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Morning guys, how we doing? All right, if you have your
Bibles, you can go to first Peter and go there.
This morning we're continuing our conversation about a long
obedience. Last Sunday we talked about
trust. We talked about trust and we
said God is forming us to be people who trust him.
He's not just after compliance, He's not just after compliance.
He's not trying to make us into a bunch of robots.
He's after people who trust his heart, who trust his character
and trust his ways. We said last week, we said this
was very important, that the life God invites you into is not
a life based on your faithfulness.
And even though this is what many of us think Christianity
is, I got to be faithful. I got to be good.
The life that God invites you into, into is not a life based
on your faithfulness, but a life based on God's faithfulness to
you. God is faithful to you.
And today we want to answer this question.
So if you're wondering where this message is going, if you
take notes, here's the question we want to answer today.
If I'm trusting God fully like we talked about last week, if
I'm trusting him fully, if I'm saying, hey, God, I trust you,
you have my life. How is that showing up in my
everyday life? In other words, what's changing
about Tuesday at work? What's changing about the the
neighbors that I have a hard time getting along with?
Like what's changing in my life? Because I trust God fully.
That's the question we're going to answer today.
Now this is where our text is going to take us this morning.
All right, It's going to answer this question, and you can go
there first Peter, chapter 1. I do.
If you don't have your Bibles, it'll be on the screen.
But if you have your phone, you can go to the Bible app.
It'd be helpful for you to see it.
This context of this is #1 Peter is a letter.
So when you see first Peter, it's a letter.
Don't be, don't be weirded out by the Bible.
It's just Peter's writing a letter to some Christians in
Asia Minor. And these Christians are under
some persecution. Their lobs are very difficult,
some very difficult circumstances that they're going
through. And Peter tells these believers
that God calls them to live faithfully even though the
culture is opposed to them. Now, the persecution that these
Christians in Asia Minor were facing was not like a state
persecution yet. That hasn't quite started yet in
the history of the church. It was like a soft persecution.
It was kind of like Christians were not able to get good paying
jobs. It this happens around the world
today, like there are certain countries where if you're a
Christian, you're, you can be a janitor and like, that's it.
OK, That, that's, that's a reality now in places.
Well, this is what was happening then when Peter's writing this
letter, Christians couldn't get good jobs or kids couldn't get
into good schools, like that type of thing.
It was they couldn't live in certain parts of town.
It was a soft persecution simply because they were Christians.
And Peter tells these believers in the midst of this
persecution, he says, remain faithful to God even though,
even though the culture is opposed to you and doesn't
appreciate your faith and is even hostile towards it.
And so the question then is, how can you remain faithful to God
in the middle of that persecution?
How can you remain faithful to God in the middle of those
difficult circumstances? And what's interesting is when
Peter begins to answer this question throughout his letter,
he doesn't list, he doesn't make a list of behaviors like if you
want to be faithful to God in the middle of this persecution,
then do this and do this and do this and do this and don't do
this. Don't do this and don't do this.
That's not where he starts at all.
He doesn't start with like a list of behaviors that they need
to be doing in order to be faithful to God.
No, actually he starts with hope.
Hope. Now imagine your life is hard.
You're poor. And if you just.
Abandoned your faith in Christ. If you just said, I don't
believe Jesus resurrected from the dead, your life would get
easier. Imagine that all you had to do
was get up one day and be like, hey, our family's not Christian
anymore and now your life will get easier.
What would you need somebody to tell you in order to help you
get through that? So Peter offers them the word
hope. He says hope is what you need
now. Hope is always about the future.
Hope is never about the present. And that's exactly how he uses
the word hope. He tells them to have hope about
the future that is promised to them.
That there is a there is a future that's coming for you
have hope in that. And that hope you have about the
future changes your perspective of the present.
Your hope about the future changes your present
perspective. Or you could say it this way it
changes. Where your heart is devoted,
what your heart is committed to. Let me say it this way.
What you're devoted to, what you're committed to changes
because of the hope you have. So write that down.
