Peter. You should be fairly familiar with where that is. Pastor Doug just gone through second Peter recently. First Peter chapter one. You know that Pastor Doug normally preaches an entire chapter to you, and I bring you one verse this morning. Although we'll be commenting on the surrounding context, Peter exhorts us, therefore preparing your minds for action, being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I'm going to begin this morning's message by using a dirty word, at least it's a dirty word in the context of our culture and in our society today. It is the word d-u-t-y, duty. Most people today do not like the word duty. In fact, if you were to speak even with most professing Christians and ask them, do we have a duty in our obedience to God and in our service to one another. Their response would be something like, no, it's not a duty. It's a work of grace that enables us to do what we do out of thankfulness from our hearts. And by saying those kinds of things, they divorce the idea of grace from the biblical notion of duty. What I hope to show you this morning from God's Word is that these two ideas are never intended to be separated. But in fact, the grace of God which is at work in us in the proclamation and the effectual doing of salvation by God produces in us a gratitude by which we act in accordance with duty. Our duty to obey. In the opening verses of this chapter, Peter is also already expounded upon the great themes of the gospel, you recall, beginning especially in verse three, how he spoke of the mercy of God causing us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Because of Christ's resurrection and our resurrection with Christ, we look forward to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled and will not fade away, Peter says, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God. God preserves us in order that we might persevere and take hold of that final prize, which is eternal life. Eternal, blessed joy in the presence of God and with his son, Jesus Christ. As we await this inheritance, Peter says, we're kept, we're preserved, even in the midst of all kinds of trials and tribulations. Fiery trials, as he put it. And though we've not yet seen Christ physically with our own eyes, we believe in him. and rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining as the outcome of our faith the salvation of our souls. Now, what this is, what Peter has given us in the opening chapters of this book, is the superlative nature of the gospel, the glorious nature of the gospel, that God has caused you to be born again to a living hope. We've been raised up out of our death unto the newness of life as we've been given the gospel and forgiven of our sins through the mediation of his son. And Peter reminds us of these things, how wonderful the gospel is, how gracious it is, and how it points us to the mercies of God. The gospel that Christ brings to us is so wonderful. In fact, Peter said that the angels stare in wonder and awe when they consider the graciousness of the gospel, that God has redeemed sinful rebels like us. Men and women and children, all of us rebels against God, and he's redeemed us from our rebellion and our sin. He's made us new in Christ. He says the angels stand in awe. They look at this and they wonder how in the world can this be? Men who rebelled against God, who hated God, God redeemed them from their rebellion and brought them out of their bondage and brought them into a place of worship and service of his holy name. Beginning in verse three, Peter brings us this moment of pause and response, that is in verse 13, excuse me. How should we respond to the glorious gospel? Having heard the gospel, having believed in Christ by faith, we've trusted in him. How do we respond to this glorious gospel that we have heard? How do we respond to its benefits? Well, you'll notice there in verse 13 that Peter begins this section with the word, therefore, Now, whenever we see the word therefore used in the scripture, we need to ask ourselves that simple question. What is it therefore? What is it building upon? And it inevitably introduces for us the imperative. Having heard the indicative, having heard that which has been accomplished for us in Christ Jesus, Peter now introduces the imperative. If you truly understand the heinousness of your sin, if you truly understand that you have rebelled against God and you are not deserving of his mercies, but by his grace alone you have been saved and that God has caused these things to come about, that God has caused you to be born again. You could not bring yourself to the newness of life. You were dead in your sins, in your trespasses, as Paul put it. But God, who is rich in his mercy, has caused you to be born again to a living hope. Having done that, we come to this point in the passage where Peter says, therefore, how should you respond to the grace of God, having heard the grace of God and believed in Christ? Peter makes this connection. If the angels long to look into our salvation, how much more should we long to understand the gospel and its implications for our lives. Furthermore, it's interesting, as we read earlier in both the law and the gospel from the