Turn back to 1 Peter chapter 4. 1 Peter chapter 4. Continue our exposition of this book and we'll consider with God's help the first six verses this morning. 1 Peter 4 verse 1. Let's give our attention to the reading of God's word once again. For as much then As Christ had suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that had suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you, who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. May the Lord bless the reading and especially preaching of this holy word. Well, it is a truth that each of us only has a certain amount of time on this earth. We only have a certain amount of time to live. Time is really your most precious commodity, brethren. I think the saying that time is money has really made us think the two are equivalent. They're not. They're not at all. There are ways for me to make more money. There's no way for me to make more time. It is allotted how much time that I do have in this world. Time is actually far more important than money. Far, far more important than money. Yet we don't live that way, do we? We don't treat time with the same preciousness that we might treat money. We look at how little or how much we have and we count it, we make sure that we have enough for whatever, for the bills and everything else, we seek to earn more money, and yet time just slips straight through our fingers. And we don't seem to have a care. We look at the person who's prodigal with their goods, and we look down on that, but many of us are prodigal with our time, wasting our time away, not doing what is most necessary and what is most to the glory of God. And all of us must ask, what am I spending my most precious commodity on? I must one day, after all, give an accounting to God for what I have done in the flesh. And if I were to ask you the question, friends, how much time do you have, what would your answer be? I don't know. I don't know. None of you know. I don't know how much time I have. And that ought to instill in most of us a sense of urgency, shouldn't it? You don't know. We live as though the actuarial tables are promised to us, don't we? On average, a man's gonna live about 72 years, and I have been deceived into thinking that me, over here, I'm gonna have 72 years. No, that's not a promise. That's just statistics, which is very different. The answer is you don't know how much time you have. And sometimes we say that, as I mentioned in the reading, to spur on the unbeliever, to tell the unbeliever, you need to close with Christ. You don't know if today, tonight, your soul will be required of you. No one knows that. And so you ought to consider your standing with God. And so there is always to be urgency in the gospel proclamation, great urgency. And yet, as we have heard, God is also urgent towards the believer, that the believer who has been saved is to be one who has to have instilled in them a sense of urgency about the time that is left with the Lord. You're to be earnest about how much time you have left to live a holy and sanctified life. how much time you have to mortify sin and your lusts, how much time you have to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, to contend for Christ in this world. Verse two says that the one in Christ should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. When you hear those words, the rest of his time, That should arrest you, shouldn't it? That there is just the rest of your time. And what should I do with that time? Well, the apostle is clear here. In some ways, you have to think on this, that there is an allocation of time left for me. I don't know what that time left is. And so then I must live in the manner that is prescribed in the word. And we read in Romans 13, that urgency in Romans 13, and that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. What a word that is there. It is high time to awake out of sleep. Sleep. He's talking to Christians. And he's saying that many of us just sort of sleepwalk the time that we have here on the earth. We don't actually use it and leverage it for the glory of God. How many of us might be sleeping away the time we have left? You know, sometimes if you have children and maybe you have a teenager and sometimes you wonder, how can you be asleep for so long? It's almost noon and you're still sleeping. And you go, it's time to get up. It's time to get up and be productive. It's time to redeem the time for the glory of God. And yet many of us are like that, adults, children, teenagers, right? It's not so much that our eyes are closed, but really it is the fact that spiritually we seem close to the Lord. And it's always struck me in Romans 13, how the apostle says, for now is your salvation nearer than when you first believed. You are getting closer to glory. And so you should live more like a holy one, one who is prepared for that place. Christ is coming, you're going to be received by him, and you will give an account of your time in the flesh, as I will too, and what is it then that you will spend the rest of your time on? knowing that your salvation is nearer now than on the day in which you believed. How much time will I spend on the glory of God and for righteous living? Could we truly say, and oh, that it would be our heart without reservation, what Brainerd, who lived a mere 29 years, said, oh, that I could spend every moment of my life to God's glory? That that would be our yearning? that I