And welcome to the ministry of First Reformed Church of Aberdeen, South Dakota. Our worship services are at 9 o'clock every Sunday morning. Now we join Pastor Hank Bone as he brings us God's Word. Let's turn our Bibles to the book of 1 Peter. We're going to be starting a look at chapter 4, looking at verses 1 and 2, but I'm going to back up and we'll start in chapter 3, verse 18, and then read through the first six verses of chapter 4. In this section, Peter has been encouraging us in terms of recognizing who we are, what our identity is in Jesus Christ, and he's been pointing now to examples of how we can make ourselves presentable in terms of that identity that we hold as Christians. And so he says in verse 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us, baptism, not the removal of filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, Arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his life, the rest of his time, in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit. And of course, our text for this morning will be the first two verses of chapter four. Father, as we have heard your word read, we pray that you may now grant unto us through the working of your Holy Spirit the true sense of this word, that it may encourage us in that calling that we have to walk worthy of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we do pray. Amen. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the world we are surrounded by many voices, many people speaking of their truth and of your truth, as though truth is only relative to the individual. The world is splintered into special interest groups with diversity in what many see as competing interests. How do you explain all these divisions? Well, the answer is simple. Sin. And specifically, the sin of man's ignorance that they can be like God without honoring God. The division into special interest groups first began at the Tower of Babel. where the world was united in their singular goal to overthrow the supremacy of God in one united front. And so God confused their language and scattered them based on differences in languages. You can read that in Genesis chapter 10 and 11. From this, a principle is established that groups are divided based on not being able to understand each other or, to say it another way, they are united based on speaking the same way. The principle is advanced in not just speaking the same language, but in thinking the same way. And that is true in the church. You know, it's bewildering why there are so many different churches or denominations when Christians are all supposed to have faith based on the same Bible. We are to be united in Christ according to the Word of God. But it is not enough to say, I believe the Bible in our day. One must ask, but what do you believe the Bible teaches? The goal of Every Christian is this. It's found in Paul's words in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 4 and 5, where we read, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. But how do we get there as the church of our Lord Jesus Christ? Is it to be of the same mind? And that is the subject of today's sermon. We are to be of the same mind. And that seems so difficult. It's difficult even with our own congregation, isn't it? But that's the nature of the beast. It's called progressive sanctification. We grow in our faith, and not all of us are at the same point. As we look through this room, we have infants to older people, and we're all at different points. We've all had this path of life at different times, and we're growing in it, and we're moving forward. As a member of the church, you are called a Christian. which means a Christ-like one. When you are united to Christ through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, applying all of the benefits of Christ's death on the cross to you, you become a partaker of His suffering, death, and resurrection. Another way of summing that up is that your life becomes bound up in the pursuit of being holy as God is holy. And to that end, Peter exhorts or encourages you to follow the example of Christ in pursuing that holy life. So in 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 1 and 2, you will be challenged to see that in terms of the transformation of how you think through the theme of this message, the Christian calling is to equip oneself with the mind of Christ in doing the will of God. That's a challenge before us, that we are to put on the mind of Christ. in the pursuit of the will of God. We're going to see this in three points. First, we are to put on the mind of Christ. Second, we are to pursue the will of God. And then third, you are to promote a holy life, the holy life within you. So put on, pursue, promote. So first, putting on the mind of Christ. We open up the chapter with these words. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind." The center of this text is bound up in the command that you are to arm yourselves. This isn't a suggestion. This isn't maybe some whimsical kind of thing to think about. This is a command from our God. You are to arm yourselves. I don't think that's a second amendment right. I think that's an eternal spiritual calling. He's not talking about guns. He's talking about arming yourself with something far superior, the mind of Christ. The word itself is a very fascinating word. is a command that drives Peter's teaching in the first six verses of this chapter, but I want you to focus on the central idea of what you are to arm yourself with. I'm gonna limit myself somewhat this morning. The first thing that you should note is that this is a command, not to individuals, but to the people of God collectively. This is an aspect of our commission or calling. You know, a good hymn at this point would be, we're in the Lord's army. We're all to arm ourselves and we're to view ourselves