Let's give our attention to the reading of John's words. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, stand here hopefully under the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who calls you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy." This is God's living and abiding Word to us today. What shapes your life? It's hard to think of a more important question that we need to ask ourselves than this. What shapes your life? And yet, quite possibly, it is a question that not too many of us probably think about with any degree of frequency. What shapes your life? Would you ever stop to consider this? Do you know the answer? What guides and directs the myriad of life-shaking decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis? Now, by life-shaking, let me distinguish between life-shaking and life-shaking decisions. By and large, life is shaped by the many small decisions that we make in the course of everyday life. These are the decisions that set the pattern of our lives. These are the decisions that determine the direction our lives are headed in. And in the same way that changing the course of a large ship, by a very few degrees, makes a vast difference in the ultimate destination at which that ship arrives, These patterns are established by our daily life-shaping decisions, and they affect the direction of our whole lives. In all these very few short verses that we look at from Peter's 10 this morning, we find a pattern and a paradigm for living that is simply remarkable, but is very straightforward. It's not hard to grasp at all. And yet, it is a path of action that radically affects the character and the quality of the way that we live our lives, and the ultimate character and quality of the truthfulness and the fullness that we experience in this life. We saw that last time, that living in hope causes us to live at a level-headed, mentally alert, ready for action sort of way. And today, as we travel on, we learn also that living in hope calls us to live lives of holiness. Lives that are marked by a childlike quality of obedience that springs from a heartfelt desire and affection to model our Heavenly Father's separation from everything that is sinful, everything that is corrupt and vile and opposed to His perfect standard of holiness, His righteousness. his justice. Now notice how Peter addresses us in verse 14. Who are we? What are we? We are obedient children. Every English translation I have looked at of this verse uses the exact same words here. Obedient children. Let me explain. It is unmistakable. Peter is calling us obedient children as a badge of identification. Have you ever attended a convention or a conference or a seminar and as you checked in you were given, what, a name tag? And you had to wear that ID badge in order to be recognized to get into the sessions that you were going to be attending as part of that conference. Well, Peter is equating his readers then and now with children in God's family who are wearing their name tag. Hello, my name is Obedient Child. As a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, our lives are characterized by a willing and a loving obedience to our Heavenly Father. Understanding the nature of our relationship with God, this father-child relationship is absolutely fundamental, absolutely key to grabbing hold of what Peter has for us here. God is our loving, kind, generous, providing Heavenly Father. And we are His blessed, loving, affectionate children. Now, I know that those of you who are currently engaged in the child-rearing process, or those of us who have been through that, are typically aware that children don't come wired for obedience. In many, many ways, obedience needs to be modeled, and taught, and re-taught, and taught some more. But the picture that Peter gives us here is of the very young child, that little boy, that little girl who wants to be just like mom, just like dad. So if mom is busy in the kitchen with her cooking and her baking, the young Susie is busy imitating her as she works at whatever the 21st century equivalent is of the Easy-Bake Company. She wants to be just like Mom. She's going to do everything that Mom does. And if Dad is heading out on a morning like this to shovel, or in the fall if he's heading out to rake, the little Billy's going to grab his little baby shovel and his little baby rake, and he's going to go out and pedal. And by the way, if your children are still at the stage, enjoy it while it lasts. I don't know why these old commercials keep coming to my head lately. I know last week we remembered buckle up for safety, but I'm hoping this isn't some sign that my second childhood has already begun. I'm a little nervous about that. But I'm also thinking maybe it's just that my childhood wasn't as wasted as my parents thought that going down and watching those old reruns of Superman and Perry Mason, maybe it was worthwhile. I could have said, oh wow, I'm preparing for a sermon illustration I'm going to give in 2014. That would have been a wise thing to say when you're eight or nine years old. Anyway, as I was thinking about this idea of children who imitate their parents, I remembered an early anti-smoking