would spend every moment of my life to God's glory. And so being saved, brethren, does not release us from an obligation for holy living. But in a lot of ways, it actually puts an exclamation mark or a fine point on it, that we are having been redeemed, right? We saw that in Exodus 20, having been saved from the bondage of our sin, we are to live for God, we are to do the will of God now, not to indulge in our lust, but out of gratitude, seeking to please the one who saved us and not the world. So let's consider such things this morning from our word, the word that is before us. We'll have three heads, and the first is the suffering, of mortification, the suffering of mortification. Verse 1, for as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. Now here Peter reminds us that Christ suffered in his body. Christ suffered in his body, that's what he means by flesh here. You remember, and I hope you never forget it, especially children, that our Redeemer, He faced unimaginable torments. For what purpose? For sin. Not His sin, but our sin. The sin of His people. You're going to see that at the communion table in the sacrament, God willing, next week. And as you recall, the Apostle Peter had reminded us of that in chapter 3. Verse 18, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. Christ suffered grievous torment, body and soul, but the cause of it, our sin. Isaiah 53, he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. We can say truly that we crucified Christ. Zechariah 12, 10, they shall look upon me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for him. I have pierced my Lord because of my sin. If it were not for my sin, Christ did not have to suffer. He suffered for iniquity, for transgressions. crucified and suffered in the body for our sin, as well as his soul. So that's what the apostle reminds us of here in verse one. Because of sin, Christ suffered. And that suffering is, and mind this, it'll become pertinent in a moment, that suffering, right, in the body is from his crucifixion. He's nailed and pierced for our sin. And what Peter's going to do is he's going to draw a connection from Christ's suffering for sin to our need to cease from it." Which is what he means to do in the final clause or final words in our verse. One, he that had suffered in the flesh had ceased from sin. The he here is not Christ. We know that because he never sinned. There's no ceasing from sin for Christ. The he here is a believer who is in Christ, and that's made plain because of the in-between words, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. That's a reference to believers, of course. So the he that suffered in the flesh that has ceased from sin speaks of believers. And some of this might be a bit confusing to you at this point. I was thinking about some of the difficult verses that Peter has brought to us in chapters 3 and 4. You think about his second epistle when he actually says Paul is the one who has some things that are difficult to understand. He himself is no stranger to that either. He has some things that are a bit difficult to understand. But what he is drawing out here is that the believer's old man was crucified with Christ. When Christ was crucified, the believer's old man, the old nature was crucified as well. Romans 6.6, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Or as Paul put it succinctly in Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. Now, In Galatians 2.20, you remember that Paul adds that though he is dead because his old man, the old Paul, is dead, yet he is alive because Christ liveth in him. There's a new birth. Though his old man is dead on the cross, there is a union with Christ's death in the death of the old man and a union with Christ's resurrection in the arising to newness of life. So the believer has, according to the Bible, a communion with the death of Christ in the mortification of their sin nature. That as Christ suffered on the cross, the believer can say that their old man, their sin nature, was crucified on that cross with Christ. And that's what has happened to you, believer. In union with Christ's death, you are freed from sin's power. Praise God for that. And when you were given a new heart, regenerated, simultaneously, your old man, your flesh, the sinful nature, was crucified. And to what end in Romans 6? That you would no longer serve sin. For the elect at Calvary, both the guilt of sin and the power of sin were definitively broken, for which we can praise God. But with that, and that is where Peter is going here, What he says is there is a measure of suffering that you face, and that's something that's not often appreciated. He has dealt with earlier in the epistle the fact that you will suffer for righteousness' sake. That's an outward kind of suffering, right? People rail against you because you're a Christian. But there's actually a true inward suffering that has happened when your old man was crucified with Christ. And that's what he's making a connection here. He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, speaking of the believers. There is a real suffering, an inward suffering that comes in the crucifying of the old man. The death of the old man is painful in some ways, isn't it? As your old man is put to death, the things that you used to enjoy that were sinful being put to death, self-denial, the attachment to sin and worldliness that has to be put to death, it hurts. There