What you're devoted to changes because of the hope you have.
And the hope is about the future, but the devotion is
about the present. So my present devotion changes
about about my future. Hope did we get that.
OK, we'll talk about that more. So let's jump into this text a
little more first Peter chapter one, verse 13 through 16.
Let's let's read this. Everybody got the context all
right. Therefore, with minds that are
alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought
to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at His coming.
As obedient children do not conform to the evil desires you
had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who has called
you as holy, so be holy and all you do.
For it is written, be holy because I am holy.
All right, we're going to pause here for a second.
We're going to say a prayer and I have this.
I don't know, I don't really normally have these types of
things happening when I'm on stage or preaching.
I have this sense that the Lord just wants me to pray for, for
any of you who are dealing with some illnesses, whether it's
emotional, mental, physical, any of you are just walking through
something that's just illness. So if you're here and you're
walking through illness, there's just a pressing on me to pray
for you. So if you're here and you're
walking through illness, the Lord is having me pray for you.
All right, so let's let's just do that together.
Or if you're online, maybe you're watching right now and
that's why the Lord's pressing this.
So let's pray as we've read this text and let's ask the Lord to
be in this message. And let's pray for wholeness and
healing for those who are walking through illness.
Father, out of obedience, I just pause here and and just say
thank you that you love us so much.
And I pray, Father, that that we would remember your devotion to
us. That you've met our greatest.
Need in that you gave your son Jesus to die for our sins.
The Lord, there are, there are those among us and those who are
tending a line who are facing illnesses, physical things like
with their bodies, with their hearts, with their hands.
Like there's, there's illness and then there's just, there's
mental health. Lord, there's the struggle
around anxiety and depression and just the stress of life.
And so Lord, I, I, I pray for healing over whoever it is
that's walking through these things now.
And you get to define healing, Father, whatever healing is, is
you define it. We just, we just want your will
to be done in their lives. And so we pray that they would
have wholeness. They would have your presence
that you would be there with them that they would know you're
you're, you're part of you're part of this story that they're
not alone and at this moment would confirm that to them.
So Lord, we pray your will be done in their lives and we pray
they'd be comforted by the truth that you are aware of what
they're walking through. And Lord, we pray you teach us
through Peter's words this morning what a gift it is we
have them. In the name of Christ, we Perry.
Amen. OK, so in this text that we just
read, there were three ideas. You know, I like to do this.
Three ideas. It helps you take notes.
And I like to say it helps you know how close we are to being
finished. All right, so three ideas.
OK #1 hope in God's grace #1 hope in God's grace #2 live as
God's children, live as God's children, and #3 reflect God's
character. You got it.
Hope in God's grace. Live as God's children reflect
God's character. So let's jump in to the first
one. All right #1 hope in God's
grace. That's verse 13.
So the command in verse 13 is for you to set your hope on the
grace that is coming in the future.
Now what he's saying is, hey, guys that are under persecution
in the future, a new reality is coming.
Something's going to change. Like the world is broken and
it's messed up and there's pain and there's difficulties, but
God is bringing a new future where where the pain of this
moment will be forgotten and the pain of this current existence
that you have will be behind you.
Something better is coming. Peter's saying we set our hope
on our future promise. Now it's interesting.
Look at the text. OK, what does he say we set our
hope with? He doesn't say with our hearts.
He doesn't say set your hope on the future with your hearts.
He says to do it with your, what everybody say, minds with your
minds. So he says with your thinking,
set your hope on this future promise that's coming.
And he says with minds that are fully alert and minds that are
fully sober. In other words, you've thought
this through. You've worked through the logic
and you've said, OK, the world is broken and it's messed up.
And if my heart is not home, if my life is not home in this
world, then surely I must have been made for a different world.
I've worked this out. And so that now in my mind, I'm
thinking about the fact that there's a future hope, that that
is a filter that I run. Everything else I'm working
through, everything else I'm living through, I run it through
that filter. That's what Peter's telling
these believers, hey, you're going through some tough times.
