Before we turn to our texts this morning, something caught my attention this week that probably caught yours as well, whether you wanted it to or not. On Wednesday, there was a concert somewhere and there was a CEO of some tech company and the HR executive of that same company that were caught on a kiss cam in a romantic embrace. And immediately when the camera was on them and when they realized that they were being seen, they were ashamed and embarrassed. They were found out to be in some kind of a adulterous relationship. I don't know details. I don't need to know details. I don't care to know details. But what was amazing to me is how this thing blew up. Blew up on the internet. Everything from like every news outlet thought they had to report it. Everyone's making memes about it. Everyone's making AI generated videos about it. And just, man, it's so huge. And it just struck me how in an instant, your life changes because of sin. how in an instant, one moment, one moment you are blissfully, blissfully enjoying sin, and the next moment you are found out and everything crumbles. One moment, these two were blissfully enjoying their sinful affection for one another, soaking in the moment, enjoying just the nice bend and sway to the music, and the next moment, an instant reality check. They knew it immediately that they were caught. Everything lost. This man loses his job, his wife and children are scandalized, his career is changed, and this moment will now define him for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life, in an instant. Reminds me of the words of Jesus in Luke chapter 12. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known. This is true. Sin is pleasant for a while, yes? It's pleasant for a while. You can hide it with some level of success for a time, but it will find you out. And everything will come crashing down in a moment, whether in this life or when you stand before the Lord. One moment in bliss in sin, and then the next, reality. Check. If you are involved in secret sin of any kind, repent. The clock is ticking. You are going to run out of runway. The crash is coming in this life or the next. And there is cleansing and forgiveness to be found in Christ if you turn and humble yourself. If you repent, don't presume upon God's patience when it comes to these things. Take a lesson from this thing that blew up on the internet. What kindness this may prove to be to those people that their sin would find them out now. What kindness it may prove that God may use that to bring them to repentance. in order that their sin might cost them something here in this life, but in the age to come that they would know eternal life. Be encouraged and exhorted by that. Take a lesson. When you see sinners have their lives crumble, that is God's grace to you to see that, that you might repent. As we continue our journey this morning through the book of 1 Peter, which I invite you to open with me now, I want to take a few minutes to recap where we've been thus far and how we've come to where we are, as I believe our text today marks a sort of turning point in Peter's discourse. Back in chapter one, verses three through 12, we're not gonna read that all, but we're just gonna kind of run through this. Peter begins his letter addressing these elect exiles by praising God for the salvation that we've received. He begins extolling in the fact, extolling God in the fact we've been born again to a living hope. through the resurrection of Jesus. He calls us to marvel in considering how blessed we are in the fact that this great plan of redemption, which was made before the foundation of the world, hidden from the prophets even, and even hidden from the angels, it has finally been revealed to us, to this generation, in this era. We are the people upon whom the end of the ages has come. We are the people who get to actually see and experience the new covenant here in this life. Christ has come, he's died, he's risen. We get to be the ones that benefit from that here, this side of eternity. We get to see it. We get to experience that, how blessed we are. We are the people who get to enjoy the glories of Christ now by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Peter characterizes the present suffering of his original audience, first century Christians under the widening threat of persecution in the Roman Empire, as trials which were serving to test and purify their faith, preparing them in order that their lives may give all the more glory and honor to Christ at his coming. Peter exalts in the fact that for the believer, though we have not seen Jesus, we love him. with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, a joy that empowers us through every trial of life. In verse 13, Peter begins to tell his readers what we must now do in light of this great salvation. We must prepare our minds for action or gird up the loins of our mind, as we talked about. He calls us to be sober-minded. setting our hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is an active thing that we do. Our mind is to be set upon the expectation of future glory, set on things above, upon the anticipation of taking hold of a heavenly inheritance. We can't just reflect upon the great truths that we see in verses 1 through 12 and say, well, that's really nice. and then just go back to our lives. No, we deliberately set our minds to action. We cling actively to an anticipation of glory each and every day of our lives. In verse 14, he commands us as children of obedience to not be conformed to the passions, the desires or the lusts of our former ignorance, but to be holy in conduct, just as God himself is holy. We are commanded to conduct ourselves with fear, knowing that He whom we call upon as Father is an impartial judge, remembering that we were ransomed by the precious blood of Christ. In other words, He warns us that we must not kid ourselves when it comes to living holy lives. Being in Christ now demands obedience. We are no longer conformed to or shaped into the mold of our former earthly desires, the ones that we lived in before we came to Christ. We are to now live as a people set apart and we must not deceive ourselves. There is a holiness without which no one will see God, the Bible says. God's people are a ransomed transformed people and that looks like something as we would live our lives. Christians don't just