Well, it's, it's football season and, uh, so hope shines bright for
NFL fan bases all across America.
Unless you're a Cowboys fan.
If you're a Cowboys fan like I am, uh, your owner slash GM thought it
was the best move for the team to trade your best defensive player
for, uh, a bag of, of potatoes.
Basically, at the end of the day, couple of picks and a, a defensive tackle.
Listen, I, I've been a, a fan of the, the Dallas Cowboys for
as long as I can remember, and I don't plan on jumping ship.
And in fact, I'm, I'm thankful for the Cowboys because the Cowboys remi remind
me every single year that my hope is not here and now, but it's then and there.
I learned very early on in my life not to trust Jerry, but to trust Jesus.
You don't need the, the Cowboys to be reminded that it's difficult to
find hope in this world sometimes.
You don't need the Cowboys to be reminded that our earthly hopes are fragile hopes.
Hope in general is such a a fragile thing.
We love it when we have it, but at the same time, even when we have hope, we
sit there concerned that at any minute our hopes might be dashed and we might
be left to pick up the pieces once again.
What we've been learning so far in one Peter is that there is a better hope.
As Peter called it in first Peter chapter one, verse three.
There is a living hope that will never be dashed, that will never let us down.
It's a certain hope.
It's a sure hope more than any other hope that you could have in this life.
And this morning, we're gonna learn what matters most in our battle for that hope.
And it's not your circumstances, it's not your brain, it's not
your body, it's not your friends.
It's not your family.
What matters most in your battle for hope is your mind.
What matters most, more than anything else in your battle to hold onto
and hold fast to your living.
Hope is your mind.
Take your Bibles first, Peter chapter one, verse 13.
That's our text this morning.
One Peter one 13 says this.
Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded,
set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the
revelation of Jesus Christ, he begins this verse with the word, therefore.
Therefore, therefore is put there to draw a connection to what has come before it.
And what has come before it is, is 12 verses of what we would call indicatives,
that are statements of facts or truths about Jesus and our relationship with him.
Truths like the fact that we've been born again to a living hope that
we have been brought from death.
To life truths about our status as elect exiles.
Truths about our, our status as those that are secure by God's power.
Were being guarded through faith for that salvation.
These truths about the reality of our inheritance.
That's imperishable and undefiled, and unfading being kept in heaven for us.
These truths about the, the, the, the love and faith that we can have in
Jesus, even though we don't yet see him.
The truths about the inexpressible joy that we have over being with Jesus
that we talked about last week, or the privileged position that we have,
that we understand something that even the angels in the very presence of God
stand in awe of through the gospel.
And so this is more than just a, a grammatical note from Peter,
even though it is that he's making a transition in his argument.
This is so key to our understanding of everything that's going to
follow from here, because if, if.
First Peter was to start with verse 13.
It might feel soul crushing to us.
It might feel like, how do I do that?
How can I prepare my mind and be sober minded and set my hope fully
on the grace that's through me mind at the revelation of Jesus Christ
when I live in a world where it's so hard to hope in anything at times.
The first 12 verses are so crucial to our understanding of how we can
read verse 13 and think to ourselves, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
I want to do that.
And I feel like through the spirit's power, I can do that.
In this verse, the the first imperative, as I said, it's transitioning from the
indicatives to the imperatives, and that's gonna be the command section,
and that's starting now and it's gonna keep going through the epistle.
But the first imperative that we find here in verse 13 is actually at the, the end
of the verse when he says, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought
to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Preparing your minds for action and being sober minded.
Those are two disciples in the original language, and, and they modify the,
the main command, the main command being set your hope fully on the grace.
That's to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Hope is dynamic.
Hope is a a moving target, earthly speaking for us.
Case in point, when you were little, you grew up hoping that you were
gonna get a good hall for Christmas or a good hall for your birthday.
Your hope was in what was underneath the tree when you woke up in the
morning or maybe in school, you hoped that you had studied enough to get a
good enough grade on the exam, that you wouldn't be grounded afterwards.
