw the rhythm out, peppermint, all the month of December. I'm just brainstorming here. I don't know what I'm doing here. Just imagine, hypothetically, that this is your thing, right? Chick-fil-A milkshake every single day except for Sunday. You could live out that desire. You could pursue that desire. And pursuing that desire would be pretty gratifying on a certain level, but enter your mind into that equation. And imagine the day that you're in Chick-fil-A, ready to order your daily obsession. And you see for the first time what the FDA now requires, Chick-fil-A to display on their menu, that is the nutritional information pertaining to your daily obsession. What thought is going to occur to you, the day that your mind encounters that information for the first time, where you're going to realize that your daily obsession is actually killing you. And it won't happen immediately. It won't be like a light switch that you've just flicked on or off. But that new information, as you set your mind on that new information, it's going to change what you desire. It's going to change what you love. It's going to reshape your affections. Why? Well, because you want to live, and your mind is telling you that consuming a Chick-fil-A milkshake every day is probably not a good way to accomplish living for long, at least. This is the relationship between our minds and our hearts. And this is why Peter tells us to prepare our minds for action or to be so reminded. Our minds, they shape what we love, what we desire, and ultimately what we do. And so Peter's urging us to discipline our minds, to think upon the glorious inheritance that we have because of Christ Jesus. We will only hope fully in that inheritance if our minds are focused on that inheritance. By nature, our minds are going to be focused on every shiny object that we see. Peter says, discipline your mind to ignore those distractions, and instead fix yourself, fix your eyes, fix your mind on the inheritance that is yours in Christ Jesus. And so, Church, we should read God's Word to behold this inheritance. We should sit under biblical preaching to behold this inheritance. We should gather with other Christians around the Word of God so that we can be hold this inheritance. We must discipline our minds, preparing them for action, engaging in sober-mindedness all so that we might ultimately grow in love for and hope in the grace that is to be ours in Christ Jesus. Naturally, we will not do this. Naturally, our minds will chase after any number of things that we think will make our life here on earth better. Peter tells us, gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that is to be yours when Jesus returns. Sometimes, I hear, just one more thing about this whole mind business, because sometimes I hear Christians elevate the heart above the mind in a way that I think is really unhelpful to us. And they'll do that and they'll sound good what they're trying to do. And I think really their motives are good, but they'll say things like, "I don't want just head knowledge about God. I want heart knowledge." And the thing that's right about that is that we don't, any of us, want a face that's just totally intellectual. We don't want to just have big theological brains but hearts that aren't the same size or shaped by all that information. But that doesn't ever really work, this idea that we just want to heart for God and we don't really care about what our minds think or know about God. Because the truth is, the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. If you don't know things about who God is, what his purposes in the world are, what he has done to save you and to bring a people to himself, if you don't know those things, then you won't have a heart for those things either. And there's a limit here, the degree to which you have set your mind on the truths of the gospel will always be the limit to which you actually love God in response to that gospel. So maybe be people who are so reminded and prepared in our minds to set our hope fully on grace. That's the first command that Peter gives us. I'm going to try to move faster. Here's the second. He says, "Be holy as God is holy. Be holy as God is holy." Look at verse 14. He writes, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance." In other words, don't live the way you used to live before you were born again, before you had received God's great mercy, before you were promised this glorious eternal inheritance. Don't live like who you used to be. Instead, verse 15, "As he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written." Now, Peter quotes from the Old Testament book of Leviticus. He says, "You shall be holy for I am holy." That's God's voice. You shall be holy for I am holy. There's the second command, right? Be holy. What's the standard for holiness? How do we know what holiness looks like? Well, God says, "As I, the God of heaven and earth, am holy, so you also be holy." As obedient children of the Heavenly Father were to resemble our Heavenly Father in His holiness in our conduct. Do you ever pick up an old family photo and find yourself just kind of struck by how much one member of your family looks like another? Even when those family members are separated by generations, I'm always kind of fascinated by that. That happens to me every time I look at a photo of my dad's dad. Now, there are a lot of ways in which my dad and I resemble one another, but I am the spitting image, not of my father, but of his father. It's uncanny, like when I look at a photo of him when he was my age, it's like looking in a mirror. Obviously, my grandfather was a ruggedly handsome dude. Similarly, Krista, my wife, she has a younger brother who we don't see very often, but when we do see him or when we see pictures of him, we're immediately struck by how much our oldest son resembles him. Sadly, from my oldest son, he didn't pick up my ruggedly handsome good looks. He instead looks like his uncle. I'm kidding. But when we run into stuff like that, it doesn't surprise us, right? Even when it's across generations. Like, it's not surprising when a grandson looks like his grandfather or when a nephew looks like his uncle. That's normal. We expect family members to share basic physical traits. What Peter's urging here is that we aspire to that same kind of family resemblance in the family of God. Of course, he's not talking about a physical resemblance. We're to aspire for a resemblance in conduct, in our conduct. We should look like our heavenly father. We should be holy as he is holy. When you look at your life, when you consider your conduct, do you see an increasing family resemblance? You should. We should. God is perfectly holy, and we won't see perfection in ourselves in this life, of course. But we should see progress. We should see more signs of holiness today than we saw weeks ago or months ago or years ago. We should see progress. Are you growing in holiness? Are you becoming more and more holy like your heavenly father is holy? Are you becoming more patient or more loving or more kind? When you don't get your way, and my life, I found that that's the moment that reveals who I really am, when I don't get what I want, when I don't get my way, when you don't get your way, are you responding with more grace, with more kindness, with more gentleness? When people sin against you, are you responding with an increasing measure of forgiveness and kindness and mercy? Or do you hold grudges? Are you bitter? Or are you increasingly willing and able to forgive others for their sins against you? What about the way he used the things the