is a kind of inward affliction that comes to the believer, a kind of suffering that comes because the things that you desire, there's still a tugging at those things, right? And when those things are crucified with Christ, and you know that you cannot go back to those things, and yet because of the struggle that continues on with the remaining corruption in your soul, there is a measure of suffering that comes. And you've probably faced it yourself, the anguish in your soul even at times, that you know you have to put away things that you must put away, that the former life must be gone and you must make break with your former way of life and even with former people that were in your life. There is a measure of suffering that comes when the old man is crucified with Christ. It is painful. that attachment to sin and worldliness. When it is put to death, it hurts. That's why the Lord talks about, does he not, about denying yourself, carrying your cross, and following him. It is hard. It is hard. And it's not often said anymore, but to deny your flesh is painful. And when you think it's not is when you will despair. A lot of people, they know what they ought to do, but then they say, this hurts to have to give up these sins, to worldly attachments and so on. And surely that must mean that the Lord Jesus is not calling me to that. And yet, Christ promises a lot of inward suffering for the sake of holiness. This is a uniquely Christian suffering. Only the Christian knows it. That tension that within, the enemy within, is the worst kind of enemy of all. The one that I have to fear the most is wrong. That's my most fearsome enemy, really, in many ways. The enemy that's right in my soul. Because it's painful to mortify the lust of my flesh. It's like the excising of a tumor or cancer, which can be quite painful to suffer through, at least depending on the treatment, and yet is necessary for our health. To mortify lust, to live for righteousness, it requires tremendous self-denial, and it will hurt you in some way. It is good for you, but you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with that, to go to war with your sinful nature. More than that, you are to embrace it. So go back to the middle of the verse where we read, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, meaning the mind of Christ who suffered for the sake of sin. Now, he suffered for sin in a different way. He suffered for your sin. But you too are to have that same mind of being willing to suffer to kill sin. That same mind was in Christ. He wasn't there to make peace with sin. He was there to kill it. And it has to be the same way for you as well. On his cross, he defeats sin. And you must have that same mind. What is the action intended here? Arm yourselves. The word arm means to prepare yourself. You can think of drawing your weapon in that. Prepared for use. Daily, you need the sword of the Spirit to fight the flesh. And he says, it begins in the mind. arm yourselves with the same mind. And that's where all transformation begins, isn't it? Be renewed by the transforming of your mind. You have to have a kind of holy resolve in your mind, like a soldier would going to war. There's a resolution, a holy resolution, that I will kill the enemy, that I will kill sin. And no matter what blows I take, no matter how many times I get shot, I'm going to press forward. You're to arm yourself with that kind of mind. To gird the loins of your mind, as the Bible might say, to steel yourself as a warrior, and I am not going to make peace with sin. That's my mind, and that's meant to be in the Christian. And you also have to then say, I am prepared to suffer spiritually when I war against sin. I am prepared to suffer, suffer afflictions in my soul, maybe even suffer externally in terms of relationships that will be destroyed because, as we'll see later on, there are people who are going to hate you because you want to be holy. I'm willing to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christ, is what the Christian says. And that I am to embrace the painful nature of mortifying sin, and I will not shrink away because of the pain. Just as, you know, if any of you here have done any sort of athletics, you know that an athlete, in order to advance, must experience pain as he pushes his body. In fact, he makes no progress if he stops when the pain comes. But all are taught to push past it. Otherwise, there's no growth, there's no advancement. And it's the same way in the Christian life. And perhaps why the Apostle Paul uses those kinds of analogies. If you're a runner and you just give up as soon as you start to feel a little fatigue, right, you're never going to get any better. You have to keep running and keep pushing or else you don't advance. This was the mind of Christ. He suffered for sin. He did not cease till sin was defeated. Though it hurt him in ways that are so mysterious and we will never know ourselves, It hurt him bodily, it hurt him in the mind, it hurt him in the heart, it hurt him in the soul. He was hurt, of course, and he steeled himself in this way, not to mortify his sin, but ours. We're to have that kind of mind. And so to make spiritual progress will hurt you. It's not popular to say that anymore. Not when men want Christ to be a mere addition to their life and not their life itself. Yet the apostle said what? I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Right, Christ is his