book of Exodus, that in this passage, Peter is caught up with the idea that the church is like the children of Israel, and that we who are in Christ have been delivered from spiritual Egypt by a far greater sacrifice. Now the reference that Peter makes here to the first celebration of the Passover in Egypt is unmistakable. If I want to keep your place here in 1 Peter, look with me at Exodus chapter 12. In Exodus chapter 12, as we just heard a few moments ago, God told Moses, and Aaron to go to Pharaoh and to let my people go, so they may come into the wilderness and worship and serve me. In Exodus 12, look at verse 3. He says, tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for his household. And then look down at verse 11. In this manner you shall eat it Notice what he says here, with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. Now, I hope you notice there the connection that Peter makes. Yes, Peter, I believe, is thinking about this passage. He's thinking about the Exodus event. He's thinking about God's deliverance of his people out of Egypt. And in verse 13, he says, God having delivered you. Remember, as we read this morning, God sent his death angel. And he said, but all of you, if you paint the doorpost of your house with the blood of the lamb, you and all of your family will be spared from the judgment of God. And so all of Israel were delivered from the judgment of God, the judgment that came in every household in Egypt on that day in which God killed the firstborn, even of the flocks of all that were in Egypt. But none of the house of Israel were touched. All of them were spared because they were under the blood which God commanded that would protect them, the sacrificial atonement. of the blood. Now, notice back in first Peter in verse 13, Peter picks up on this theme. God having delivered you cause you to be born again. It's interesting. We read in Exodus and said 413 years they were in Egypt and on that very day, 413 years later, they were delivered. And the whole picture there is one of newness. It's one of deliverance and a newness of life. That's why Paul connects it to baptism in first Corinthians, chapter 10, that all of Israel were baptized through the Red Sea. And so we have all of these photographs, these pictures of Israel being delivered out of their bondage to the newness of life, to worship and serve God no longer under the bondage of their former past master in Egypt, but now free to serve the living God. That's exactly what Peter has been doing. He's been building towards this place throughout this passage. You have been born again. You've been delivered. How? By the miraculous power of God. You've been caused to be born again to a living hope through this raising up, through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Now in verse 13, listen, he says, therefore, prepare your minds for action. And being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Notice especially the cause and effect of our salvation In verse two, we see this even as Peter began to weave this idea, he says, You are the elect according to the foreknowledge of God, the father in the sanctification of the spirit. But he doesn't stop there. We don't stop with doctrine. We don't stop with a declaration of what God has done. But rather, he says, what, according to the foreknowledge of God, the father and the sanctification of the spirit. Notice he says for in the New American Standard, it says unto or to obedience for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. In Scripture, these two things are never separated, we are sprinkled with the blood of Christ so that we may obey. in the day of salvation so that we may walk in a manner which is pleasing unto the Lord. And so, again, in this section, verses 13 through 16, Peter marks out the same relationship and applies it to our Christian duty. I won't expound on it at great length this morning, but in If you're looking there at your text in verses 13 through 21, Peter deals with our Christian duty as it relates to ourselves, that is, to the way we think, what we think in our minds. And then in verses 21 through 25, Peter deals with our Christian duty as it relates to the way that we treat others, especially our brethren in Christ. Now, as to the first part, I want to set the foundation for you as it is laid in verse 13, in particular, There are many Christians who have the idea that the concept of duty is antithetical to the concept of grace, but it isn't. Duty is simply something that we ought to do. In other words, it's our moral obligation. One of the reasons why people want to dismiss the law today and every aspect of the law and say, we're not under law, but we're under grace. is because they want to downplay this idea of duty, that we ought to obey God. But we believe, at least in this church, that the moral law of God is in perpetuity. The moral law of God is never abolished. The Ten Commandments, as were given to us by God, are a summary of the moral law. And we have a duty to obey them. It is our duty. And as Christians, we ought to obey the law of God. Why? Because we have been delivered from the bondage of our rebellion against God. We have an oughtness, a specialness, a