Living HOPE #2

Northside Church

1 Peter #1

Jamey Mills

10/23/22

My name is Jamey and I’m the lead pastor here at Northside.

So good to be with y'all…

We are in our second week of our new series called Living HOPE…

Looking at the letter that Peter wrote to a group of displaced Christians that just didn’t fit in their culture for all the right reasons… their beliefs and values were different… they had faith in and hoped for different things…

They were facing growing scrutiny, pressure, and persecution from the heavily Roman influenced culture around them…

It feels like Peter is telling us what it looks like to live out our faith under that sort of pressure, and remind us that this very pressure is part of God’s grace… His gift to us… that it is refining, formative, and even rewarding…

We talked about how the major danger that Peter seems to be addressing isn’t the growing opposition to Christianity… but identity amnesia… that when things are hard and when we face this sort of pressure… it's all too easy to forget who we really are in Christ and what we’ve been given.

Story of sewer pipe…

1 Peter 1:13–2:3 NLT

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. As the Scriptures say, “People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of the Lord remains forever.” And that word is the Good News that was preached to you. So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

1 Peter 1:13 NLT

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.

13 So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control (SOBER MINDED). Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.

The first word is actually therefore, Whenever you see it your supposed to ask what it’s there for… it usually is some sort of call to action, and that's exactly what Peter is doing. Because things are hard and are getting worse… Peter is saying… this is what you need to do.

And He uses strong words… it has a military tone… a sense of urgency and weight to it… The actual term is “to gird up your loins” yea I said that in church… They’d tuck the four corners of their robe into their belts… which allowed them to move with more speed and purpose…

And it's an honest question… Do you desire that? Do you really want to live out this relationship with Jesus well… in a world that opposes it? In this face of opposition, is your hope to be found faithful to God? Do you want to see the fruit of his grace… through hard times… become a growing reality in your life…

Peter is saying that if that's where you're at… if you want to keep your feet firmly planted in Jesus… then what I am about to tell you is mission critical… it's not optional…

Peter spoke this truth to a people that didn’t fit into a very secular culture that was far from God two thousands years ago… and it is the exact same thing he say to us today within our own.

The first things Peter says you have to do…

Prepare your mind

… the actual word is.. Be sober minded… think clearly, it means to have a single minded focus… you have to be intentional. Coasting… wont work.

And…

Put all of your hope in Jesus

and His promises…

Not in Jesus and… money, education, friends, government…

Tripp says it's a values clarification… and he uses this example of listening to the voices of the other side… they don’t celebrate big houses, great promotions, personal power, amazing education… they celebrate the faithfulness of God… God fulfilling His promises…

And it's true… if we these things that honestly don't matter nearly as much to lay claim our heart… we begin to measure our life and our value by them. Our lives become diverted… and distracted…

That warning is everywhere in scripture…

Matthew 6:24 (ESV)

24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Peter says… put ALL of your hope in Jesus, it's not foolish, He is faithful.

This living hope…

Is anchored in the past… God’s faithfulness

It’s aimed at the future… eternity in the presence of God

And it's experienced now… Peter is saying you have to fix your mind there.

1 Peter 1:14–21 NLT

So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.

14 So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then.

15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”

17 And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.”

18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.

20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.

21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.

It feels like Peter is saying that when things get crazy… or when pressure hits… especially pressure that's connected to your faith… not only is it easy to get to this point of being conflicted… it’s easy to want to go back to what you knew…

I think you see it after Peter himself denied Jesus… and after Jesus' death on the cross… the feeling you get is… he’s rattled and conflicted… and he goes back to what he knew before he knew Jesus, which was fishing.

I think you also see it in the nation of Israel, after they left Egypt… the grumbled and stumbled and sinned along the way and things got hard… and at one point they roughed up their leader a bit… Why did you bring us out here to die… I wish we would have just stayed in Egypt… where they lived as severly opressed slaves under heavy handed slave drivers.

The actual word is passions… Peter is saying that even though you're pressed on every side you cannot slide back into those passions that drove you before you knew Christ… Those things that you desired, that motivated you, and that … brought you happiness…

Even in Christ… we cannot be driven by our passions (lusts)... if our heart was trustworthy, maybe it would be okay…

Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

“Your heart is only as trustworthy as what controls it”

Paul Tripp

And how do you know what controls your heart?

This is how Jesus put it…

Luke 6:45 NLT

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

(NLT)

45 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

A huge indicator is… as to where your heart’s at is what you think and talk about.

Our passions and feelings aren’t trustworthy.

I can’t tell you how many people I know that struggle in their relationship with God because they don’t “feel” it… two things…

Not all struggle is bad…

We have to know that our relationship with God cannot be reduced down to a feeling…

Peter would say that the popular advice “just follow your heart” is incredibly confusing and terrible.