In college, maybe you hoped that the girl that you asked out would say
yes, maybe as a young married couple.
You hope that that pregnancy test comes back and reads positive.
As parents, you hope your children will be safe as empty nesters.
You hope your children will come back again at Christmas.
As retirees, you hope that the vacation that you have planned is gonna be
as fulfilling as it was last year.
As those that progress closer and closer to death, you hope that you
will have another day of health.
See, hope is, is a moving target from the world's point of view.
We hope in different things as we get older.
From the time that we're born, we find ourselves moving
from one hope to the next.
And part of the reason for that is because number one, no earthly
hope can fully satisfy us.
CS Lewis was the the one to say, look, if, if we find in ourselves desires that can't
be satisfied by anything on this earth.
Or in this world, shouldn't that imply and, and tell us that perhaps
we were made for a different sort of a world, a different sort of a future
earthly hopes can't fully satisfy us.
And then the second reason why we, we move from hope to hope is because earthly hopes
come with a large measure of uncertainty.
When we talk about hope, as those that are are here, we, we think about
hope and we think to ourselves, well, I, I, I hope for white Christmas.
Okay.
Probability is that's not gonna happen.
You have hope, but the reality is, you know that it's unlikely.
The hope that we have in Christ, the living hope, that we have the hope in
the future of the the grace that to be ours, of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That is a different kind of hope.
That is a hope that Peter has described as a living hope.
That's a hope.
That's the inheritance.
That's imperishable and undefiled and unfading.
That's the hope that's ready to be revealed in the last time.
That's the hope that gives us a joy that's inexpressible.
And filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith,
the salvation of our souls.
That is that we would be with Jesus.
See, the New Testament concept of hope doesn't possess the
uncertainty of earthly hopes.
The writer of Hebrews illustrates it for us right here in
Hebrews chapter six, verse 19.
He says, we have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the
soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.
He's talking about Jesus as our great high priest who is gone as
the Old Testament high priest used to do into the Holy of Holies.
Well, he's saying Jesus has done that.
He is the, the anchor that is in the very presence of God.
In the next chapter in Hebrews chapter seven, he's gonna say, in
that high priest, that anchor is interceding for us before the Father,
so that we can be confident that he will save us to the uttermost.
See, the hope in the New Testament is a, sure.
It's a secure, it's a hope that we can trust in.
Later on.
The Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, says in Hebrews 10 23.
Let us hold fast.
The confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful.
See, that's why church, our hope is sure and certain because it's,
it's anchored not in the changing circumstances of our world.
It's not anchored in our physiological makeup.
It's anchored in what God has promised, and God is faithful.
And so our hope is immovable.
Our hope is sure.
Our hope is steadfast.
Our hope is confident.
And this morning, you can set your hope fully on the grace.
That's to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
But let's even talk about that for a minute.
Peter uses the word hope, like Paul uses the word faith.
In other words, Peter's talking about a hope that won't be fully realized here
and now, but it will be fully realized then and there when we're with Jesus.
And that's what he means by set your hopefully on the grace that is to be
yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
You might say, well, wait a minute.
Don't we have that grace?
And I would say in part, yes, there's an already not yet element here.
For by Grace Paul says, you have been saved past tense.
So in a reality, we talk about that most often with salvation.
We'll say, when were you saved?
When did you get saved?
I got saved at this point.
Past tense, and that's true, but there's another reality that you
are still presently being saved.
Paul talks about that in one Corinthians chapter 15, that the
message of the gospel is the message by which we are being saved still.
And all that means is not that there's a potential that you won't ultimately
be delivered or that there was something wrong with your profession
of faith, or that there's something lacking in your profession of faith.
No, all that means is that you are in the process as you continue on this earth.
As you continue in these earthly bodies of, of being saved until finally you
will be saved, when you are delivered into the very presence of God.
