00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Hear now God's Word from 1 Peter
1, beginning at verse 13. Therefore, gird up the loins
of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace
that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts
as in your ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you
also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, Be holy,
for I am holy. And if you call on the Father,
who without partiality judges according to each one's work,
conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in
fear, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things
like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition
from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of
a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was ordained
before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these
last times for you, who through Him believe in God, who raised
Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and
hope are in God." Congregation, this is the Word of the Lord.
Amen. You may be seated. So many of
you will be familiar already that 1 Peter is an epistle written
to suffering Christians, pilgrims who were being persecuted because
of their faith in Christ. He is writing to them to speak
comfort to them and to ground them in the divine truth. He's
not speaking empty platitudes or simply making expressions
of sympathy. He is urging them to gird themselves
for the suffering by which they have been called to glorify the
Lord. who first saved them by suffering
for us all. And he points to the fact that
they have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and the way in
which that knowledge, that truth, should make a profound difference
in our lives. And so tonight I want to encourage
you with some of these same exhortations that we find here in Peter's
first letter. He begins in verse 13 speaking
to mindset and sobriety and the hope that is to characterize
the Christian life. He says, first of all, gird up
the loins of your mind. Now, when a man in the ancient
world wanted to run, he would have to tuck up his robe so that
he could run and not trip on his garment. In the same way,
Peter says we are to gird ourselves, but in this case, what we need
to gather up is our mind. We're to prepare ourselves for
spiritual battle every day, and it requires a particular mindset. In other words, there is more
to this than simply a religious habit, more than just a daily
pattern of prayer or devotion. There is an actual attitude change
that is to flow out of our relationship to God, and out of our worship,
and out of our daily prayers. It would be easy every morning
to get a cup of coffee and our Bible or a prayer book and go
through our morning quiet time and then simply set that aside
and approach our lives in the way that everyone else around
us may do. But in fact, Peter says we are
to approach our day and all of our work and our experiences
in life with our minds girded. That is fixed and set and prepared
for the battle that we face. Mindset is crucial in our success,
in enduring suffering, in battling temptation, and in obeying God. The Christian life calls us to
practice virtues, and practice requires deliberation and mental
engagement. Not just going through the motions,
but having our head in the game, we might say. And many of us,
I think, if we're honest, will admit that oftentimes, not always,
but oftentimes in our lives, we struggle unnecessarily. And we fail more often because
our minds are not in the right place. Because our minds are
not on the work that we have been called by God to do. We've
seen that in our vocations. We've seen that doing household
chores. We've seen that doing basic tasks, and we're not paying
attention to what we're doing. We're basically on autopilot.
You've missed your turn because of this. You found yourself a
couple of miles down the road from where you're supposed to
be, simply because your mind was wandering. Now you're operating
the vehicle safely, but your head is not in the game. You're
not paying attention. And there are struggles in the
Christian life, there are failures in the Christian life, that are
attributable to the very same kind of mistake. How often are
we defeated before we even begin? How often have we already given
up the fight before we start? Because we see temptation coming,
and we know, I can't win this round. I've failed every single
time. That opponent always beats me
at the game, and therefore, I'm as good as done, even before
the contest begins. And when that's our mindset,
we don't resist in the way that we should. We don't persevere
in the way that we could. We don't have hope in God, oftentimes,
because our minds are not set upon the Word of God, the promises
of God, the realities of the work of Christ for our salvation. We are not called to live the
Christian life in a rocking chair. We are called to gird our minds
for combat and for competition, to get up every day and to remember
that we are downrange. We are on enemy ground. We are
surrounded by foes. There are spiritual hosts of
wickedness that are coming after us. And there is a different
mindset that you are to bring to that kind of context than
if you feel safely secured in your own space. Peter goes on
and says we are not only to gird our minds, but to be sober. And
the word that he uses here speaks of a calm and collected spirit.
A person who is temperate, dispassionate, and circumspect in his life. And this is really the fruit
of self-control. Self-control is the fruit of
the Spirit. It's part of the grace that the Spirit of God
is working in your heart and in your life. And the result
of that self-control will be an attitude of sobriety. Sobriety in our attitude and
in our disposition toward the lives that we live. My favorite
poem speaks of that sobriety as definitional for true manhood. All of my boys had to memorize
the poem, If, by Rudyard Kipling when they were much younger.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men
doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too, if you
can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about,
don't deal in lies. Or being hated, don't give way
to hating. And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. The first stanza of a great poem.