life. And he says the old man, the old Paul, was nailed at Calvary 2,000 years ago with all of his lusts and his sins and every evil way, but I live because it is Christ who has taken up residence in me. I am to live that Christly life. It also reminds you that Christ, though, has destroyed sin's power, and his resurrection power is there for the believer, such that in this battle against our sin, you are not left to yourself, but you draw on Jesus Christ. You draw on his power, right? You draw on the one who is victorious over sin. You draw on the one that you know has defeated sin and is there to give power to you in your own war against sin. He doesn't leave you to yourself. He doesn't say, okay, good Christian soldier, off to the battlefield and I'll see you in heaven. He says, by my spirit, I go with you. My almighty power goes with you. And what enemy can stand if I am for thee? So we come to Christ victorious. Now one of the uses of preparing for the Lord's Supper as we are, coming up is to bring to that table an inventory of the lust that you need help dealing with, so that His power would come to you. Bring the unbelief that plagues you, bring it all to the Lord and say, I need help, I need strength, feed me at thy table, give me grace when I see that broken body and shed blood. that I would have faith to feed on my crucified savior that was crucified at Calvary. And by faith, I believe that my old man was crucified with Christ. And so feed me, oh Lord, give me strength that I would draw from Calvary from your side to mortify the old man. No, mortification is not pleasant to the flesh, but there is power in the blood of Christ. to purify your soul. So this is an inward suffering, but the Christian is to desire it, to arm themselves with the mind of Christ, because sin is heinous, sin is evil, it is like a cancer patient saying, it is killing me, it is corrosive to me, it is also hateful to my God that loves me, and I love, my Redeemer died for it, so let me kill it. Let me kill it. Let me mortify it by the Spirit's power that unites me to Christ." So this is not a sermon on mortification of sin, how to go about it. We can maybe have a sermon like that at another time, and yet the duty to mortify is here, and also the fact that it will be painful. Just remember that, brethren. We're in a society that wants no pain. There's a pill for everything. And yet, friends, you are called to suffer. You're called to suffer for Christ. And you might think it's strange because very few preach that anymore, though it is right here out of the word of God, we're not inventing anything, that you are going to have to suffer. The Lord Jesus Christ said, take up your cross. What did he mean by that? Yeah, the Christian life is going to require tremendous, tremendous pain, but it is a sweet thing. because it is Christ who is at work in the midst of it, such that it's a bittersweet thing to see us go to war with our sin. But if we are called to suffer in this way, let us see there's an urgency. The crux of it is this, if I spend time sinning, one of the reasons I want to kill sin in me, if I spend time sinning, that means I am not spending my life for God. It is a zero-sum game. Time spent in sin is not time spent with the Lord or for the Lord's cause or for His glory. Now, time spent mortifying sin is. Time spent walking in newness of life is. But there's an urgency because, right, whatever is done to serve the lusts of the flesh is certainly time robbed from glorifying God. So let's consider that in our second heading, the rest of our time, the rest of our time, Verse two, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. So we're not to live the rest of our time in the body, indulging in the lusts of the flesh. And you find here that the lusts of men are contrasted with the will of God. And the lusts of men are also called in the next verse, the will of the Gentiles. So you have on one hand, you have the will of God, And on the other hand, you have the will of the heathen and you have the lusts of men. And these two, as you can see, are diametrically opposed. There's no crossover here. You're either in one or you're in the other. And time spent in one is time not spent in the other. And so that's why there is this great contrast over here. Peter is drawing a line in the sand, as it were, showing these two are contrary. You cannot serve God and indulge in the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of men. Totally opposed. Now, he gives you examples of some of these to bring to mind what he speaks of. Verse three, he speaks of lasciviousness. That's a kind of sinful abandon. Lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries. You can summarize these as sort of giving into the sinful appetites of the flesh. And idolatry, of course, which is an abomination, serving that. In a lot of ways, you see that this is all serving that which is not God. You're serving self, the sensual appetites. This is not service to God. Sensory overload, the things that the unbeliever glories in and seeks after. This is what our society sells us on the billboards and the advertising, isn't it? This is what so many indulge in and they think is actually the way of happiness, but it's not, as you've seen in Ecclesiastes. Paul gives you an expanded list in Galatians 5, which is a list opposed to the fruit of the spirit. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, consider them. adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, same we heard here, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, that is contention, emulations, that's jealousy, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. It's as though he says the list continues on and on. I think you get the point. of what the apostles are trying to say, those are not the things to be indulged in. Not outwardly or inwardly, of course, because sin begins in the heart. These are the things that your old man is into, that the flesh craves. And you might say, well, if I'm a believer, I've been crucified with Christ, the old man is dead. Well, you have to understand the remnant still remains in you. If you've ever, perhaps, shot an animal. And you find that though the animal be dead, it's continuing on, just spasming out of control for a while. That's kind of what it is like. That's kind of what it is like for the old man that has been crucified. It's like an animal that's been crucified there, and yet is thrashing about in the death throes. And sometimes such a creature is more dangerous than when it has its faculties present. And so that's why you find sin arising and churning in your heart as a believer. Sometimes it seems stronger than when you were an unbeliever because now there's a true war going on in your soul that you must fight. So you have your old man thrashing about and he needs to be mortified bit by bit. And because he is still a part of you, it does hurt to deny your flesh what it desires. part and parcel of the sufferings we considered earlier. Now you think about even something like this, contention or jealousy, right? In that list in Galatians 5, right? You might say, well, how does that hurt in order to deny myself such things? Well, it actually does hurt, doesn't it? To put away bitterness. There's a part of you that likes these things. Jealousy. It actually hurts to stop that. You don't want to. In fact, in a lot of ways, you might even get upset at the one who tells you, brother, sister, just stop envying. There's a modicum of suffering in that. Well, in any case, you find here that we are to put these things away because they're opposed to the will of God. And I'm not going to deal with, as I mentioned, mortification so much. I'll deal with that in another sermon and other places. But I want to deal with the issue of time, as I opened with. Peter says, the rest of our time in the flesh. And he says, it's either going to be spent on sin and loss, or it's going to be spent in the will of God. And what we have to remember is something I've circled back on multiple times. We don't have all the time in the world to live for Christ. Our flesh loves to procrastinate, in other words. We are procrastinators in the flesh. I will get about the work of religion tomorrow, or the next day, or what about next communion season, or maybe I'll do that a couple weeks from now, or when I'm a little less tired, right? It's always putting off the things of God. And there's never a sense of urgency, like there would be on something that's truly urgent as well, like our daily bread. It's almost like put it off. But brethren, simple thing, but reflect on it. Hours turn quickly to days, days turns to weeks, weeks to months, months to years, years to decades. You put off things today. and decades from now, you probably still haven't begun. That's just the way it goes, and we have to be wise to such things. Time is fleeting. And the only thing the Lord Jesus Christ has told you this, that endures into eternity, is what we have done for the Lord. Your treasury in heaven is filled by what you did in this finite life. That includes mundane things, or what the world would consider mundane things as well, raising your family, right, other things like that. It's not speaking of you have to go be a missionary in Nigeria. But everything you do must be done for the glory of God, with Him present in your mind, thinking, how do I redeem this portion of time for His glory? We should all desire to maximize our time for the Lord and our time spent with the Lord The Apostle Paul in Romans 13, I'll bring it again, that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. I wonder how many of us know the time that it is. Knowing the time, that it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. What's the application? The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness. and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, nor in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. There's urgency there. There's urgency there to walk in the day and not in the night. Enough time has been spent in the night No more. There's an urgency in the Word of God when it comes to mortifying sin that is often just not present in us. Look at our verse 3 in chapter 4 of 1 Peter. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in that list of sin. Do you hear that? for the time past of our life may suffice us. That's enough. That's enough. No more. You've had your fill of the filth of the world. Have you not spent enough of your life in doing what the heathen do? In other words, will you look at those years as years that the locusts have chewed away? Do you really want to spend more time in that which is unclean and no good? The Christian ought to say I have served sinful lusts far too long and now I know what time it is. It is time to serve my Lord and my master because the time is coming when I will meet him face to face very soon. To do his will to keep his commandments as Christ did. Now, youth and children, I'll speak to you particularly. You're very young, and some of you might think that when I get older, I will serve the Lord. That's for older people, and it's maybe for my mom and my dad. When I get to their age, then I will get serious about religion, and then I will get serious about the Lord, but you don't have all the time in the world either. The same thing that I said earlier, or I asked of everybody else, is true. How much time do you have? And children, you have to say, I don't know. I don't know. One minister whose church building, as church buildings used to, they had windows and they had graveyards. And when he preached to his congregation, he pointed to the children, children, there are long graves and there are short graves. Meaning, children die. Children don't always make it to very old age. And so you need to settle your soul with the Lord. And having come to Him by faith, you are to live for Him. You are to live for Him, children. But also, so that's the negative, but on the positive side, children, think of the impact that you could have for the rest of your life if you got serious about the Lord today. It's astonishing to think about. What time redeemed even in youth could do for the remainder of your life? Knowing the Lord from infancy? You think about those who even died at a young age but were fervent for the Lord at a young age. You remember Robert Murray McShane died at 29 and yet he left an indelible impact on the church. He became serious about the Lord as a young man. Even in his last year of life, he said, he told others, he wrote, pray for me that I might be holier and wiser, that I would be less like myself and more like my heavenly master. What a thing that would be for all of us to pray that way for each other, that we would be less like ourselves and more like our heavenly master. There was a sense of urgency in that man and that's why at the age of 29 when he dies in 1843, he had done so much that even today reverberates in the Church of God. Or you remember David Brainerd, which I mentioned earlier, missionary to the American Indians who at 29, died at 29 as well, he was known for saying, oh that I could spend every moment of my life to God's glory. Edwards published his journal, as you know. Edwards' wife was known for piety as well. In some ways, some said, excelled her husband in her devotion to the Lord, raised 11 children while he was away doing his master's business, and had such a command of them by her sweet and firm demeanor that they would cheerfully follow her commands. But I believe she said that her religious awakening was about the age of six, and she was serious for the Lord. ever since. So you can see here what an impact your life may have, children. And maybe the question would be, what is it that keeps you from devoting yourself to the Lord at this age? What is it? It's nothing good. It's nothing good, right? Put in your mind why it is that I will not consecrate myself to God. Don't have to be a minister, but that I would spend my days seeking the glory of God. Whatever it is, right, whatever is pulling your heart in the opposite direction, that needs killing. That needs mortifying. So that you would honestly say, and not be feared, fearful of holiness. Maybe make a holy resolution as Edwards himself did. And I remember he made those resolutions, those 70 that he's famous for. I don't know about all 70, but certainly he began them when he was only 19 years old. Consider his first resolution. I will do whatever I think will be most to God's glory and my own good, profit and pleasure for as long as I live. I will do all these things without any consideration of the time they take. Resolved to do whatever I understand to be my duty and will provide the most good and benefit to mankind in general. Resolved to do this whatever difficulties I encounter and no matter how many I experience or how severe they may be. You see, he understands suffering will come. No matter how severe it will be to live for God's glory, I am resolved in my mind, I am armed with the same mind as Christ. to do it. Some of you are about 19 years old. What keeps you from making such resolutions? Some of you are older, like myself. What would keep you from making a resolve like that? I wonder. So forget the exact wording of Edwards or quibble about a sentiment here or there, but even just take up that first phrase, I will do whatever I think will be most to God's glory. How many 19-year-olds in the church have made that resolution? But these are the kinds of saints that are used of God. Is it not time for each of us to put away our own ways and our own lusts to devote ourselves to the Lord in whatever we do? Yes, it's high time to stop sleeping and to awake to God. We ought to live a holy and consecrated life to God and his glory because our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. Glory beckons, Emmanuel's land is before us. And rather than that making us slack, it is to make us more motivated when we consider the time that it is. And that will require you and me to at times lay aside even lawful things, won't it? To say I've spent enough of my time, even in that which is lawful, I need to spend more time focused on the glory of God. There's this excuse Christians make, well, certainly that's not sinful to indulge