You're going through some difficult circumstances.
Don't set your mind on those circumstances.
Set your mind on the future hope.
Set your mind on the future reality.
You know in. Essence, what he's saying to
these suffering Christians is this.
Do not be anxious in your thinking.
I know easier said than done, but it takes practice.
But it also don't be anesthetized.
I can't say that word. Don't be, don't be asleep in
your thinking. Right.
And it so does that better? Yeah.
Somebody say anesthetized. How do you say that word?
Who's got it anesthetized? I can't do it.
That that that that my tongue just turns it on itself.
So don't, don't, don't be anxious.
Like don't be like, Oh my gosh, everything's falling apart and
and don't be asleep in your thinking.
And, and if you think about it, this is kind of where most
people are. They're either like panicking
and worried about the future all the time, or they're just like,
whatever man happens, I don't care.
You know, I just this is going to unfold.
They're asleep thinking about the future, right?
It's one or the other. Don't you guys agree with that?
It's kind of like, is this kind of where you, I mean, this is
kind of this is the pendulum I live in.
Like I'm trying to solve everything.
I got to figure it out. Oh, it doesn't matter.
Whatever is going to happen, what's going to happen, you
know, right? Peter says.
Don't do either of those. Don't don't be asleep in your
thinking and don't be anxious in your thinking.
Be sober and be alert with your mind on the.
Hope. The future hope that is coming,
that there is a new day, new day coming.
And let that future hope in God's grace that's coming,
meaning there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth.
This future promise. Let that guide you in the way
you think. So let me say this this way, if
I set my if I set my mind or the future hope and I'm and I'm, I'm
mindful of the fact that the world will be made right, that
everything will be put to right. So this is not the only life I'm
going to get that I'm going to get a whole nother life.
If I'm setting my mind to that, then that will change how I
react to my present. That would change to I will know
what's really important in life. I will know how to respond to
what's really happening in my life.
So let me say it this simply hope for your future changes
your present. Hope for your future changes
your present. Hope you.
You can take a massive disappointment because you know
this life is not all there is. You can take a massive victory
and not get practical and arrogant because you know this
life is not all there is. Does this make sense?
Hope for your future changes our present.
Now we understand this, we get this.
I don't. You don't have to like think
about you don't have to think about this theologically.
Have you ever had on your calendar a cruise or a vacation
that was well into the future? Does it ever change your
thinking a little bit leading up to it?
Do you find yourself thinking about it a lot?
Do you find yourself like buying extra things here and there?
Do you find yourself, especially if you're going like on a beach
vacation, you're trying to find yourself trying to lose a little
weight before you go? Anybody know?
I'm talking about you're like, we're going, we're going to the
beach and we're going to the beach in July and it's February.
I need to try to lose 80 lbs before now and then, you know
what I mean? Why?
Why is that happening? Because you have a future hope
that you believe is going to happen and you're having
circumstance, you're, you're changing your present
circumstances because of that future hope.
You believe in that future hope so much so that you're doing
things in the present. Because of that.
Think about kids who are in school right now.
If you're in high school right now or middle school right now,
do you probably know how many days are left in school or how
many weeks are? Left in school.
Right. Do you guys remember that when
you were in school? You know, do you know how many
you guys know how much time is left in school?
Look, look, right here, He's like to how many 10 weeks is
what he's saying, 6-6 weeks, 10 days, 10 days.
Yeah, man. Now, listen, so if you know
there's only 10 days, you know there's only 10 days left in
school. What are you thinking about
between now and those 10 days? Like, you're you're thinking
about the fact that you're going to be done soon, right?
You know it's all going to be over.
Yeah. You got to finish your papers
and you got to do your tests, all that kind of stuff.
But you are imagining yourself. And when I was in high school,
doing nothing all summer, right? Doing nothing.
It didn't actually work out that way.
But that's what you're imagining yourself, right?
In other words, when you know something in the future is
coming, it changes your present, changes the way you think.