give a one-time mental ascent to the gospel. There are many who call themselves Christians because they believed in Jesus a long time ago. as if believing something a long time ago is what matters. They view coming to Christ as a one-time decision. But the question is not what you believed one time. The question is, what do you believe today? Would you walk through the forest and see a barren log laying on the ground and call it a healthy tree? Because it was standing a long time ago. Could we say of a seedling that has been plucked from the ground that it's a healthy tree because at one time it had roots? You know, there's an image I'll always remember at our first home, and I was a very responsible homeowner, right? And we had all these, you know, ash trees or maple trees around our property. We had a one-story house, and we would get so many leaves, and those little helicopter seeds would fall into our gutters. And I didn't know anything about cleaning gutters. And one day, I'm driving home, and I'm looking at my gutters, and there's trees growing in the gutters. I'm like, what is going on? I've never seen that before. So after marveling for a few days, I get a ladder and look up there. It's like, wow, I have compost. I have soil in my gutters, basically, because of composted leaves. And I have those helicopter seeds falling in there and growing into trees. But you know what? They just plucked up really easily, right? There's no depth of root to them. You ever have those helicopter seeds fall into your rocks, rock beds, your mulch beds, things like that? They spring up and then they just, they're gone. Just a little yank is all it takes. We're not healthy trees because we sprang up at one point. The question is not if you believed once, it's if you believe now. The question is not whether you received the word of Christ at one time, but rather did the word of Christ take root in you? Are the roots of the gospel growing stronger and deeper in you today? Healthy trees are shown to be healthy by the fruit that they bear. Did that belief in Jesus that you expressed a long time ago, did it set you on the road of obedience to Christ? Did it set you on the path of holiness? Is your mind actively engaged in following Jesus today? Is your life characterized by obedience to Jesus or are you still drifting along in the same old desires? Verse 22, Peter commands us that having purified our souls by our obedience to the truth, that's faith in the gospel. For a sincere brotherly love, we are to love one another earnestly from a pure heart, putting away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander." This was a command of Peter. And in fact, it's almost not even a command. In his words, we see Peter so closely ties together conversion and loving the brothers that the thought of being a Christian and not having brotherly love is unthinkable. God's people love each other. We do it on purpose from a renewed heart. We put away false deeds. We put on love. Peter tells us to be like newborn infants, to crave after pure spiritual milk that we might grow up into salvation. Our love for Christ and for the truth of his word is to be ever increasing. The love of God in Christ is to become more and more satisfying to us as we grow in our knowledge of him. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit through whom we share together in the fellowship of Christ with one another is to be growing all the more sweet to us. We are to grow more and more desirous of Jesus Himself and the nourishment that we receive from Him. 4 through 10, we saw Peter paint this beautiful picture of who we are now in Christ. We are living stones being built into a spiritual house, a dwelling place for God. God no longer dwells in an earthly tent or an earthly temple. Rather, he dwells in his people. He's building his church into a beautiful structure, which will prove one day to be the wonder of the ages. All of history is in motion. according to the providence of God, moving all things forward to a glorious culmination when God completes the building of that new temple, not made by human hands. And he reveals it in the new heavens and the new earth. Peter draws us to look forward by faith to that glorious moment when the unseen kingdom finally becomes the visible kingdom. And each of us, according to Peter, we're part of the architecture of that great temple and we're also part of the construction crew. We're living stones that make up the walls and we're God's priestly instruments who proclaim His excellencies, calling others to turn from sin and come to Christ, to become living stones with us. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, we are God's fellow workers. fellow workers, we, the apostles, and by extension, the whole church. We are God's fellow workers. You, church, are God's field, God's building. What a thought. We are both the building and the builders at the same time, and God is doing it all. Peter tells us of this incredible calling that we've received. We're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are a people chosen for his own possession in order that we might proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. We are a people who have received mercy. We've been cleansed. We've been set apart for holy service to God. To sum up, Peter has taken us on a ride to consider the glorious wonders and the joy of our salvation. The wonders of how Christ ransomed us, the wonders of the calling we've received as God's holy nation, and he has exhorted us to the kind of mind we ought to have in ourselves, setting our hope fully upon the grace that is to be revealed at Christ's return. He's called us to holiness and to brotherly love. And as we come now to verse 11 in chapter two, there's something of a shift now in Peter's discourse. Having now explained to us what we are and the kind of mind we're to be operating out of, Peter will spend much of the remainder of this letter giving forthright instruction as to how a Christian is to actually live in this world. Because as illuminating as it is for Peter to give us beautiful pictures of rich spiritual realities to guide our thinking, there remain some very practical questions about the implications of these realities. If I'm an elect exile, if I'm setting my mind and my hope fully upon the coming of Christ and the culmination of the kingdom of God, well, how