Living in Hope: A Call to Holiness
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Open your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter one. Follow along as I read our passage for today.
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.”
Peter’s teachings are radical for his readers.
Jews and Gentiles held tradition in very high esteem. The rituals and customs of their ancestors was passed down from parent to child. But all of these never knew the Messiah, there was the hope of the coming Messiah but no one knew Him.
When we read this section we don’t really see radical. We see what we consider to be normal. Don’t be conformed. We are not to be conformed to the world. We are not to be conformed to our past sin. Both were done in ignorance before knowing Jesus.
(What does it mean to be holy?)
1. Prepare Your Minds
1 Peter 1:13
Therefore, prepare your minds.
The “therefore” links this section with all the earlier verses. The lives we live should be lived because of what God has already done.
God chose us. He chose us to be born again into a living hope and to obtain an inheritance that will never cease.
Therefore, since God has done this, our lives should reflect what has already been accomplished. We are to live holy lives but in order to live holy lives we must prepare our minds for action.
A more literal translation of the Greek is “Gird yourselves for action, therefore, in your mind.”
Girding yourselves was a common metaphor during the time. It means to pick up your robes and gird them around your waist so the long robes would not impede you.
14 Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
Anyone who has studied Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is familiar with the idea of girding or belting your waist.
One thing we would do in the military in preparation for a mission was what we called a walk-through. It was normally done on a sand table. As we went through the operation brief, each person would talk about their actions during certain phases. The idea was that we knew what we had to do and we knew what the people around us had to do. The commander wanted all leaders to be mentally prepared with the operation.
This meant that the preparation started long before we went into battle. As a matter of fact, the mental preparation starts as soon as you join the Army. It starts by each Soldier learning their basic tasks.
Why do we have SS, Bible study, Worship in the church? Why are each of us supposed to spend time in reading the Bible, in prayer as well as thinking on those things that are pure? Because we must prepare our minds for action.
When I fail to accomplish something I set for myself to do, the failure isn’t because I didn’t finish it but that I didn’t prepare myself to finish it. Before I do anything, it is my mind that starts the process.
Part of being prepared is to also “keep sober.” This isn’t an admonishment against drinking. It is an admonishment about how we should live our lives.
Another way of explaining this metaphor is by saying that we should be sober-minded or that we should be serious.
One of the best things that happened to me when I enlisted was an NCO who was a Vietnam Vet became my mentor. He taught me that training on the military tasks was serious, not to be taken lightly.
He was drafted, as many others, and he did not take any of the training serious. One patrol almost cost him his life. They were ambushed and everyone scattered. He ended up with only one other soldier, a .45, no map, no radio and no idea where they were. It was by luck that many days later, they bumped into another American patrol and was rescued after being listed as MIA. After that he took everything seriously. And because of that, he taught me that the professional Soldier is serious about their craft.
Our minds should be prepared, sober and our hope is set completely on grace.
In this letter, Peter talks about “the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Grace is something that brought us into God’s family. Grace is something that we need everyday but grace is more.
We normally talk about grace as the acceptance and love that we do not deserve. Or sometimes in the negative in that because of God’s grace we don’t get what we do deserve. God’s grace goes beyond just those two things. Grace is also something future.
Grace is also the outworking of God’s work in our lives. Grace is the necessary consequence to God’s decision to save you. I want you to grab that and hold on to it. I want you to feel the depth of this grace.
It means that God has called you into His family. It means that God will be with you, will give to you everything needed to navigate this life. It also means that God will work in your life so that you may live. And it also means that because God is God, His grace will result in your completed salvation.
This is why we can put our hope in God’s grace. not just because it makes us feel better but because God cannot fail.
Not that He won’t fail. Not that He shouldn’t fail. Not that He is stronger than anything and everything else but that God cannot fail. That is where your hope is, in the God who cannot fail.
The very first time I drove a manual shift I did it perfectly. To be honest, I perfectly failed on the first attempt.
2. Purity in Practice
1 Peter 1:14
And so I had to practice.
Even after I could get the tractor moving I still needed to practice more and more to learn the clutch. Once I could drive the tractor with the clutch, I then had to learn how to do that in a truck. In the truck I at least had some understanding of what I needed to do. But still I had to practice.
A few months ago, I went to drive my brother in laws truck. It is a manual. I had not driven a manual in years. The first time I drove his truck I almost stalled the engine because I was out of practice.
Practice is essential to all of life, no matter what we do, if we are out of practice, we will have problems. How do we get out of practice? We simply don’t do or do the opposite of what we should be doing.
For a short period of time, I practiced Martial Arts in HS. Our instructor was from China and had grown up with Martial Arts. When we were tested, we had two things to do. First, we would have to fight someone at a higher level than ourselves. Second was to perform a Kata. A Kata is an exercise that has precise movements. It started in one spot and ended in another spot, every time. Between the beginning and ending there were certain punches, kicks and blocks that were performed; but there was no opponent. As we practiced and practiced and practiced each step, each stance, each body movement, our instructor was right beside us. He would take our hands and move them to the position they were supposed to be in. It was very exacting and difficult to take the same stride each step, to punch at the same level on each punch, very exacting. But when that Kata was mastered, you discovered at least two things. Your footwork, your hand and eye coordination, your movements were better than when you started. And, when you got to watch yourself in a video or someone else performing, it was a dance.
But no one ever completed the Kata that did not practice the basics every day. You cannot throw a proper kick without first being in the proper position. You cannot be in a proper position without knowing what the stance is, why you were in that stance, how far apart your feet were, what direction each foot faced … etc. It was exacting, tiring both mentally and physically but there was no purity to any of the motions without proper practice each day.
I am not suggesting Christianity is a dance. It is a lifestyle; it is the only lifestyle since every other way leads to death.
And that also means our lifestyle before we were saved leads to death. Peter tells us to be obedient children and do not be conformed to our former ignorance.
Our former ignorance means before we were converted.
John Calvin wrote:
There is no greater darkness than ignorance of God.
John Calvin (French Reformer)
John Blanchard wrote.
Atheism is the ultimate ignorance.
John Blanchard
Dallas Willard wrote:
The only protection from our own pride, fear, ignorance and impatience as we study the Bible is fellowship with the living Word, the Lord himself, invoked in constant supplication from the midst of his people.
Dallas Willard
Years ago, one of the slogans you probably heard from Army commercials was, “We own the night.” This slogan referred to the US having advanced night optics. We could see more with these optics than with the normal eyes. Having a better ability to see is a significant advantage in war.
However, there was one thing that shattered this supposed ownership, light. If someone is wearing night vision goggles and therefore can see better at night, simply turning on a switch to light the room would temporarily blind them. You would go from owning the night to being blinded by the light.
Darkness does not encroach on the light but the light will always win over darkness.
If we are not living as obedient children to our Father then we will be living as disobedient children to our Father. This disobedience causes us to wander away from the source of light and back toward the darkness, back to our lives before our conversion when we were ignorant.
When we are teaching our children, we often tell them do this and do that, follow this rule, obey this rule, don’t do this. When we teach them about being Christian we typically teach them the dos and don’ts of the 10 commandments.
What Peter is teaching is that we should live our lives as Christ lived His life. As Christians, we must become more and more like Christ.
3. Pursue Holiness
1 Peter 1:15-16
Another way of saying this is that we should pursue holiness.
