1 Peter 2, verse 11 says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and Glorify God on the day. Of visitation, may the Lord bless the reading of his word. maybe speaking to some of you children in here, have you ever seen, usually it's in an office or on a desk, or you may even have this at home, but there is this little instrument with a couple of silver spheres, usually four or five, all hanging in a row on a rod, and you go to one of the spheres on the end and you pick it up, and what do you do? You let go of it, and then what does it do? It hits all those other spheres, and then it goes up on this side, and it goes, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, over and over, hitting one another and creating a ricochet. I didn't actually know that there was a scientific thing behind this. It's called Newton's Cradle, and it demonstrates the principles of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy and physics with swinging spheres. And likewise, Peter, in his letter, like Newton's cradle, is repeatedly going back and forth, back and forth between doctrine and practice, who you are and how you're to live. Over and over he does this. He weaves back and forth. We saw this in chapter 1. He begins in chapter 1, verse 3, blessed be the God and Father who has blessed us with great mercy. And he begins, he unpacks the blessings that we have in Christ through the resurrection of Christ and having this living hope. And then in verse 13 of chapter 1, he then says, be holy for your heavenly Father is holy. And then in chapter 2, he sort of weaves back again. He goes back and he says, oh, you have been built up on this choice stone. And now he is going back again, and he's about to give some very specific instructions for Christians how there to live. And this section begins, really a new section, in Peter's letter. This section runs from chapter 2, verse 11, all the way to chapter 4, verse 11. You'll notice at the beginning of the section, in verse 12 of chapter 2, what is he talking about? He's talking about glorifying God, and if you skip over to chapter 4, verse 11, how does he end this section? in order that in everything God may be glorified, that through Jesus Christ to Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. And so this is a new section we're entering then into, into Peter's letter. But Peter's point here in these two verses, and really in this, really in one sense, the whole letter that Peter's writing here, is the Christian is called to live a life as a pilgrim in this world. There is a pilgrim ethos or a pilgrim ethic that helpfully describes our situation as Christians. We're called to live amongst the world, but we are to be distinct from the world. The world that once was our home, we are now, in a sense, homeless in. The way of life that we once lived, we are now in conflict with. The Christian pilgrim has a new life in Christ, a new home, a new way of life, a heavenly life. And so what I want us to see in our short time this evening and looking at these two verses is that Peter in our text calls us as pilgrims to wage war against that former way of life and to live in an honorable way so that our lives might give a glorious report to the unbeliever. So the first thing I want us to see in our text is this holy war that he speaks of in chapter 2, verse 11. And notice, notice how he begins. He says, Beloved, I, Beloved, I urge you. I urge you. This is Peter's, if you will, pastoral appeal. He's pleading with his readers. I urge you. Pay attention, Beloved. Listen to what I'm about to say. I am pleading with you. I'm making an appeal with you. Please listen to this. I'm earnestly pleading with you. This is an entreaty of love that Peter here is bringing to his readers in this letter to these Christians. And Peter's heart here is instructive for us both as Christians and as pastors. Any hard conversation, any strong rebuke or exhortation that we must make or a hard conversation we must have with someone ought to embody the heart that Peter here displays for us. The question for us is, do you want to slam the truth upon your hearers so that they might see how right you are? Or do you want your hearers to receive the truth because you love them and you want them to love the truth as you love the truth? There's quite a difference there, is it not? There's quite a different motive and quite a different heart. And when we approach hard conversations together like that, The former is pride masked in a false love for the truth. But the latter motive is love exercised in a genuine love for others to know the truth. Our love for truth, by the way, is not evidenced and is not purely measured in how much we know intellectually, but our real love for the truth is evidenced by how we wield that truth towards others. And there's quite a difference there. I know many of men or many of women who have great insight into the great doctrines of scripture, but there is a disconnect between what they know and how they live that out in their lives as they seek to love one another. So may we have this heart then, and may your pastors, this is our heart for you. If we, I pray, if we have to have a hard conversation with you, I pray that we would, one, that we would do it by the Spirit's help with this motive, but you would also hear it as our love for you. Beloved, I urge you, I am imploring you, please hear what I have to say here out of love for you. And so Peter here says, Beloved, those loved by God and those loved by me, listen to me, listen up. This is of serious importance for the sake of your soul. And Peter's then pastoral urge then calls us to ask the question, doesn't it? Do you hear God's appeal to you? Do you hear the Spirit of Christ speaking through the