Lord has given you? Your resources, time, energy, money. Are you increasingly using these things for the good of others and the glory of God? Is the way you steward what God has entrusted to you, marked by love for God and love for neighbor? These are the kinds of questions that we should ask ourselves, because that's the kind of progress we should be seeing in our lives. If we truly are God's adopted children, we're going to look more and more and more, like the character of our father, which begs another question. What do we do if we don't see that family resemblance? What do we do if we aren't looking more and more and more like our Heavenly Father? Well, I'll tell you, the Bible's answer to that question is actually stunning in its simplicity. The Bible says that if we long to look like our Heavenly Father, we should look at our Heavenly Father. If we long to look like Him, we should look at Him. And this is remarkable grace because if I want to look like my grandfather, I can't change a thing by simply staring at Him, right? Like I'd have to take real action and maybe change my haircut. That's a joke I don't have here. I could potentially alter things about my appearance so that I could look more like Him, but that would be very difficult and very challenging. And it would be on me to make that happen. The Bible says that's not how we grow in the likeness of our God. Now there is real effort that goes into growing in holiness, but we begin to grow in holiness simply by staring at the one who is holy, by beholding the one who is perfect in holiness. If we long to look like our Heavenly Father, we need to look at our Heavenly Father. We become like what we behold. And so to grow in holiness, we need to look upon our Holy God with eyes of faith. And as we do that, we can trust that the Holy Spirit will work in us to make us resemble our Heavenly Father. And here's where your mind comes into play yet again. We need to fill our minds with truths about who God is. We need to fill our minds with deeper understandings of what He is like. We need to know His purposes, His works, His ways. We need to examine His characteristics and His attributes. We need to behold Him for when we behold Him, we will become like Him. That's the promise of 2 Corinthians 3, 18. The apostle Paul, inspired by the Spirit, he wrote, "And we all with unveiled face, be holding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. As we behold the Lord in His glory, we will be transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to another. This is how we can be holy as He is holy." So we are to hopefully, we are to be holy. And then the final command Peter gives, we must fear rightly in our time of exile. Look with me at verse 17, Peter writes, "And if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. Conduct yourself with fear," Peter says, "and he means a fear of the Lord, which is altogether different than something like a fear of the dark, or a fear of heights, or a fear of snakes. And the fear of the Lord involves a humble reverence for and before God. It's about worship. And I hope you'll notice that this fear of the Lord, it's grounded in an almost paradoxical understanding of God's nature." Right, Peter points to the fact that God is Father. He's tender. He's loving. He's near. He's a provider. But then Peter also points to the fact that God is judge. But He's holy. He's righteous. His Word, it carries weight and authority. And it's only when we see God as each of those things linked together. It's only when we see God as both Father and judge that we will grow in our fear of Him. And then Peter tells us that one other key to growing in our fear of the Lord is that we remember that we were ransomed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Right? He says that in verse 18, he says, "Knowing that you were ransomed," so verse 17, "conduct yourselves with fear," here's how, verse 18, "knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ." Like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. How precious was this blood? Well, Christ, verse 20, was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Peter tells us before he was revealed in the last time to us. Why is the blood of Jesus so precious? Well, it's because Jesus was known by God from before the foundation of the world. The Father knew and loved the Son before time began. The Father's affection for the Son as is an eternal affection, the height and width and breadth and length of God's love for the Son is unmatched. Right? We cannot rival it. God loved no one and no thing more than he loved the Son. Yet the Father, he said the Son to pay the price of our ransomed by shedding his blood for us because of his love for us. Peter says this is the truth that should pierce our souls and move us to fear the Lord rightly. When we've grasped how precious, how infinitely and eternally precious the blood of Christ was, then and only then, can we grasp how precious and priceless his love for us is? When we hold on to those things, we'll be moved to fear him rightly. You see, Church, the worth and value of something that inevitably shapes how we handle it, how we respond to it, how we live, the worth and value of something that changes us. I remember the first time my family and I walked into the home of Joyce and Bob Jacobs. It was October of 2013, I believe my kids were like ages seven and six and two and a half. I was the young new pastor of Capitol City Christian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. Bob and Joyce were senior saints in that congregation, longtime members of that church and they wanted to welcome me, to welcome us. And so they invited us over for dinner. It was very kind of them. But we walked in the doors of their house and it was immediately clear to us that it had been a very long time since Bob and Joyce had had young children in their house at all. They had like fragile knickknacks all over the place. Nothing was even remotely kid-proof. And then there was the table. The table was set like Bob and Joyce were expecting the king and queen over for dinner. They really intended it to be a kind gesture to honor us, which we appreciated. But honestly, I stood there and Christian was next to me and we looked at this table and I could feel her blood pressure rising next to me. Joyce had folded all the cloth napkins into swans on each table. Like the six-year-old immediately picked one up and threw it at his brother. It was comical. She used her fine china, crystal glasses. Things were just set so beautifully. I'm thinking of the sippy cups and plastic plates from Target that my children would typically throw at one another at the dinner table. And here we have this fabulous spread before us. And the entire meal was lovely. I don't remember most of it. What I really remember is the fact that Kristen was deeply stressed the entire time because she knew the value of the plates and the glasses and everything. And the worth and value of something inevitably shapes how we handle it, right? You handle the cheap plate from Target differently than you handle the fine china that's been handed down for generations. How do we grow in fear of the Lord? How do we fear him rightly as we conduct ourselves throughout our time of exile? We remember the price paid for our ransom. We remember the precious blood of Christ. Today as we continue in worship, we'll celebrate the Lord's Supper. May this be a time when we consider when we discipline our minds to think upon the price paid for our ransom, the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Pray with me, let church.