duty to obey. Many today believe The opposite. Unbelievers also have a moral obligation to obey the law of God. But they don't obey the law because they consider their obligation to themselves as being greater than their obligation to worship and serve God. As Christians, our obligation is the same, only now it is made possible by God's grace. Everyone on this earth is subject to the law of God. There isn't a person in this world who is not under the obligation of God's law to obey his law. Every person must obey. People don't because they don't care. They're in rebellion against God. But as believers, we are freed from our bondage. We are freed from the slavery of our hatred of the law. because our hatred of the law is our hatred of God. And having been freed from our hatred of the law, we are now free to obey the law. And we obey it out of the gladness of our hearts and out of thankfulness because we have been delivered from our sin and our misery. The obligation is the same, but having now been delivered by God's grace, And having now been taught by the gospel, our duty to God, in the words of Christ, is no longer burdensome. It is something we do now out of sheer joy and adoration of the Savior who has released us, saved us from the rebellion and sin. Therefore, Peter says, speaking of our duty in Christ, notice what he says. Another idea that is abhorred by many today. Therefore, he says, gird your mind. Gird your mind or your minds for action, keep sober in your spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you. at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, in this verse, we notice that there are three things that Peter points to in relation to our duty in Christ. The first is the duty of our minds. The second is the duty of our demeanor. And the third is the duty of our desires or our hope. First, he addresses the duty of our minds. Notice, therefore, he says, Gird your minds for action. Now, what in the world does that mean? Gird your minds for action. Well, this is an expression of speech which is known as a similitude. It's taken from the ancient custom that we read about just a few moments ago, where I read from Exodus chapter 12. Literally, the text here says, gird up the loins of your mind. Now, in ancient times, in those times, at least in that Middle Eastern culture, men didn't wear the pants in the family. They wore the robes of the family. Now, if a man wanted to go somewhere quickly or work vigorously, what he would do is he would take off his belt. And he would gird up his robe in such a way he would tie it off so that it was more like pants where he could walk freely and not be encumbered by the robe binding against his legs. And that's exactly the idea that's going on. We saw that when we read in Exodus chapter 12 this morning. He said, I want you to gird up your robes. Take your staff in your hand. In other words, have your suitcases packed because we're leaving on a moment's notice. I want you to be ready at a moment's notice, because when I give the command to march and move, we will move out. We won't have time to mess around. Honey, stop washing the dishes. It's time to go. We've done all that we can do. We're ready to go. And that's exactly the idea of readiness. I want you to be ready. Well, how does Peter tell us here that I want you to be ready in Exodus? He said, I want you to actually gird up your robes and be ready to move out here. Peter puts kind of a different twist on the idea. He says, I want you to gird up the loins of your mind. What in the world does that mean? To gird up the loins of your mind. Well, as we've already seen, the imagery in the Jewish mind comes not only from the daily experience, but right out of the Exodus as in relation to that first Passover, they were preparing themselves to move quickly. Now, in the Exodus, that deliverance of God's people from Egypt was to come the following day. For Peter, our actual deliverance is still in the future. There is a sense in which we have been already delivered from the wrath of God, right? The blood has been applied to our households, to our door posts, if you will. We have trusted in Christ's blood, which has been shed for us. That day has already passed. The wrath of God has already passed over our house, over our heads. We have been saved from his wrath. But there is another sense in which our sojourn into the promised land, if you will, is delayed. And Peter speaks of that all throughout this portion of scripture. There is a sense, you remember, he said that we have been caused to be born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ to an inheritance which is undefiled and imperishable and unfading. And it's being kept in heaven for you. We're looking forward to that final day of deliverance in which we will finally and completely be set free from the bondage of sin every week when we come here every week. We confess our sins to God, rightly so. We stand before God and we confess our sins because we know how frail our hearts are. We know how clouded our minds are, how encumbered we are by the things of this world. And so we rightly confess our sins, Lord. And we look to Christ anew. We recognize the already and the not yet. We've