Not Of This World Pt. 19
Otherworldly Advice
2 Peter 3:14-18
Orchard Church | Pastor Jim Jackson
Otherworldly Advice | Not Of This World Ep. 19
are in 2 Peter 3 verse 14, therefore beloved. Since you are waiting for these, so the these he's talking about is that God is going to close up history. If you missed last week's sermon, you can go back and listen to it, but it's the idea that God is going to destroy the world and everything in it. And so because that's going to be true, how should we live? Therefore, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him, speaking of Jesus, without spot, circle spot or blemish, and be at peace, circle peace, and count the patience of the Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved brother Paul, circle Paul, also wrote to you, according to the wisdom, circle wisdom, given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters, speaking of end time matters. Underline the next sentence. There are some things in them, Paul's letters, that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable men twist, circle twist, to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, know this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away, underline carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. Underline all of verse 18, but grow, circle grow, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to him be the glory, circle glory, both now and to the day of eternity, amen. If you got your notes, pull them out. They should be inside your bulletin if you came on campus. If you're online with us below the video on YouTube, you'll see it in the description area. You'll see a link click on that link and my notes will come up. And number one is this, focus on your attitude. Where are my people with attitude here this morning? This is going to be a good service. So many times when we talk about having attitude, we got a little attitude. Your husbands are brave when they say that to you as wives, taking their lives, sometimes into their own hands, sometimes your kids have attitude, sometimes your wife has attitude, sometimes your husband woke up and has a bad attitude. You get on the 15, everybody's got a bad attitude. I'm gonna walk with me, okay, we're gonna close up this whole series and Peter's gonna give us his last best advice. Here's a man of God, a man who literally walked with Jesus is gonna tell us how to live for God. Here's, look at me, this isn't over speak. I'm going to tell you today how to literally finish your life so that your life matters at the end. It's that big. So I'm going to give you some principles to help you live for God so that your life, so you don't fail at living. That's the thing, that's where we're going today. So here it is. Knowing he will be executed soon and this may be his last chance to encourage people to live for God. Peter distills down God's life strategy for believers. I want you to think about something. If you had seven sentences left to live, you're dying. You have a heart attack here on the floor. You get into a car accident. You know you're gonna die on the side of the 15. I visit you in the hospital. Ready? Let's rewind to the end of your life really quick. Let's just go there. Now we're here, okay? You literally have a minute, 60 seconds to live and let's just say you have enough energy to write out seven sentences or text seven sentences or speak seven sentences and that's it and you're done. Now you're going to see God. Like let's go to that moment for a second. What would be the seven sentences you would end your life with? If I'm standing next to you, what are the most important things you just got done telling me about how I should live my life because you're not going to live anymore? What would be the last seven things you would tell your kids as you lie dying? What would be the last seven things you tell somebody on the soccer field or whatever the kids, the people that you did life with because your kids played soccer together and you're having a heart attack on the on the sidelines or whatever. What is the last things you say? These are the most important things. Do not fail to do these things. That's literally what I'm going to talk about right now. This is the last seven sentences of Peter and he's going to tell us how to live our lives well for the glory of God because he's going to die. He's in jail right now. He's in prison in Rome 2,000 years ago. He knows he's not getting out. This is the end of his second and probably last letter he ever wrote. Here's what it looks like today. You can actually go visit the Mamortine prison in Rome. If you take a journey there, you can you can find this place right down in very close to downtown Rome and it was a very beautiful building and they had their own water. They had a cistern in below the they dug a well below the actual house and they you know bored out a hole and they just scoop out water and they pull up a bucket in this well. Well they decided to drain this area and they use it as a maximum security prison. So if Rome say conquered a land and they captured a king or captured a commander or whatever, somebody they're going to put to death publicly. They don't want to kill them on the battlefield. They want to