And yet he is talking about a sobriety that is definitional for true
manhood. And this is what separates men
and boys. It's not chronology. It's not
the amount of testosterone that you have coursing through your
body. It is whether or not you have the outcome of self-control,
the exercise of self-control leading to a sober mindset. This sobriety is the opposite
of intoxication, whether by the elevation or depression of one's
spirits. We think about being intoxicated
normally makes people happy and giddy and peppy and perky and
more bubbly and they're just speaking without any inhibition
or self-control. But you've probably seen alcohol
do the exact opposite, haven't you? You've seen it depress. You've seen people who become
weepy in their beer when they get enough of it in their body.
Well, the reality is you can be intoxicated in either of those
ways even if you never touch alcohol in your life. intoxicated
by elevation of your spirits, irrespective of the circumstances
of your life, or depression of your spirits, sometimes because
you're focusing too much on the circumstances of your life. But
the Christian is neither to be giddy and silly, nor despairing
and panicked by what's going on around him. He is supposed
to be sober. And that is even-keeled. That
is temperate. And that doesn't mean he can't
have a good time. And that doesn't mean he's not able to weep with
those who weep. But he is a person who is not
driven and tossed emotionally and mentally by all of the winds
and the waves of his life. This is the mindset of a true
son of Issachar. if you recall from the book of
Chronicles, one who knows the time and knows what men ought
to do. That is a sober-minded person.
And all Christians are called to that kind of sobriety. And
then he says, verse 13 still, rest your hope fully on the grace
of Christ. Now, Peter may not have had as
much formal education as Paul, but Peter's sentences are rich
and fascinating. Paul writes in what we call a
higher register of Greek, and then other writers in the New
Testament have an even more complex and sophisticated form of Greek
than Paul does. Peter writes in a very simple
and maybe not entirely accurate form of Greek, and yet the substance
of what he says is magnificent. Think about that sentence. Rest
your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That is an exhortation that is
worthy of many hours of regular prayerful meditation. It might
be a good one to commit to memory to that end. What does it mean
to rest our hope fully there? It means forsaking all other
people and things in which we would otherwise place hope. It
means not resting our hope on other people who may inevitably
disappoint us. or other outcomes that may inevitably
not turn out in the way that we wish they would, and placing
all of our hope on Jesus. And saying, no matter what happens
in my life, whether I experience success or failure, whether things
go my way or not, whether other people love and appreciate me
or forsake me, my hope is in the Lord and in the revelation
of grace that we will see one day in Him. What does it mean
to hope in Jesus? It means that Jesus is our comfort,
our joy, our full desire, and all of the encouragement that
we need to press on. You don't need anything else.
You don't need any expectation of success. Now, our world would
say, that's exactly what you need. If you don't expect to
be successful, you can't have any hope. You don't have any
motivation to go and to do the things that you ought to do.
But the reality is, Peter is saying, you do have an expectation. An expectation of what will happen
at the return of Jesus. His victory is inevitable. As we saw this morning, death
will be swallowed up in victory. And so from that perspective,
there is a real sense in which we don't need many of the things
that we want, and many of the things that are beneficial to
us. Certainly, no man is an island. We live in community. We benefit
from fellowship. It's a means of grace, but we
don't need man's help. And so when men forsake us, when
they turn against us, it's disappointing. It may be hurtful. But ultimately,
all of my hope rests upon Jesus and not upon my brother or my
fellow man. Friendship, worldly comforts,
or success, none of those are things that I need. They are
welcome additions. But the reality is, all I need
is to know that one day the King is coming again. That's all I
need to know. And the Christian lives every
day in view of that day. Every single day of my life is
to be lived in view of that day when the grace that is to be
brought to me is brought at the revelation of the Lord. Peter
goes on in verses 14 to 16, to exhort us to be holy just like
our Father in heaven. We are obedient children, he
says. Obedient children of the Father,
but will we be that or not? We are God's children. We are
objects of His pity, grace, and love, and as His children, we
are supposed to obey Our Father, we're called to that. To lives
of joyful and faithful submission to His will. That's what it means
to be a child in the household. Children, obey your parents in
the Lord, for this is right. If that's true in Christian families,
if that's true in all human families, how much more true is it in God's
family? If my children owe obedience
to me because they are my children, then what do I owe to my Father
who is in heaven? Now you cannot understand this
point if you view God's law as an enemy. If you view God's law
as a foe, as an opponent, as something that is merely there
or even primarily there to convict you, to condemn you, to crush
you, and to drive you to the cross. The law has that purpose
for the unconverted. But that is not its purpose in
your life. Yes, the law convicts us of our
sin and reminds us of our need for Jesus. But that first use
of the law, as it's traditionally identified, is preeminently for
the unconverted. The primary use of the law for
the church is as a rule of life and faith and gratitude, as a
law in which we delight. It is the Father's instruction
telling us how to be what we are, God's children, and how
to be obedient in that role. God's law, therefore, is our
friend. These are the house rules by
which we conduct our lives, and when the children obey the rules,
everything goes better. Everything is easier. Disobedience
is hard. It brings discipline. It brings
shame. When we are obedient children,
everything is much better. And God's law is there to help
us understand how to be obedient children in the Father's house.