been delivered from the wrath of God. But the day is coming, brothers and sisters, when we will finally and completely be delivered not only from the power of sin, but from the very presence of sin. And Peter says, with that hope in mind, we'll come back to this a little later. I want you to prepare your minds. This is a battle for your minds. God, are you really going to take us into a broad place of blessing and worship when you lead us out of here into the place where you will lead us? Are you really going to bring us into the promised land as you have promised? They had a night to consider those kinds of doubts and fears, didn't they? To remember the stripes of Egypt, to remember the turmoil and the pain and all that they endured. They had but a night to consider these things. Many of us have had 50, 60, 70 years, more, many years, and will have many more years, Lord willing, to think of the greatness of our salvation and to wait for that day that has been promised to us when we finally be delivered. And so Peter says, this is a battle for your minds, folks. It's not a battle of your emotions. Do you always feel like obeying the Lord? Do you always feel like thinking of the greatness of his salvation and what that compels us to do? And the oughtness of his law and obeying him? We don't always feel that way, do we? It's not about our feelings, is it? Peter recognizes that. So many people today are captured by their emotions. They're captured by the way they feel. They come to church and they want a lift. I want to go from this place feeling good about what I've experienced. Peter says it's not what it's about. So this is a battle for your minds, not for your emotions. Your emotions just flow out of whether or not you think rightly about your situation in Christ. He says, that's why you need to prepare your minds, gird up your minds for action. He says, it's interesting, Jesus, both Christ and the Apostle Paul made great hay of this same idea. Jesus said in Luke 12, be dressed, same picture, be dressed in readiness. and keep your lamps alight. Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast so that they immediately open the door when he comes and he knocks. Concerning the full armor of God, Paul said in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 14, Remember, stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth. Well, how do you gird your loins with truth? Put on the pants of truth? What does that mean? Obviously, he means your minds. You gird your minds with truth, young people especially hear me. The cry of the culture today is that truth doesn't matter. All that matters is your journey or your experience or whatever. It does matter because Satan wants to have your mind. And guess what? He's coming after it. He's coming after it in the billboards, in the music that you listen to, the television shows, the movies that you watch. If you don't think that Satan and those that are under his influence in Hollywood have an agenda to steal your minds from you, you're wrong. They do. And God says you ought to be concerned about your minds, about the way you think, about your sin, your rebellion against God, God's deliverance of you from your rebellion through Christ Jesus by his blood alone. You need to think rightly about truth. Paul says, gird up your loins with truth. If you're prepared in your minds, you'll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, Paul says. It's a wonderful illustration, Proverbs 31. Where Solomon is speaking of the qualities of an excellent wife, he says, she girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong. Now, in the case of the excellent life, this implies preparation for serious work. We've all seen our moms or our wives getting to the kitchen when they're about to make a great feast, Thanksgiving or Christmas, and they're serious about their work. Get out of my way. I'm busy. If you're not going to help, then leave. Right. Because they're working hard at the task that is given to them. This is exactly what Peter says. You have to work hard on the preparation of your minds so that you can be girded up with truth. For the day of your salvation. case of the Christian life, he says, we must prepare our minds. I like the NASB translation here because it implies that the preparation of our minds with the truth of the God's word cannot and must not be accomplished with academic indifference. It is not knowledge that we seek for knowledge sake. We don't read books just because we want to be smarter, because we want to be able to converse with academics and theologians. Rather, we recognize that it is the preparation of our minds that leads to the obedience of our hearts. It is the preparation of our minds that leads to thankful obedience. Why? Because I have to know. I must know. Mason prayed this morning, God Help us to know of your grace and your mercy toward us. We have to know about it. We've got to listen with our ears and think about it in our minds. How great is my sin against God? How great is this salvation by which God has delivered me? The only way that we can know these things is by the pursuit and the study of doctrine, applying ourselves to think about How great it is that