Hope & Holiness
Notes
Transcript
Good morning church! I’m glad to be back in the saddle today. I’m thankful for Will & Frank kicking off this series so that I could get the ball rolling on our watermelons harvest. We are officially rolling on a farm down in Clarendon and hopefully will be feeding you watermelons till frost! Throughout this series I’ll preach every few weeks till I get done with harvest. Starting next week we’ll begin to bring in some outside help and then Will & I will do as much as we can, when we can. So that’s the trajectory going forward.
Today go ahead and flip over to 1 Peter 1. We’re going to look at the next 9 verses in this passage. Just like Frank covered some of what Will preached on, I’m going to look back and go over some of what Frank preached on, and you can probably guess that this will be a common practice throughout our study on this letter. The passage last week was really heavy on what God has done for us in Christ, and this week we will begin to look and see what that means practically for us. So let’s read 1 Peter 1:13-21; we’ll read, pray and then dive into it. As I read through this passage I’m going to point out 4 different imperatives that Peter gives us here and those 4 commands are going to be our 4 points for the sermon. So let’s read and I’ll point these out.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and 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 is 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 as 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 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.
This is the Word of the Lord. Let’s pray.
I started listening to a book a couple weeks ago that’s been on my list for about 10 years now. It’s called Water from a Deep Well and it contains a lot of stories of Christian martyrs. There’s some fascinating, and convicting stories. One of the very first stories in the book is about a 1st century martyr named Perpetua. She came from a prominent Roman family, yet she wouldn’t participate in the cultic sacrifice ritual. Perpetua had believed in Jesus as Lord. Now what makes her story even more remarkable is that she was a young, married mother. Her family begged her to just participate in the sacrifice for the sake of her family and her child. They used all the leverage they could with their position, but to not participate was to not bow the knee to Roman authority. She was arrested and thrown in jail. They continued to beg her to participate. She was beaten and told that if she didn’t do what was asked they would execute her. With joy, Perpetua smiled and just said, “I’m a Christian. I can’t do that.” Throughout her short imprisonment she maintained the joyful attitude because she understood that she had been counted worthy to suffer the same sufferings as Christ. She sang as she walked to the platform to be scourged and executed by a Roman gladiator. Now, what would cause someone to endure that with joy, and to leave behind a family and a new born baby? It seems absolutely inconceivable, doesn’t it? You see, Perpetua had a hope that was greater than any threat that life would throw at her. She knew what awaited her was of more value than life itself. She lived with a hope and purpose that caused her to face what so many fear with joy.
This passage calls us to the same thing; not to martyrdom, but to live with hope and purpose during our exile because that’s what Christ’s death does. That’s our main point for today: Christ’s death gives us hope & purpose during our exile. You’ve already seen the four points that come from this passage. It’s the four imperatives, or commandments, that Peter calls us to and that is the purpose that I’m talking about in our main point. So let’s jump into that first imperative, or our first point:
Set your hope
Set your hope
Peter instructs these exiles that he’s writing to to set their hope on the grace that will come at the revelation of Jesus. Now we’re going to unpack that, but before he instructs that he starts with the word “therefore.” In other words, set your hope because of the things that I’ve just said. What are the things that Peter just said? Frank preached on that last week, so I’m not going to cover it all, but in order to understand our text today we need to have it fresh in our minds.
Last week we saw in v3. that “[God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” When we place our faith in the person and work of Jesus we are raised to life and promised an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us who are being guarded by God’s power. What incredible promises and joys these verses contain for us because of the work God did through Christ on our behalf!
And because these promises are true and given by one who keeps his promises what are we to do? We’re to set our hope. So what then does it mean to set our hope? Last week Frank defined hope as both a noun and a verb. As a verb hope is a feeling that things will turn out for the best. It is a feeling, an emotion, and we’ll see here in a second why that’s important. Hope has to do with emotion. We are to set our emotion, we are to direct our emotions toward the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus.
There is both a present a future aspect of this. What grace is brought to us at the revelation of Jesus? Presently, it’s grace to be born again to a new and living hope! It’s grace that covers sin now so that we can walk forward in freedom.