kill them publicly to make a show of like hey we beat this country. They would put them in this prison and basically if you ended up in this well it's a one-way trip to death. When when you get pulled out you're not going back to your old life. You're you're ending your life. This is where Paul and Peter probably ended their lives was in this was in this prison. So you can go visit it today go take a tour through it and Peter probably through an amenuensis or secretary either dictated this letter to them or maybe even wrote because it's obvious dark in there. It's damp. You're cold. It smells. You don't eat well. You're you're probably famished the majority of the time shivering a lot. And imagine Peter at this level of his life. The guy who's literally walked and talked with Jesus. He's going to end his life in a hole like this. So I want to put that in your mind that this is the context of the end of his letter. As God will destroy the whole universe at the end of history, believers are to have an eternal focus. This focus starts with the heart of Thanksgiving for God. Here we go. I'm going to tie in last week to this week. If God is going to burn everything, he's going to burn this world. He's going to burn your TikTok account. He's going to burn everything. He's going to burn our son. He's going to burn the black holes. He's going to burn galaxies. He's going to burn everything in the universe. He's going to torch it all, which is why I don't recycle. He's going to do it all. He's going to take care of everything. He's going to dissolve. It says the whole universe, which we looked at last week. So now Peter is going to say this. If that's the way the whole universe is going to end, why are you not living for eternal things? Why are you living for things that are going to burn? Because many of us just get obsessed. We get obsessed with politics. We get obsessed with our image. We get obsessed with our influence. We get obsessed with our job. I'm going to make this money. I'm going to buy this boat. I'm going to get this next car. I'm going to get this next house. I'm moving here. I'm moving there. Whatever. We get so obsessed with the here and now when at the end of the day, when you're dead, all the stuff you've worked for that isn't God-oriented, you just leave here to be burned. And so Peter's going from prison. Hey, let's change our focus. Because where your focus is is where your life goes. If my focus is on here, on these things of this world, alone, then I just, I've literally wasted my life because God's going to burn at all. But if while I'm living, I have some of these things. I have some wealth. I have some influence. I have great relationships, whatever it is, that's okay. That can be a blessing of God. But if I'm living for those things, I've wasted my life. But if I'm living for God who gives me some of those things to enjoy, I've had the best of both worlds because I'm living for the glory of God and God has blessed my life while I've lived it. See how that works? If I'm just living for the things, I lose it all. But if I'm living for the God who gives me some things to enjoy, that's the best of both things because I'm living for the glory of God and I get to enjoy this life as well. Here's our principle. Your attitude should display a heart of gratitude. Hey, where's my complainers in here? Who loves to complain? Oh, you just got pointed out. You know who I'm talking about because it might be you. Oh, gosh, did you see the traffic today? Oh, look at my hair. Look at the political... Look who we get to choose from for president. Oh, my job. Oh, these clothes. I can't find anything to wear. Oh, my cat. Shoot on something, tore up something again. Oh, my dog pooped on that thing again. Oh, my kids, why? Listen, listen, ready? What comes out of your mouth is a reflection of what's in your heart. If all you can dig out of your heart is complaining and criticism that shows you have a heart of ungratitude toward God for all the good He's given you. Let me clarify your mind. You don't have anything that's good, not a relationship, not money, not anything that God hasn't given you or allowed you to have. So be very careful when you start being critical of things because criticism is oftentimes just covered selfishness, which means this. It's not the way I want it, so I'm going to complain about it. This isn't the way I want this. I'm going to complain rather than saying that might not be the way I want it, but I'm thankful to God for what He's given me. I don't have everything I want, but man, the things I do have is just a blessing from God. So thank you, God, because I don't need these things. God just gives me these things to enjoy, but that's from the hand of a good God that loves me and loves you. So here's the idea. All of us hit hard times. All of us will have health issues. All of us will have relationships that are blowing apart. All of us will have stress. All of us will have anxiety. All of us will feel depressed at certain times. There is no one that gets away from that, not Peter, not me, not you, not Jesus, not anyone who's lived in the real world will ever get away from those things. There isn't like a life you can live where you're like, "I'm so happy every