that way, right? And so he calls upon us collectively and the force of the word is focused on the process of gaining common understanding that aligns with how our Lord Jesus thought. What was front and center in the mind of our Lord and how he viewed the world and his role in the world? And we'll answer that in the second point. But for Jesus, it was always tied to doing the will of God as his priority. Now, following a little bit on the military metaphor of arming yourself, I grew up in San Diego in the 60s. If any of you have been in the service, you know what San Diego is famous for. Marine training. That's where they train the Marines. And you know what they do with the young 18-year-old out of high school that decides he's going to take the world on and be a Marine? They bring him in there, and they tear him down to the point where I've seen young men come back after training, after boot camp, and they look like zombies. because they have to purge them of all the crazy, silly ideas to then be able to bring them back into thinking as a single mindset unit, military unit to fight together. It's a reprogramming that goes on. And what we wanna see here is that in some ways, There were great benefits to that, but there were also great consequences to that. Those of you who have served in the military know what I'm talking about. But in the Lord's situation, he gives to us a new mind. He gives to us the mind of Christ. And so Peter is advancing. his thought here from chapter 3, verse 18, which states, for Christ who suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. In that passage, the thought evolved around Jesus' death on the cross and leaving this world to ascend into heaven. But he comes now into this chapter, and he's advancing that thought. And he makes an application of that truth of Jesus' suffering to advance the thought of reformation of our whole person in this life, whereby we are equipped through the working of the Holy Spirit to throw off the flesh of our old nature and be conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. So as in the military, you purge the civilian mindset, and you put on the military mindset. So in the church, you are to put off the old nature, and you are to put on the spiritual nature. And you become a different person. You're not an individual. So we must pursue the question. How did Jesus think? If we're to put on the mind of Christ, how did Jesus think? And the answer to that question is that Jesus was the ultimate spiritual man who was not infected by the sins of the flesh. Jesus, at all points, was holy as God is holy. And this is obvious if one has a grasp of the person of Christ as one who is not only a true and righteous man, but also more powerful than us all. He was true God. One of the great mysteries of the faith is that our Savior Jesus was not only like us in every respect except for sin, but he was also true God, equal with the Father in every way. Paul said that we are predestined to be conformed to the image likeness of Jesus Christ in Romans 8. But how are we to understand that? It's a great mystery. But we believe it because God says it. How can I then equip myself or arm myself to think as the one who is the true God? And yet in 1 Corinthians 2.16, Paul stated, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? That's a rhetorical question, right? Meaning the answer is obvious. No one, none of us can instruct God. God is all-knowing, infinite in his wisdom, power, and being. How may we instruct him? But then Paul says this odd thing. He says, but we have the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ. We can understand the things of God. Two things must be understood here. The first is that you do not come to be of the same mind as that of Christ through your own efforts alone. It's not something you can study yourself into. This is an aspect of the Holy Spirit's work of regeneration in us. We are given the mind of Christ in the same sense of Romans 12, 2, where Paul calls upon you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The second aspect is that you are responsible, engaged in this process of renewal. This cooperation, I think, is expounded by Paul in a way of explanation in Philippians chapter 2. where he says in verses 12 and 13, therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do for his good pleasure. It is never one or the other, it's always both. God works in us, but we are doing the work. I heard somebody once explain it this way, that you work out your salvation as though it's completely and entirely up to you, knowing that you're completely and wholly dependent upon God to do the work. This putting on of the mind of Christ is shaped by developing godly thought through patterns, and what you think And what your priorities are will dictate what you pursue in this life. We note, secondly, the pursuing of the will of God. Because Peter goes on in verse 2 and he says that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. When we put on the mind of Christ, we embrace even as Christ, in that sense, put away the flesh and pursued the will of God. So the context of Peter's teaching in this letter is caught up in the suffering that takes place in this world. When Peter addressed the hearers of this letter as pilgrims and sojourners, there was a kind of double reference envisioned. The physical and the spiritual realities of Peter's use of this identity must be borne in mind. We have to bear them in our minds. In a physical sense, he writes to Jewish Christians who had been driven from Jerusalem into foreign lands, and they were physically now living among Gentiles as foreigners with whom they had little in common and often found themselves suffering for their faith. The spiritual sense, however, is that your home as a Christian is a heavenly one. You are not of this