It’s grace now that grants us a new identity. Now we no longer have to bear the burden of our sin and shame, because Jesus did that for us on the cross. Peter has already used this phrase, “at the revelation of Jesus Christ back in v7. Look back there with me at 1 Pet. 1:6-7
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
What happens when Jesus is revealed? The genuineness of your faith is proven and it results in the praise and glory and honor of who? I want to be careful here because it can sound like self worship, but the praise, glory and honor here is given by Christ to you for your faith—that he gave you—is being proven genuine and true! Paul talks about this in Rom. 2:7 and then again in verse 10
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that when Christ is glorified he will look at us and offer glory, and praise and honor to us. Of course we’ll look back at him and go, Jesus any good or faith that I had, any perseverance that I had was because of Christ in me and not of my own doing. But that’s the beauty of our living hope and future inheritance that is given to us through Jesus. We are given grace that gives us this new identity as co-heirs with Christ.
This grace that covers our sin and gives us a new identity isn’t the end of it though. You see the future grace is the full and complete revelation of Jesus. It’s no longer seeing through a glass dimly, but beholding him face to face. It’s seeing him as he truly is and walking and living with him every day.
So if that’s the grace that awaits us at the revelation of Jesus, how then do we actually set our hope, or set our emotions on that? Peter tells us, “preparing your minds for action,” it literally means “gird up the loins of your mind.” In Biblical times the men would wear these long robes everyday. And when they decided to race or go to work they would hike up their robe so that their legs were free to move as needed. So Peter gives us this mental image here of you hiking up the robes of your mind so that you’re ready to go to work. This means that there must be an intentionality and discipline to your thinking. It’s something that will require effort and concentration.
Prepare your minds, gird up your the loins of your mind, be intentional and disciplined in what you think, and then he says “being sober minded.” Now the opposite of sober is intoxicated. To be intoxicated means to influenced by outside sources and not thinking clearly. So to be sober minded then would be to think clearly with self-control. As Karen Jobes, one commentator said, “Peter wishes his readers to avoid any form of mental or spiritual intoxication that would confuse the reality that Christ has revealed and deflect them from a life steadfastly fixed on the grace of Christ. Self-control of the mind facilitates prayer, (as we see in 1 Pet. 4:7) and an awareness of the devil’s ways (as we see in 1 Pet. 5:8)”
We set our hope on the grace that is to be revealed when Jesus comes by how we think, by the way we think. So church I think this verse causes us to ask two questions. The first is this, what are you hoping in? I think it’s really easy for those who are evangelically house-trained to go, of course my hope is in Jesus. But maybe a way to really reveal what our hope is in is to honestly answer the question, what does your emotion or your thoughts run to when the reality of your exile sets in? So when that family member unexpectedly dies, or maybe your marriage its falling apart, or your kids aren’t turning out like you had hoped, or you aren’t turning out like you had hoped, or your job is just really tough, or kids your friends reject you because you weren’t the cool kid and willing to do the things they are doing; when those situations arise and you’re reminded that you don’t belong here and this isn’t the way things are supposed to be, do you just want to escape for a minute? Do you run to Netflix or facebook or TikTok or your friend group or the gym fill in the blank to just escape? What you run to might reveal what your hope is in. What are you hoping in?
Second, if we set our hope by what we think about then this reveals that our thinking is to serve our emotions. We can be emotional people who get so wrapped up in a moment that we act out impetuously. So we must fill our minds with thoughts that will guide our emotions in the heat of the battle. How then are you training your mind? I’m reminded of that little nursery rhyme be careful little eyes what you see; be careful little ears what you hear. When you input is what you will output. So what you watch and what you listen to is going to train your mind and your heart how to respond. This is where that intentionality and self-control and self-discipline are really required. I get it; it’s a lot easier to turn on Netflix than it is to read a book about how Christ calls us to manage relational conflict. But if your hope truly is in Christ then why wouldn’t you want to put forth the effort to learn and know more about the one who came and died for you and has given you a purpose to live? What are you setting your hope on and what are you filling your minds with? Christ’s death gives us hope & purpose during our exile. Having looked at our hope let’s now look at the purpose that comes with it.