commercial from the 1960s. And if you saw it, you probably remember it, too. It began with a voiceover saying, in a nice, deep voice, like father, like son. And then there was a background of bubbly music, and then it shows scenes of father up on the ladder, Painting a house with a little type down below, something like a paint brush case or something on the side of the house. Then the two of them are pictured driving in the car, and the little fellow had his own little steering wheel attached to the dashboard, and he asked if children sat in the front seat in the 1960s. And I never told him that. But anyway, he's driving. Father reaches out and makes a turn signal with his arm. Some of you may not even know what that's about. The son reaches out, and he makes a turn signal with his hand, too. Then it shows him washing the car, the father has his clothes, the little guy has this remnant small sponge doing the cupcaps next to it, skipping rocks down the water, and finally there's teeth beneath the tree. And dad pulls out a package to the rest, and he lights up and sets the pack on the ground. Of course, the little guy picks it up, starts looking inside, and then the voiceover comes back in a real questioning tone. Light father, light son. Well, Peter uses this image of Father and Son in an extremely positive way, as He helps us to grab hold of how we are called to live. As He who calls you is holy, you also be holy in all your conducts. By definition, obedient children is what we are, children whose highest and best goal is to imitate our Heavenly Father, as He who calls you is holy. be holy of all your conduct. In Scripture, the word obedience is derived from the same word as hearing, because obedience implies both hearing and then a favorable response to hearing. So it's hearing and doing. Now, some of you know the account in Acts Chapter 12, Peter who's in prison, and Peter gets a miraculous get-out-of-jail-free card, and he's let out of jail by an angel, and he goes to a house where everyone's praying for him, and he knocks on the door to get in, and a servant girl, whose name is Rhoda, we're told, comes to the door. She hears the knock, and she answers the door. That is the same word as obedience. She hears the knock. She responds to the knock. She obeys the knock. Well, Christians are those who have heard the call of the Gospel and responded to it. We have turned from sin. We have submitted ourselves to Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savior. We have embraced the high calling that He has given us so that we will live lives that imitate His. We delight ourselves in imitating God because He is our loving Heavenly Father. His moral excellence is inherently beautiful. It is so desirable, as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conducts." Psalms puts it this way, it says, there's just no better possible way to live. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Later in Psalm 73, He guides me to your counsel, and afterward you receive me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but You, and there is nothing on earth I desire besides You." The implications of what Peter calls to here in terms of holy living has various signs for the Church's history. It's been either misunderstood, distorted, misapplied. In some areas and in some forms of Christendom, some have suggested that because our sin was judged at the cross of Calvary as penalty borne by Christ, and of course that is entirely true, we who are the recipients of God's justifying grace no longer have any accountability to God. And those who have gone down this particular path of shamanic or Christian will not stand before the judgment seat of God. Our behavior really doesn't matter that much. Others have gone down a completely different path and suggested that not only will Christians appear before the judgment seat of God, but at that time, God will somehow factor our good works into an equation in which salvation by grace plays a part. God will do the math, and He will then let us know if our score is high enough for us to be saved or not. Both paths take us completely away from the Biblical truth that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Yes, the verdict on our sin has already been pronounced and dealt with at Calvary. Our sin has been dealt with and God's wrath against it has been satisfied through Christ's atoning death and the merits of His perfect obedience. Yet there will be a time and there will be a place in which God will judge our works, which includes our obedience, and reveal the ways in which we have brought glory and honor and fame to Christ. Our faithfulness will be put on display not as a basis of our acceptance, but as a way to demonstrate how life-changing, life-transforming grace has made a difference in our lives. Several important cities during New Testament times had elevated places in them which were approached by a series of steps. And these were known as Hema. And the Hema was typically a place where some sort of adjudication was made. But this adjudication was most frequently the bestowing of a victor's crown on someone who had either achieved a victory in battle or won in an athletic competition. By