in, right? It's lawful for me to do that, and certainly in a certain measure such things are. However, the question is, what proportion of our time goes to the thing that most tends to God's glory, and what proportion of our time goes to those things we say are lawful and unnecessary? As that missionary to China said, only one life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ will last. And so part of living for the Lord involves dealing with your own soul, brethren. You may never be a missionary to China like C.T. Studd, which is fine, but will you seek to live for God by denying yourself and living for righteousness at the very least? That's not a high bar, that's actually the bar, right? For the super-Christian, it's for every Christian. You know, brethren, the fact of the matter is, you and I might actually not see each other next week. You know that, right? You and I might not see each other, and I don't mean that because, you know, you and I might be in different places, but you and I might have an appointment with God before then. Would you live this week differently if you knew that you would meet the Almighty on Friday? and that he's coming for you. What would this week look like? I wonder. It might be very different from most weeks, wouldn't it? If you knew the Lord was coming. Why don't you live every week and every day that way? That's why the Bible says the Lord Jesus Christ is not gonna reveal to you when he's coming, so that you might live every day as if he is. Take that thought and bring it into your life, brethren. You and I might have an appointment with God this week. Well, on that note, we'll consider the third head, which we'll be brief on, which is the judgment to come. Well, to live this way will bring conflict with those who live contrary to this life of holy living. That's a kind of suffering that will come on you as well if you seek to live a holy life. Verse four, wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riots speaking evil of you. This is the effect of one who denies themselves on others. If you seek to live holy to the Lord, they will speak evil of you. Isn't that a shock, a strange thing? The word strange here, wherein they think it's strange, It has a sense of being surprised. They are surprised that you do not run with them to the same excess. That you don't indulge in lusts like they do. And they speak evil of you. And you know why that is. We've spoken of this in other sermons. It's because your holiness, the holiness that Christ manifests in you, convicts them of their unrighteousness. Their conscience is bothered. when they see what life ought to be like and their conscience testifies, yes, you need to be living soberly, righteously, not in drinking parties and every other manner of lasciviousness that was listed in the word of God. And they will speak evil of you, right? So the irony is you who seek to live a righteous life will be called an evildoer. And there's a measure of suffering that comes on the Christian for that. Now, I do want to go a bit more broad here, because it's likely that their evil speaking is more broad than against an individual Christian. The word you, as you might see in the translation here, italicized, is not in the original but was added by our translators. It's quite possible that was the intention, but if you strip out the you, and consider that the word for speaking evil has the sense of speaking blasphemously, it is probably more broad that the unbelievers here who look at the holy conduct of Christians will start to rail against Christ and the Christian religion as a whole, and not just you as a private individual. Christianity and Christ itself is going to be spoken of in an evil way. I think you don't need a lot of experience in our society to see that as the case. We recently thought on Tertullian's apology for the Christian religion. Christians were being spoken of as evildoers. Augustine deals with the problem in the City of God. Going back further, Elijah is called the Troubler of Israel. The Puritans get their name not as a badge of honor, but one of disrepute. These are people who want to be pure in their religion, and so the enemies of purity of religion, they call them Puritans as though to mock them. They take this religion thing too seriously. Now today, God has redeemed the name Puritan in the church, but the world hates it still. So we deal with the same problem today. We are the troublers of the commonwealth. Holiness convicts them, and the world rails against us, even if we do good. So this is another area where you will find suffering for righteousness. And this is another suffering that the Christian must embrace. Children, early age, learn it. Some of us have learned it over time. You have to be okay with this, being called an evildoer, even though you want to just live for the Lord. Who are you to be so bigoted and deny people love and so on and so forth, right? Who are you to tell a woman she can't murder her child? You are the troublers of Israel. Who are you to say there's only one God and that Islam is a blight on the face of the earth? But no matter what disrepute they throw on you, living for Christ and the glory of God is worth living for. Didn't Christ give his life for you? You give your life for him. What is it to be spat on, slandered and shamed for his cause? I armed myself with the same mind that took him to the tree. But also, Peter would remind us