Word to you? Do you hear Christ Himself speaking through His Word, saying, Beloved, I urge you? Peter then goes on to preface his command with something else, with another reminder of their identity. What does he say? He says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles. I urge you as sojourners and exiles. And what's important to recognize here is before Peter even gets to the command to abstain, and before he even gets to the command of keeping your conduct honorable amongst the Gentiles, he reminds them that they are beloved by God and they are sojourners and exiles in this world. You see, because our motive and the drive behind abstaining and keeping a holy conduct must be motivated by something higher outside of ourselves. We're not to pursue godliness merely to be counter-cultural. We're not to pursue godliness merely because it gratifies some desire of her own flesh. But no, living a godly life requires a higher aim, a higher end, a higher life. It requires a heavenly aim. And it begins with us understanding what Peter here says, that as Christians, we are pilgrims in this world. that this world is not our home. And just as God said through Moses and Leviticus, he says, you were to go into the land and you're to not be like the Egyptians and you're not to be like the Canaanites. I am the Lord your God and I have called you out of slavery, out of bondage, and I have made you a people for myself. And this then is how you were to live as a distinct and peculiar people amongst the nations. And Peter here then is saying to us, as sojourners and pilgrims, not as Americans, not as Southerners, and not as Georgians. And I qualify now. I've got a real driver's license. I paid that wretched tax for my vehicle. I've got a tag now on my car. But Peter here is reminding us, even in the Western world, you're a pilgrim and a sojourner here. This world, while you still live in it, while you still have citizenship here, while you still have common things, common affections and enjoyments of things here, the reality is this world is not your home, and we don't go to this world then to find our ethic of how we live in it. No, we have a heavenly ethic. We have a pilgrim ethic of a heavenly origin with a heavenly destination. Why? Because we're spiritually in Christ, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We're, in a sense, tethered to heaven. What does Paul say in Colossians 3? He says, seek those things which are where? Below? Seek those things which are above. Why? Because Christ is there and he is your life. So there is this then heavenly vision that we have because we are now fellow citizens with the saints of old and the saints present and the saints to come. We are fellow citizens of this grand household of God that has a heavenly destination. That then means we are also free, aren't we? We are free in Christ from our old way of life. We are freeing Christ from the bondage and dominion of sin and from the passions of the flesh. They are dead to us. They have been crucified to us, Paul tells us. But we are alive in Christ and live by faith in the Christ. I want you to go to just one place that beautifully shows this. Go to Galatians 5. I'm going to read for us Galatians 5 verse 13, then skip to verse 24. Well, actually, if we have time, come back and read those verses in between. But for now, just to see that we are free in Christ and we are dead to our sins and the passions of this flesh. Notice what he says in chapter five, verse 13, for you are called the freedom brothers. We do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. but through love serve one another. And then skip now, if you will, to verse 24. He goes through and he names the fruit of the Spirit, and then he names the works of the flesh, which are contrary to those fruits of the Spirit. And then he says this in verse 24, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. We once were comfortable in this world. We once walked according to the course of this world. We once held the world's values. We once were a full card carrying member of the world. But now we're dead to the world. And the world is dead to us. Now we fight against being conformed to the world. And now we walk according to the will of God and not the flesh. So do you see how this then shapes how we live in the world and how we fight the passions of the flesh? Do you see why Peter, before he even gives the command to abstain, he says, Beloved, as sojourners and exiles. He's raising that, raising that motive, raising that bar because of who you are in Christ, because of because of what Christ has done to your sin and because of what Christ has done to those passions. He's then going to say, abstain from those same passions. And do you see also how viewing the Christian life as a pilgrimage clears our vision? gives us a heavenly perspective. You see, when the lusts of the flesh entangle us, we forget that our home is heaven. But when we live as pilgrims in this world, we live as free men and free women in Christ, no longer in bondage to the flesh. We are freed to serve Christ, and we have this heavenly vision on him. That's why Paul would say to young Timothy, do not entangle yourselves in the affairs of this world. So there's this pilgrim ethic of a heavenly origin with a heavenly destination that must be understood if we are going to do what Peter then is now going to command his readers to do. What is he going to say? He says, abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. The question, of course, if I just said that we have died to sin, if our sin and our passions have been crucified, the question then is, well, why do I still struggle with sin? Shouldn't it be gone? Well, the simple answer is that until we are glorified, sin