Response to Salvation

Welcome

It is great to be back and get to share God’s Word with you today.

I want to thank Garrett for letting me fill in for him today. He didn’t give much notice though. He asked me to preach for him on October 10th!!

I asked Garrett if there was anything particular that he wanted me to preach on. He said that there was one subject that he was thinking of. He said that every time he talked to the men of the church, they would always ask him to preach on this subject. I told him that I would be happy to, but nervous to preach on this. So today we are going to look at what the Bible has to say on the subject of the Submitted Wife!!

Just kidding! Garrett never asked me to preach on any subject.

While your pulses are returning to normal, we are going to be in 1 Peter 1:13-16.

I am going to pray and then we will get into our verses.

Pray

It is not very often that Dec 31st is on a Sunday. I wanted to take this opportunity to take a look at some verses that would help us as we look back to last year and our lives in general and also as we look forward to 2024. During my daily reading one morning I read these verses and felt like this is what God wanted for today. As we look at these verses, let’s keep in mind we are 1 year closer to the return of our Lord. Are we truly ready for His return? What changes do we need to make to get/be ready?

A little background on 1 Peter. The Apostle Peter wrote this letter. Peter was the leader of the Apostles. He was a man’s man. Like most of us men today, Peter would act or talk before thinking. This is a general letter that was written to the scattered believers in the region we now know as Turkey. It is believed that Peter was in Rome when he wrote this letter. Peter wrote that he was in Babylon when writing this. There are 3 possibilities to where this Babylon is. 1st is ancient Babylon in Mesopotamia, but this is unlikely that Peter, Mark and Silvanus were all in the small distant place at the same time. The 2nd possibility is Babylon in Egypt. It was a Roman outpost in northern Egypt. Again this was a small and obscure place and there are no reasons to believe that Peter was ever even at this location. The 3rd and most likely is Rome. Babylon is an alias for Rome and perhaps even a code word for Rome. In times of persecution writers took unusual care to not endanger Christians by identifying them. According to some traditions, Peter followed James and Paul and died as a martyr near Rome two years after he wrote this letter. He did not want the letter to be found and the church to be persecuted. Thus using the code word Babylon for where he was. The name Babylon fits perfectly because of the city’s idolatry.

Peter wrote this letter to a people that were scattered and under persecution. He wrote this to teach them how to live victoriously in the midst of that hostility; 1) without losing hope 2) without becoming bitter 3) while trusting in their Lord and 4) while looking for His second coming. Peter taught that while living an obedient, victorious life under duress, a Christian can actually evangelize this hostile world.

In the first 12 verses, Peter is teaching about the salvation that they have recieved and that it is not perishable but is a salvation that is imperishable and will withstand the fires of this life.

Now we are caught up to verse 13. Let’s look at our verses for today.

1 Peter 1:13–16 (NASB 2020)

13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

In verse 13 Peter starts with the word Therefore. Whenever we read the word Therefore, we must ask ourselves what is it there for? It is a transition from statement to application. Peter just finished talking about the salvation that was recieved and now he is going to give us some commands on how we should act after receiving the free gift of salvation. The first command is to prepare our minds for action. Some translations will say to gird up the loins of your mind. That is an extremely strange saying in today’s world. What does that even mean? Well back in Peter’s time, the men would wear long tunics or robes kind of like a dress. It was a manly dress though! When a man needed to run or do work he had to pull up the bottom of his robe and pull it between his legs and tuck it into his belt, thus girding up his loins. If he didn’t do that he would trip on the tunic or tear it up. Thus they were prepared to run or do the work that was required. We are to prepare our minds for action. We need to get our minds ready for work. For the work of our Lord. We need to stop putting things of this world into our minds. We must be filling our minds with the things above, things that are eternal. We tend to think with our eyes. We dwell on the things that we can see. We see the things of this world and that is what we tend to focus on. One commentator put it this way, “ in our day the church is wearing her robes too long. Our minds have not been properly elevated. We must raise them and tuck them in. We must make ourselves ready for running. A healthy mind is the means by which we fulfill Peter’s command to be known for decided hope. He calls us to it. Gird up the loins of your mind.” We must study God’s word. I saw a post on Facebook that my sister-in-law shared. It said that at some point it must go from being highlighted in our Bibles to being written on our hearts. The Bible must be center of our minds. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, “No true Christian in his right mind will desire anything other than true holiness and righteousness…but… if you want to be holy and righteous, we are told, the intellect is dangerous and it is thought generally unlikely that a good theologian is likely to be a holy person…The apostles, who wrote ‘stir up your minds’, ‘strive,’ ‘fight the good fight of faith,’ and many such things, would be surprised to hear what some people now say about ‘the higher life’…If you teach that sanctification consists of ‘letting go’ and letting the Holy Spirit do all the work, then don’t blame me if you have no scholars!”

We must do our part to be ready for when our Saviour returns. Our minds are the front lines in the battle against Satan. He knows that if he can keep us from preparing our minds for the Lord’s work, he has won. We must be intentional about what we put into our minds. We must be ready to go to work!

Next he tells us that we must keep sober in spirit. What does that mean. I wish he would speak in English!! It means to not lose control of our thoughts or actions. When someone is not sober, they have lost control and something else is influencing their actions and thoughts. We must not let the world influence us. We must not take in the world’s sinful system. We must have spiritual steadfastness and self-control. Keeping our minds clear and our hearts disciplined must be a priority. We need to crucify our flesh daily and keep it under control and not let it influence us. TV is an example of this. When I was a kid, there was never a gay person or couple on TV. Then as I got older they started out by rarely have a gay person appear on a show. Then one show would have a person that was gay regularly on the show. Now every show seems to have a least one gay person in it. We have allowed it to become the norm. It has been accepted into society. It has even been accepted into some main stream Christian denominations. Several denominations allow homosexual pastors! They did not keep their spirits sober. They allowed the world to influence them. We must not allow this to happen to us. We need to stay in control and actively be aware of what is influencing us. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to be our influence, through studying the Bible, prayer and the fellowship of saints. Stay the coarse and stay in control. Self-control is a by product of the Spirit that lives in us.