God has delivered us. And now that we know that, we must know what we must do. How must I serve you, Lord? How ought I to serve you? How should I obey the law? You think this is impractical? It isn't impractical. When you're standing in a hospital room and somebody says, pull the plug because they don't have a quality of life anymore. In that very moment, it's the most practical thing that can ever come to pass. When you know the law of God and you can apply the law of God, which says, thou shalt not take a life. When you know that quality of life is not defined by men, but rather than by God himself, it is the life itself that is that which God has given and sustains. Our ethics. The way that we think rightly about life is determined as to whether or not we understand the moral obligation that is contained in God's law. And so we must learn to think rightly about our moral obligation before God. How, Lord, ought I to act? How should I respond in this business situation in my family? Whatever it is, we gird up our minds with the loins of truth and we're able to stand firmly in the day of destruction. What a tragedy it is. Certainly shows in Christianity that surrounds us today when Christians are either afraid or they're simply given over to so much sloth and laziness that they do not believe that the life of the mind is important for the Christian. In fact, I encourage you. This was such a powerful thing for me when I first looked at this. Go home and get out your Bible concordance or go on BibleGateway.com and use the search features. Do a word study in all the Bible of the word mind. And see how many times, especially in the New Testament, the emphasis is on our minds, the way we think and how we think. And how we should develop our minds so that we can more effectively obey the Lord Jesus Christ. You can love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and with all of your sincerity that you can muster up by the grace of God. But if you do not obey God and love him with all of your mind, remember that that is a part of the command. Love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, minds and If we don't love the Lord, our God, with all of our minds, the battle for your spiritual maturity will be lost. You will remain a baby in both your thinking and your behavior until the day you go home to be with Christ. Peter says, prepare your minds for what? For action. This is why Paul says in Ephesians 4, 22, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the loss of deceit and that you be renewed in the spirit of your emotions. Now, some of you look at me and you realize that that's not what Paul said. He said, be renewed in the spirit of your what? Mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Yes. It is the duty of our mind in addition to this, Peter says, I'm going to go through this quickly. We also have the duty of our demeanor. He says, keep sober in spirit. He uses the same admonition in 1 Peter 4, 7 and 5, 8 says the same thing. What is sobriety? Well, in one sense, it's the opposite of drunkenness, and that certainly would be implied in this context, not to be drunk, but rather to be sober. And more explicitly in 1 Thessalonians 5, where Paul says, for those who sleep, do their sleeping at night. Those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. Even more than speaking of our sobriety from drunkenness, Peter is referring to spiritual sobriety or shall I say, spiritual seriousness. Now, this doesn't mean that we walk around our whole life with our heads down in a grave tone and our voice to prove how serious we are. You've met Christians like that. I knew a man one time, you couldn't talk to him without him hanging his head and wanting to talk of spiritual things. Everything about this man was serious. That's not what that means. It doesn't mean that you can't laugh, that you can't be filled with glee and joy and all of the good things that God has given us in this life. There are times of feasting and rejoicing. There are times of dancing and great joy. It doesn't mean that we have to have a demeanor about us that is what people think of the Puritans, which was not true of them, by the way. But rather our spiritual sobriety is measured in our ability to refrain from being drunk with the allurements of this world and to think and act rightly and responsibly about the seriousness of our duty in our Christian faith. It is to take our Christian faith seriously. Don't be drunk with the things of this world. Don't be drunk with the allurements of the devil and with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Don't allow yourselves to be drunk with all the world thinks is cool. And great. And what it's all about. But rather think about your spiritual condition. Think about your family. Think about What God requires of us, fathers in our families, to teach our children, to be serious with them about what they're facing and to teach them how to use their minds, to gird up their minds with the truth of God's word so that they can be equipped. When they go into the college classroom and the college professor says, Christians are stupid for believing in God. We all came from nothing but an explosion. We're all just