still remains. And there is now this irreconcilable war, our confession says, between the flesh and the spirit, seeking to live in that freedom that Christ has given us, seeking to live no longer as servants of unrighteousness, but rather servants of the living God. And there is this irreconcilable war that will not be reconciled until we go to glory. Our confession is helpful here in chapter 13, verse 2, a tremendous chapter on helping us understand the Christian life and our struggle with sin says this, this sanctification is throughout the whole man, yet imperfect in this life. There abides still some remnants of corruption in every part. We could say amen to that, couldn't we? Amen. Or oh me. Wherefrom arises a continual and reconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. But what does Peter mean here when he says to abstain from the passions of the flesh? Well, it is what we call the mortification of sin, the putting to death of sin within us, the putting to death of those sinful lusts and those sinful passions that still remain in us, that seek to bring us back into bondage, that seek to obscure the gospel, that seek to tempt us and draw us away from the glory of Christ, that seek to obscure all the blessings that we have as God's people, but this abstaining here is a total abstinence. It's a putting to death of sin. It is an ongoing life of exterminating sin in every corner of our lives, of every variety of sin that tempts us by the power of the Spirit. And this abstaining from sin, this mortifying the sin, this putting to death the sin, is more than mere dealing with the fruit of our sin. You know, we often do that. We will sin. We will be quick to repent of that sin and confess that sin, but never really examine what the fruit of that sin is. Why is it that we are moved to this particular sin and this situation over and over and over again? There's an underlying sin there. There's an underlying root there. If you were to go into your yard and you had a fruit tree and there was a little limb and you said, oh, I'm going to take down the whole tree. I'm going to kill it right now. And you chopped off just that little limb. Would that kill the tree? Hopefully, no. If it did, the tree was already dead. In the same way, when we deal with sin, oftentimes we're focused on dealing with fruit. And we never consider and pray and ask for the Spirit's help to help us to see the root of our sin. Do you want me to tell you some writers that are really helpful? I call them the doctors of the soul. They seem to know how to take the scapel of the Word, and they know how to just ask these sort of penetrating questions. They'll cite you a text, and then they'll ask you 20 questions about your soul, and all of a sudden you realize, There's a deep root in here. I've been dealing with the fruit. It's the Puritans. The Puritans were masters. That's maybe a little bit too high. They were sinners. They were men. But they thought long and hard about sin and what sin does to the human soul and how there is often a deep rooted sin within us that we are always quick to ignore and we always deal with the root. Perhaps another example of this, and I'm gonna speak in code since we have some young children here, but there is a Greek myth of this thing, okay, follow me here, this thing called the Hydra. And the only way to defeat the Hydra is not by dealing with one of its many heads, but it is to deal with all of them at the same time. And I think that's a hopeful example here that we must not content ourselves in merely cutting off the fruit, but we must deal with the root. This mortification, then, is us daily being crucified with Christ, us daily putting to death our fleshly desires, our selfishness, and all that would be contrary to the life of Christ. If a believer wants to proclaim God's excellency in their lives, then it begins with putting to death in your life all that profanes God's name. We would want to be evangelistic. We want to be mission, not great. We want to be a great commission church. Part of that includes us living in such a way where we are so zealous for God's glory and so zealous for God's name to be honored in our lives that we are quick to put to death anything that would profane God's name. William Jay is helpful here in this idea of putting to death, of this mortification. He says this, he says, but to crucify is not only to destroy, it signifies a peculiar kind of death, a violent, unnatural death. And sin never dies of its own accord, nor from weakness, nor from age. It must be put to death by force. It signifies a painful death. And Jay goes on to actually describe the anguish of a body crucified. And then he says this, whoever was a Christian without difficulty, self-denial, sacrifices, groans and tears, though crucifixion was a sure death, it was a slow and lingering one. And our corruptions, though doomed to be destroyed, are not to be dispatched at once. We shall have to mortify the deeds of the body as long as we are here. As long as we are here. Now, I think some of us can be moved to hear this and be discouraged because there is that sin that we always put to death and it always comes back. I think there's also a word of encouragement here to take courage, Christian. Remember, your sin, all of it, was put to death for you. Even that lingering sin, even that troubling sin, even that sin that always seems to have the upper hand. And Christ will indeed deliver you at His coming from this body of death. And so, until then, Wage war against your sin. How do we do that? We do that by walking in the spirit. We do that by putting on Christ. We do that by filling ourselves with the word of Christ. And when we are filled with the love of God and the word of God, and we