should I view and interact with civil authority now? You're telling me I'm part of a royal priesthood. I'm part of a holy nation. I'm a citizen of a different kingdom. My citizenship is in the kingdom of Christ, not in the kingdoms of this world. What then are my obligations concerning the rulers and the ordinances of this world? If Christ is my king, what other king can claim rightful lordship over me? The Romans are telling me I have to submit to Caesar as Lord. They're telling me I have to pay taxes to support their wicked pagan regime. They're telling me I have to pay taxes to fund the murder of children in the womb. How's a Christian to navigate these things? You're telling me, Peter, that as far as I'm concerned, my mind and my heart are already set on the end game. I'm already at the end of history in my mind when Jesus appears and ushers in the governance of an entirely new heavens, an entirely new earth where sin is no more. That's where you've told me that my mind is to be operating. I'm looking to that. I'm setting my hope fully upon that. But in the meantime, we have some real problems here. Christians are being slandered and persecuted, even killed. And the emperor certainly isn't doing anything to protect us. Remember, this is important. Peter is writing this letter during the reign of Nero, likely just a few years before Nero burned Rome and blamed the Christians for it. And great persecution was about to break out. According to tradition, it's believed that Paul and Peter would themselves be executed during this wave of persecution under Nero. Just this context, what implications does this have concerning how Christians are to interact with civil government? If I'm a slave, how should I interact with my master? How am I to honor God in that? Should I even submit to my master? Does that honor God if I submit to another? If I'm a wife, how should I interact with my husband? Should I submit to him, especially if he isn't even a Christian? What does it look like to be a godly wife? What does it look like to live as a godly husband? In the face of persecution, do these things even matter? Well, we're gonna see that they matter a lot. These are the kinds of questions we will discuss in the coming weeks. And while we aren't facing the same persecution as the early church in the first century, these things are just as relevant to us today as they were in Peter's day. In fact, Peter's instruction becomes all the more forceful when we consider the fact that he was writing these things on the eve of some of the worst persecution in history. So today we find ourselves in verses 11 and 12. And we're gonna find Peter giving us some more foundational instruction before he goes on into these things. And I pray we will give ear to it today. Please stand with me as I read 1 Peter 2, 11 and 12. 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. Amen. You may be seated. As we look now to our text specifically, I want to begin asking you a question. Of all the potential enemies in the world that might wage war against you, which of them is the most dangerous in your mind? Of all the enemies in the world that might wage war against you, which is the most dangerous in your mind? Is it Russia? Is it China? Is it the liberals and their secular globalist agenda? Is it the devil? Well, here's the answer I believe Peter gives us, in which the Bible reinforces again and again. Your greatest enemy is your own desires, which originate from your own flesh. Your own passions, your own cravings, your lusts. And if you get one thing out of today's passage, I want this to really settle into your ears. Your desires are trying to kill you. They are waging war against your soul, is what Peter says. In the inner man of every man, woman, and child, the flesh is actively at work to destroy you and drag you down to hell. The flesh is a factory. hard at work manufacturing ammunition, tanks, bombs, planes, everything it needs to wage war against you. The whole of your flesh is actively bent with all its might to see you destroyed. If you see nothing else in this passage as I go on, see that the passions of the flesh are waging war against your soul. Countless people live their lives completely unaware that such a war and such an enemy even exists. They don't know they're at war, and they don't see what's at stake. Because this enemy, the flesh, is so cunning, so wise, and so crafty, and so powerful, that the flesh wages war in such a way we don't even realize we're at war. We'll just wake up one day in hell. Game over. It's done. It's it. Flesh has won. So great was the dominion of the flesh over us in life that we didn't even realize we were at war. But not so with you, Christian. We are not among those who go through life being knocked around by the flesh. We were saved unto something better. And not only do we know that the war exists, but we have been given the weapons of righteousness with which to battle in this war and emerge victorious in the end. Before we look closely at this text itself, I want to consider again the context in which this book is written. It's so striking to me to consider afresh the context of not only this letter, but all of the epistles, but especially these later epistles from Peter and Paul. Active persecution against Christians is breaking out in the Roman world. We talk about persecution here, but mostly it's like a war on Christmas or something. Mostly it's like, do we keep in God we trust on the currency? You know, our persecution, our imagined persecution here in the West is pretty lame most of the time. There is persecution, it really does happen, but it's pretty lame in comparison to what history has known in the church. The great persecution of Christians under Nero is on the doorstep. Horrible things are about to take place among Christians. Christians are going to be put in the arena and be torn apart by wild beasts. They're going to be slandered and accused of being cannibals. They're going to be accused of being insubordinate rebels and rabble-rousers. They're going to be blamed for burning Rome. They're going to be burnt alive as human torches. Peter himself will be crucified within a few short years of writing this epistle. Paul will soon be beheaded. This is the backdrop against which the later epistles of the New Testament are written, on the doorstep of an incredibly gruesome wave of persecution