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Introduction
Will you please open your Bible and turn with me to 1 Peter?
This morning we will be looking at 1 Peter 1:13-21 together in a message that I have entitled, “Hope, Holiness, and Fear”.
If you don’t have a Bible, the passage is on the screens in front of you and you can follow along there.
Please read along with me as I read 1 Peter 1:13-21.
Read 1 Peter 1:13-21.
Pray.
We are all born with a common disposition.
No matter where we are born or what family we’re born into we all share this common trait: we instinctively believe that we are capable of earning our salvation.
As soon as we are aware of things beyond the crib, we begin a life of merit.
We have the idea that our good can outweigh our bad and therefore, in the end, whatever god may exist and whatever life beyond the grave looks like, we’ll be OK.
Every human being alive that senses their need to be saved is first confronted with the temptation to be saved by their own ability.
This is a common trait of us all.
But for those who are born again, who are Christians, also tend to share a common trait.
This trait is much different, though.
Christians know that they are unable to live up to the measure of God’s standard and know that their good works cannot save them.
Christians know that salvation is by grace alone through Jesus Christ.
But this isn’t the common trait I’m talking about.
Though this is true of all Christians, there is something that many of us share that goes beyond salvation by grace and it’s that we often believe that since we are saved by grace, lives of obedience are inconsequential.
That is, we can find ourselves unconvinced that obedience matters at all to God.
After all, we’re saved by grace.
These two ideas, however (being saved by our ability or obedience is irrelevant), are absurd.
They each miss the mark. 1 Peter 1:13-21 reveals to us the errors of both these ideas.
On the one had, we are going to see that obedience matters to God.
God calls his people to reveal his holy character.
His desire for you and I as we live in this world is to be a holy people.
And yet, this holiness that we pursue will, in no way, save us.
Instead, our pursuit of holiness is grounded in a salvation we have already received.
I imagine that most of us are facing one of these ideas today.
Either you are doing your best so that God will save you on the last day or you haven’t thought about holiness in quite sometime.
As Christians are pressed to the margins of society, you are being tempted to conform more to the world that surrounds you than the God who has redeemed you.
Today, God’s Word is addressing us all and God is telling us through his Word that gospel hope produces holy living.
This message comes to us in this passage through 3 commands.
Before we get to those commands, however, we ought to notice something.
In verse 13 we see the first of 3 commands in our passage, but more importantly, in verse 13 we meet the very first command of the entire letter of 1 Peter.
This is our 5 sermon in our series through 1 Peter and there has not been one single command we have read.
We have heard about our Trinitarian salvation, our new birth in Christ, our inheritance as God’s people, and our genuine faith.
We have heard about our amazing salvation, one that angels marvel at.
But we have not heard ONE command in verses 1-12.
Do you know why?
This is a theme that runs throughout the Bible.
Commands are not just given by themselves, they are rooted in something.
They’re grounded.
They have a foundation and a basis.
Here we see that foundation: all that God has done through Jesus Christ.
What He has done, is doing, and will do.
All of the wonderful truths of verses 1-12 lead us to verses 13-21 where Peter then tells us, “Gospel hope produces holy living.”
This is made clear by the very first word of verse 13, “therefore”.
This word is a siren to us.
It alerts us to the idea that what is about to be said is grounded in what has been said.
This is critical.
If you miss this, if you invert the order, you fall into the error of every man, believing that your goodness is the foundation or ground of your salvation.
BUT, if you skip over the “therefore”, you fall into the error of many who have been born again by believing that obedience is inconsequential.
Both are errors.
God’s Word tells us, on the other hand, that gospel hope produces holy living.
All that God has done for us in verses 1-12 leads us to the commands of verses 13-21.
In these verses we see 3 commands:
Set your hope fully on grace (v.13)
Live a holy life (v.15)
Walk in the fear of the Lord (v.17)
It’s no surprise that these three commands will serve as our outline for this morning.
Let’s begin looking at how God has called us to live by looking at verse 13:
Set Your Hope Fully On Grace
The first command that we are met with in 1 Peter is right here in verse 13: set your hope fully on grace.
Read verse 13 again:
Hope is important to Peter and it stands out in this letter.
As you might imagine, considering the sufferings that these Christians were going through, offering hope would be high on Peter’s priority list.
He has already encouraged us by saying that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now he is commanding us to set our hope fully on grace.
In light of all that God has revealed to us in verses 1-12, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
One effect of the gospel in your life should be that you now live with a settled hope in the grace of Jesus Christ.
You have hope because your sins have been forgiven and you have hope because you know that you will receive grace on the last day.
Can you imagine what the original readers may have been tempted to put their hope in?? Money to buy them out of trouble, status to help them escape persecution, relationships to deliver them from trials.
What do you put your hope in?
Peter commands us all, set your hope fully on grace!!
And the way that we do that is given to us at the beginning of verse 13: by preparing our minds for action and being sober-minded.
“Preparing our minds for action” is literally (as you can probably see from the footnote in your Bible) girding up the loins of your mind.
This picture is clear when we think of a person during this time that would take his long garment and tuck it under his belt so that he wouldn’t be hindered in walk or at his work.
It’s kind-of like rolling up your sleeves.
Get ready to work.
One theologian said this, “Hope will not become a reality without disciplined thinking.
Thinking in a new way does not happen automatically; it requires effort, concentration, and intentionality.”
Secondly, we set our hope fully on grace by being sober-minded.
Don’t allow your mind to be drunk with the world.
Dull to the reality of God.
Instead, drink the satisfying Word of God.
Look at the Scriptures and be amazed at all that God has done for you.
Set your hope fully on grace.
The second command we see in this passage is found in verses 14-16, which we can summarize this way:
Live A Holy Life
Be holy.
Gospel hope produces holy living.
You are commanded today, by God, to be like God and live a holy life.
What is the basis of living this way?
To begin, we are God’s children.
In verse 14 Peter appeals to us that we should live a holy life as obedient children.
We have been adopted into a new family.
God, the very God of the universe that we sinned against, has made us his very own family, adopted us to be his children.
He is not just a master over us, demanding our allegiance, he is our Father, our loving Father.
How did he make us his children?
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