The Father has set His love upon us in His Son, and that tells
us who we are and how we are to live. You've been adopted
as a child of God. Go out and live like it. Go out
and live like you belong to the Maker of heaven and earth, and
that He loves you, not just as a creature, not just as a servant,
but as a son, as a daughter. And then treat your brothers
and sisters in Christ as brothers and sisters in the family of
God. As those who are loved by the Father who has loved you. And that includes, Peter says,
repudiating the former pattern of lust that characterized our
lives. It was a pattern that not only
characterized us, but was actually taught to us. We were catechized
in this lust. It was cultivated by the world
that has educated us. Remember, Chesterton says there
was no such thing as uneducated people. The street urchin in
Oliver Twist is as educated as the person who has a terminal
degree. He's just been educated in worldly wickedness. That pattern
of lust is no longer the organizing principle of our hearts. Our
hearts, as children of God, have been changed. Our affections
have been reordered. We have been given new loves
and taught a new way to love. A life of worldly lust, Peter
says, is ignorance. It is aimless conduct. We chase
pleasure and success without knowledge because we are fools.
Why would you do those kinds of things? Now, you have been
adopted by the Father. And you have been taught a new
pattern of life and love and values. Our lives are characterized
by new holy desires created by the Spirit and trained by God's
Law Word. God's Word is continuing to train
and mold our hearts in the same way that your Word to your children
is reordering their minds and their lives and their affections.
If you discipline your son and you leave him at the end of discipline,
angry and sullen, you are missing the point. The point is not external
conformity. The point is the conformity of
the heart to God's law and to the Father's love expressed through
you as a parent. If your goal as parents is simply
to survive the day and keep the children from burning the house
down, which admittedly there are seasons of our lives where
that seems like the best that we can do, but ultimately that's
not your job as a parent. It's not just to survive. It's
not just to keep your children out of juvenile hall. Your goal
is to form your children in the likeness of Jesus Christ. That
is what the Father is doing as He pours His Word into you and
applies it to you. So every day as you're reading
Scripture, every day as you're praying the Psalms, every Lord's
Day as you're sitting under the teaching of the Word, what God
is doing is retraining and educating your heart. Because what was
formerly natural to us, what was formerly characteristic of
us, is no good. We need a new ordering, a new
prioritization of affection and desire, and that is taught to
us by the Word of God. Don't let your conscience be
your guide. Let God's Word retrain your conscience. That's the point. And then we're
to be conformed, he says, to the holiness of God. God is holy,
and He calls us to holiness in union and communion with Him,
because we can have holiness no other way. We can't be holy
independent of God. We can't be holy outside of Christ. Everything, everyone outside
of Jesus is by definition unholy. Because holiness is a property,
is an attribute that we have by connection with and proximity
to the Holy One. Holiness speaks of God's transcendence. His purity, perfection, and consecration
to the true good. God is committed to goodness,
which He Himself is. Goodness, as we know it, is simply
an expression of God's own character. And in the same way, we are called
to that type of transcendence. Now, you might say, well, no,
no, no, Pastor. I've read a theology book. That's one of God's incommunicable
attributes, His transcendence. That's one of the attributes
we don't share. That's a conversation for another day. whether communicable
and non-communicable, incommunicable, or even the right categories.