that their mockery, their evil speaking, and their profane words and actions will end. Their tongues will come to a halt one day. There will be a reckoning for them on the day of judgment. Verse five, who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick, that is the living and the dead. Even if they kill you, and they might, even if they outlive you, he will judge them. He's coming, and they will give an account. He is ready to judge the living and the dead. If they don't repent, they will be judged by the judge of all, and they will give an account of their actions against Christ and his church to the one who suffered at Calvary, and is that not fair? that the one who suffered for sin is now going to be the one who judges sinners. It's incredibly fair and right. There is urgency in this too, isn't there? A day of judgment is coming. Verse six, for for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. Now this is a bit of a difficult verse. The dead that the gospel is preached to, the sense here seems to be those who are spiritually dead in sins and trespasses. So the gospel is preached to them so that they might live according to God in the spirit, that they might be born again, that they might be saved from their sins and be alive according to God in the spirit with a soul that is alive to God, regenerated and now living for God. Yet in the process of coming to Christ, just as we've heard, they will face the wrath of men. So when the gospel is preached, you are called to count the cost. Eternal glory, yes, but also you will suffer the indignation and wrath, the judgment of men. The Lord says count the cost before you're his disciple. See, this is why you have to arm yourself with this mind. Otherwise you will turn back. You will turn back. This is all part of the gospel. Yes, what it gives is far greater than what it demands, but it does demand something of us. Not only to live for the Lord, but to suffer for Him. These are not the things that give us salvation, but they are the product of it. They're certainly the product of it. You don't become saved by suffering for Christ. You're saved because Christ suffered for you, and you received Him by faith. But now, being a disciple of His, the calling is self-denial. going to war with the world, and by God's help, by Christ's help, being victorious as your head was victorious. So you who are dead in your sins and trespasses, the gospel is preached to you once again. Sinful as you are, sinful as you are, the Lord can save you. The Lord can save you. All you must do is receive Christ by faith and repent of your sin. And the Lord would, as he preaches the gospel through me to you, would say, live, oh ye dry bones, live, come alive in Jesus Christ. Yes, there is an urgency in that, because you don't know, as I have said, if I will see you next week. You don't know where you will be next week. You might be before the judgment seat. So there's an urgency in all of this. How much time do you have, friend? I ask the question again, and if the answer is what it ought to be, I don't know, that makes today the day of salvation, not tomorrow. Not tomorrow. There's an urgency in that. And if you are converted, don't be dismayed that both your inner self, your flesh, and the world has come into conflict with you. You have heard it today. And there's urgency for you as well to deal with that and to come to grips with that. And I would, as painful as it is, and I trust it is the same for all of you, never give up that conflict internally and externally for the hedonism of the pagans and the fleeting pleasure of sin in view of the blessedness of eternity with Christ. It's all worth it. This is the bargain. Sign me up. What a wonderful thing I should say. Eternity is long, time is short. Always remember that and live accordingly. And so for you who are my brethren, your salvation is nearer than on the day you believed. You will see Christ face to face soon. Praise God for that. And if he is where your heart is, then live for him today. As Samuel Rutherford once said as he came to the deathbed and in some of his letters, the sands of time are sinking. And we will soon see our bridegroom in glory. So let us be faithful until we see him face to face. Amen. Let us rise and go to the Lord in prayer. God in heaven, cause us to live for Thee, O Lord. May the one who has no faith receive it so that they may live for thee truly. And may the one who has faith have also a sense of urgency to live the rest of his or her days for the glory of God. May all the brethren here, may they all have this resolve that whatever they do the rest of their days, it certainly would not be to indulge in sin. but rather to seek after thine own glory. And as thou art glorified in these ways, would thou grant us our desire that we would live for God. And if there is any other desire that is intruding on a life lived for God, smash those idols in us, Lord. Take them away by the root. Mortify truly our lusts so that there's no remnant of those things that stand between us and our God. And though we know we will not be perfect in this life, oh, make us as close to perfect as we can. It would be a wonderful prayer of ours, oh Lord, that thou wouldst make us as much like Christ as is possible in this life. So bless the word that was sown, and may it not be the evil one that plucks it from the hearts of thy people, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.