are when we are filled by the spirit, we'll find that there is no longer room for the desires of the flesh. There is no room for self. There is no room for sin when we are filled with the Spirit of God. And this is why Paul says there is no law for the fruits of the Spirit, because those who are walking in the Spirit are walking in the will of God. Notice that last phrase Peter says to sort of raise the stakes of why we should abstain from the passions of the flesh. What does he say they are doing? which wage war against you, or you could translate it as because, because they wage war against you. Because they wage war against you. These passions of the flesh are waging war against us, and there is then no neutral ground. There is no ceasefire. There is no humanitarian safe zone in the battle against sin. There is an ongoing war, and we will either be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. The philosopher Gollum says this, that's a Lord of the Rings character if you didn't know. It cannot be seen. It cannot be felt. It cannot be heard. It cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills and empty holes it fills. It comes out first and follows after. It ends life and kills laughter. Now, he there is talking about the dark, but I think that riddle aptly describes the passions of the flesh, which are often unseen, aren't always felt, aren't always seen, aren't always even understood that they're there. And yet they're waging war against us. Passions of the flesh are seeking to kill us. And just like there's no pause in tug-of-war, there's no truce in king of the hill, there's no allowing the opposing team in a track meet to slow down so they can catch up, there is no neutral ground in us waging war against the flesh. Now, some may say, some may say this idea of waging war against the soul, some of you may say, well, I'm securing Christ and this war does not concern me. There's nothing that can be lost for me in this conflict. I'm eternally secure in Christ. I would say, oh dear brother, oh dear sister, have you tasted the Lord's goodness? Have you come to know Christ? Then where is your pilgrim ethic? Where is your striving to be holy as the God who has called you as holy? Where is your heart that offers a living sacrifice to God in your life? You're quite right that we are secure in Christ. You are quite right that those in Christ cannot lose their salvation. But the presumption in this statement is an alarm to something dangerous in your heart. And we see God's command and say, oh, I'm secure in Christ. I can live as I please. So, brother or sister, do you understand grace? You understand the freeness and the fullness of the gospel. The point here is not that we might add law to the gospel. That's not what Peter's doing. But Peter is talking of those who are already beloved by God. And in response to that. By the spirit of God is calling them to live holy lives and a way out of a heart of gratitude and a way of response seeks to honor God. Paul sort of anticipates that same question, doesn't he, in Romans 6? Oh, if grace is this good, shall I sin that grace may abound? And what is Paul's answer? May it never be a strong, strong, emphatic no. The question is for us, do we, if we think of that way, if we think of this command this way, the question is, do you know Christ? You see, sin destroys. human beings. The fall turns the image of God into a ruined mess. And in one sense, sin makes humans something a little less. And what I mean by that is, yes, after the fall, we still bear God's image. But because we are created for communion with God, to lose that communion with God because of sin is then to render us as something a little bit less than what God created us. And when we sin, we're going back to something less. We're going to something that's not that glorious. I just heard Joel Beakey say this afternoon, we're going after pig food. We're going after food that doesn't last, food that doesn't satisfy. And we are filling ourselves with it. And all the while, God is saying, you are my beloved. I have redeemed you. What are you doing? I have set these blessings before you. I have given you my word. And you are entertaining yourself with the things of the world. You've forgotten that you're a sojourner and that you're a pilgrim. There is a real danger. that the passions of the flesh, while they cannot destroy our salvation, they can inflict great harm and bring great consequences on the Christian, so that the joy of our salvation is robbed, so that the experience of God's presence is robbed, so that the assurance of salvation, the sweet communion with God is robbed. We don't lose those benefits, but they become muted. So we ask, where have they gone? I can't taste them, I can't feel them. My joy of my salvation is gone. It's because we are not abstaining from these passions of the flesh and they are waging war against our souls and making our affections and our wills and our minds dull to the things of God. Those things that were dear to us, those hymns that were dear to us, now have been robbed of their sweetness because of that sin that has taken root and we are harboring in our hearts When we fail to abstain, we begin to become spiritually malnourished. We begin to become pessimistic in God's plan in place for us. We lose sight of the privileges of God. We begin to isolate ourselves from the people of God. We begin to draw back from doing good to one another. We begin to extinguish the light of the gospel in our lives. We can even make shipwreck of the lives of those around us because they're seeing our testimony and they're seeing what we're doing as a license to sin. We turn grace into a wage and we turn love into a contract. The question for us, brothers and