world, Jesus said in John 17, even though you are in the world. You are the light of the world, even though the whole world lies in darkness. We need to understand that we are qualitatively different, even though it often doesn't appear that way. The world sees death as an enemy that brings life to an end and is an occasion of anguish and terror. Though they seek to deny any final judgment, it looms over them so that the ungodly approach death with dread. For the Christian, however, Death is an entering into eternal life and an escape from the flesh to realize the fullness of the spiritual life we have in Christ. These bodies are not permanent, they're temporary vessels. It is through persevering the suffering and sacrifice of this life and doing the will of God that the Christian moves forward unto eternal glory. in many ways. The spiritual, when we start out, seems much harder, and the physical much easier when we're younger. But as we get older, the physical seems much harder, and the spiritual seems to become easier. We more rely upon God. We more sense the presence of God. Meanwhile, we struggle with our bodies because our bodies are not meant to be permanent. We'll be given new bodies, even as Christ himself was given a new body. It's an amazing thing and we have a challenge always before us to sort out how we understand these things and we understand them in a sense in part now. Many times it becomes more a matter of faith that we believe these things because God has said these things, but we rest in them. The pursuit of the will of God. was Jesus' life and ministry. And it sets before you the example of living in Christian hope contrasted to being caught up in the lust of the flesh. You know, the life of Jesus is an interesting thing to think about. We're coming up following Thanksgiving. I mean, I don't know where you're at in your home. We always have this struggle in our home where Patty says, well, it's the beginning of November. Can you start bringing the Christmas decorations out? But she resists putting any up until after Thanksgiving, unless somebody plays particular Christmas music. And so there's always that struggle right now, right? There's always that struggle right now. We start thinking about Christmas. But one of the points that I always make in terms of our reflections upon the birth of our Savior is that Jesus, when he was born, came into this world with the conscious path that he came here to die. We think we're born to live. Jesus came to die. so that in His dying, we might live." An interesting thought. And as we think about this, putting on the mind of Christ, who suffers for us, even suffering the death of the cross, He sets before us a pattern that He does that, He might bring us to God. So that Jesus knows he came to die, not so that he would stay there and remain there, but so that in his death, as we are joined to him in his death, he then brings us to God in heaven. And we become partakers of that. So that our death is being adjoined unto God. By the lust of the flesh. has meant those things in the world that appeal to our carnal nature. They take us in a direction away from a greater understanding of God. The pursuit of the will of God is contrasted with the lusts of men. Think about what Paul says in Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 11. Philippians 3, 7 through 11. He says, but what things were gained to me These things I counted loss for Christ, yet I also count all things loss. All the things, all the material fleshly things that appeal to my body, these things I count as loss because what I really want, what really is important to me, is I count those things at loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. That's what now has become important. Of all the possessions I can gain in this world, the possession that I want most of all is something that's not of this world. And then he skips down to verse 10, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if by any means I may obtain to the resurrection from the dead. The world, the things around him, the things that we labor for, the things that are necessary to life, it doesn't mean he doesn't pursue them. Doesn't mean he doesn't work, doesn't labor, doesn't seek to buy food and have housing. You know, he did all those things, because we have to, to sustain our lives. But he says, they weren't important to me. What was truly important to me was the pursuit of the spiritual knowledge of Christ to the end that I would receive the resurrection from the dead. He lived for an otherworldly goal. Peter's lesson for us is this, to put on the mind of Christ begins and ends with a desire to pursue the will of God in your life by rejecting the sinful desires of the flesh and the world so that you might gain heaven by living on a heavenly path in this life. Jesus is the illuminating light for us to doing the will of God. When at every turn, He explained that He came to do the Father's will and not His own. Do you want to know what the mind of Christ is? I did not come to do my own will, but to do the Father's will. And as Christians, our goal should always be not to do my will, but to do my Father's will in heaven, to pursue the glory of God and to exalt the name of Jesus Christ by the things that I do, by the way I speak, by the decisions I make. The path he was called to was one of suffering, even to the death of the cross, that he might bring us to God. His life was one for the good of others and not himself. But by pursuing the doing of the will of God, he also gained what? The glory of heaven. For our Lord, to be in the flesh, was a form of suffering in and of itself. because he had left the glory that he had in heaven. He knows what he left behind when he came into this world and took upon himself our human nature and took upon himself a fleshly body. And so that's why we