Speaker: Well, we are starting a, a new series called Redeemed Living.
And in it, Peter is going to, to turn our attention to how do we live
in light of the suffering and the reality of the suffering that he's
been talking about so much already.
In first Peter, some of the brass tacks, some of the applications, some of the
imperatives to compliment the indicatives.
But as we come to these first two verses of First Peter, chapter four
A, a book came to mind and that's the book that is the title of the sermon,
what to Expect When You're Expecting.
You're wondering, what in the world does that have to do with
one Peter four, one, and two.
Some of you are, are young, younger, uh, than than the rest of us in the room.
And, and so you don't know what this book is, but before we had wise social
media influencers to tell us how to, you know, get through a pregnancy and
how to have a baby and what the right way to do it is and what the ungodly,
sinful way and how dare you do this and you've ruined your child forever
because you had an epidural way to do it.
Um, that was too far.
I should not probably have said that.
See, my wife's not here and I just say things out loud.
Um.
That's not my conviction by the way, but we had this book called What to
Expect When You're Expecting, and it was written to young families and my
wife and I remember when we first had our, our firstborn, Josh, who was born
in 2009, we had this book and we were going through it together and she was.
Trying to help me understand what pregnancy looked like while she was trying
to understand what pregnancy looked like.
And the book is also trying to get you to the place where understanding
like this is what is gonna happen.
And, and then you're gonna have a baby and, and then this is how
you deal with the baby initially.
And then after that you're on your own.
Um.
No, I think there's like a what to expect in the first year and, and
what to expect when they're 16 and 17 years old now and, and all that stuff.
But this was the book that was meant to prepare you for
the reality that lay ahead.
This was the book that was meant to get you as ready as you possibly
could be for what was coming.
It was there to get you to the place where you had the right mentality and the
right expectations for what awaited you.
In some ways, that's what Peter's doing here in chapter four.
That's why my mind went to what to Expect when you're expecting.
Peter's not trying to prepare us for pregnancy.
Peter's trying to prepare us for life in a world where we're gonna suffer turning
the page, so to speak again, to where now we're going to figure out what does it
look like for me to live in this world?
How do I, how do I wake up?
How do I keep going?
What, what?
What do I need to do to be ready for the suffering that awaits me in this world?
Peter's gonna let us know what to expect as we expect the suffering that comes with
following Christ in a christless world.
Let's begin in first Peter chapter four, verse one.
It says this, since therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh arm
yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered
in the flesh, has ceased from sin.
Peter begins since, therefore, Christ has suffered in the flesh, which should
sound somewhat familiar to us because last week we looked at verse 18,
which begins for Christ also suffered.
And then later on in verse 18, it says, being put to death in the flesh.
And so Peter's making a a statement here, since therefore,
he did suffer in the flesh.
He's looking back to where he was and he's drawing a connection now for us.
He's saying, since that's true, there's implications for you
and me since this is the reality which he established last week.
Now there's things that we need to do in light of that reality.
This is something that is not uncommon in scripture.
In times there's entire books.
In fact, the book of Ephesians is set up this way where chapters one through
three are all of the gospel indicatives.
An indicative is a statement of fact.
It's a statement of what is true.
And then chapters four through six in Ephesians are the gospel imperatives
and imperative is a command.
This is, here's your call to action.
In light of what this indicative says, in light of what this says is true,
then this is what you should do with it.
This is the action that is being called for here.
That is what Peter's doing for us.
Now we're pivoting from the impar, the indicatives of suffering to
the imperatives of suffering.
So he's calling us back to where we just were last week since therefore
Christ suffered in the flesh.
And then he goes on, he says, this arm yourselves with the same way of
thinking, arm yourselves to arm oneself is to, to prepare, to be equipped.
Uh, this is a word that's unique in the Bible to just this verse in one Peter.
And so it's hard for us because we don't have a semantic range for us to grab from
other passages in the Bible to say, well, it could mean this, it could mean this,
it could mean this outside of the Bible.
It can refer to preparing provisions for a journey or making a horse ready for a a,
a ride preparing sacrifices or equipping a person with weapons for battle.
You'll notice the ESV, and this is also the choice that was made by some of
our other more well-known translations, and including the NASB, the LSB and
others have chosen the word arm.
And, and so that gives us the indication that they're believing that
Peter is calling us to prepare as a soldier for what lies in front of us.
And I think they're right in that.
I, I think that's the right approach here.
Peter's already referred back in First Peter chapter two, verse 11, to the
reality that we have passions within us that are waging war against our souls.
We talked last week about the reality of spiritual warfare that plagues us
as Christians, that we need to be on guard against as we go through this
world because we live in a world where the prince of the power of the air,
for now at least, still operates.
And so when Peter says you need to arm yourself with the same way of thinking,
I think it's in keeping with this idea that we as Christians are not just exiles,
but we are also soldiers here on Earth.
You remember the old hymn Onward Christian Soldiers Marching as we Go.
There was a, a Latin phrase that came into being in the early stages of
the church called Militia Christi.
Militia Christi, and it's a phrase that means soldier of Christ.