nothing but a bunch of monkeys. And here's the science to prove it. Christians fold like a tissue paper in front of them and go, I don't know what to say. Josh McDowell rightly said it. Many of our young people today are checking their minds at the door. One of the reasons for this, frankly, is because we're not serious about the battle. We're not serious about what's really taking place around us. And this is why Peter says, don't be drunk. Rather, be sober minded, realize what's taking place in this battle so that you can prepare yourselves for action. And then finally, he addresses the duty of our desires. In the last part of verse 13, he says, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. A wonderful verse that is what a great sentence. Not only have you been delivered by God's grace from the wrath of God against you, but finally one day by that same grace, God in his mercy will deliver us completely. The revelation of Jesus Christ from the very presence of sin. It's been said that in salvation we are freed from the penalty of sin and justification. That's right. We confess every Sunday morning we've been forgiven by God, we've been justified. In sanctification it is said we are being freed from the power of sin over our lives. But one day we will be freed completely from the presence of sin. This is why it's so important, believer, that we study our Bibles and study the doctrines of grace, these doctrines that are expounded to us here, so we know with conviction in our hearts how grave our sin is against a truly awesome and holy God, that He is truly holy and we understand the graveness of our sin. And having understood the graveness of our sin, we understand How great a pull sin still has on us. We not only confess it, but we understand it so that when we are tempted to sin, we cry out for God's mercy. Lord, deliver me to stay from the power of sin by your sanctifying power, by your spirit. Give me the power to overcome this temptation. Paul says he will. No temptation has overtaken us. All right. Fix your hope, he says. In the original language, the word for fix your hope is one word. It's in the imperative, which means that it's a command. Here God is commanding us. I want you to fix your hope completely. What are we commanded to do here? To reorient the desires of our mind in such a way that God's kingdom is first and foremost in all that we do. We recognize the frailty of life. We recognize that all the things that we acquire in this life, all the desires that we have, whatever it is, it's all going to fade away. It's all going to burn. But that what Christ has accomplished for us will last forever. Which will magnify the glories of his grace forever and ever. So he says, where's your desire? By the way, it's interesting. The word that he uses here for desire is the same word for lust. We lust after the things that we want, don't get. We sin in our lust. He says, rightly set your desires on that which is to come. Listen, if we understand the heinousness of our sin against God, I encourage you, pray, pray that the Lord would help you to understand the graveness of sin. Because when you understand the graveness of sin, then you can pray and desire that sin no longer take up residence in you. You ought to be able to recognize it. Oh, I recognize that sin and have that same strong desire that Paul said. Oh, the things that I wish I don't do and the things that I don't do, I wish Paul had that tremendous struggle, that desire, because he knew the blackness of sin in his heart. Oh, that God would give us such a desire to be delivered from this body of sin and to be delivered unto Christ on that final day. That's where he says, set your hope on that day, set your hope, because in that day, the grace of God, which has delivered you from the bondage of sin, will finally and completely usher you into his presence, his blessed presence, where you will worship him forever and ever. How does this come about? It comes about as we set our minds, fix our minds on the truth as we consider the soberness of our spirit, seriousness of our faith, and then reorient, by the grace of God, our desires to serve the Lord Jesus Christ and to wait for his coming. Let's pray. O Lord, we recognize our frailty. We recognize, God, that not one of us in this room, not even one of us, God, do any of these things perfectly. Only one has stood in our stead, the Lord Jesus Christ, who constantly and completely girded his mind for action. Who without fail, was sober in his faith and who always looked forward to the final day of his coming. He would deliver us from all of the effects of your wrath in this world. Oh, God, I pray that we would be serious minded believers, that we would grow up in our faith, and that we would fix our hope completely on the salvation that is to be finally consummated in the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, Lord, I pray that you would accomplish this in your people this day so that we might stand before the world and show the world what deliverance looks like. That we, Lord, have been delivered, not by our own hand, not by our own doing, by sovereign choice of God. Through your Son, Jesus Christ, we thank you in his name. Amen.