Because actually, in every way that we see God's character and
being manifest, there is a type of communication of that in covenant
relationship with the Lord. And here is where transcendence
comes in. We are to transcend the corruption of this world.
even as God is above and beyond the corruption of this present
world, so we, through union with Him, by fellowship with Him,
are to be more and more above and beyond the corruption that
is characteristic of this present age. We are to live in purity
and live consecrated to lives of faithfulness consecrated to
the goodness that we find in Him. Our works are of little
value and effectiveness. Holiness is what our brother
needs, and it is what our God demands. All of the good things
that you can do for your neighbor, for your brother and sister,
for your co-worker, or even your enemy, is objectively of very
little value. What your brethren, and your
neighbors, and your friends, and even your enemies need more
than anything is for you to be a holy person. That's more valuable. It's more important. And it's
exactly what God calls us to. A life of good works, sure, but
first to holiness. Because good works without holiness
are not in themselves any good at all. Peter goes on in verses
17 to 19 to talk about the holiness that then characterizes the fear
that we have grounded in the blood of Jesus. Christ has delivered
us from fear in one sense. John talks about that in 1 John
chapter 4, you remember. Perfect love casts out fear because
fear involves torment, but he who fears has not been made perfect
in love. So the fear of being condemned by God on the last
day is no longer a fear that we carry with ourselves. When
we lay our heads down on our pillow at night, you should know
with confidence, my soul is at peace with God. My sins are forgiven. I am accepted because of the
righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now I lay me down to sleep. I
pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. It's a simple prayer, but it's
absolutely appropriate. Because I am at peace. And if
this is the last time I close my eyes in this world, when I
open my eyes I will see the face of Christ. Not because I am good,
but because God is good. And because He has given His
Son for me. Jesus has delivered us from fear of judgment. From the fear of hell. From the
fear of divine wrath. But He has saved us in fear.
And He has saved us for another type of fear. Notice what Peter
says, verse 17, if you call on the Father, who without partiality
judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout
the time of your stay here, In fear. Why? Because God is a judge. Now, He's your Father. And so
He's judging you in the way that a good father will. That is in
love. That is in mercy. But a good
father will still judge critically and kindly the deeds of his children. And there is to be a holy fear
that characterizes our life of obedience to God. And that's
more than reverence. It's not less than reverence,
but the mistake that is sometimes made is to say, well, the fear
of God is simply reverence and awe. No, it's reverence and awe
plus some. Reverence is an important part
of that godly fear, which is more fully, perhaps, defined
as a wholesome dread of displeasing. We dread to displease our Father,
but in a wholesome way. Not in a terrified way. Not in
a way that fears Him lashing out. Not in a way that fears,
if I don't measure up, then I will be rejected. No, it's a fear
grounded in the Gospel, grounded in the work and righteousness
of Christ, and yet a fear of love that desires to please God
more than anything else. And the man who fears God in
this way will be fearless regarding everyone and everything else.
That's why we talk about the importance of living with reverent
abandon. When you fear God, you don't
have to fear anyone or anything else, because all of your fear
is directed God toward, I want to please Him, and if I don't
please anyone else, if nothing else in my life works out in
the way that I hoped it would, it doesn't matter, because our
heart's orientation is to fear and to glorify God. Now does
that kind of godly fear characterize our lives? Or, if we're honest,
are we more afraid of man? Or are we more afraid of danger?
Christians are not supposed to be afraid of danger. We are.
That's natural. But you're not supposed to be.
Not everything that's natural, not everything that's expected,
is spiritual. And this is a reminder of our
sanctification. You find yourself in a situation
where you're afraid. Okay, that's understandable. But as a Christian, God has called
you out of that fear. Fear God and fear nothing else. Are you afraid of missing out?
How often does that animate the sins that we commit? How often
does that drive us into disobedience? Because I'm afraid I'm going
to miss out on some pleasure, some satisfaction, something
that we think God might not be willing to give us. Why does
an immoral man view pornography or engage in casual sex? It's
because he doesn't fear God. Because if he feared God, he
wouldn't do that kind of thing. You remember Jonathan Edwards'
resolutions that he made as a very young man and resolved to read
every week for the balance of his life. Resolution number 7
said, Resolved never to do anything which I should be afraid to do
if it were the last hour of my life. And number 17, resolves
that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to
die. What difference would that make
in your life if every day you lived in the way that you will
wish you had lived when you come to the end of your life? When
you look back and all of the regrets that you have, All of
the foolishness that characterized so many years of your life. What
if from this day forward, you lived like that person that you
wish you would have been. That God called you to be. Peter
says, remember that you have been redeemed by the most precious
thing in the world. Literally bought back by the
precious blood of Christ. By the blood of God Himself. And you say, God doesn't have
blood. That's true. The God-man has blood. The God-man
shed his blood. And so, Paul can say to the elders
from Ephesus in Acts 20-28, shepherd the church of God, which he purchased
with his own blood. Because the blood of Christ is
the blood of God, and there's no greater treasure in the world.