Following Jesus is where wisdom lives…

Instead of falling back… Peter says be HOLY…

Instead of living in this place of being overwhelmed… and falling back…

Instead of blending in with the culture… insteading of forgetting who we are in Christ… Peter says be Holy… IN EVERYTHING you do, just as God who chose you is Holy.

He’s reminding them that they are… set apart… by God and for God…

He is saying… Christ makes a difference… His truth in your life, makes a difference in the way that you live… He changes things…

Holiness reminds us that there will be times when our own passions… or when the culture around us wants us to see, think or do things or respond a certain way…

But Christ in us looks different… it acts differently…

We have to understand that we are called to think and act differently… There is a part of holiness that has to do with dying to yourself both to bring honor to God in your life but also for your own good. It leads us to places of greater peace… greater freedom from the “stuff” or passions and even our culture creates in our life…

It helps us to see life differently… to invest in things differently…

Not different for different sake… but in ways that are guided by His truth, empowered by His spirit in us, and that reflects His holiness to the world around us…

So many people see holiness as behavioral… that holiness is doing or saying the right things…

Holiness points to the reality of God’s presence, truth, and character being formed and reflected by your life.

but behavior is the fruit of holiness.

Holy has to do with being set apart for God and for His purposes…

Holiness carries the idea of devotion… or deep commitment… having God in the right place in your life. It has to do with reflecting God’s character and values…

Holiness is God’s standard for humanity

And I cringe a little… There are days, times and areas in my life that just aren’t.

But I think we learn a few things…

Comparing ourselves to other people as a standard… is fruitless. How I stack up with others is not God standard. True holiness causes us to get real with God.

Trip says this… that part of holiness brings us to the end of ourselves… and drives us toward our need for God… if we really think we are okay… if you trust in yourself… we will never understand grace, the need for it, or the cost of it.

Holiness here… in a sense sort of points out the difference between the way things were when you chased your passions… and what should be this growing sense of how things are now in Christ…

Vs 17 is really interesting… Peter talks about the importance of reverent fear…

In some ways, fear can be the enemy of faith, but the fear Peter is talking about is what happens when we see God the right way…

From realizing just how big God is… seeing what He’s done, knowing what He stands for and realizing how much is really in His hands…

It comes from realizing that everything about you… and your situation… and your eternity… rests in the palm of his hand…

It also has this idea of recognizing God’s worthiness… and what the proper response from us looks like… which is reverence… awe… adoration.

But Peter does something interesting….

In one Vs. addresses God as both Judge and Father

… on purpose.

This is so cool…

That the one who holds you accountable, is also the one who holds you as a Father…

That

His discipline is aimed at correction and not condemnation

… and it's done with the heart of a father…

It reminds us all over again that God is for you…

And that's going to look different than you might think sometimes…

1 Peter 1:22–2:3 NLT

You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. As the Scriptures say, “People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of the Lord remains forever.” And that word is the Good News that was preached to you. So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

22 You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.

23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. 24 As the Scriptures say,

“People are like grass;

their beauty is like a flower in the field.

The grass withers and the flower fades.

25 But the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And that word is the Good News that was preached to you.

1So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. 2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

Peter reminds us that standing up in the face of a culture that is increasingly skeptical and even oppressive…

Part of standing strong is standing together

We’ll talk about this more next week…

It’s absolutely foolish and outside of God’s will for you to stand away from God’s body/family in a culture like this…

There is no such thing as a perfect Church… we all need to know that…

But having a church family where you are invested and investing… where you know others and are known by others… is huge.

The bible talks a ton about grace and love winning out between us… and all of the one another statements in scripture… are aimed at guiding these relationships in the best possible God honoring way.

God knows it's hard… and in that love, grace, gentleness, and walking together and even falling short with each other… if our hearts are right and our eyes are on Jesus… we sharpen and challenge one another toward Jesus…

And lastly… Peter says

There are just some things that you need to be done with

Things that are disrupting, distracting, or even detouring you from what it is that God wants and has for you.

I am 100% sure that every single one of us has stuff like that… and Peter is saying you can’t just sweep it under the rug… you can’t continue to give the devil a foothold in your life by farting around with things that rob you of all that God wants from you and has for you.

Tripp said this…

“You cannot look at the radical miracle of redemption, or at the great cost at which it came and blow sin off”. - Paul Tripp

Peter says instead we have to CRAVE pure spiritual milk… we have to crave the truth of God… His Word… in the same relentless way a new born does…

We need to come to this place of craving the truth of God.

Crave is a hard word… it has to do with seeing an unmet need, and not resting until it's filled.

It's a spiritual commitment we need to make too.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taught this to students and my own kids…

What you put in your mind is a lot like what you put in your body… you can just feed it with garbage and expect good results.

If you want to stand firm in a culture that is far from God, you have to get real about putting His truth in your mind everyday… craving it…

Conc

Pray

Daniel communion thought