That confident belief in a future reality changes how you
act and think in the present. And this is what Peter is
describing. And Peter says, hey, this is not
accidental. This is not passive.
He says this is intentional. You purposely set your mind, you
purposely think on these things. You have habits.
You wake up every day and you have some type of habit where
it's reading the Bible or spending some time in prayer or
spending some time in quiet. You have habits that help you.
Set your mind to help you set your mind on the hope that is
coming. And that habit keeps you in the,
in the, in the present of living like there's a future that's
coming that's better. Now.
It's interesting to me that Peter's not describing emotions
or feelings Like feel, if you just, if you just feel hope
you'll be OK. No, he says, this is something
you think about. You use your mind for this.
We think actively and soberly about the reality that this life
is not all there is, that there is a coming future.
And when you do that, it will change your commitments.
It will change your actions. It will change the way you live
in the present. If I believe a new life is
coming, my devotion of what I live for now changes.
So number one, first of all, we put our hope in God's future
promise of grace. That's number one.
We put our hope in God's future promise of grace at the Christ
coming. And then secondly.
So hope in God's grace #2 live as God's children, live as God's
children. Now we get more specific, more
specific about how our. Day-to-day lives begin to change
when we set our hope on the future.
Grace. If I've said this morning so
far, set your mind, get your thinking about the future,
promise. OK, now let's get more specific
about how that changes our day-to-day life.
Look at verse 14. OK, verse 14, it says this as
obedient children do not conform to the evil desires you had when
you lived in ignorance. Now again, he's writing to
people who are Christians and Asia Minor who used to not be
Christians. And Peter says, first of all, if
you set your hope on God, you will begin to look like an
obedient child of God. You see how that works.
What what we tend to think is if I want to be an obedient child
of God, I got to really, really like get disciplined and try
hard and get myself together. But what Peter says is now the
way this starts is you set your hope on God.
You set your hope on his future. People who hope in God live
their lives like obedient children in God's house.
I'm. Going to say that again.
People who hope in God live their lives like obedient
children in God's house. It's a correlation.
It's disconnected. Now, there are two things I've
got to address about this text. First of all, notice how Peter
addresses them. He says as obedient children.
He doesn't say as faithful servants.
That's what you hear. But that's not what he said.
You hear as faithful servants, be obedient.
That's what you heard. That's what all these preachers
you've heard your that's what you heard in your head, but
that's not what he said. He calls us children.
He doesn't say as faithful employees or faithful servants.
He says as obedient children. Now this matters because think
about this. A servant obeys out of fear.
A servant obeys out of fear because what can happen to a
servant? He can be dismissed, she can be
dismissed, she can be removed. And so a servant obeys out of
fear, out of losing their position or losing their reward.
But a child doesn't obey out of fear.
A child obeys from a place of security and safety.
A child says, I belong in this home.
They're they're a child's not trying to earn their place in
the home by trying to be good. They already have a place in the
home. This is why Peter calls us
obedient children. This is on purpose.
You belong in the home. So Peter is saying hey, we obey
God in our day-to-day lives not to get into the family of God,
but because we are already in the family of God.
We we recognize how loved we are by this future hope in this
future devote this future promise of grace that Christ is
returning. There is a new heaven and a new
earth. I will get a whole new life.
I realize that that God has loved me so much that as an
obedient. Child I want to.
Honor the God who loves me so much.
This is what children do. And now are there any perfect
children? No, they're not.
They're just not any perfect children.
I mean, maybe 30 seconds after they're born.
I don't know well. There are no perfect children.
You and I are not perfect. We're we're not going to be
perfectly obedient to God. Like I figured all this out.
That's that's not, this is how we think Christianity works.
If I'm good, God accepts me. Peter's flipping that over and
he's saying, no, you're in the house.
You're in the house. And the fact that you've been
accepted and the fact that you set your hope on God, that
begins to change you. That's how he flips it.