day." The true life is one where you go, "I bring my attitude of gratitude to my circumstances and thank God in them. I might not appreciate my circumstances, but I can always appreciate the God who will get me through my circumstances." That way, you know that God is with me. God is not against me. Even if these circumstances are against me, I know God is with me in them. When you're critical and you're a complainer and you don't have any thanksgiving to God, that just shows your heart has no gratitude for God, not what he's done in the past, not what he might do in the future, not what he's doing right now. Because here's the reality, right? Here's the heart teaching. God puts you in difficulty to see where your heart's really at. So, nothing exposes your heart like hard times and nothing exposes what your heart is, how your heart exists than what you say out of your mouth. Let me flip it over like this. If people see you coming down the hallway at work and go like this, because their lives are hard enough, they just don't want to hear you complain about something else or like talk about politics for the 4,000th time this week, or talk about just how hard things are or how your health is or whatever. It's like everybody's life is hard, but here's the thing, God is strong. And people need to know God is strong. And so, even if you're going through difficulty, the heart of gratitude says, my children are going through this hard time, but man, I know God's working in my life, God's working my family's life, blah, blah, blah. I have these health issues I'm dealing with, but I know God's, you know, I have faith in God, blah, blah, and all of a sudden people are like, dude, you got some faith. I don't have faith like that. How are you living your life like that? Because I just want to complain all the time, things aren't my way. But like you seem to have a different attitude. Look at this, Colossians 3 17, Colossians 3 17. So all you complainers, these are your life verses, get ready. Colossians 3 17, and whatever you do in Word, what comes out of your mouth, or deed, what you do with your body, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Everything give thanks. Everything give thanks. In my hardship, give thanks. When I'm financially in difficult times, give thanks. When money's flowing my way and things are going well, I give thanks. When all your relationships are going awesome and sweet and everybody just loves you and wants to give you a bro hug, give thanks. When everybody's like, I don't even like you at all, I block thee. Give thanks. Maybe you didn't need those people in your life anyway. So the reality is this, always give thanks. Even if things aren't good, God is still good. When my mind gets right, my life will get right. When my mind is always poisoned by my selfishness, because I always complain about things, and I don't have things given to God, then literally I start to drift away from God. Let me tell you this too. Many times our complaining is just different shades of what is really good in our life. What am I saying? I'm saying this. There are many people around the world that would trade their life with your life in five seconds because they don't have running water in the house. They don't have hot water at all. They have to go to the bathroom outside their home. They're scared sometimes of wild animals coming into their hot and their home and dragging their children away. So to this debt, like right now, as I'm speaking, there are churches where they're scared that the government is going to come through and take their pastor and put him in jail or kill him, literally outside the church. So just understand this. While none of us have perfect lives, most people or many people in the world would go, "I'll get it." Southern California, here I come. You can go live way over here where I'm at with nothing. But if all you're complaining about is the free Wi-Fi not loading fast enough, I'm in. If that's one of your hardships, if that's one of the things you play, stupid wife lunch, you're so free. What are you doing? Many times we just complain and it's just the shades of God's goodness. We just haven't gotten things that we want, but God's given us everything that matters. "In appreciation for God, believers must be diligent to meet Jesus without spiritual spots or blemishes. While God has made us positionally perfect in Christ, Christ has made us perfect in Him. Positionally, we are like Christ in front of God because if our sins are forgiven, Christ has made us that way, which we celebrate our communion at the end of every service, which we'll do today too. While God has made us positionally perfect in Christ, we are to practice perfection for Christ. Here's the heavy lifting on your character today. Here's our principle. We will never be perfect behaviorally. We're always going to fail at some level. But we can always give perfect effort. God expects you to be better. Look at me. Look at me. You can be better than you are today. For God, you can be better. You can spend your money wiser for the things of God. You can watch your mouth in the things you say and the vulgar things you do and say. You can be better. All of us can be better. Your thought life