And this is in keeping with the, the biblical theme, not just in one Peter.
I referenced one Peter two 11, but there's plenty of other instances
in the New Testament where we as Christians are considered to be those
that are soldiers, those that are at war, those that are in a battle.
Paul speaks of us taking up the full armor of God, for example.
Or there's the idea that we talked about last week of, of spiritual warfare, which
ties in with that, with Paul as well.
Uh, but how about this from Second Timothy two, three.
This sounds a lot like what we're dealing with in our text in one
Peter second Timothy two, three, Paul says, share in suffering as a,
here's the phrase right there for you.
A good soldier of Jesus Christ.
And so this idea of being part of the army of God, the, the
militia Christi, the soldiers of Christ, we are to arm ourselves.
But the, the question should be begged then or should be asked, I should suppose.
What are we to arm ourselves with?
And, and if we're battling an, an enemy that's not fleshing blood, then we
aren't arming ourselves with the Glock.
We're not arming ourselves with a sword.
We have to arm ourselves with something else.
And in our text here, Peter says that what we should arm ourselves
with is the same way of thinking.
Arm yourself, take up the the weapon, take up the instrument
of the same way of thinking.
Uh, same way of thinking.
The word thinking there it is translated elsewhere as, as mind
or attitude, purpose, or this is the one that I like the most.
Resolve.
Arm yourself with the same resolve that you saw in Christ.
Since he suffered.
Remember Peter's already pointed out the fact that Christ suffered as an example
for us that we might follow in his steps.
Well, since Jesus suffered for us, we should arm ourselves with the same
mentality, the same resolve, the same thought process, the same attitude that
says I'm, I'm ready to face whatever comes my way because I'm following Jesus.
See, when we decide to follow Christ by surrendering to him and faith and
repentance, we're making a decisive break with this world, and that's going
to put us at odds with this world.
This is what the next five weeks are really gonna be about as we
unpack chapter four together.
But before we get too far into that discussion, we have to make sure that
we're ready to live as Christians.
We have to make sure that we are prepared to be these good
soldiers for Jesus Christ.
We have to be prepared to, to face the suffering by arming
ourselves with this resolve.
And that begins with our minds.
That begins with how we think about ourselves, about our identity, and
about the world in which we live.
Point number one this week is this.
Embrace the wartime mentality.
Back in, in 2019, my wife and I went to Israel and, and
it was a trip of a lifetime.
And, and while I was there, and I think I've mentioned this before,
but the Palestinians would be firing rockets while we were there.
And, and there were apps on the phone that you could actually see the, the
rocket, uh, fire taking place there.
And I remember asking our guide once, uh, is, is this okay?
Um, this is not something that we face in Southern California.
We don't have rockets being fired at us.
Should we take shelter?
And he just shrugged it off.
He was like, what?
What are you even talking about?
And I pointed at my phone that had the apps and he's like, oh yeah,
that, that, that's just life here.
That's just life.
So even though there were rockets being fired in 2019, nobody was taking shelter.
This was not anything that anybody was concerned about.
Contrast that with what happened yesterday.
Contrast that with, with, even yesterday as I was watching some of the news
coverage, they would shift over to the correspondent that was in Tel Aviv.
And every time they would go over to him, the, the air raid sirens were
going off in the background, and he was putting on his flak jacket and he was
putting on even a helmet at one point because he needed to be ready to brace
for impact because they were under an imminent threat of a legitimate attack.
That's a wartime mentality.
That's the mentality that we as Christians need to have.
See, you're not gonna have scripture calling us to take shelter in the bomb
shelters of the church and just gather in our holy huddles and our Christian
cliques and hang out here and not engage because it's scary out there.
That's not the reaction to a wartime mentality.
But what scripture will call us to over and over again is to embrace the
reality and prepare with our minds to engage a world that is not friendly
to our faith and to be prepared even to suffer as Christ has suffered.
Uh, that, that's why when Peter first addressed this group as those
that are elect exiles, we talked about that in our opening message.
Remember, we are the church on in exile, not the church on vacation.
But it's not just that we're not home in this world.
We need to not just think of ourselves as, as those that are away from
home, but we need to think about ourselves as those that are at war.
When I travel, when I go someplace, I, I like to explore.
I like to get to a new place and find the, the good food that's
there, or go sightseeing or, or talk to the locals that are there.
It's fun to be in a new place and, and even though I'm aware I'm, I'm not at
home when I travel, I, I like to travel and be in a different place and try to
be as comfortable as I possibly can be there and enjoy as much of the, the, the
wares and, and the, the food and things like that as I can while I'm there.
No one who's deployed to the front lines of a battle is asking what
coffee shops are in the area.
Nobody who's on the front lines is thinking about, well, I wonder what
sites there are to see around here.
Nobody's digging a foxhole.
Thinking about I, I hope I get a chance to get to know the locals
as the church.
We have to think of the world around us as what it really is, which is a world that's
hostile to the savior that we serve.
And again, we have to be careful because it's not that we hate the people.
Paul says, our battle's not against flesh and blood, but we do need to understand
that the spiritual forces at work in this present age, in this present darkness,
are hostile to the savior that we serve.