that's coming against the church, the sort of which the world may never see again, actually. I think we often read the epistles as if they were written in some quiet contemplative isolation, right? Like here's the apostle, he's just sitting at a table. You know, you've seen the paintings. Sitting at the table and he prays and he's just sitting there and he's like, I think I'll write some theology down for the church. So he pens a letter and it gets inserted into the canon of scripture and we're done. But no, the epistles were written by real Christian men to real Christians and all of them were experiencing very real distress. very real suffering, very real fears about their lives, real threat of death, real hunger, real persecution. Nothing in the epistles is theoretical to these men or their readers. In our generation, we are so divorced from the distress of the first century Christians. I get to wake up in the morning, I make myself a cup of coffee, and I go sit on my back porch with my Bible, and I sit down and read my Bible, and I listen to the birds chirping, and I say to myself, what a beautiful day. And I, you know, I'm reading this letter, and I pull out my phone, and I might sit here and parse out a Greek word here. I have this very sterile experience with my Bible, and you do too. Meanwhile, I'm reading a letter written in urgency by a man who knows full well he's about to die. And he's writing to a people to prepare them for very real persecution. And somehow, this letter he writes ends up becoming one of the most precious and timelessly instructive things ever written and is, in fact, the very word of God. And we rarely feel the weight of the text. We rarely feel it because, in part, we don't fully appreciate what was going on when it was written. We regularly need to be renewed in the way we read our Bibles. So there's the context. Looming threat of persecution, Peter turns the attention of his readers to a war that's going on. And it isn't the war that's being waged against the church by Nero. There's a far more pressing war going on that Peter wants to talk about. which has a far greater consequence. This is the war Peter is concerned to make sure the church is fighting, the war against the flesh. Let's look now at the text. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles. Peter ascribes there three words as belonging to the identity of the church. One of them we've seen before in this letter, but two of them we are hearing for the first time. Throughout this letter so far, we've been addressed as elect exiles. We've been addressed as a holy nation and a royal priesthood, but now he calls us beloved. Beloved, he begins this statement with. We are the beloved of God. Not only are we God's chosen possession, but we are His beloved possession. He has set His affection upon us. He purchased us by the blood of His Son, and He doesn't have buyer's remorse. We are a treasured possession to Him. A fair amount of ink in the New Testament is devoted in order that we might understand the love of God toward us, particularly from the Apostle John. In John 17, in what is known as the High Priestly Prayer, Jesus prays to the Father asking that they, that is the church, all who believe, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Wow. He prays also, I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. And that passage always blows my mind. The very love with which the father loves the son is the same love with which we are loved. If that is true, then we could not possibly be more securely loved than we are. We are the beloved of God. Will the Father's love for the Son ever fail? Will the intensity of the Father's love for the Son ever grow dim? No, it's not possible. Then neither will God's love for you and me, for all of us who are in Christ. If we are in Christ, then we are in the Father's love. We are so securely wrapped up in the love of God that nothing can ever separate us. Beloved, this is not a throwaway word in Peter's discourse. The assurance of the love of God means everything to the believer, especially by the way in the face of great suffering, which the early church knew all too well. It was the aim of the apostles to gird the mind of the Christian with the sweet assurance that God's love for us will never fail. Paul said it best in his letter to the Roman church. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. You ever wonder why Paul pauses there to quote scripture about us being killed all the day long, being regarded as sheep to be slaughtered? Do you know why? Because they're about to be slaughtered. Because they are sheep about to be slaughtered. Because tribulation and persecution is not something they are reading over a cup of coffee. They're going to die. But in all these things, no, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Never grow tired of meditating on the love of God, beloved. Never grow tired. As we would sit and listen to a sermon, you know what a really common thing for a pastor to say to a congregation is to address them as beloved. Feel the weight of what is behind that. That's not a throwaway statement. That is everything to the Christian. If we are in Christ, we are beloved beyond comprehension. And it's upon this basis that Peter is going to urge us, to exhort us, to beseech us to do what follows. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners in exiles. Sojourners in exiles, what's that all about? We've already been told we're exiles. We've talked about that in prior weeks. But now a new word is used, sojourner. Well, what's that? Is a sojourner, is it the same thing as an exile? The King James renders these words as strangers and pilgrims. Now at a glance, let's look at this, right? The two Greek words being rendered here, they are virtually synonymous, but there is some distinction. And since Peter is using them both, it falls to us to give a little thought and find out what he's getting at. And as I stared at these words for a while, I found the commentator Joseph Benson to be helpful here. He observes this. The former word properly means those who are in a strange house, a house not their own. The second word denotes those who are in a strange country and among a people not their own. So in other words, one word denotes that we're living in a place that is not our home. The other denotes that we're living among a people who