That's the ultimate reality.
That's the ultimate truth.
That's the ultimate realization of our salvation, is when we are stepping
foot into the presence of God.
When we see our savior face to face, then we will know the grace that is to be
ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So that's why Peter says, this is our hope.
Set your hope fully on that day.
Set your hope fully on the time that you will be with Jesus Y'all.
As we navigate this world, as we pursue hope in this world, we don't
look for hope the same way that our neighbors look for hope or even
the same hopes that they look for.
We seek a different hope because it's a hope that's guaranteed.
It's a hope that this world can't offer.
It's a hope that's sure and it's sure not to let us down.
So then the question, I guess becomes, well, what do we do with
our other hopes that we have in life?
If I'm to set my hope fully on that grace, does that mean I can't
hope for a promotion at work?
Does that mean I can't hope that my kids are healthy?
Does that mean that I can't hope that, uh, my, my diagnosis comes
back clean from the doctor?
No.
But what do we do with those hopes?
We're not stoics.
We're not passionless, we're not strangers to these hopes.
We just have to use our earthly hopes as springboards to remember our eternal hope.
Point number one this morning, along those lines is this, find the eternal
hope beyond the temporal hope.
Find the eternal hope beyond the temporal hope.
And again, your mind is the most important thing in your battle for hope.
And so as we have these temporal hopes, we need to look beyond them to see the
eternal hope that is beyond them, that that, that they are foreshadowing.
In biblical studies, uh, there is something called type and anti type.
And, and what that means is sometimes we will see a type and
often this pertains to Jesus.
We will see a type that is the, the foreshadowing of the anti
type, which is the greater reality.
Okay?
Paul employs this reasoning in Romans chapter five with Adam.
In that Adam was a type of Christ in that Adam was the representative of mankind.
We connect this to the idea of original sin.
Paul says in Adam, all sinned.
And then he says, so also in Christ will all be made righteous, right?
Those that put their faith in Jesus will be made righteous
will receive forgiveness of sin.
So Adam is the type, Jesus is the better anti type.
Y You could also look at Moses in the same way.
Moses served as a deliv deliverer.
Moses served as a mediator, even between God and man.
You remember when God was fed up with the Israelites and Moses
went before the before Yahweh and said, don't destroy them.
And so me, Moses was a a, a type of mediator between
Yahweh and the Israelites.
Jesus is the anti type.
Jesus is the better deliverer.
Jesus is the better mediator.
Between God and man.
And so we have that as it pertains to Jesus.
And what I'm saying is let's take that into the realm of the things
that we hope for in this world.
How can I set my hope fully on Jesus and being with him and yet still
hope for things that are temporal?
Well, that's what I mean by find the eternal hope beyond your temporal hope.
So maybe your hope is for your children's wellbeing.
It's a, a hope that every parent should have.
I hope my parent, my kids are safe.
I hope my my kids are healthy.
Your eternal hope beyond the temporal hope is that I trust you.
Hope that your kids will one day be right with God and spend eternity with Jesus.
So you see, you can hope in the temporal and, and possess that and
maintain that, and yet realize that the greater hope beyond that is more than
you hope for their physical wellbeing and their, their physical health.
You hope for their spiritual wellbeing and their spiritual health.
Or maybe you hope for a good review from your boss.
Next time you go in for your annual review, you're thinking,
man, I, I hope that, that, I hear that I'm getting a bonus.
I hope that I hear that I'm getting a raise.
That's a, a temporal hope.
That's fine.
That's a good hope to have.
But as Christians that may forecast or, or that may cast your mind forward,
I should say, to the eternal hope that one day you will stand before
Jesus at the beam sea, and your hope is ultimately to hear from Jesus.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
So your temporal hope can be a springboard to your eternal hope.
Or maybe you hope for your next vacation to be restful and to, to recharge.
And maybe that is, is is a hope that you have.
And that, again, that's a good hope.