This is why Paul says in Colossians chapter three, one and two, he says this,
if then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the
things that are on earth.
Paul's aware there as he's writing to the church, as he's writing to
believers saying You need to keep your mind fixed where your home ultimately
is, and understand that you're gonna be tempted to get your mind off of there
and put it here in this place instead.
The world works really hard to get our minds off of Christ.
The world works really hard to convince us that we're not at war with it.
The world works really hard to try to get us to focus on all of
the things that it offers us here.
And we have to be careful not to be distracted by those things.
Lemme just talk about social media for a second and the way that I think the enemy
uses social media, for example, ladies, the enemy uses things like social media,
Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, to convince you that you're supposed to have the
perfect house and the perfect kids, and the perfect marriage, and all of it needs
to be perfectly photogenic at all times.
I'm assuming the smattering of chuckling in the audience is an admission that
nobody actually has that life, do they?
And so what does it turn into?
Well, it turns into this crushing feeling like something's wrong.
I don't measure up.
I'm not like what they tell me I should be.
And so the anxiety creeps in.
You don't look like your favorite influencer does, and, and, and
you think, man, something's wrong.
Or men, the world of social media has created a vision of what marriage should
be, a vision, what of what your wife should look like or could look like.
A vision of the car that you should be driving, the house that you should be
living in, and the job that you should have, and how much money you should have.
And it's saying you should expect all of it so that when it doesn't happen, when
it doesn't measure up, when your house isn't as big as as you wish it would be.
Your car isn't as nice, your job doesn't pay as much.
You think, well, something's wrong.
Unless it's not, unless as Christians, the reality is we are not of the world, and
so the things that the world is trying to pull our hearts towards, the things that
the world is trying to fill our minds with and get our attention on is not what we're
called to have our minds filled with and our attention fixed on Christianity costs.
That's gonna be a common theme throughout this entire passage that we're looking at.
Christianity costs.
It's the mindset that we have to develop, and it's really hard to do in our cultural
context here because if we're honest, it doesn't necessarily cost us much.
I'm not saying it doesn't cost us anything.
I'm saying it doesn't cost us much.
And so that's why a huge part of our wartime mentality that we're trying
to have here is this exiles mentality to realize this is not my home.
If there's an account that I follow on X that its whole purpose is this, it
sends out one tweet a day and the tweet that it sends out every day is this.
You're gonna die someday.
You might think that's rather macab, but it's in keeping with the ancient practice
of Memento Moori, remembering our death.
Pastor Rod has a skull on his desk that I'm pretty sure it's fake,
and it's for the same purpose.
It's to remind him that one day he's gonna die.
In fact, I, I recently downloaded an app.
This app is called Left.
And the reason I downloaded the app is I saw it and I was like, man,
that, that's really fascinating.
In this app, what it does is it's a countdown app, but it goes beyond that
because it actually, you can plug in your information into it and I know
I'm giving China my information about who I am and, and my body weight
and my height, and that's fine.
They can do whatever they want with that.
But I put it into the app and then the app kicks back its estimate
of how much longer I have to live.
You guys ready for this drum roll please.
Apparently I got 36 years left.
So I'm gonna be 77.276
years old when I die, I guess.
I don't know.
Um, but if I was to pull that up in real time, those later numbers
are actually, they, they are just counting down the whole time.
So you're watching your life just dwindle away.
Now, I know that this is not inspired.
I know that I might live shorter than this.
I might live longer than this, who knows?
But just the reminder of my lifespan progress.
And so I've got a widget on my homepage on my phone that visually represents
that I've got 36 years left in my life.
Why do I have that?
To remember that I'm not home To remember that I have to
have a, an exiles mentality.
And also to remember that I'm not here to be home.
I'm here to be at war.
I'm here to fight for the right things.
I'm here to have the mentality that says, this world is not my home.
I'm here to say, okay, if, if following Christ means suffering
for me here, okay, so be it.
I need to be ready for it.
I need to have the mentality that says, okay, if, if I can glorify God
better in the value of the shadow of death than with the Instagram family.
Okay, so be it.
I need to have the mentality that says if I'm exhausted because I'm caring
for my family, I'm working my job, I'm serving the church, but you know what?
God is honored by my life right now.
Then so be it.
Bring on the exhaustion.
I need to have the mentality that says, you know what?
If my kids don't get the same opportunities as their friends might
because they grow up learning the importance of church and we're not gonna
compromise, so that they can be on the the best travel ball team, then so be it.
If my retirement doesn't look what, like what the world defines as
retirement because I haven't retired from the church, then so be it.
It's a mentality.
It's a shift in how we think.
And, and, and this is really not asking a whole lot from us, especially
as we consider church history.
If you think back to the persecution that took place under Bloody Mary,
if you don't know the, the stories of the Marian Martyrs, it's one of the
recommended reading resources that I've got on the back of your worksheet there.
It's called Light From Old Times.
Uh, it's by JC Ryle.
It's a book that is.
It is a, it's challenging because it's a, it's an account of the
testimony of the martyrs of the English Protestant Reformation who
died for their faith under bloody Mary.