are not our own. These are synonyms with a different emphasis, if you will. Living in a place that is not our home and among a people that are not our people. A sojourner in an exile, if we just glue the words together now, a sojourner is one who's dwelling in another land that's not his home. a country wherein he is not a citizen. He comes to dwell alongside the natives without becoming a native. Sojourners live in the land as foreigners. Whether they're welcomed by the natives or not is not what matters. The place of their dwelling is not their home, and they don't intend for it to be. The people that they're dwelling with or near are not their people. They live peaceably, maybe. But they don't intend to integrate with the natives. Back when we lived in Ankeny, there was a Dunkin' Donuts there. And I frequented Dunkin' Donuts. Forgive me. But there was a guy there from Egypt. really friendly guy. He would be there for a few months at a time and then he'd be gone and then, oh my goodness, he's back again next year. And I got to talking to him one time about his life story and he started explaining. He lives in Egypt. I think he has a couple of wives, actually. And he just talked about how, yeah, he comes over to the States by himself and he works. He works like three jobs, just works intensely for like three months and then goes home. Well, what's he doing there? He's a sojourner. He's coming to the United States not to live here, not to integrate, not to become a native. He's not looking for citizenship. He's here to work. He's here to labor and then take resources back home. He's a sojourner. He doesn't belong here. He doesn't want to belong here. This isn't his home. He doesn't call it his home. He's passing through. There are many examples of sojourners all throughout the Bible. We see several occasions in the Old Testament where God would strike a land with famine. And the people would leave that land and go dwell in another land temporarily in order to survive. They were sojourning. More importantly though, God's people have always been sojourners. God's people have always been sojourners. And it began with our father Abraham. Look with me at Genesis 12, verses one through seven. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So what's God telling him to do? Get up from your country and you're gonna go to another country. You're gonna go to another place I'm gonna show you. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place called Shechem, to the Oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring, I will give this land. So Abram's taken by God from his native land, and he became a sojourner on the earth. He sojourned in the land of Canaan. And God promised that one day his offspring would come to possess that land for themselves. But as far as Abraham is concerned, he is a sojourner all of his days. So is his son Isaac. And so is Isaac's son Jacob. And the children of Israel became sojourners in Egypt for 400 years before they came to possess the promised land. But if you follow the thread of scripture all the way through, we see that God's people have always been sojourners. God's people are not at home in the world. We belong to another country. This is the example that we receive in Abraham. It's made more plain in Hebrews chapter 11. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the thing promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who thus I'm sorry, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city. Now mark that, the patriarchs died without having received the promised land. They were promised the promised land. but they didn't receive it. They lived in expectation that they would inherit a promised land, but they never experienced it this side of eternity. And they came to see that they were sojourners on the earth, living by faith in expectation of taking hold of a heavenly promised land. And as Christians, we are to have the same mind as them. Hebrews 13, 14 says that, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Like Abraham, we are looking for that city whose designer and builder is God. We are not going to find ultimate rest until we come to dwell with the Lord in glory, first in heaven and then ultimately in the new heavens and the new earth. As Paul also wrote, our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are sojourners on the earth. It is true, we as the church, we have been promised we will inherit a land, won't we? We will inherit the earth, the Bible says. There's a similar promise that we've received. There is a promised land at the end of the line here. But until that unseen kingdom is revealed, here we sojourn. Here we sojourn waiting for the land of promise. And it is so critical that we recognize that we are sojourners. It's so critical. Throughout the history of the church, it is a recurring problem and a trap that Christians forget this basic truth. This really is Christianity 101. We live in this world a short life, and then we die, and if we're in Christ, we go to heaven. That is Christianity 101. Our hope is not here. My hope is not in this mortal body. that is going to decay. My hope is not in what this world becomes. What this world will become when I die, I know not. My hope is in heaven. My hope is in Christ, in the presence of Christ. Whenever I leave this mortal shell, I want to go be with Christ. That's all I know. That is Christianity 101. But we forget it. Why do we forget it? Well, for one, we grow far too comfortable here. But put yourself in the shoes of the early church now. Put yourself in the shoes of the people reading this. Persecution is real. Their possessions are being plundered. You think they're going to put hope in their possessions when they're being plundered from them? Oh, yeah, you think they're going to put hope in some eschatology of how the church gets all the stuff in the world? No. Death is just around the corner for them. The cost of following Jesus to them is tangible. It's in their face. They follow Jesus to the point of submitting themselves to bloodshed. Anyone here ever done that? Peter's words are real to them. Yes, we are sojourners. We are sojourners. And how much hope would it give his original reader? How much hope would it give as Peter talks to them about all these glorious things? Set your hope fully on what's coming. You're a sojourner here. Contrast that to the modern