And if you think about it, man, I'm telling you, there's stories
and testimonies people can get up and share about how the
devotion and the love of a parent or a friend change their
lives. My younger brother Mess had a
mess going on in his life just. When he was in his early 20s, I
don't want to put his junk in the street, but everything you
can think about early 20s being a mess.
And my dad, my dad went to him and he put this out there
publicly. So my, he, my dad bailed him out
of jail and in the parking lot began to weep.
And my dad was not a crier. He didn't he wouldn't like me.
He didn't cry weeping in the parking lot.
He said, son, you're killing me. I love you so much and I can't
live. I can't live, please, I'm
begging you, start making some changes in your life.
And my brother, not on the flip of a switch, not overnight from
that point, he he marks it to that point is when his life
began to change. And today he has a good career
and two beautiful boys and a beautiful wife, living a
wonderful life, faithful to the Lord.
My dad did not say I'm tired of you.
I always get in trouble. You're an idiot.
He said, I love you. I can't live this way anymore
like this. This is what it means.
This is how God loves us. This is how he calls us into
obedience. He accepts you and He loves you
and he puts you in the family through Jesus Christ and that
acceptance and that hope of the future.
Begins to change us who can say that's true who can say I can't
deny the changes that have taken place in me since I've come down
to the Lord You can say it right you can say it right you can't
deny it you can't you can't now it didn't happen overnight it
wasn't like a switch flip and you're like man, I used to be a
total jerk and I'm less of a jerk today, you know no, it's
like slowly over time it's like oh I can't and then you look
back over the long arc and you realize man, look at what the
Lord has done in my life you know what the one thing that
changed was it wasn't your effort it was your.
Faith that he actually accepted you, that he actually loves you.
You actually believe that and that's what brought the change.
So that's the first thing. Peter addresses them as children
when he calls them obedient, to be obedient.
Now, I the second thing I need to say about this verse is this.
Peter does indeed call us to obedience.
He does indeed call us to obedience like this.
This is in the Bible and he begins by describing obedience
in a negative way. He says do not conform to your
evil desires. Now, that phrase evil desires is
a little bit misleading, and I think it's a poor translation.
And I've always point out to you guys poor translations.
There's one word there in the Greek for desires, all right,
And Peter uses that word desires or passions.
What we all know is that not all desires or all passions are bad.
Some passions, some desires are good.
The issue is not that we desire evil things.
The issue is that our desires are disordered.
Did you hear what I just said? Peter says.
That in the past, in the past, your issue wasn't that your
desires were evil, it was that your desires were disordered.
Let me, let me read you. This is the new Revised standard
version of this same verse, verse 14.
And I think this translation captures it very well.
It says, like obedient children, do not be conformed to the
desires that you formerly had in ignorance.
All right. In other words, you had some
desires that were out of order. You, you, you, they weren't
necessarily evil, they were just out of order.
Now, there's an assumption that Peter makes.
Do you guys hear the assumption in this verse?
The assumption is that our desires form us because he says
do not conform to your former desires.
All right, That you had an ignorance.
Well, what's the assumption? That what you desire, what you,
what you set your heart and your mind on has a way of forming
you, forming your character and forming your way.
That that's an assumption that he makes all right.
And what Peter is saying is, hey guys, before you knew God
before, before you had a relationship with God, your
desires were void of God. In other words, all your desires
and think about your life before you knew the Lord your you had
desires and they weren't necessarily evil.
They just didn't include God, right?
They didn't include God. And Peter says when you had
these desires that did not include God, those desires were
shaping you. And so therefore you were being
shaped by desires that did not include God.
And those desires gave us those desires, gave us direction, they
gave us purpose, They gave us meaning.
And, and Peter says in ignorance, like we didn't know
any better, we looked at things like comfort, approval, success,
and control to give us what only God can give.
These weren't always bad things. They were just things that we
trusted in more than we trusted God.
We had what Augustine called disordered loves.
This is what Peter is saying. Like before you came to know
God, you, you, you had your desires.