confess that he suffered from the time he was born to the time he died. There was a sense of his suffering, his setting aside the glory he had with the Father to put upon himself the frailty of human nature. The flesh or body that has been corrupted by sin grows old and has problems, right? We all know that, don't we? We're all struggling. Many of us here in this congregation are struggling with things. It's part of the physical aspects of who we are. The flesh is weak. and is not fitted for living eternally to the glory of God. But Jesus' death released him from the flesh." That's what Peter's saying. Jesus' death released him from the flesh, and he entered into the eternal residing in heaven. In this life, we are to pursue the things of the life to come by seeking to be the light of Christ to others so that we might be used to bring others to God, even as Christ came to bring us to God. And so we know thirdly, we are to be promoting the holy life. In verse two, where he says that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men, but for the will of God, we see their emphasis there, the emphasis there is on pursuit of a godly life, promoting a godly life. The promoting of the holy life or of living the pursuit of godliness in your life is the fruit of the Spirit giving you a new heart that desires that which is spiritual, a longing for it. When we are young, we tend to focus on our physical bodies. But the time comes when all the effort that you can muster cannot stop the process of growing old. You know, it's interesting, when we're kids, we can't wait to grow up. And when we grow up, we wish we were kids again, right? How can I stay young? The body ages and is but a shell that contains the true essence of who you are. And it is that essence that we call the soul of man, and that is the real you. At that point where the body becomes more of an instrument by which you exist and your spiritual essence becomes your focus, then your priorities move from feeding the soul, move to feeding the soul rather than the body. The process of arming yourself with the mind of Christ is one of pursuing the truth of God through His Word, the promotion of faith in Christ through divine fellowship. It is the recognition that time in church is more important than time in the gym. Time in fellowshipping with God through reading the Bible and prayer is more beneficial than hanging out with your friends. Often there is a sense that one is not able to understand the deep truth of the Word of God. I know many of you feel that way. Oh, I just, I can't understand it, Pastor. I'm afraid that I might say the wrong thing. You know, I'm not sure I understand completely. We all have that sort of insecurity. I'm just one who's too dull to grasp the Bible. To which I say, shame on you for thinking that. God's given you the Holy Spirit. You've been given the mind of Christ. Don't underestimate that. What Peter indicates in this passage is that you are really and effectually supplied with the spiritual weapons to subdue the flesh, to overcome that, to gain that knowledge of Christ. You know, Jesus opened the Sermon on the Mount, which you find in Matthew chapter 5, with the Beatitudes. Take some time today, or some time this week, and turn to the Beatitudes, and ask yourself what kind of people Jesus has in mind as he's teaching. Notice too, just think about this, who did Jesus gather to himself to be his disciples? Were they the university grads? the East Coast Ivy Leaguers? No, he went and got the, put it in my language, beer truck drivers, carpenters, even hockey players. He gathered to himself normal people, not elitist. And as you go through Matthew chapter five, and you ask yourself the question what kind of people Jesus has before him in his teaching, Consider especially verse six, which says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Does God ever say something that isn't true? If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, for knowing God, for knowing Christ, if you pursue that in that sense of just hungering and thirsting, He promises you you will be filled. Not all of us in the same way, but you will be filled. You will gain that knowledge. You will sense that intimacy with God. And when you consider that, when you ask that question, then pray to the Lord and ask if you have that kind of hunger and thirst that Jesus wants you to have. And if not, then ask Him to give it to you, to give you that desire. At the heart of this teaching is the idea that we are all as the people of God to have the same common faith that is consistent with the mind of Christ. We are to move from trusting our own opinions to thinking God's thoughts after God. In thinking about this, my mind, it sort of drifted to the Christian's comfort in life and in death. It's been a lot on my mind this week for obvious reasons. It is that we do not belong to ourselves, but to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood is satisfied for all our sin and has redeemed us from all the power of the devil. Brothers and sisters, we all share this common hope and comfort in Christ. This is the mind of Christ in us. This is our common faith that being in Christ, we are no longer under condemnation and equipped to be the followers of the Most High God. That's an amazing thing to think about that. That's who we are. That's our identity. And that should fill us with joy. That should bring a smile to our face. In some churches, it would even bring a few amens from the audience. Well, the week ahead is one of National Thanksgiving, but for the church, we are a people who live out a daily Thanksgiving by offering our bodies as a living sacrifice for the salvation we have obtained through our Savior, Jesus Christ. Because we have this promise from God in Scripture, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Amen?