church. Contrast that to the modern Christian, at least here in the West. I don't think we're actually quite sure anymore if we're sojourners. Life's pretty good over here. We're pretty comfortable. Christianity has been pretty triumphant in Western history, you see. America was built as a Christian nation, you see. And we begin to wonder, perhaps we've misinterpreted what the New Testament means that we were sojourners. Maybe they were sojourners, but not us. Before you know it, we're rebuilding our eschatology around notions of Christian nationalism. Rather than looking to a city that is to come, we devote our energies to building a caricature of that city here on Earth. We redirect our efforts away from building the church and instead labor to build Christendom. We just need to fight and protect the things that made America great. We need to fight to protect our way of life. We must be very careful to not lose the plot here, people. We are a holy priesthood, citizens of another nation, waiting for the revealing of an unseen kingdom, which is being built one living stone at a time, as men and women turn from their sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we're looking for any other city than the one which God is building, we've lost our way. Can we look at the world and can we rejoice to see how the gospel has made great inroads over the last 2000 years? Like as the unseen kingdom has been growing, there's visible things in the world which we can look at and rejoice, but do not lose the plot. Do not lose the plot. But for most of us, we don't forget we're sojourners because of Christian nationalism. We forget we're sojourners because we're just so content with the things the world has to offer. Our flesh is constantly working to entice us to be at ease in the world, to just give ourselves over to the pleasures and the stuff that the world has to offer. And this is a timeless danger that is common to every Christian across the ages, whether in time of persecution or in time of peace. This is what makes the Bible timeless. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. The passions of your flesh, Christian, are waging war against your soul. Now, the word rendered passions here is the common word for desires, cravings, longings, lusts. They're all the same word. We're talking about desires which originate from the flesh, from the carnal, natural inner man. Well, what does that look like? What's he talking about? What are these passions of the flesh? Well, we can answer that quite easily by considering the fruit that comes from them. Paul writes in Galatians 5, now the works of the flesh are evident. The fruit that comes from the flesh, right? The works of the flesh, the thing that comes out of the flesh, it's evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. He's got to stop the list somewhere. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. The works of the flesh are obvious, Paul says. You don't really need me to define them. You know exactly what I'm referring to, but I'll give you a list anyway. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, orgies, these are the fruit that come from giving ourselves over to a fleshly craving for sexual titillation, gratification. When we take God's good gift of sex and we make it into something horrible, something that God made to be enjoyed in purity and with fruitfulness in the marriage bed, we twist it into an idol by which we defile ourselves and others. Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, jealousy, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, the fruit that comes from whoring after the things of the world, lust for power, fame, wealth, possessions, vacations, experiences, high feelings, fits of anger, the fruit of discontentment, selfishness, lovelessness, We crave after the stuff of the world. Indeed, all the lusts of the flesh can be wrapped up under the banner of idolatry. The flesh is constantly trying to pull us away from cherishing God and instead cherishing the things of this world. And we're no different from the early Christians in this. Nothing has changed about the human condition since the fall of Adam and Eve as far as the flesh is concerned. And Paul says, I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In case we've forgotten what's at stake here in this war, sin leads to hell. James also explains how our passions are at war. He says, what causes quarrels, what causes fights among you? Anybody experience quarrels and fights among them? Your households maybe? Any quarrels or fights even with people sitting next to you in other rows in this room? What causes that? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. And you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? Do you think the Scriptures say with no purpose that God cares about What we love? When God speaks of himself as a jealous God who he's jealous over the hearts of his people, is it to no purpose that he says that? Why is there quarreling and strife in the world and sadly even among God's people? Because of our desires waging war within us. We covet, we envy. He sums it up that we are an adulterous people. Always cheating on our husband, the Lord, by going after other gods. Paul says in Romans 8, 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. We must heed the warnings of the apostles. Do not be fooled about the desires of the flesh. If you're living according to the flesh, you will perish in your sin. But there's hope. Because if we're truly in Christ, we are not exempt, even though we're not exempt from the temptations of the flesh. Even though it's true that if we're in Christ, the war is actually intensified for us. There's hope. Because by the power of the Spirit, we finally come to know that we're at war. And not only that, but by the Spirit we have the power to overcome. We have the power to put to death the deeds of the body, as Paul says, or as Peter puts it, we have the power to abstain from the passions of the flesh. Well, how are we going to do that? What's that look like? He's given us the instruction, abstain from the passions of the flesh that war against our souls, but how do we fight to abstain? Does anybody else, can we testify, can we testify that this war is real? I see exactly what he's talking about. That wages war in my heart from day to day. What does it actually look like to fight? Do