sisters, friends, is what excuses do we use to justify the passions of our flesh? Other people's sins? Oh, I, I sinned against them because this is what they have done to me. Maybe it's our present circumstance. Well, if God wouldn't have put me in this place at this time, I wouldn't do these things. Maybe it's our upbringing. Well, I was raised this way, and therefore I'm going to be this way. Perhaps it's a difficult marriage, it's difficult children, perhaps it's our health, perhaps it's our jobs, perhaps it's the common refrain, you don't understand, to which I say, maybe not, but the Lord Jesus Christ does. Doesn't he who was tempted in every way as we were yet without sin? What excuses have we used? To pacify the conviction of the Holy Spirit, of those sins that we are harboring, those passions, the flesh that we are harboring. I know we believe this, but the biggest problem we have is not within, it's not without, or the biggest problem we have is within and not without. And it is the great trick of the trade of the evil one to shift the focus off of the problem from self into the problem of others. Really is the great deception that our culture is bought into, is it not? Everyone else is the problem. I can name all these things of why I can't do this or do that, but the problem begins with who? With us. This then brings us to the second point, and it is a glorious report. A glorious report. And Peter begins in verse 12 with another command. He says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. And really, in one sense, the command to abstain and the command to conduct, to have an honorable conduct, are two sides of the same coin. Really, they are the same thing. The command to abstain is the negative aspect of it. Don't do this. Stay away from these things. Abstain from these passions of the flesh. And then the positive side of the command, then, is to keep your conduct honorable. Keep your conduct honorable. amongst the Gentiles. This word here for conduct is one of Peter's favorite words. It speaks of a way of life, and Peter describes our conduct or our way of life in chapter 1, verse 15, as being holy, as the one who has called us is holy. And an honorable conduct is a life that is lived in submission to God's word as a rule of life. You want to know what an honorable conduct is? There it is. It's a life lived in submission to God's Word. It's a life that lives out our freedom in Christ, not as an opportunity to sin, but as an opportunity to honor God and to do good to others. Notice two things, though, that Peter says that are pretty peculiar here that we might just pass over. He says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Who is Peter writing to? Christians. But what are they? They're Gentiles. But Peter no longer considers them as among the Gentiles. They are in a sense among them in the world, but they are not among them in a sense of belonging to them. That's no longer their people. And it goes well with what we've heard as we've kind of gone over Romans 10. Each week, as Hank is working through that chapter, that there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile. All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved, and these Gentile Christians have called upon the name of the Lord, and no longer are they marked among the Gentiles. No longer do they belong to the Gentiles, but now they are part of the people of God. But notice the second thing, where are they? Though they don't belong with them, they are where? They are amongst them. And that then is interesting because that helps us kind of finish the picture, if you will, of what it means to be a pilgrim. Some people read things like being a pilgrim in the Bible, and they say, oh, we will retreat. We'll isolate ourselves. We'll create these holy little communities. We'll only work in these holy places and these holy jobs. And we won't ever fellowship or associate with unbelievers. And we'll kind of create these holy huddles and we'll hold hands and pray and read scripture and close our eyes so the world is burning around us. And we'll wait for Jesus to come. But that's not what the Lord has in mind when he says that we're pilgrims, when we're sojourners, we are not to be of the world. But we are to be in the world, right amongst the people of the world. Let me maybe just make this clear, let's go to John chapter 17 and hear our Lord Jesus's prayer for us around this same same thing. John 17, verses 14 through 18. Here, Jesus is praying to the Father, and He says, Why? Because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you, listen, take them out of the world. but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Here it is, friends. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. Do you see the full picture now? We are to be in the world, but not of the world. We are to be pilgrims in this world, not letting our affections or our way of life being shaped by the world, but we're to be in the world as a gospel light. So as pilgrims, we can expect hatred, right? Just as our Lord has been hated by men. And in our particular text, we can expect to be slandered. We can expect to be spoken evil of. You can expect persecution to come. In fact, the question of whether or not Christians will be persecuted or whether or not Christians will be slandered is really not a matter of if, but it's a matter of when. It's a matter of driving down that old dirt road that's not maintained by the county. And it's not a matter of if you're going to hit a pothole. It's a matter of when you're going to hit a pothole. And in the same way, if we are living as pilgrims distinct from the world, then the world is going to hate us. And the New Testament says much about this. Peter, later on in