God became man and poured out his blood for you. Jesus had
a body and blood coursed through His veins for the express purpose
of that blood running out of His body onto the ground to purchase
you. It's the most precious thing
in the world. How then should we live? The
Lord has bought you. He owns you. And He has literally
poured Himself out for you. And without treating the blood
of Jesus in a superstitious manner, which I realize some traditions
have, we really should probably reflect a little more than we
do on its worth. Because that blood is created
by God in order to be spilled. That is the purpose for which
Jesus is given a body, is to lay it on the altar of the cross
for your sake. Every drop from His back, from
His head, from His hands and His feet, and from His side where
the spear pierced Him, every drop is worth more than the rest
of the entire universe combined. And He made it so that He could
shed it. so that he could spill it, because
that was the price required to save you. Peter says, remember
that and meditate on that. That's worth keeping in our minds.
We've been delivered from the empty life that was handed down
to us. Notice what Peter says, the Lord
saved us from the empty way of life handed down by tradition
from our fathers. The word here, worthless, unsuccessful
way of life. One way you could translate that.
All pride of heritage aside, the way of life passed down by
our fathers is empty and leads to hell. Some of us can be pretty
proud of our heritage, pretty proud of the people that we came
from, the part of the country that we belong to, the fathers
and grandfathers that we had, but ultimately, outside of Christ,
it leads to hell. It's worthless. It's less than
worthless. It's useless. It's unsuccessful. We can't rely on human wisdom.
Even the greatest examples of it, we have to learn from Christ.
What will the greatest wisdom of the Greco-Roman world bring
you to? It will bring you to perdition
apart from Jesus. Current conversations about ethnicity
and heritage and culture have some value, but only if we learn
to think about those categories biblically, which seems to be
in short supply right now. But Peter gets to the point.
This is ultimately what it comes down to. There is one race in
the Bible, the human race. There are two humanities. That's
it. Fundamentally, all of the rest
of the conversations and distinctions aside, there is one race and
two humanities. We will be sons of Adam or sons
of Christ, and no one will be saved because he was a son of
the South. Finally, in verses 20 and 21, he speaks about the
Christ in whom and through whom you believe. And these are two
verses that, as Calvinists, we love to camp out on. We could
spend a lot of time here. We won't this evening, but notice
a few points. Peter says in verse 20, He, Christ,
indeed, was foreordained before the foundation of the world,
but was manifest in these last times for you. who through Him
believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory,
so that your faith and hope are in God. For ordained before the
foundation of the world, the Son was destined to die and rise
again even before the world was made. Which is why one of our
former elders used to say, before God said, let there be light,
He said, let there be a church. He created the world so that
He could create the church, and the church could fill that world
with glory. Salvation began in eternity in
the mind of God. Christ would be a lamb before
he became a king. It is very important that we
understand that. Peter makes it clear the cross
is not plan B. It is not a reaction to man's
sin. It is not an adjustment based
on the fall. It is not due to the fact that
the Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah and crown Him
King. The cross was the plan all along. The first crown was always going
to be made out of thorns. He was foreordained to that role
before God said, let there be light. And this is the perfect
and incomprehensible wisdom of God. The author knew the entire
story from the beginning. He knew that it would be through
death and resurrection that the world would be saved. And there
is no other plan. There need not ever be. The Lord is not making adjustments
as we go along and doing the best that He can with what we
have. Salvation is assured because
salvation is secured by the decree of God prior to creation. That's an important thing to
try to wrap our minds around. Foreordained before the foundation
of the world, but manifest in history for you. That's what
Peter says. The plan may have appeared in
God's mind long ago. Christ came into creation. He stepped out of eternity into
time and he did it, Peter says, for you. born of a woman, born
under the law to redeem those who are under the law. This plan
is executed in space, in history, in creation. And therefore these
are the last times, the last days, the final period before
Christ's return. This is what the Bible calls
the day of salvation. That's not something that we're
waiting for. That's something that's been going on for a very
long time and may go on for a very long time yet. But the point
that Peter is making means necessarily that Christianity is therefore
not a philosophy and not a myth. It's not simply a prescription
for how to have a good life. It's not just giving you ethical