You had desires for things that controlled your life, that
formed your life, things like control, things like money,
things like success. But now Peter says, now that
you've come to the Lord, now that you've become a Christian,
now something has changed. Now because you know God, he
sits at the top of all your desires.
He is your primary desire. So he sits at the top of all the
things that you want and all the things that you long for.
So just like you tend to set your heart and your mind on your
desires, Peter says, now God sits at the top of those
desires. You set your heart and your
mind. On this has.
Changed. And Peter would contend that
this changes everything now. We still have other desires.
You still have other desire. It isn't like I wake up every
day going. I desire God and only God.
That's it, right? And that's not like, well,
that's what you got to be, to be a Christian.
No, it's that I still have other desires.
I still have desires for comfort and desires for success and
desires for, you know, all of these other desires, right?
But they're not, none of them are primary now.
None of them take the place of the first position.
Who gets the place of the first position?
Now God gets the place of the first position.
Now He becomes my primary desire.
And if I put God at the top of my desire chart, if I say of all
the things I want in this world, I want my relationship with my
heavenly Father to be first in my life, this is the most
important thing. Then every other desire, every
other love becomes ordered. Does this make sense?
So this is what Peter is saying. He's saying in the past.
In the past you had you had desires that were disordered.
And so we place God at the center of our lives and he
orders our desires correctly. And we don't do this because
we're forced to or coerced to. We do this going back to verse
13. We do this because we set our
minds on the hope of his grace. We.
Go man, God has been so faithful to me, so good to me, why would
I desire anything other than Him first?
Does that make sense? You see how the mind is such a
key part of this? We think it's all about what
we're feeling. It's not.
It's all about what our mind is set on.
I set my mind on the future hope that God's going to give me.
And then I realized that my my desires are disordered.
And I put God at the top of my desires, and then all my other
desires become ordered. And this is what it means to
live. As God's children, we are secure
in His family, and we began to live with Him as a child in his
home. And he is our greatest desire,
seeking to please Him, not to earn His love because we already
have it. We don't obey to earn God's
love. We obey because we have been
loved and accepted by God. Does this make sense?
All right. So #1 we set our hope in God's
grace #2 We live as God's children, no longer shaped by
our old desires. And I don't know how we're going
to do #3 in this little bit of time, but you guys, buckle up #3
we reflect God's character. I have to do it.
So somebody text people in children's ministry and tell
them to buckle up, reflect God's character.
Look at verses 15 and 16. If you have your Bibles, your
spawns, this is what he says. So instead of conforming to your
old desires, do this instead. But just as he who called you is
holy, so be holy and all you do for it is written, be holy
because I am holy. Now remember I said his first
description of obedience was a negative description.
It was like, hey, reject your old values, reject your old
desires that you were ignorant of.
That was the negative. Now in these verses he shows us
how obedience is a positive sense and that positive sense is
a pursuit of holiness. Peter says God himself is our
model and our standard for holiness, not other people.
Peter tells us to be holy in all you do.
Print that on a card and stick it on your dashboard of your
car. I no way, bro.
Like I love Jesus except when I'm driving.
You know what I mean, That people's crazy out there.
I never do anything stupid in the car.
So he knows. Peter says be holy in all you
do. That's that's strong.
That's, that's crazy. But here's the thing.
He says being holy in everything, Yes.
But then he says the standard for our holiness is being holy
like God. And you got to get this.
Be holy like God is holy. This is important.
Because you don't get to define what Holiness is.
You don't. You don't get to decide what
holiness. I don't get to decide what
holiness is. I have to be holy like God is
holy. This is the call of my life.
All right, I think we have to stop here for just a moment.
And we got to talk about holiness.
When we think of holiness, we all tend to think about
morality, right? Morals.
So again, some of you who reject Christianity, This is why you
reject Christianity. You think it's all about morals
and we boil Christianity down to don't do bad, do good.
That's silly. Think about this.
If someone were to ask you, hey, what is God like?
Tell me about God. And you said, well, God is holy.
And they said, OK, cool. What does that mean that he's
holy? And you responded with, well,
you know, he's really moral. He's got really high morals.