Our second imperative this morning is found in 1 Pet. 1:14
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
Do not be conformed
Do not be conformed
Now naturally and logically this flows right out of our previous point, but here Peter has expanded on how this grace has given us a new identity. We saw just a second ago that the grace of God gave us an identity as co-heirs with Christ and here the other part of that identity is that we are children of the Father, which we see in v17. Prior to this we were children of wrath because we had rejected God’s word and God’s ways, but now in submitting to Christ’s Lordship God in his mercy adopts us into his family. Notice, it is out of our identity as his children that flows our action of not being conformed. What Peter is saying here is that you’ve been given a new last name, so live according to your new families identity.
As our kids grow we’re really beginning to see the impact that their friends have on them, and I’d like to say that just kids do this, but really I see adults do this just as often. Whenever you get around a certain group of people, or my kids go hang out with their buddies, they begin to act like them or maybe even more wild than their friends are allowed to act. There’s been a time or two when we’ve caught them doing that and our response to them is, hey, you’re friends might be allowed to act like that, but you know better. Anyone else ever said or heard that phrase? You know how you’re supposed to behave as my child. Don’t conform to what impresses your friends or to acting like they act. You act according to what your last name is. You act according to what your Father expects of you.
That’s exactly what Peter is calling us to here. Instead of acting according to the “passions of our former ignorance.” This has been one of the phrases that struck me this week. If you flip over a page to 1 Pet. 4:2 he explains exactly what this means:
so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
Our passions of former ignorance are then human passions that are opposite the will of God. The next verse then shows that these passions are gratifying the desires of our flesh. I think this would have had a lot of impact for Peter’s original audience. Imagine for just a second the life of Perpetua that I talked about in the opening illustration. She lived in a culture that would’ve been ok with Christianity, just as long as you still participated in the Roman cultic feasts that would’ve been wild, lavish parties that often included cult prostitutes. If you’re living in exile, oppressed and not sure of when all the pain and oppression would end, constantly being enticed by the lures of “a better life” do you think you would’ve been tempted to participate in something that would’ve looked fun and pleasurable and satisfying? Honestly, don’t you feel that today? The world today is still enticing you to participate in what it says will bring you joy or contentment or happiness or satisfaction?
What if, though, the exiles Peter is addressing, or what if you gave into and were conformed to the passions of your former ignorance? What would that look like? You’d look like the rest of the world around you. There would be no distinguishable difference between you and the unbeliever. So the question is then, do you? Do you look like the rest of the world? Have you conformed to the passions of your former ignorance thinking that by gratifying those your exile will become easier? Or have you set your hope on something that is greater than the fleeting pleasures of the moment and prepared your mind for when life gets hard to find your contentment and joy in Christ instead of your former passions? Here’s the thing, when you say that satisfying those passions is what brings relief, what are you saying about the death of Christ? You’re saying is wasn’t sufficient to purchase you all that you need in life and death. However, the death of Christ has purchased for you a living hope that give you the purpose of not being conformed to your former way of life.
Set your hope. Do not be conformed. Next we see in 1 Pet. 1:15-16
but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Be Holy
Be Holy
The next imperative we come across is be holy. I find it interesting in each one of these points that grace precedes demand. Notice that Jesus doesn’t just say, go be holy so that I can call you. He starts with he who called you. Holiness wasn’t forced, it was called out.
Just real quick flip over to 1 Pet. 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
What did God do? He called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. He didn’t call you because you could be holy or you could be light, he called you because he is the gracious God who loves you and in his calling he made you light and made you holy. So then his calling is based off of his character and the grace that he gives, not off of who you are or what you can do. If that’s true, what should the holiness that he’s calling us toward look like?
Well, Peter quotes Leviticus and there’s multiple places throughout that book in which God calls his people to be holy. Peter does this “to establish the principle that, as Christians, his readers must be set apart from their surrounding culture in a way that is consistent with God as revealed in Jesus Christ. The holiness that we’re called to is the holiness that Jesus displayed here on earth.” It’s the holiness that we saw all throughout the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a holiness that encompasses all of our lives—be holy in all of your conduct—not just our Sunday worship.