can be cleaner. Everything about all of us can be better. So that's what I'm talking about. We will never be perfect. I will never be Jesus walking on the earth. But I can be more like Jesus than old me today. I'll never be perfect, but I can pursue perfection, which is I need to clean up areas of my life. So I love that that Peter says this. Look at it in verse 14, end of verse 14. It says be diligent to be found by Jesus without spot or blemish. What the heck does that mean? Someday you're going to go see God. I'm going to speak into your future right now. I'm going to tell you the truth of what's going to happen. You're going to see God. It's not made up. It's not mythology. It's not some religious mumbo jumbo. You're going to die. You're going to go see God. It's the truth, okay? On that day, you are going to wish that you had done more for God with this life than you've done up to this point. You're going to wish, in other words, the things you're going to leave to burn. You're going to wish you had done less of that and more God stuff. That's a guarantee. So here's the idea. Peter says this, be found by him when you go see God without spot or blemish. And it's a physical metaphor of a spiritual picture. So if you've ever had a weird spot on your skin or your kid has had a weird like mole or something, you're like, we need to go get that checked out. So you go to the doctor and you see a weird spot on your skin or whatever it is. And the doctor looks at it and says whatever it is. It looks like you have skin cancer. But what do they do for skin cancer? They usually carve it out and scoop it out and stitch it so it can heal. So what's true physically, which is if you have a spot or a blemish, let's fix it. It's also true spiritually. What is the cancer that's stuck to your soul? The thing you haven't dealt with in your life. The thing that's keeping you from really pursuing God. Then I really got to control how I complain. I just, I'm not grateful to God. I'm just kind of always angry and things are never good. I don't have a heart of thanksgiving. I have a heart of just selfishness because things aren't my way. There's just the sexual things that you've done. You're like, I keep on doing that thing. I go places online, I shouldn't go. I hang out with people, I shouldn't hang out like whatever that thing is, whatever God's calling you, because all of us are at different spots in our walk with God. That's the thing that Peter's saying, go after that. Let God carve that thing out of your soul so that it doesn't grow and start to hinder your walk with God. Because I'm dealt with sin and I'm talking habitual. It'll never be perfect. You're going to have to just repent every day. But I'm talking to things that like, it just sticks to your soul. And you're like, man, I need to really, I need to fix that part of my character. That's what I'm talking about. You take it to Jesus, the surgeon, and he just goes, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. That's surgery, by the way. And now you can heal. Now you can get better. Now you can develop new habits that are godly, rather than ugly habits that are ungodly. That's the idea. Be found by God without spotter blemish spiritually. Change who you are so that you can live this life the best way for God so that when you see him, you go, God, I gave you my best. The things I was weak in, man, I just gave it to you and you helped me in those areas. I didn't finish my life stumbling toward God. I finished my life strong and God was pleased with my life. Never perfect, but pleased. So I've been a football coach as I told you many times for like a decade. And now we're going to see probably the Minnesota Vikings win the Super Bowl this year. Don't shake your head. Here's the deal. When I coach young men in football, one of the things that we always talk about is practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice. Stinks sometimes because it's like, who wants to do this again? But guess what? You know the more you do it, hopefully with repetition, practice becomes permanent. And we have a phrase in our culture. Practice makes, that's actually not true. Because bad practice makes bad playing. You know what actually is true? Perfect practice leads to hopefully perfect playing. Here's the idea. When you practice, if you're practicing perfection, chances are when you hit the game time, you have a better chance of being perfect in that game. If you don't practice well, if you don't practice perfection, if you practice sloppy, if you practice not well, there's almost zero chance of when the rubber hits a road at the game, you're going to actually do what's beneficial for yourself or the team. What's true physically is also true spiritually. The more you give your life to God, the more every day you're like, God, how can I serve you today rather than here are the things that I'm really irritated about. When you wake up with an attitude of gratitude, it's amazing how much better your day goes. It's amazing how like, let's focus on God, not focus on me. And God then begins to guide your life. That's a practice over and over and over. Train your mind to focus on God. You'll be amazed how much different your life goes. The course your