Well, yes, God has really high morals, but does God is
perfectly moral capture that God is holy?
Are those two things equal? Isn't God being holy much deeper
than just He's perfectly moral? Well, certainly it is.
You see, God is moral. And yes, for you and I to be
holy certainly includes being morally good.
Certainly includes that. But it's deeper than that.
Holiness. Write this down.
Holiness means set apart. Holiness means being distinct.
Holiness means being different. So when we say God is holy, what
we're saying is God is not like anything else in all of
creation. He's separate.
He's distinct. There's no match for him.
He's the only one. He's he's set apart.
OK then, Steven. All right, great.
Well, then if, if, if God is holy, then that means he's set
apart and we got to be holy like God.
He's the standard. That means we're set apart,
we're distinct, we're different. What does that mean?
That we're like, we're distinct because we're so much better
morally than everybody else. And that's the kind of preaching
people talk about right? Here they go.
You got to be better and you got to stop doing those bad things
and do good things that way. We're set apart in the world,
right? And it's no like that.
That's not it at all. Like, that's not how we're set
apart is being better morally than everybody else.
Now, again, again, again, we're certainly committed to a moral
lifestyle. Don't walk out here going, I
think Steven said we don't have to worry about moralities.
Like, no, no, we're certainly committed to a moral lifestyle,
but that is not what sets Christians apart.
You guys know this, right? There are plenty of people who
do not know the Lord, who do not believe in God, who are
atheists, who are morally better than you.
They are, they are there. I mean them all the time.
I'm like, this dude is this dude is better than me.
And some of them even adhere to Christian ethics, meaning they
agree with our view on things as far as Christian ethics go, and
they adhere to them better than we do.
So if being set apart and being distinct is what holiness is,
and the Bible tells us to be holy, being set apart and be
distinct, and that doesn't mean just being morally better than
everybody else, then what does it mean?
Are you ready? Write this down.
The word whole, WHOLE, Radic WHOLE, the word whole.
So what does it mean to be distinct, to be set apart?
It means we are whole. WHOLE.
All right, I'll keep talking. We are integrated, meaning our
lives are not fractured. Fractured.
We're not trying to manage how certain people perceive us over
how other people try to perceive us.
We're not compartmentalized. Instead, we are integrated and
unified in our purpose and our nature.
Who we are is settled. OK, well, OK, OK, OK, OK, well,
what is that? What does it mean that we're,
we're settled and we're integrated and, and who like,
how, what does it mean? We're like, we're whole like
that. Well, this is how wholeness
happens in your life, when you are holy WHOLLY, when you are
wholly committed to God, committed.
When you were. Wholly committed when you say he
is my. Highest desire, when you look at
all the rooms of your house, listen to me carefully.
When you look at all the rooms of your house, and I don't mean
your literal house, I mean this house.
When you look at all the rooms of your house and you say, Lord,
you can have every room. I'm giving you authority over
every room. I'm giving you authority over
every room. I'm not going to hold any part
back of my life or my heart from you.
I'm going to strain every day to surrender every part of my
finances, every part of my physical life, every part of my
body, every part of my mind, every part of my emotions.
I'm going to do everything I can to surrender to you and thereby
being committed to God. You are becoming integrated as
His children, not fragmented as an employee who seeks to be good
when the boss is looking and does whatever he wants when the
boss is away. Do you see how that changes
everything? When I'm wholly committed to
God, WHOLL, when I'm wholly committed to God, He's first.
My life becomes integrated, becomes unified, and I am not
fragmented as an employee or servant.
Now the wholeness, this wholeness, the self wholly
committed to God, makes you and I distinct from the world.
Because that's the, that's the goal of.
Holiness to be distinct from the world.
You being whole makes you distinct from the world.
How? Well, yes, it includes good
morals, but in addition to that, you and I, as believers in
Jesus, have given to God complete and total authority
over our lives. Stay with me.
You have given to God complete and total authority to God over
your life. That means you've said to God.