I just like repeat this verse as a mantra? Abstain from the passions of the flesh, abstain from the passions of the flesh. Is that going to help me fight the flesh? Is that what it looks like? Well, let me try to put it all together. Let me see if I can follow Peter's discourse as we've seen so far in this book. I go back to chapter 1, verse 13. I set my hope fully. on the grace of God to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ. My hope is fully set. I've been saved, I've been ransomed, and you know what I need to do? I'm gonna gird up the loins of my mind. I am gonna set my mind fully on the coming of Christ. I am going to be with Christ. He is coming. It is gonna be over. This world, this transient world, this flesh that I battle with, it's all gonna go away. I'm gonna be with Christ one day. My hope is there. As I go through all the trials of this life, all the troubles of this life, I'm getting through them. You know how I'm getting through them? Because I see glory. My eyes see what's coming at the end. My hope is fully on the grace of God that's going to be revealed in the end. My hope is not on I'm going to get out of this trial. My hope is not on that person's going to change. My hope is not on I'll figure it out. No. My hope is I'm going to glory. He's coming. The grace of God to be revealed at the revelation of Jesus Christ, nothing else satisfies me until I see that. That's where my hope is. All other hopes are faulty hopes, people. So that's what I do. I set my hope fully on the city that's to come. Remember, I'm a sojourner here. I'm a sojourner here, Peter says. I'm waiting for a city that I see it far off. It's coming. I can't see it yet. I can't take hold of it. I see it by faith. And I'm not going to put down roots here. I'm not putting down roots here. I'm not here to plant my flag in Sodom. I'm not here to put off my sojourning and become a native. When Jacob and his people came to Shechem, What do the people of Shechem want to do? Oh, come and intermarry with us. Come and give our daughters, give your daughters to us. We'll give our daughters to you and we'll become one people. No, says the people of God. I'm not becoming a native here. Even though my flesh cries out every day, indulge, indulge, indulge. Be at ease, be at ease, be at ease. Eat, drink. Take it all in. Put down roots. Enjoy. Indulge. I say, no thank you. I have a better possession and an abiding one. That's what it looks like, I believe, in practice. In the actual, real-life battlefield of the affections. In the actual moment of temptation. What avails you? My hope is fully upon the revelation of Jesus Christ, nowhere else. That's what it looks like to put to death the deeds of the body by the power of the spirit. I look to Christ in faith. I walk in the actual joy of knowing him. That inexpressible joy that is filled with glory that I read about, It's not just something we read about. That has to be experienced, tasted. Peter says that I've been called out of darkness into His marvelous light. I overcome the darkness because my eyes are fixed on the marvelous light of Jesus Christ. I consider all of His excellencies. And then I proclaim them. Proclaim them to you right now. Maybe some of you will taste what I'm talking about. And in Him I find the power to abstain from the passions of the flesh. In Him I find power to conquer the flesh again and again and again until that great day when I take hold of Christ and this body of flesh has no more sway over me. But until that day, I am a sojourner. This isn't my home. Christ is my home. I want to read a quote from old Scottish pastor James McKnight. The settled inhabitants of a country are anxious to acquire riches, to purchase lands, and to build houses. but they who stay but a few weeks in a country or who only travel through it are commonly not solicitous to secure to themselves accommodations which they are so soon to leave. In the same manner believers being only sojourners on earth and travelers to a better country ought not to place their happiness in the enjoyment of those objects by which carnal desires are gratified and which are peculiar to this earthly state but in securing themselves possessions in the heavenly country, the proper habitation of the righteous." My Dunkin Donuts friend, what was he doing in America? Moving here? No, he came here to secure possessions for a different country. He came here to get wealth that he then is taking home. And we are to have that same mind. Lastly, let's consider verse 12. Understanding now that we are sojourners called to abstain from the passions of the flesh, Peter now enjoins another thought to this one. 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. Now the ESV begins a new sentence here, but that word keep may be better translated keeping or having. So in other words, you might envision a comma there between verse 11 and 12, not a period. So Peter has more in view here. Not only do we abstain from the passions of the flesh for the sake of our own souls, as we've been talking about, but there's another reason in view that he wants us to have in mind. Keeping your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Well, what's that got to do with anything? Is he saying we should live in such a manner as to please men? I thought we're supposed to please God and not man. Why is he suddenly so concerned about what the Gentiles think of us? Well, here's what he means. In abstaining from the passions of the flesh, we show ourselves to be of honorable conduct. We aren't actually living as self-indulgent people. We aren't rebellious people. We aren't idolatrous people. We actually show ourselves to be honorable. Another translation for honorable here would simply be honest. We show ourselves to be upright. We're commendable. We're admirable. People can look at us and the way we live and be like, I don't really have anything bad to say about that guy. In other words, if you're living as God calls you to live, then none of those slanderous accusations that the Romans are going to throw at you are going to stick. live honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." Glorify God on the day of visitation? What's that mean? What does the day of visitation refer to? Now, this phrase is the subject of some debate. The word visitation here is interesting. Episkopos. It's only used four times in the New Testament. And