But there’s also something else happening when Peter quotes Leviticus. Think about the purpose of the book of Leviticus for a minute. God gave that book, with all of its rules and regulations, to show what God’s people should live like inside of the covenantal relationship that he had with them. So when Peter recalls the book of Leviticus and quotes this verse verbatim, what he’s doing is he’s saying that those who proclaim Christ as Lord are now the covenantal people of God. Again, the relationship of God with humanity is functionally different.
The question then that remains is, how do we live out the holiness that Jesus depicted for us in his life? Having just spent 1/2 a year studying the Sermon on the Mount and seeing what all Jesus calls us to and what his holiness actually looks like, I think after about 5 minutes with any one of us we’ll be going, yeah right, ain’t no way that that guy can live up to that level of holiness. Peter’s expectation isn’t that these exiles once they have converted to Christianity just flip the switch and boom live perfect lives. No the call here is that of progressive sanctification. When we submit to Christ’s lordship he makes us holy by making us his, now we live that holiness out. The way we do that is to go back to the beginning of all of this. Peter’s argument is circular in someways, but as you go back to the beginning you see the deeper parts of what he meant.
We live out our holiness by setting our hope on what Frank preached on last week, v3-12. We do this by preparing our minds and thinking clearly about what God has done for us in Christ. We remember that he has given us a new life by being born again. Now being born into his family, with God as our Father and Christ as our brother, we have an inheritance that is in heaven. One that is certain and sure. All of this causes us to love him and believe in him and “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” When our lives are built around our hope and influenced by biblical thinking we aren’t conformed to the world around us, but are instead living out holy lives. No we don’t do it perfectly, but we do it progressively. Set your hope. Do not be conformed. Be holy.
The last imperative is found in verse 17. Let’s pick back up there are read through v21. There’s a lot to cover here. 1 Pet. 1:17-21
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, 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 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.
Live with Fear
Live with Fear
The fourth imperative we see is to “conduct yourselves with fear.” This last imperative is interesting to me. We’ve talked about hope, not conforming, and holiness, and now fear. To me fear almost seems juxtaposed to hope. Even in the verse we find the instruction fear isn’t the thing that I would’ve emphasized. Peter says “if you call on him as Father.” We’ve already established that because of the grace of the Father given to us through the Son we are born again, we are made a part of a new family with God as our Father. God as our Father would seem comforting, not fearful.
It’s been a month or so but we’ve had some big storms roll through this summer. I can’t remember if it was late one night or early one morning, but one storm blew in and man it had some really loud thunder and lightning. The thunder felt like it shook our whole house and the lightning seemed like it was just right outside the door. The kids were in bed and one thunder bolt in particular hit and Jordan and I just knew that the kids were getting up after that one. So we jumped out of bed and started to walk into the living room and sure enough all 3 of them came running out because they were afraid of the storm. They feared the storm so they ran to their parents for comfort. God as our Father would seem to be comforting thing in exile, not the source of fear. But that’s not the only comforting thing from this passage.
Verse 18 tells us that we were ransomed with the precious blood of Christ. One of the things I learned this week in my study was that this would’ve had a unique emphasis to a someone in the Greco-Roman culture. In order for a slave to be set free their freedom had to be purchased, but that wasn’t just an exchange of money from one hand to another. The way their freedom was purchased was that you would go to the temple and give the money to the temple priest and then the priest would put the money in the temple’s treasury. Then the payment for the slave would be made out of the treasury. “The former slave would then be free in the eyes of his former owner and society but would be considered a slave of the god or goddess.”
