Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Peter 1:17-21

What motivates you to get up?

What shapes your values, inspires your goals, and influences your choices?

Motivation is the reason we do things, and everyone is motivated by something.

For example, what motivates people to perform well at work?

One survey indicates that money and other material incentives are not a primary motivation.

Primary motivators are:

Camaraderie and peer motivation (20%)

A desire to do a good job (17%)

Feeling encouraged and recognized (13%)

Making a real impact (10%)

Growing professionally (8%)

Other surveys offer insights into the motivations of people in other avenues of life:

One survey indicates that the most common motivation for donating to charitable causes was not generosity or personal concern but social pressure from others.

Another survey indicates a similar trend, that social pressure is a significant motivation for why people vote.

The more people are asked if they will vote or believe they will be asked if they voted after the fact, the more likely they are to actually vote.

Still, another recent survey indicates the following reasons why Americans go to church:

To become closer to God (81%)

To provide their children with a moral foundation (69%)

To become a better person (68%)

For comfort in times of trouble or sorrow (66%)

They find the sermons valuable (59%)

To be part of a faith community (57%)

To continue their family’s religious traditions (37%)

They feel obligated to go (31%)

To meet new people or socialize (19%)

To please their family, spouse, or partner (16%)

Why do you work hard, donate money, vote in elections, and go to church?

Some motivations are better than others – in particular because some motivations not only encourage good and better behavior but they – more than others – inspire us to keep on doing something worthwhile even when doing so becomes confusing, costly, dangerous, difficult, discouraging, or painful.

Following Christ is this way.

When we believe on him, he forgives us from our sins and places us into God’s family forever.

As encouraging as this may be, it may (and probably will) require us to encounter and go through some very difficult trials and seasons in life.

If your motivations for following Christ aren’t properly tuned, you’ll struggle to keep going on, backing up and even backing away from doing all that Christ commands.

You’ll pause or pull back from taking your next steps in following Christ.

Young people face this potential pitfall when they profess to follow Christ but then experience the new challenges and temptations of teenage and early adult life.

They back up or back away from their pursuit of Christ.

Young, early career and newly married adults face this potential pitfall when the responsibilities of family and working life weigh heavier upon them.

They hit the brakes and hold back from their pursuit of Christ.

Older adults who face this potential pitfall when the failures, frustrations, and hardships of life overshadow them.

So, they slow down and stop serving Christ as they once did, allowing the sorrows and sufferings of life to dampen or diminish their pursuit of Christ.

If your interest in Christ and your service and passion for him has diminished or disappeared over time, then please ask yourself this important question.

What was your motivation for following him?

Perhaps your motivation was not significant enough to carry you through?

Perhaps you served Christ for a superficial reason such as:

A domestic motivation to carry on your family’s religious tradition

An economic motivation to receive material blessings from God

An intellectual or logical motivation to do what seemed to make the most sense

A religious motivation to earn the favor of or impress God

A selfish motivation to become a better person

A social motivation to be like, fit in, or impress your peers

While all of these motivations offer some degree of positive value, they fall short of the ultimate motivation – the motivation which will enable you to persevere through any trial, even when the other motivations lose their appeal.

A deep respect for Christ should motivate your actions and choices in life.

Conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear;

The believers to whom Peter originally wrote had followed Christ and then experience hardship and persecution as a result.

In other words, there was a sense in which following Christ had caused their economic, material, and social lives to go from bad to worse.

Yes, they now enjoyed a close relationship with God and a confident hope in Christ’s coming kingdom, but their present lives were marked by painful trials which they had not previously endured.

They had been forced to uproot and move away from their long-held, inherited family estates and were facing even greater dangers in the future.

Later in this later, Peter will acknowledge their coming sufferings, saying, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you.”

(1 Pet 4:12).

“Conduct yourselves” is the lone action verb in this section of Peter’s letter, with every other action expanding or explaining it further somehow.

It describes the actions and choices you make day by day as you make your way through this journey of life.

It speaks not only about how you behave “at church,” but how you behave in general, of your habits, priorities, and routines of life – of which church is a part.

This command reminds us to take responsibility for how we live our lives.

We are not helpless victims of our circumstances, but responsible human beings made in the image of God who are called and capable to respond properly – as God himself would respond – to all of our circumstances, no matter how enjoyable or excruciating they may be.

“Throughout the time of your stay here” teaches us a key concepts – that we are temporary residents of this present world.

Whether we rent or own a home, out time in this world resembles spending the night at an Airbnb or hotel.

Knowing this should encourage us to stop trying to find too much comfort, satisfaction, and security in this life.

Whatever this world has to offer is temporary at best.

Therefore, we should take the influencers and offers of this world far less seriously than we do.

We should focus our hearts and minds on fearing God instead, “in fear.”

This fear does not describe the kind of fear we experience as a child who is “afraid of the dark” or “afraid of scary clowns”, etc.

As Paul told Timothy, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim 1:7).

“In fear” refers to having a deep and profound personal respect for Christ.

This is the kind of respect that children should have for their parents or the kind of respect we should have for law enforcement officers and government officials.

While we often fail to feel and show proper respect for these people, we also have a tendency to show this kind of respect to other people, instead – Hollywood personalities, social media influencers, sports stars, or certain relatives and so-called friends whom we have chosen to respect more than those we should.

This kind of fear was not some special New Testament concept or insight from Peter or even Christ himself.

Peter reached back into the longstanding teaching of – you guessed it – the Old Testament (OT) for this foundational and timeless life truth.

“You shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.” (Deut 8:6)

“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”

(Job 28:28)

“Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.

For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

(Eccl 12:13)

To fear God is the greatest motivation which can guide a person through life for it encourages a person to persevere through any trial.

To fear God is to value him so highly that you desire to hear his words, understand his words, and live according to his words for no other reason than that you know him and treasure him as your God more than you treasure anyone or anything else in the world.

If you are a genuine follower of Christ

If you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work,

Peter prefaces this command to fear God with a precondition or necessary qualification.

Not everyone can fear God – only those who have become his children by faith in Christ.

“If you call on the Father” clarifies that to live a life that’s motivated by a deep, personal respect for Christ requires that you first be a person who can call God your Father.

Have you truly called upon God as your Father by turning to Christ alone as your Savior?

If not, then you are what the NT calls a “son of disobedience” (Eph 2:2; Col 3:6), someone who disobeys and disregards God’s authority in your life.

Therefore, you are not God’s child.

If this is the case, then let me encourage you to acknowledge your lack of respect for God and your disobedience to him today.

“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame” … for ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’”

(Rom 10:9-13)

If you have believed on Christ, then you may call God your Father.

Like a good father, he will care for, discipline, and protect you.