in two of those instances, the word is used to refer to the office of an elder, believe it or not. Not the elder, meaning the officer, but the office itself. The word has to do with the act of visiting for the purpose of overseeing, inspecting, examining, or investigating something, to find out what's in something or someone. But the closest parallel usage would be in Luke 19, verse 43 to 44, when Jesus speaks of the judgment, which will come upon Jerusalem at the hand of the Romans. He says, for the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation. So in that sense, we see a time of visitation. This is God is coming upon Jerusalem to see what fruit he finds there, and he finds none. And so what does he do? He is going to destroy it. We talked about those things before. Some, therefore, taking this meaning, understand Peter in our text to be referring to the coming of Christ, when Christ comes to inflict vengeance upon the people of God. So in other words, Peter would be saying something like this. As you conduct yourselves uprightly, Enduring the slander of the Gentiles, Christ will be all the more glorified by their destruction on the day of his coming. Now that reading certainly is plausible. Many believe that. Still, the phrase, day of visitation, it is also left open to other meanings. It could refer to a time when God comes to confer blessing. When we go and visit one another, we're not always coming to destroy each other, I would think, right? And this seems to be the more common understanding that's existed throughout church history. And the one that I think a good argument could be made fits the broader context of Peter's letter. Peter is saying that when the unbelieving world sees Christians behaving with an upright conduct in a way that obviously contradicts the slanderous accusations that are hurled against us, this will serve as a testimony which God may actually use towards saving sinners. The pure conduct of a Christian in the face of persecution and slander is a powerful testimony to the power of Christ at work in us, because natural men don't do that. They don't do that. It may just be that our good conduct in such circumstances, that may just be the divine spark which lights the fire in the conscience of a sinner and brings him or her to see the light of the gospel. Now, I know what you might be thinking, right? I can't be right. We can't share the gospel by our actions only. We must use words to share the gospel. The gospel isn't communicated by our actions. We've talked about these things. This is true. The Bible says we need to actually speak the gospel. The gospel is not shared by conduct alone. But this does not contradict the fact that our conduct is part of our testimony to the world. Peter's words are very plain here. When they speak of you as evildoers, they will see, eyeballs, they will see your good deeds, the things you do. He's not talking about hearing your words. They will see what you do. And in seeing that, they will glorify God. The conduct of the church is as much a part of the gospel witness as our words are. I don't want to overstate that, but I don't want to understate that. I'll put it this way. A full gospel witness occurs when the word of the gospel goes forth from people whose lives are consistent with the gospel. I'll say that again. A full gospel witness occurs when the word of the gospel goes forth from people whose lives are consistent with the gospel. And a powerful place where that is seen is what Christians do in suffering. One commentary characterized the conduct and the impact of the early church in this way. And I believe this is a condensation of some of the writings of Tertullian, who was an early Christian writer. Tertullian contrasts the early Christians and the heathen. The heathen delighted in the bloody gladiatorial spectacles of the amphitheater, whereas the Christian was excommunicated if he went to it at all. No Christian was found in prison for crime, but only for the faith. The heathen excluded slaves from some of their religious services, whereas Christians had some of their presbyters or pastors of the class of slaves. Can you imagine that, having slaves that are pastors of their masters? Slavery silently and gradually disappeared by the power of the Christian law of love. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. When the pagans deserted their nearest relatives in a plague, Christians ministered to the sick and the dying. When the Gentiles left their dead unburied after a battle and cast their wounded into the streets, the disciples hastened to relieve the suffering. Christians are different people. Our conduct among the Gentiles matters. It is part of our testimony to the world and it carries great weight. Not that we would put on a performance for the world, but that we would be transformed as we treasure Christ above all things. And so live a life that abstains from the passions of the flesh and actually walks in newness of life that looks like something. Next week, we'll see how Peter instructs the church as to what it looks like to live honorably among the Gentiles in our relationship to the interaction with civil government. But I close today with these simple exhortations. Never forget that you are at war with the flesh. Or at least, don't ever forget that the flesh is at war with you. Whether you're fighting or not, the other side is fighting. Never forget that, that you are at war with the flesh. Never forget that your desires want to kill you. We're not playing games here. Never lose sight of the fact that you are a sojourner. Never forget that you are a citizen of a kingdom yet to be revealed. And never forget that in Christ, you are among the beloved. And by the power of the spirit, you will emerge victorious in the war against the passions of the flesh. that have no power over God's people. Let's pray. Father in heaven, this salvation is indeed greater than we could say. I pray that we would see Christ clearly, that the joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory that Peter speaks of, which is to fuel the Christian life, I pray that all in this room would taste of that today. I pray that the excellencies of Christ will be seen and savored. I pray that the marvelous light of Christ will be reveled in, and that darkness will be put away. May you be glorified in all of it. In Jesus' name, Amen.