life takes is the view that your mind has. You will never be a failure focusing on God. Hey, listen to me. Many of us are scared to fail. We're scared to look bad. We're scared to like, I don't want to venture out and do this thing. Because if I fail, I'll feel bad about myself. Somebody else will mock me or whatever. Here's the thing. You will never fail at living if you serve God. You will never fail. Your life will never be wasted. You want your life to matter to your children, to your grandkids, to somebody in your life that looks at you and goes, man, that's how to live life. If that's the kind of life you want when you serve God, and every day you just get up and go, God, how can I serve you today and serve my family, or serve the people at work, serve the 15 freeway? How can I serve others and bring you glory? You'll be amazed that God will guide your steps and guide you to the right job, and guide you to the right football team, Minnesota. He will guide you. All of a sudden you'll have wisdom that you never had before. You want to know why you get wisdom? Because now you're connected with God rather than just going, I don't know, I'm just going to do whatever I feel like. Listen, your feelings will lead you to failure, but your faith will lead you to success with God. You will never fail your life following God, never. It's impossible. It's impossible to fail at life following Jesus. But you can fail your life many times if you do something other than Jesus. Here's our principle. A God-focused life starts with a God-focused mind. A God-focused life starts with a God-focused mind. And I thought of this before the first service today. I didn't have, for whatever reason, God didn't give it to me when I was typing these notes up. So write this down. Write it down. Take your pen out. Wake him up. Tell him to write it down. Both your boys. Tell him. Write this down. Write it. Everything emanates from your attitude. Everything emanates from your attitude. People are going to die in your life. You're going to get sick. You're going to lose a job. The president that you wanted that you voted for might not get in office. Relax. Relax. Jesus is still on his throne. Still follow Jesus. Don't freak out if things don't go your way in your life. From an external standpoint, follow God with your spirit and you'll be amazed how much peace you live in in the chaos of our culture. Everything emanates from your attitude. Which leads us to number two. Number one, focus on your attitude. Have the right attitude. Number two, focus on your awareness. Focus on your awareness. Within the apostles' lifetimes, people were already distorting their teaching. They're still living and they're distorting their teaching. This included Paul, the apostle, whose difficult theology was often used by heretical teachers to teach error and manipulate people. As their letters were already considered scripture, while they were living, people were to study those and listen as they were taught. So everybody, look at me. Peter's living and he's talking about Paul, who's probably dead by this time, but they were contemporaries. Think about this. People were already taking Paul and Peter's letters and as they taught them, they would twist the scriptures because some of Paul's letters are very difficult. So what they would do is they'd create this like weird twisting of it and people would kind of go, that kind of sounds weird, or they'd create a system or whatever, and then all of a sudden people would go, I guess that's what it is, but it wasn't the clear teaching of scripture. And so even in Peter's lifetime, he's going, even while I'm still living, people are twisting scripture. And I love this humility with Peter. If you didn't know this, Paul, the apostle who wrote a bunch of books in your New Testament, he wasn't an apostle of Jesus, or a disciple of Jesus while Jesus was living. There was the 12. Paul actually hated Christians. He was known as Saul before he became Paul. He hated Christians. He wanted to kill them all. But then Jesus transformed his life after Jesus died and resurrected, showed up to him in a vision. It says he needed to change your life. And all of a sudden he became one of the greatest Christians to ever live. Peter could go, hey, Paul didn't walk with Jesus like your boy, Peter. Who was Jesus the right hand man? Me. Who was Jesus the best friend? Me. So don't you know what? Don't listen to Paul. He's a little weird anyway. Peter could have been all like, hey, you know what? Who's the man? I'm the man. Even Jesus said I'm the man. So who's more man, man than me? Nobody. But you know what? He goes, Paul's awesome. And with the wisdom God gives him, he writes some tough stuff, which other pastors twist. But I appreciate Paul. And I love that about Peter. He was humble right to the very end. And here's what I want to tell you to. Ready? There's a lot of whack teaching out there. Be very careful who you listen to. Be very careful with the podcast. Find a dude that'll teach you out of the Bible, and not just what he wants to teach you about stuff. Find a guy that'll teach you something out of scripture, even if it's hard teaching. Find that guy. Because those guys are like gold. And even from