and large, this was not a place at which criminals were sentenced. That was done in the courts. The Vima was very much like the winner's podium at the Olympics. the judges at the Bema bestowed rewards to the victors. They didn't whip the losers. And so in many New Testament passages, believers are pictured as those who are competitors in a spiritual contest. And John says, victorious, Grecian athletes appeared before the Bema to receive what was a perishable award, a crown, a laurel that would fade and deteriorate. The Christian will also appear before Christ to receive an imperishable award. And God's final judgment will glorify His justice as He rewards His children for their faithful obedience to Him. And these awards, these crowns, they're not to bring attention, to bring honor, to bring glory to ourselves, but to bring glory, honor, and attention to the One who has made all of that possible. Peter has much more about this judgment with our Father that we'll hope to come to in the weeks to come, but he wants us to know for right now that we are to come to Him with what one common man calls not a soul-destroying dread, but rather the holy, reverent, loving fear. He has begotten us. We are heirs of His blessing. Because our Father is holy, we are to be holy too. Because He hates them, we will hate Him. Because He loves righteousness, we will love righteousness too. Like Father, like Son. Like Father, like Daughter. Now to illustrate how this works, Peter reaches back and quotes a central passage from the Old Covenant. He quotes from Leviticus chapter 19, verse 2, which says, "...Speak to all the congregations of the people of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." Because of the presence of God in her midst, Israel was intended to pursue and to retain a lifestyle that was strikingly different from that of the pagan nations that surrounded her. Though this calling had wide-ranging implications, it was not a complex principle that was hard for people to understand. No, it was a very simple formula. You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. For instance, in addition to weapons, soldiers needed to carry shovels to dig trenches in order to conceal human waste. Pots and pans in the temple were set apart for holy uses, just like the illustration with the children this morning and the spoons. No one would think of running into the temple and grabbing a pot or a pan out of that and using it to fry up his or her eggs and bacon. Certainly not the bacon. Edward Cloney writes, the purity that God's presence demanded was symbolized by elaborate ceremonies of washing and cleansing. Hygiene in the camp honored its symbol. presence of the Lord whom there can. Of course, these external practices were intended to picture and to reinforce Israel's need to keep pure and to steer clear of spiritual violence, to steer clear of idolatry, to steer clear of all of the immoral practices of the Gentile nation. in the same way as Israel was to keep itself separate from all this evil, all this uncleanness. Now, we too today are meant to not be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance. Peter's son said, don't go backwards in your life. If you've gone forward, don't go backwards. Don't be like a dog going back to eat its own dog. In the New Testament, this word that he used here for conformist, it's only used here in one of the places, which is Romans 12.2. It's a verse many of you know, and it's a verse that talks about what we are to have in our life on the very thing, what shapes our life. Romans 12.2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, as you may feel what the will of God is, what is good, acceptable, and perfect will is. So you perhaps know the paraphrase of that verse by J.P. Phillips. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your mind from within. We are to shape our lives by watching and imitating our Heavenly Father. We are to live like Father. We are to conform to His image, like Father, like Son, like Father. like daughter. We don't pursue living lives that are distinctly different from the world around us for the sake of novelty. That leads to the sort of annoying and obnoxious behavior that often gives Christians a bad name, and rightfully so. We don't live lives that are different from the world around us to call attention to ourselves and say, hey look, I'm different! No, we live such lives to call attention to Him who is our God. We submit all of our conduct to this truth and direction so that we will bear the family likeness. Peter implies to us here a very distinct before and after picture here. Don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Once you are ignorant, Now you're enlightened. Once you have a heart of stone, now you have a heart of flesh. Once you have the Spirit who is alive and at work in sins and disobedience, now you have the Spirit of Christ. I mentioned this verse last time, and I mention it again at 1730. It tells us the times of ignorance God overlooks. And that is great news. God overlooks all that, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. There's the before. And there is an after. Ephesians 4, 18 puts it this way, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the light of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. That's the before. We are to live and to pursue all the ramifications of being the after. Every single one of us was once driven around by every myth, every feeling of our mind and body. We did what we felt like. We did what was right in our own eyes. We sinned because we just simply loved sinning. But we are no longer bound by that ignorance. We are now privileged to walk by and to walk with the Holy Spirit. We are no longer enslaved by the passions and by the desires of the flesh. That pattern of living is broken in Jesus Christ. In our reaching out to, in our witnessing of our faith to others, we must never forget what it was like to be lost, to live with that kind of ignorance. But at the same time, we must not reverse to the way in which we lived when we were not His. We must not return to the way we lived when we were lost. We've been transformed. We are in the daily process of renewal. We are imitators of God as His dearly loved, obedient children. That God is holy means He is separated from sin and that He is devoted to seeking His own honor. That should be what meets in our hearts as we wake up each morning. Be separated from sin. Be devoted to honoring God. That should be our closing thought as we come to the end of each day. Separated from sin. Devoted to seeking God's honor. As His loving, obedient children, we will separate ourselves from all that is evil and dedicate ourselves to all that is righteous. To do this, To live like this, it's not a matter of following a complex list of do's and don'ts. It's actually so much more than that. And it's actually so much easier than all of that. The Pharisees, and at times various sects and branches of Christianity, have gotten themselves all tied up and all trapped with various lists of do's and don'ts. One of my most frequently quoted quotes is, don't smoke, don't chew, don't go with girls that do. I remember when I was living with Christian, and I was at a church that had a generous population of senior saints who had walked with the Lord a long time, they told me that in their younger days, the pastor would preach, how would you feel if the Lord came back and you were sitting in the movie house? What would you, what a shame, what a dishonor, what a curse to Christ, everything. Well, all of that is part of personal preference, conviction, style, but it's not the heartbeat of holiness. The heartbeat of holiness is living a holy life with desires to imitate our Heavenly Father and to have a transformed heart that makes a clean break with the thoughts and the attitudes and the patterns of thinking and relating to others that That kind of thing that characterizes an unregenerate mind, we have broken with that, we have left it behind, we are not going back to it. Holy learning is not a matter of having what one author calls an encyclopedic grasp of endless directives and prohibitions. An encyclopedic grasp of endless directives and prohibitions. That was the Pharisees, wasn't it? They had their lists, they had their rules. True holy living flows from the heart. Love is the key to it. To be holy is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength. We will love our neighbor as ourselves if we love God as we ought. We will imitate the grace and love that saves us if we have this love first and foremost in our life. We will be like Father. We now obediently and lovingly shape our lives according to God's commandments. We know that His way is the best way. We know His plan is the path to true fullness and joy, being holy in all of our conduct. It is a pattern of life that transforms all that we are. To pursue holiness in this way reaches and touches every aspect of our personalities, every day, every moment. Every thought, every action, as He who calls you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Let's pray. Father God in me, Thank you for the fact that you have reached out and loved us, chosen us, you've taken us out of a world that is filled with darkness, ignorance, rebellion, by your grace, and only by your grace, you have transformed us into a kingdom of light, a kingdom of love, a kingdom that seeks to bring honor and glory to you. Lord, help us to live as obedient children. Help us to love you so much that we will want to imitate you in every possible way that we can. I pray today for anyone who is not known for the life-changing, life-transforming power that you give that enables us to pursue this. This is not something we do in our own strength. This is not something we can do out of even a passionate, fleshly desire to run hard after that. No, we need divine grace. We need divine enablement and that we need to cooperate fully with that spirit. I pray that we would grow in our obedience to you, Lord. That we would mirror more and more who you are. Now that wouldn't be kind of like a burden or a drag, but it would be a joy. It would be our great joy to live in this way and to bring glory to you through these meetings. So help us as your people here to grow in this, to continue to encourage one another to it, to seek to share it with others. In Jesus' name. Amen.