Peter’s thoughts here obviously resonate with that custom. This Father who loves you didn’t just adopt you but he purchased you with something that is way more valuable than anything that perishes, like silver or gold. He purchased you with Jesus’ blood. This wasn’t just any person’s blood either. This is the blood of the eternal one; the one who was foreknown before the foundation of the world. He has existed before all of time. He is the firstborn of all creation and all things were created in heaven and on hearth by him and for him. He holds it all together. He was without blemish and spot. He was perfect. He was the holy one who lived the life we were supposed to live then our merciful Father spilled his blood for our sake. Church, don’t miss this, I love what Piper said on this, “You have a Father who loves you and a savior who spilled his infinitely precious blood for you.” That’s the measure of love that God has for you. But it doesn’t stop there. He, God, then raised Jesus up from the dead and glorified him so that you might look God and believe in him. In doing this what do you have? You have hope! This hope that we talked about back in v13 comes because God raise the one who died for you! IF he did that then delivering you out of exile, delivering you from your various trials, all of that is nothing for the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
So then, if we have this incredible comfort that God is our Father who loves us enough to send his son to purchase our redemption and make us his children by placing our faith and hope in Him, why are we instructed to fear? I think there’s 2 reasons we are to conduct ourselves with fear despite how much comfort there is here. 1) Live with fear because of who He is. Look back at verse 17. He is our Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds.
It feels like every time there’s a problem with my children it’s always because of what the other sibling did. “Well I bit him, but he pushed me.” “Well I made the ugly face at her, but she made one at me.” The list goes on, right? When we stand before God either when He returns we aren’t going to go, God, look I know I was addicted to porn, but I grew up neglected by my family, I had no friends, and it was just so accessible. God, I know I was a serial-gossiper, but the group of people I was around just made it so easy. I know that I didn’t participate in the regular fellowship of the body of Christ, but we had kids sports or a cabin in the mountains or a boat on the lake. The Father, who loves us, will also judge us based off of our own actions. He won’t be partial to you because of when you were born, or where you were born, or what family you were born into. He will judge you based off of you.
The second reason to live with fear is because of what we value. Look at v18: “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers.” In Peter’s day the Greco-Roman culture would have been of extreme value. Rome would come in, conquer a land and then enforce their way of life upon them because nothing was better than their worldview, the way they did government, the way the functioned economically, the way they raised their families, their version of religion & education—their entire way of life.
I was at the grocery store a few months ago and there was a number of Guatemalan families in there. The lines were backed up and you could tell a family was struggling to communicate. An older gentleman who I had known growing up here and hadn’t seen in years walked over to me and goes, “the least they could do is learn English” as if learning our language and our way of life is of ultimate value. But the same could be said of the sub-cultures that exist in our society…we went to the XIT Junior Rodeo yesterday and there’s a sub-culture that exists among cowboys. I’m a watermelon farmer and go to the NWC and there’s a sub-culture that exists among watermelon farmers that says nobody knows like we know. We tend to value these things and think that when the rest of the world doesn’t function like we do they’re less than us. But Jesus’ redemption doesn’t just purchase us freedom from sin it also ransoms us from the futile ways of our forefathers—the cultures that have been handed down to us through generations. It’s delivers us into a whole new way of life.
So then, if we return to the futile way of our forefathers, being conformed to the world, not walking in holiness, not setting our hope fully on the grace of Jesus, what does it say about how we value the blood spilt to ransom us? When you go back to your old self you are declaring that the blood of Jesus is not of infinite, precious value. You are saying that the passions of your former ignorance are worth more than life of Jesus. As John Piper says, “fear treating the Fatherhood of God and the blood of Jesus as trash. If cozying up with the sins that your Father sent his Son to die ever is tempting to you run with all of your might the other direction lest you find yourself in bed with the very things that slaughtered the Son of God.”
What do you fear? Your fear drives your conduct. Maybe you need to look at your conduct to answer that question. What does your conduct say about your view of the Fatherhood of God and the blood of Jesus?
If you have made light of the blood of Jesus and the fatherhood of God then I have good news for you. You see our Father knew that you would fail, so that’s why spilled the blood of his Son. That’s why he raised him up from the dead and gave him glory. To cover our failures. He offers grace upon grace because He is a merciful father. Christ’s death purchased that for us.
Church we have a great hope. It’s a hope of grace that covers sin. It’s a hope of a new identity being adopted into the family of God, and it’s a hope of beholding Jesus and receiving glory, and honor and praise for the faith that he gave us. This hope leads to a purpose of living holy lives, not being conformed to the world, but living in fear of making light of the Fatherhood of God who judges impartially and of belittling the blood shed for us. Christ’s death gives us hope and purpose during our exile. What does your conduct say about where your hope and purpose is?