I have surrendered all my autonomy over my body and over
my emotions and over my mind to you as Master and King.
And that, my friend, is distinct from this current world.
Because in this current culture, the last thing you would ever do
is surrender the autonomy of yourself, your body, your mind,
your thoughts. The last.
Thing you would do in this it's it's, it is, it is sacrilege.
It is a, it is a sin in our culture.
It is a sin in our culture to sacrifice your autonomy.
To anyone else other than yourself and what Christians do
is Christians say I am holy, WHOLLY, wholly committed to God.
He has all the authority over my life.
He I have, I have 0 autonomy anymore over me and friend that
in this world will make you distinct.
It will make you stick out big time and more than perplexed.
The world will not just be perplexed by you.
Listen to me carefully. The world will be annoyed,
frustrated and angry at you. And do you know why?
Because if you've declared God as your king and the authority
of your life, no one can move in and set up another throne in
your heart. Credit card companies can't move
in and set up another throne. Mortgage companies can't move in
and set up another throne. Alcohol producing companies
can't set move in and set up another throne.
Government can't move in and set up another throne.
No one can set up another throne.
In your heart, you can't be subjugated.
You can't be. They say, what if you don't?
If you don't submit to this, you're going to be killed.
You're like, well, hey brother, let's do it.
I'm submitted. So you become a threat to the
wider culture because you are a Kingdom inside of a Kingdom.
Did you hear what I just said? You are a Kingdom inside of a
Kingdom. That's what believers are.
And so we are distinct and different not because we're
morally better than anybody else.
No, no, we're distinct and different because we have only
one ruler and it's not ourselves and it's not the government and
it's not anybody else. We have one ruler, and his name
is Jesus. He's our king.
We surrender to him alone. No one can manipulate.
Us or push us away? From our devotion to God or
frighten us into subjugation. Now why would you and I
abandoned our autonomy to a God we cannot see or touch?
Well, we believe that this God abandoned his autonomy for us.
It is wild to think about, but to say I will not be in charge
of my life. I will take whatever comes my
way, good or bad, and I'll say if it's from the hand of the
Lord, and it is because all things are from His hand, and it
is for His purposes. Well, how could you give up
wanting to be in charge of your life?
Because what I believe is God abandoned the throne of heaven.
Jesus left heaven and came to earth and surrendered his
autonomy for me. He said I won't.
I won't be my own king. I won't be in charge of my own
life. I'll become an infant.
I'll be raised as a child. I'll let men I created, men I
know everything about. I'll let them beat me with an
inch of my life. I'll let them torture me and
I'll let them crucify me naked in front of a crowd of people.
I'll surrender my autonomy. Why?
So that I can be a child of God. So you could be a child of God.
So surrendering the authority of my own life and saying, Lord,
you have, you have authority over every part of me, mind,
body, spirit. And there's some things that God
caught, you know, some things I'm not going to like about
that. And some things are going to be
challenging and difficult. But no one is hanging you naked
on a cross. He did that for us.
And so, my friend, be holy, be holy, WHOLLY holy, committed to
your Heavenly Father, and from that everything else will
change. Will you stand with me?
Let's say a prayer for us, God, this for me.
This text was challenging and convicting, and I thank you that
we have it in the Bible to wrestle with.
We're just reminded that none of us can walk out of this room
with arrogance or pride, thinking that we somehow have
figured it out, that we're somehow better than others or
not. We've simply been invited into a
childlike relationship with you. Thank you Lord.
Thank you Lord Jesus, for abandoning your autonomy so that
we could be saved, so that our sins can be forgiven, so so that
the justice of God can be met. Help us to follow you and
abandoning our autonomy so that we might be full of the joy of
the Lord. Thank you for these believers in
Asia, my honor, in the 1st century that were under
persecution. Thank you that Peter wrote them
this letter. Thank you that they will.
They withstood the persecution and they were found faithful.
Thank you for this day. In Christ's name we pray.
Amen. Thank you friends, we love you,
appreciate your. Patience with me.