guidelines. You could learn that from the
Stoics. You don't need to be a Christian for that. You can
look at ancient philosophy and just kind of figure out how to
be a good person. That's not what Christianity
is about. It's true history. It's the accomplishment of salvation
for you. And that historical grounding
of our faith is important for living faithfully in history
right now, because that's what you're doing. You are on the
stairs of Sirith Ungol. You are making your way up a
steep ascent and suddenly discovering that you are in the same stories
that were told so long ago. 2,000 years ago, something happened
and you're in the same story. You have woken up and realized
the book that you are reading, you are a character on the page. And you are to be faithful in
history by looking back to history and seeing the true Christ who
entered into history for your salvation. We live today in view
of what was done in former days and in hope of the final day
to come. There's a past, present, and
future aspect to the Christian faith that makes it far more
than mythology or philosophy, far more than moralism. past,
present, and future all must be tied together or Christian
faith ceases to be Christian. And then Peter says, in whom
and through whom you believe and are saved. Did you notice
that? We believe in Christ through Christ. who through Him, verse 21, believe
in God. We believe in God through Christ. The preposition is important
there, and yes, it's in the original. It's through Christ that we are
born again and enabled to believe. You can't believe in God without
God coming and making that possible. Your faith is not external to
God, external to the plan, purpose, and work of God. Your faith is
the product of the work of God. It is united to Christ that you
trust in Christ and so visibly become in union with Him. 1 John chapter 5 and verse 1,
whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. This is a place where our English
translations fail us just a bit because there is a very important
verb distinction here in the original. The verb in the first
part of the clause, whoever believes, present, active, indicative,
whoever is believing right now that Jesus is the Christ has
been perfect passive. Perfect passive. Has been born
of God. A perfect passive verb in Greek
speaks of something that was already accomplished in the past
and was done to you, not by you. That's important. He has been
previously born of God and he didn't birth himself. He was
born by God. He was born anew, and you had
as much to do with that second birth as you did with your first.
It was done to you, and it was done by the Lord, and that new
birth precedes your present faith. You can't believe in Jesus unless
you have been born anew. And you can't muster that up
within yourself. You can't believe in Jesus so
that you might be reborn. You're not going to believe unless
you've been born. When you believe, you know something happened before
that. Before you called on Him, He
began calling you and enabled you to hear and respond in faith. The same power, Peter says, that
raised Christ from the dead is the power by which you believe
and therefore the power by which you will always believe." Do
you know why you're going to remain a believer? Because the
same power that raised Christ from the dead, and notice in
some passages Jesus says, I lay down my life that I may take
it up again, and we say, oh, Jesus raised himself from the
dead. There's a sense in which that's true, John 10, 17 and
18. But the overwhelming number of references throughout the
New Testament to the resurrection of Christ is that it is the Father,
by His Spirit, that raises Christ from the dead. And that power,
Peter says, is the power by which you believe. Look again, "...who
through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and
gave Him glory, so that to this end that your faith and hope
are in God." The Father raises Christ, glorifies Christ, so
that you can believe in Christ and have your hope fulfilled.
So why do you believe? Because God has enabled you to
believe. And why will you continue to believe? Because the same
power that brought Jesus back from the grave will bring you
to God in faith. Our faith is in God, by God. And our hope is in God, by God. He authors the faith. He authors
the hope. And then He brings both to completion
by His own power. You won't stop believing because
you didn't decide to start believing. The Lord is working in you to
that end. You'll continue to believe in
Jesus because you did not believe by yourself. You believed by
God's grace. So whether we are suffering or
not, Peter's words offer endless comfort and very helpful encouragement
to us. To remember that we were bought
with the blood of the Son of God. That we are adopted by God
as His children, called to obedience in holiness, and brought to faith. brought to trust and hope in
God by the same power by which God raised His Son from the dead. May God impress that upon our
hearts. And may we, in faith, cling to
that everlasting hope. In the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Bought With the Blood of Christ
Series Special Topics
| Sermon ID | 111224222632524 |
| Duration | 40:41 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | 1 Peter 1:13-21 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.