But when we think about these some 300 men and women who were burned at the stake
for refusing to compromise their faith in the pure, unadulterated gospel of Jesus,
and I asked myself, do I have a mentality?
Am I armed with that level to think I'm ready to do that?
So many of them were given the opportunity over and over and over again
to recant before going to the stake.
They knew what lay in front of them.
In fact, there's multiple testimonies of men who were being led to the
stake and on the way the, the, the Catholics would bring their families
to them to meet them on the way to the stake their wives and their children.
Some of these men, one of them had 11 children, and in fact, a newborn
that his wife was nursing as she came to meet him on the way to the stake.
The manipulation, the, the, the perversion of trying to get them to recant their
faith and deny Christ and the resolve that these men had to say, though, I
suffer here, I know where I'm going.
Do I have that mentality?
Do I have that ability to say, I'm ready, come what?
Lemme provide one caveat and just say this, I, I'm, I'm not
asking you to embrace an aesthetic lifestyle or to despise the good
things that God has given you.
The Bible doesn't teach us that either.
In fact, in Ecclesiastes five 18 through 19, Solomon says this, behold what I have
seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil.
Which one Toils under the sun.
The few days of life God has given him for this is his lot.
Yeah, everyone also, to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy
them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God.
So if you're in a nice neighborhood and you've got a home where you feel secure
and you've got food on your table and you've got a good job, God is not calling
you to despise that, but he is calling you to have a mentality and a mindset
that says, I'm ready to let it all go.
I'm ready to suffer.
I'm ready to follow my savior, whatever that looks like for me.
And so that's our task, to prepare ourselves for the cost of following
Jesus, whatever that task, whatever that cost may look like.
So we have to be resolved and ready to face the opposition, but rather than
thinking of that opposition and the suffering that we face is something
that's discouraging or disheartening.
I think where Peter goes next is to, to help us understand this and
reframe our perspective, to see this as something that's encouraging,
something that's good, something that's confirming the rest of verse one.
Peter says this, for whoever has suffered in the flesh, has ceased from sin.
For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin
to, to suffer in the flesh.
This is Peter's euphemistic way of referring to the suffering
that we experience in the world.
Just kind of categorically broad scale.
It's what we've been talking about in point number one.
It's, it's what we've been talking about for the last couple months here as we've
been studying First Peter together.
We need to be ready to suffer in the flesh because whoever has suffered in the
flesh, Peter saying, has ceased from sin.
Now I'm gonna ask for a show of hands in the room.
How many of you have suffered a little bit and now you're done sitting forever?
Okay, my hand's not up, by the way, it's down.
None of us are, right?
And so how do we understand what Peter's talking about here?
What in the world, how can he write that somebody who has suffered
in the flesh has ceased from sin?
Well, I think the first thing that we need to do is take
sinless perfection off the table.
Here's why.
What does John say about us if we say we have no sin?
We what are liars?
And the truth is not in us.
Okay.
How about even Peter, the author of this letter, I don't.
Peter would've never claimed to have been freed from sin at this point.
Think about the book of Acts.
He starts out.
Gangbusters.
He comes out.
He is.
He is preaching the gospel.
People are getting saved.
The church is growing, things are going really well.
You remember what happens during that time?
Peter gets arrested, he gets brought before the Jewish leaders.
Peter's gonna be beaten for his faith.
He's gonna be imprisoned.
He's gonna suffer.
Yes, Peter's gonna suffer.
So then Peter must be sinless.
Then since he said whoever suffered in the faith is, is he's from Sin Galatians.
Paul writes about Peter in an encounter that he had with Peter.
In Galatians, Paul says, I had to oppose Peter to his face.
I had to confront Peter over sin because Peter was playing the role of a hypocrite.
He was eating with the Gentiles as long as the Jewish Christians weren't around.
But when the Jewish Christians showed up, Peter withdrew from the Gentiles
'cause he didn't wanna be seen with them.
And so even our author who sinned wouldn't have made the claim that he's sinless.
So when we read something like that, we can't read something like that
and say, okay, this is promoting sinless perfection in a believer.
It doesn't hold water with any of the rest of scripture.
We have to interpret a passage of scripture within the context of the
broader context of scripture too.
So what was he saying then?
Well, I think there's a, a few options.
Option number one, the one who suffered from sin or suffered and ceases from sin
is, is meant to be understood as Jesus.
And before you stone me as a heretic, I'm not suggesting that Jesus sinned.
And so he ceased from sin in the fact that he stopped sinning.
But rather when Jesus suffered, he broke the power of sin.
He declared victory over sin.
He finished with paying the penalty for sin.
So there are some that view it that way.
The problem is this grammatically, you can't make that connection
in the text when it says whoever the nearest reference doesn't go
back to to Christ at that point.
And so I think we, we, we would say, okay, that's an option.
Probably not the right option.
Option two is this is talking about the believer.
Similar to how Paul talks about the believer.
The believer is the one who suffers and ceases from sin because the believer has
been united to the suffering of Christ.
So when Paul in Romans chapter six says that we have been united in a
death like his, or he also says, uh, I have been crucified with Christ.