Peter, he's like, guys will teach you some whack stuff, but make sure you find a guy that'll actually teach you scripture. And that was 2000 years ago. Imagine how much whack stuff we have now. I literally had a mom come up to me after the second service in between these two services. She goes, I think my son's in a cult. Because they're like sending him. He's like 19. They're sending him like to the other side of the world and stuff. And he doesn't even know what his true walk with God is. He got caught up in this weird thing online and blah, blah, blah. And they're totally like twisting scripture and stuff. And I literally taught on exactly what her son's going through. So let me tell you this. Absorb biblical teaching and reject everything that's whack. If it's not coming out of the Bible, just go, nope. Because scripture can be easily twisted to get it to say whatever you want it to say. So here we go. As their letters were already considered scripture, while they were living, people were to study them and listen as they were taught. Here's our principle. Fill your mind with the truth of God and there won't be room for error. Hey, fill your mind with the truth of God. Because many times we don't listen to God or we don't fill it with God's word and then we let people's opinions get, fill the rest of the void. Nope, fill your mind with God's word and you'll be amazed how your mind stays close to God. It doesn't have room for error. I'm going to give you three things. Look at me. Three things. If you do these three things, you will not fail at life. This is like Tony Robbins on spiritual crack. So if you're like, I really want to be successful, get rid of all that secular garbage. I'm going to give you three things that will literally transform your life. You do these three simple things. I should write a book. Three simple ways. I'm going to give it to you for free right now. Here it is. The best way to keep a God-focused mind is to focus on the teaching of God's word, the songs of His greatness, which we just got done singing and we're going to sing again, and the fellowship of His people. Here's the three ways you will stay on track with God. Here's the three ways. If you do this the rest of your life, you will not fail at life. And here's the principle. The Trinity of spiritual vitality is Scripture, which is literally what I'm doing right now. Learn Scripture, read it for yourself. Listen to guys that have teach God's word well. Songs we sing to God, we sing about the glory of Christ, and then support. Scripture, songs support. Fill your mind with God. Listen to Scripture, read Scripture, listen to worship songs. Eminem is not going to teach you about Jesus. Get godly stuff in your mind. And then guess what? You need other godly people in your life. Get some support. Look in my eyes. Stop hanging out with losers. So hang out losers. Cut all the losers out of your life. Everybody that's keep, unless they're your spouse, pray for them. You don't get to cut them out of your life. You just pray for your husband. You pray for your wife, okay? You're stuck with them. God will do a miracle, okay? But I'm talking to everybody else. Hey, young lady, you're dating some tool bag that you met online. Cut that sucker out of your life. Hey, you met this young lady, young man that you're like, I think she's going to be my wife, but she's totally dragging you away from Jesus. Cut the whole out of your life. Kick her to the door. Say, get out of my life. Everybody in your life that's influencing you, you get rid of them. Hey, hey, let me be straightforward with you. Ready? You want to start living for God? I would love to live for God. Then you got to make some hard choices. And sometimes the people that influence you are the people that you got to get rid of, because they're not leading you towards Jesus. They're dragging you away. I can't answer that for you. You got to figure out who those people are in your life. But here's the thing, scripture, songs, support. You do those three things. You won't fail at following Jesus. You will end your life well. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time to go into number three, but some of you guys are going to spin out because you left one blank. And you're going to email me. So here it is. Number three is this focus on your action, which is just a wrap up of number one and two. Focus on your attitude. Number one, focus on your awareness. Number two, do the right things. Get the right stuff in your mind. And number three, focus on your action. And I leave you to this last principle. Decide what the most important things are at the end, and live your life backwards. Ready? If my most important things are, I need to make money. I got to do this thing. I'm going to buy this stuff. I'm going to be popular. I'm going to blah, blah, blah. Then by the time you reach the end of your life, everything has been valueless for God. But if I want to do God stuff, I go, let me focus on things of God. Now I rewind my life back to where I'm living right now before I die. And I go, what are the things that will get me there? Scripture, songs, support. And I do all of those things consistently until the day I die. God is glorified and my life is blessed.