chapter 4, he says that when the unbeliever sees that you are not partaking of the same sins and the same passions of the flesh that they partake of, he says that they are going to be surprised by it, and then they're going to malign you because of it. Because you're not of the world. Because you're not of the world. And notice, he says, have an honorable conduct. An honorable conduct is a life that is above reproach, that extinguishes the enemy's fiery darts of slander. An honorable conduct can be slandered, and those around that person that know them know exactly what it is. But slander sticks easily to a man or to a woman whose life is not honorable or above reproach. Being above reproach is this idea of your life having no handles by which someone can grab you and pull you down to the ground in a sense. But when someone doesn't have an honorable life, when slander comes, it may not be true. But they don't have an honorable way of life, and even if it's not true, people go, oh, it's probably true. You know this person. And Peter here, in a sense, is saying, live in such a way that you have an honorable conduct. So when evil, even when evil is said of you, it's quickly realized with those around that that's not the case. That's not the case at all. And how do we deal with slander? Has anyone ever been slandered? Was it a high point in your life? How do you deal with that? I think Peter gives us an example at the end of chapter two with our Lord Jesus Christ in chapter two, verse twenty three, when he when he reveled, he did not revel in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but what did he do? But continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. When we are slandered, when we are maligned, And when we can honestly say, Lord, my conscience is clear before you and before others, and probably wisely, the people around me are saying and telling me my conscience is clear, we can then, even in the midst of slander, with a heart of peace, entrust ourselves to the God who judges justly. Because at the end of the day, Though it hurts and though it will bring great difficulty if we are slandered and depending upon the magnitude of that slander and how much it shapes and wrecks our life, even in the midst of that, we can say with hearts of peace and with joy that at the end of the day, it is the God of heaven and earth who will judge me. And I will entrust myself. I will entrust myself to him. Notice, though, the glorious report here. He says this. Why? Why keep your conduct honorable? That when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God. On the day of visitation. You see, the light of the gospel, we proclaim the light of the excellencies of God and of the glory of the gospel, both in our lips and in our life. The old saying, preach the gospel and use words when necessary. That's not biblical. That's not true. But it is biblical to say that we do, in a sense, proclaim the gospel in two ways. By what we say and by what we do. The question then, friends, is does our lives magnify the gospel, or does it diminish the gospel? Does our lives bring a giant spotlight on the glory and the loveliness of Jesus and saving sinners and making people new, or does our life actually bring disdain upon the gospel to those around us? Has our gospel witnessed become marred with the affairs of this world. This day of visitation here that Peter is referencing is most likely the second coming of Christ. This is to be, as he's already described in chapter one, is a day of fullness of joy, a day of fullness of salvation, when our salvation is finally complete. when this indwelling sin is finally dealt away with, done away with, and our faith has become sighed, and we have been given glorified bodies, no longer struggling with the sickness of sin, or even just sickness in general, and we will see God face to face and glorify Him. And Peter here is saying that we are to live in a way so that just maybe on that day, there will be someone there who is there because the Lord used your life of abstaining and having an honorable conduct. Let's change it to our time amongst the Fayetteville people or Fayette County. And they saw that and they were moved to glorify God and they were moved to faith in Jesus Christ. May there be, as we wage this holy war on the passions of our flesh, may there be a glorious report on this day of visitation that there were other sinners who heard the gospel from us and saw the gospel in us that were moved to glorify God and are now marked as part of the beloved. This pilgrim ethic has a vision that is tethered to heaven towards Christ But it doesn't stop there. It extends in love to others, bringing them to Christ with us. Let's pray. Lord, what a high and holy calling you have given us as your people. that began with the work of your son and then is now being worked out in us by the work of your spirit and making us more like Christ. Lord, we pray that by your spirit, this word would surge deeply into our souls and ask what sins are there, what passions are there that we must deal with by the help of your spirit, that we must repent of and put to death. And, Lord, we pray that you would give us. This holy conduct that only comes. By the power of the spirit and walking in the spirit and not fulfilling the desires of the flesh. The moment, Lord, we think that we can do this in our own will. And our own efforts, the moment we will surely fail, but Lord, we need your spirit and we need your word, which your son has prayed for us. That would sanctify us. So may we grow in that sanctification and may we take seriously. our calling from our Lord, that he has not taken us out of the world, but has sent us into the world. And in Christ's name, we ask these things. Amen.