It's no longer I who live by Christ who lives in me.
And so some have said, well, this is the believer and the metaphorical union
to the suffering of Christ that has now produced a freedom from sin in our lives
so that sin no longer has reign over us, and it's a little bit more palatable.
The problem is we're reading Pauline Theology into Peter.
And, and Paul was speaking of suffering metaphorically in Romans
six and other passages where Peter's been talking about very literal,
real suffering that these people are experiencing as he's writing to them.
And so I think the third option is probably the best option, and that
is this, that when a believer suffers for his faith or her faith, what
they're demonstrating is they're demonstrating their union to Christ.
They're demonstrating that they belong to Jesus.
And so in that sense, they're demonstrating, they've made a
break from, they've ceased from the sinful ways of the world in that.
And so it's not ceased from all sin like we talked about at the very beginning,
but when you suffer as a Christian because you refuse to compromise, when
you suffer as a Christian because you make Godly decisions rather than fleshly
decisions, you are demonstrating.
In your suffering that you belong not to the world, but you belong to Jesus.
There's been a break with the world.
You have ceased from that sinful way, and so that which is causing
you to suffer is at the same time the confirmation that you belong to Jesus.
See the perspective shift that Peter's giving us here with suffering.
He's trying to encourage us.
He's trying to say, look, here's the thing, uh, you may be going
through this right now, but, but rather than being beaten down by
it, you should be encouraged because this is part of the evidence of who
it is that you truly do belong to.
Peter's wanting his audience and us to adopt this new perspective, and
again, this perspective is gonna come from verse one by arming ourselves
with the same way of, of thinking.
This break with the world, this identifying with Christ to see suffering
is not something that's shameful or to be avoided, but something that's confirming
and affirming of our position in Christ as evidencing that we belong to Jesus.
Point number two this week is this.
Find comfort in the sacrifices you make for Christ.
Paul contrast the citizens of the world with the citizens of heaven.
In Philippians chapter three, verses 18 through 20, Philippians three 18 through
20, Paul says this, for many of whom I'm often told you, and now tell you, even
with tears walk as enemies of the cross of Christ, their end is destruction.
Notice this, their God is their belly.
They glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things.
But then what does Paul say?
But our citizenship by contrast is in heaven.
And from that, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we're gonna live a different life.
We're not going to to serve the gods of our desires, the gods of
our bellies as he puts it there.
We're not gonna glory and shameful things.
We're not gonna have our mind set on earthly things.
Instead, we're gonna have our God be the God of creation.
We're gonna have our God be the Lord Jesus Christ.
We're gonna set our minds on him, and we're gonna glory in Him.
And that's gonna mean that we're gonna suffer loss from an earthly perspective.
But in the end, it's gonna be okay because it's better to suffer
loss on an earthly level than to suffer loss on an eternal level.
And so what do we read about in the Bible?
That we are what?
We are exiles.
We are strangers.
We are aliens, we are sojourners.
These are all terms used by the biblical writers to define who we are
in Christ, and they're all meant to point to the reality that we shouldn't
feel too comfortable in this world.
When I went to college in California, I left here in Texas and I brought
with me my cowboy boots, my cowboy hat, and my Texas flag, and I hung
up my Texas flag above my bed, and I wore shoes and socks to the beach.
You Texans are like, what's the problem with that?
Those chuckling in the room have come here from California, from
the, the wilderness wanderings, and they've reached the promised land.
Finally.
Welcome.
We're glad to have you.
And I didn't like street tacos.
I know anathema,
but here's the thing.
I knew I stood out, but I was okay with it because the, the reason I was
okay with it is the things that made me stand out were as different, were
the things that reminded me of home.
A, as Christians, when we suffer for our faith, let that be a reminder of home.
Let that be a reminder that this world is not your home.
Let that be a reminder that you are confirming by your choices
that you don't belong here.
You belong to Christ.
In fact, here's the thing, what should give you pause and concern in your life
is if you have no friction with the world.
You shouldn't have pause or concern about your standing with Christ.
If you find that you're suffering for godliness.
That should be encouraging to you.
That should be confirming the fact that you belong to Christ.
What should cause you to feel uncertain and uncomfortable is if you find
that you have no friction at all.
With a world that John says is, is not from the Lord, the lust
of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life.
That should give us pause.
I may have mentioned this documentary in the past, but there's a documentary called
Beware of Christians, and you might be able to find it on YouTube, I'm not sure.
But it was a group of, of college students from America that went to Europe and
they began to, to just do man on the street style interviews with people.
And during one of these interviews, it is just emblazoned, it's burned in my mind.
They were talking to a group of, of college aged girls in, in Europe and
they said, do you know any Christians?
And they said, yeah, we, we know some Christians.
And they said, well, do you recognize anything different about them?
And rather than saying something like, well, yeah, they, they don't do the
same things we do, or they don't talk the same way we talk, or their values
are different than us, or they're always talking to us about Jesus.
They didn't say any of that.
You know what they said?
They said this.
They said, no, there's nothing different.
They're just busy on Sundays
Church.