Peter now tells us where our hope is to be placed. We are to place it in the grace that is going to be given to us at the coming of Jesus Christ. Hope is the Christians attitude towards the future. In its essence, hope is equal to faith, it is trusting in God. The major difference between them is that faith is trusting God in the present, because of the things He has done in the past. Hope is trusting in Him in the future. Faith is from what God has already said and done in His revealed Word, and hope is the anticipation of what He will yet do, as promised in scripture. Our hope is to be in that day when we are glorified and stand face to face with our saviour. This hope is what allows us to live a life that is pleasing to God, that glorifies Him. Without that hope, we will crumble when the temptations come. He uses the word, completely, to demonstrate the fullness our hope is to be. We don’t put part of our hope in Jesus, but completely put our trust and hope in Him. The Mummy, guy has multiple religious necklaces on. Peter tells us that we are going to receive more grace. What a joy to know that we have more of God’s grace waiting for us when we get to heaven. God’s grace is a never ending river, that flows down to us. In that last day, we will be at the source of that river, and it will be glorious.

In verse 14, Peter says that as obedient children. We are children of God, but we are to be obedient children. Jesus said that if we love Him, we will keep His commands. The word that Peter used in the Greek actually means that obedience characterizes every true child of God and distinguishes Christians from non-believers, called the sons-of-disobedience. A Christian will act differently than a non-christian. They are opposites. We as believers are defined by our obedience to God and His Word. The only way we can be obedient to God’s commands, is if we know His Word which contains His commands. We must study it, not just read it. We must not turn back to the lust that we had when we did not know about God and who He is. We will occasionally fall back into sin, but it must not become a way of life again. As a believer we can not be comfortable in a lifestyle of sin. If our sin does not bother us, then there is a good chance that we were never saved to begin with. We now have a saving knowledge of God, and are a new creation. The Holy Spirit now lives in us. Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space. Either the light has to go away, or the darkness has to. Darkness has no power over the light. If the light is in us, the only way the darkness can overcome the light is if we dim the light in us. We dim the light by not preparing our minds, not being sober in spirit, and not being obedient. If the light is in us, then it will never fully go out. Once we realize our sin and turn from it, the light will brighten back. Jesus never has lost anyone that the Father has given Him and He never will! We must not return to our old ways. Don’t be like the dog that returns to eat its vomit. As gross as that sounds, that is exactly what we are doing when we return to our old sinful ways. We must be obedient and not return to our ignorance and the sin that it produced.

In verse 15 Peter tells us that we are to be holy like the Holy One who has called us, and we are to be holy in all our behaviors. What does holy mean? It means to be set apart. God is holy in that He is set apart from evil, sin, wickedness, and all other things that are bad. He is good. We are to be set apart also, from those same things. If there is no difference in your behavior after your salvation, then something is wrong. Holiness is to define the Christian’s new nature and conduct. There should be a distinct difference in how a Christian acts after he is saved. Your friends should notice it as well as everyone who knew you prior to your salvation. There are too many people that think that Christianity is just lip service. All they have to do is say that they are a Christian, and then they are saved. They can continue living their life the way that they want. Once we are saved, there is no longer I, it is Him who leads and guides us. The Bible says different. Christianity is more than just a talk. It is a way of life. It is a change of who we are at our core. We are a new creation. Salvation is the most expensive free gift. It is free, but it costs us everything. We are to die to self and live for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are to be holy in all aspects of our lives. Jesus was our example, as He was holy, so should we be. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so you could live in sin. He died so you don’t have to! He died so that the Holy Spirit could come and create a new you, a justified you, who is now set apart from the rest of the world. A child of God. We must act like one! To call ourselves a child of God and then live a life of sin, is to call God a liar. The Bible says that we are a new creation, if we act like the old us, then we are not a new creation. Our actions must match our words.

In verse 16 Peter ends with why we are to be holy. We are to be holy because He is holy. In Leviticus 11:44 God is telling the Israelites how to set themselves apart from the other people. He is telling them how to be holy. Since we are God’s children and He is holy, so should His children be holy. We as His children are His image bearers and are to obey His commands to be holy and set apart from the rest of the world.

As we take time to look back at last year and plan the changes we want to make in the new year, I challenge you to take these verses and if you are not doing these things, then make them a priority in the new year. What changes do you want to make in your spiritual life?Are you truly ready for Jesus to come back? If you can’t answer yes, then make the necessary changes to get ready.

Prepare your mind for action. Get ready for the battle that wages in your mind.

Keep sober in spirit. Stay in control and know what is influencing you.

Fix your hope on the grace that is to come at Jesus’ second coming. Abide in the truth that He is coming, and when He does, He will call His to Him.

Be obedient to His commands as His child. Let your obedience define who you are.

Do not return to your sinful ways. You have the knowledge of Jesus Christ, don’t return to your ignorance.

Be Holy because our Father is Holy. We are His image bearer, shine His light.

How wonderful is it going to be on that day, when we stand before our risen King and hear Him say “well done my good and faithful servant”. If we do not do the things in these verses, we are in danger of never hearing these sweet words.

I want to encourage you to come when we start singing to come down to the alter and give this new year to God in service. Ask God to reveal how He wants you to change, what He wants you to do. Let this new year be the year of spiritual growth and maturity. We are one year closer to His return. Are you ready?

Let’s pray