If, if all your faith is costing you is that you're busy on Sundays,
you're not living as one armed with the mentality that says, I'm ready
to suffer the way my savior suffered.
You're not living as an alien and as a stranger, as an exile in this world.
You're not living at war with the world around you.
In fact, chances are you've probably made yourself at home in this world.
And the problem with that is what James says in James four.
Four.
James says, 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.
The implication would be that if we're friends with God, then we
should be at odds with the world.
It doesn't mean that you have to go around acting like a jerk to
draw the ire of the world, right?
That's not what we're talking about.
Instead, if you're truly following Jesus, if you're not gonna have to
work hard to find where you're gonna have to sacrifice comfort in this
world for your faithfulness to Christ.
That's what we're talking about here.
Evangelism is, is a huge part of this.
For some of us being ready to, to sacrifice for Christ is gonna involve a 20
yard walk next door in our neighborhoods to knock on the door with a neighbor and
to be willing to extend the invitation for dinner because you wanna get to know
their family because you wanna have an opportunity to share the gospel with them.
Or to have the conversation with the lost coworker, whatever it is.
But, but to be willing to say, yeah, I'm, I'm willing to suffer for Christ,
either the scorn or the mockery or the contempt or the rejection from
this person who, who is lost because I want to honor Christ with my life.
But there's other forms also of, of sacrifice that we make as Christians that
I think we should be seeing in our life.
And maybe we're, we're tempted to, to write them off as small, but I would argue
in fact that, that some of these forms of sacrifices more what Peter even had in
mind in first Peter chapter four, based on where he's gonna go next week with us.
But here's what some of those sacrifices might look like in your context.
You have friends that are enjoying the pleasures of this world.
You go over to their house and, and they drink a little bit
more than they probably should.
They're watching the show that, you know, glorifies and exalts the things
that Christ died for or the profanity that they use, whatever that is.
And, and, and there's something about it that in your flesh is,
is drawn to that a little bit.
You're tempted by some of those things, you know, at the end of the day you're
gonna say, but I'm going to choose faithfulness to Christ over the lures
and the attractions of the world.
That's a cost that your faith in Christ is costing you.
It's evidence of the fact that you've made a break with sin.
You're, you're ceasing from sin in order to follow Christ.
Or maybe it's this, maybe you're in a marriage and, and your friends who
are unbelievers are looking at your marriage going, man, it really seems
like you're not happy in that marriage.
It seems like she's not happy either.
Have you guys ever thought about divorcing?
I mean, after all, wouldn't both of you be happier with somebody else?
It doesn't have to be nasty.
There's no fault divorce.
Now, why don't you guys just go ahead and file.
It'll be easy.
There's so many people get divorced.
After all, it's not the the unpardonable sin.
And then maybe God has somebody better for you in life that's gonna make
you love Jesus more than she will.
And yet you're gonna say no, and you're gonna fight for your marriage, and
you're gonna stay in your marriage.
Because you know that God hates divorce and loves marriage and you vowed most
importantly before him till death, do you part to stick this one out.
Maybe that's the cost that you're paying for being a follower of Christ,
or maybe it's you're gonna delete the social media apps that we were
talking about earlier from your phone because you've realized,
man, the, the social media app, the Instagram feed, has such an anxiety
inducing grip on my heart right now.
It's making me worry about things that, that are not helpful to my marriage
or helpful to my parenting, or helpful to my relationship with the Lord.
And so I'm going to just hold that button down until the app starts jiggling.
Then I'm gonna hit that X.
And when it says, are you sure I'm gonna say yes and I'm gonna hit
delete, and I'm gonna find that I'm not nearly as anxious as I used to be.
I'm not nearly as burdened by what I don't measure up to as I used to be.
Maybe a cost that you're gonna pay because you wanna follow Christ, or
maybe it's deleting the social media apps and, and installing accountability
software because you know that those social media apps behind them lurk the
dangers of sexual immorality and other things that can be fed by those feeds.
So you're gonna say, I'm gonna pay the cost of not having those things
in order to be faithful to Jesus.
Listen, you can focus more on the loss or you can focus more on the fruit.
And Peter's, I think, encouraging us to focus on the fruit
this side of eternity.
The reality is God cares more about your holiness than he does your happiness.
He cares more that you are like Christ than that you are con happy in this world.
It's not to say there's not happiness for Christians.
There is, but that's not our main goal.
Our main goal is Christlikeness, and that will cost, which is
what Peter's saying to us.
But that cost is worth it because it confirms for us.
It reminds us that we don't belong here.
We belong to him.
But there's a reason why still behind all of this that we're making that break.
There's a reason why we embrace the mentality, a reason why we're gonna
break from sin and be willing to suffer, and it's where he goes next.
In verse two, he says, so as to live for the rest of time in the flesh.
No longer for human passions, but for the will of God.
So long as so has to live for the rest of time in the flesh.
So he's talking now about the time before your, between your conversion and when you
die or when you fly, depending on whether or not Christ comes back before you die.
So before your death or your rapture.
This time that we're here on earth, he's saying something has
shifted, something has changed.
And we're gonna make the break and we're gonna embrace the wartime mentality,
and we're gonna be encouraged by the sacrifices 'cause it reminds us of
our identity in Christ because we wanna live for the rest of our lives.
No longer for human passions before the will of God.
It no longer for human passions.
Epit Thea, in the Greek, it's, it's lust, it's desires, it's cravings,
and we, we don't wanna live for those, but for the will of God.
The desire, what God desires for us, that's what that word will
means, what his desire is for us.
First Thessalonians four, three says this, for, this is the will of God,
the desire of God, your sanctification.
We live our lives towards Christlikeness.
And so when you come to faith and repentance, you are, in other words,
setting a new agenda for your life.
You're saying, I'm, I'm done living for who I used to be.
I'm now gonna live for God.
And yes, there's that moment in time act of repentance.
That's part of our conversion.
But then what we're finding here is so as to live for the rest of our lives, that
there's gonna be an ongoing need the rest of our lives for us to take our desires
and make sure that we're subjecting them all to the ultimate desires of the Lord.
Our third and final point this morning, along those lines is this,
you need to be constantly aligning your desires with God's desires.
Be constantly aligning, constantly aligning your desires with God's desires.
'cause our default desires are not in keeping with his.
Our default desires are gonna be towards our flesh.
This is why Peter wrote in one Peter two 11, beloved, I urge you as Sojourner and
exiles abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Here.
He's saying to us in, in, in our text, live not for human
passions, but for the will of God.
And, and we know the dangerous ones, don't we?
We know the big ticket ones.
Okay, we've got lust, we've got greed, we've got envy, we've got
laziness, we've got covetousness, we've got anger, we've got pride.
We've, we've got those things down.
And, and none of us would sit here and say, as a believer, well
I, I'm, I wanna live for those things and not for the will of God.
It's not that we don't struggle with those things.
Certainly at minimum, Peter saying, Hey, we need to be on
guard against those things.
We need to be putting those things to death in our lives and we need
to be putting on Christ's likeness.
We, we get that right.
But let me ask this.
What about the desires that we have and even the strong cravings that we
have that aren't necessarily sinful on their own things like safety, health,
family, friends, financial stability.
Having well-educated children, having a nice home, a good job,
long life, the right candidate in office retirement, strong marriages,
free time vacations, et cetera.
None of those desires are inherently wrong for you.
None of them are, are inherently sinful.
Yeah, but they become that.
If we find that we end up living more for those in the reality and the
achievement of those than we are living for the desires of God in our lives.
Because what we need to realize is all of our desires for those things
that I just listed, that may not mean that God desires those things for us.
And if we begin pursuing those without considering, is this
really what God wants for me?
Or is this really what's the best thing for me or for my family?
Then those things have become a human passion that we're living for
instead of living for the will of God.
A few scenarios on this moms nap time's important for your kids.
I know that we've raised ours and, and Josh still takes naps.
You know, we, we get him home and it's like, all right Josh,
it's time to go, go down for now,
but.
You can become such a slave to your child's sleep schedule that you
forfeit fellowship with the church.
You sideline yourself from being around believers and you become paralyzed
by a fear of, yeah, but what if his sleep schedule gets messed up?
Or what if we, we miss this, and then what's tonight gonna be like?
And then, and you become so paralyzed over concerned for your child's sleep
schedule and even your child's health at times, or our health at times, right?
Cold and flu season, sometimes what?
What?
We're not even sick, but we're like, I don't know if I want to go and be a
community group because somebody might be there that's sick and so I'm not gonna go.
I think we have to ask ourselves, what's the better thing here?
Not just what's good, but what's better?
What's God's desire?
What's God's will for me, man?
Mom's God desires you to be in fellowship with each other, to be encouraged by
older ladies in the church that have gone before you, that have raised their kids.
That can be an encouragement to you that say, it's okay.
You're gonna make it.
We needed that and God brought people like that into our lives.
Or dads man, you've got the, the little slugger that can rip the ball.
And your temptation is to say, you know what, I, I want my son
to excel and succeed in sports.
That's not a bad desire, but is it God's will?
And maybe that desire for you to say, I want my son to excel in sports
is like, well, yeah, I'm gonna sign him up for the travel ball team and,
and they're gonna miss some church.
But it's okay.
It's, it's only like six weekends out of the year that
they're gonna miss for church.
That little boy has a 2.4%
chance, 2.4%
chance of making D one college ball.
And of that 2.4%
chance, that group, that's 2.4%
of those that make D one college ball, only 5% of them even sniff pro ball.
And what you've done after 18 years if you've taught your son
church, doesn't really matter.
There's more important things than us being committed to the bride of Christ.
Again, it's not just what's good but what's better.
And that involves taking our desires.
Even the ones that seem like they are by themselves good and innocent and
saying, yeah, but are they What's best?
God's will is always gonna be what's best, and so I need to take
my desires to the word of God.
I need to take my desires to other Christians.
I need to take my desires and, and, and before the Lord in prayer
and say, Lord, show me if these desires are, are out of line.
And pray for the wisdom to respond appropriately.
Because the reality is we have such an abbreviated time left on
this earth in light of eternity.
And our time on this earth is too short to live for what we want
rather than what, what God wants.
And it's not that those will always be at odds with each other.
The sweetness of sanctification is so often that process means that our desires
begin to align more and more with his.
But to use an old illustration, y'all we're the ones in
the boat, he's the shore.
Sometimes we, we throw the anchor onto the shore and we think that
we're gonna pull the shore to us.
That's not sanctification.
We're being pulled to the shore.
Our desires being aligned with his desires, and so we, are we
holding our desires loosely?
I know that's, that's hard to hear, but this is part of that break
with sin in the world that we were talking about in Po point number two,
you will live differently as a Christian.
You'll parent differently.
You will have a different marriage from the world.
You'll have different finances from the world.
Different investments, different retirement from the world.
Why?
Well, because the shift that took place when you came to faith in Christ, when
you declared, I'm no longer living for my desires, but for his desires.
And that shift comes down to the catalyst of what happened at the cross.
We sang about it earlier.
If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
Bold has gone the newest here.
And with that new comes our new mentality.
It becomes our new perspective on suffering and it becomes our
new allegiance to live for him.
But all of that is only possible because of what we're about to remember
together, and that is communion the cross, the death of Jesus for us.
That he took our sin on himself and he died for us.
He died in our place on the cross so that we would be forgiven and he rose from the
dead so that we can live with him forever.
That's what has to be there.
We have to have faith in that in order for any of the rest of this to make sense.
We have to have faith that Jesus purchased not the best life now, but
the best life that's coming in eternity.
And he did that on the cross.
He did that when he died.
In our place, in your place, and in my place.
When he suffered in the flesh
is when he secured for us that future with him.
And so we're gonna remember.
That death as these elements are passed.
Lemme just encourage you and remind you as I do every time that we
do this together, that these are elements that are for believers.
And so beware of a lack of of conversion.
If you're not sure of your standing in Christ, or if you know that you
are not in Christ, let me encourage you to let these things pass by
because these are for the church and the apostle Paul warns us of taking
these elements in an unworthy manner.
The second thing is I would be aware of a lack of of confession.
What we're remembering is the death of Christ that was offered
to pay the penalty for our sins.
And so if you have sin that you have not confessed this morning, if you have sin
that you have not brought into the light this morning, if you have sin that you've
not repented of this morning, then there's even time right now is that elements
are passed to to do business that way.
But then the third thing I would say is beware of a lack of concentration.
We can go through the motions on this and just think, okay,
here's the bread, here's the cup.
Let's, where am I going to lunch?
Uh, Paul tells us to do this in remembrance of Christ, and so let's
give our minds over to these elements Again, there's nothing magical that
takes place in the, the, the elements when you get them, but let them be
what Christ said they should be.
Let them cause you to remember the death that has led to you being
a new creation in Christ so that everything that we talked about
this morning is a reality for you.
So the elements are gonna be passed, the music's gonna be played, and we will
take them together when I come back up.
Much of our battle in this life is going to take place between our ears, what
happens, how we think about it, how we respond to it, how we react to it,
what we dwell on.
So I find it encouraging even as we observe communion this morning,
that the Lord gave us this to be something that we fill our minds with.
Something that is meant to be a a, a reminder, something that we do in
remembrance of his death, to keep our minds on the cross, to keep our minds
there, to keep our minds on that pivot point, even for all of human history,
as we think back to what Jesus did for us, which causes us to look forward
to the fact that he's coming back for us as well, the Apostle Paul.
For I delivered.
Received from the Lord.
What I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was
betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
this is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Let's eat together.
I.
The same way.
Also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim
the Lord's death until he comes.
We look back to his suffering and we remember that we suffer with him as we
look forward to his return when there will be no more suffering at that point.
Let's pray together and then we'll be done with this, this service this morning.
Lord God, thank you for your word.
We thank you for the hope that we have in Christ.
As we sang this morning, as we looked at this passage from Peter this morning, that
if we are in Christ, we're a new creation.
And how that shifts everything for us, changes our mindset, our
mentality, our perspective on suffering and trials that we go through.
God, I, I pray that you'd make us a church that suffers.
Well, I pray that you'd make us a church that is resolved to choose obedience
to you, to choose faithfulness to you over whatever may be most comfortable
for us or what the world holds out as something that's desirable for us.
God, I pray that we'd be a church that is so in tune with your will,
your desires for our lives that we hold, everything that we long
for, everything that we desire.
Everything that we would say is, is worth it in our lives loosely to say
what is not just good, but what's better?
What's best?
Which is always gonna be to do what you would have us do.
This life is exhausting.
This life is is so often difficult, and yet I think that's what you say it should
be, and yet we look forward to that future with you, where life is gonna be sweet,
and time with you is gonna be unending and there's never gonna be any more suffering
or sorrow or anything else for us to concern ourselves with at that point.
In the meantime, here we are.
Lord, help us to be faithful.
Thank you for the blessings that we do get to enjoy while we're here.
And I pray that we would give thanks to you for them as we realize
that they're so often overlooked or so often taken for granted.
Help us to be thankful for those blessings, but also ready to face whatever
comes our way as followers of Christ.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.