That's not a bad hope, but I'm saying as Christians now, we get the freedom
to have that be a springboard to our eternal hope that says, man, I know
that there's a day coming where I'm gonna have my eternal rest with Jesus.
That's gonna be so much sweeter than anything a vacation might offer.
Or maybe you hope that your boss is gonna get their act together.
Maybe you've got a difficult situation at work and you're going,
man, I just hope that my boss will figure things out already.
Again, that, that's a hope that I, I understand and I don't think it's wrong
to want to have a, a boss that that leads well, and yet the springboard
there is to the fact that you are one day gonna live under the righteous rule
of Jesus, and he's gonna lead perfectly.
And so church, this is how we can have temporal hopes.
But still get to set our hope fully on the graceless to be ours
of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
None of these temporal hopes should be our ultimate hopes.
In fact, the word there when he says, set our hope fully on the
grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The word fully there in the Greek is the word telio, which means it's the
result, it's the purpose, it's the end.
So he's saying here, the the ultimate purpose of hope is
to rest on being with Jesus.
And so as we navigate this world, we employ our minds to look at our
temporal hopes and try to get from our temporal hopes to our eternal hope.
And the problem is church, so often we reverse that process.
We think, well, I'm gonna be with Jesus.
That means my marriage is gonna be perfect.
I'm gonna go be with Jesus.
That means my kids are gonna be well behaved.
I, I'm with Jesus.
That means my job is gonna be fulfilling.
I'm with Jesus.
That means my life is gonna be great.
And, and, and that's backwards.
Rather, what we need to do is, is these temporal hopes that we have need to push
us to think, man, I'm gonna be with Jesus.
And that's the best.
That's the best.
It requires hard work.
Hard work.
And, and that's gonna be a theme in this morning's message.
It's, it's, it's hard work to do this.
But notice this is an active verb.
This is an active command.
This is not passive in the text.
He tells you to set your mind fully on the grace that's to be yours.
He doesn't say have your mind set on or let your mind be set on.
That would be in the passive tense as though someone else
were going to do that for you.
In other words, Peter's acknowledging and writing to a group of exiles.
He's writing to them saying, this is going to be hard work.
It's not gonna come naturally to do this.
And so I'm calling on you to actively, intentionally do the hard work, to set
your hope fully on the graceless to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We talked about how to do that with our temporal hopes when we
have temporal hope, but what about when we don't have temporal hope?
What about when we're walking through the valley?
What about when we're going through it?
What do we do then?
Can we still get to our eternal hope?
Can I still set my hope fully on the grace that's to be mine at
the revelation of Jesus Christ?
Take for example, the couple that keeps seeing the negative result
on their fertility tests or on their pregnancy test every month.
That's crushing.
That's hard.
That's heavy, so you can't get from that to say, well, heaven's gonna
be crushing and hard and heavy.
But you can get to the opposite from that when we're disappointed, you
can remember, your eternal hope is that you're gonna have a savior.
That Revelation 21 says, is one day gonna dry every tear in your
eyes that you've shed over that?
Or perhaps you're, you're single and you desire companionship.
You want to be married.
And God has continually put roadblocks in front of that.
He hasn't answered that prayer.
And so you sit here and you say, okay, I.
I don't have a hope to, to jump off of, to springboard off
of, to get to my eternal hope.
But even that feeling of, of disappointment and at times even perhaps
discontent, can be a springboard to remind you of the fact that your eternal hope
is you have a savior who is betrothed himself to you as part of his bride.
And the relationship that he has with you that you will one day step foot
into in full force is so much better than any other earthly relationship
that God could ever offer you.
Or maybe perhaps you consider somebody who has been abused.
Take a woman who's been abused by her husband, her husband's
also been unfaithful to her.
How do you preach to her?
Well just go from your temporal hope to your eternal hope.
She's saying, I don't feel like I have much of a temporal hope.
But she does have an eternal hope and a God who will never be unfaithful to her.
And though she doesn't know joy the same way she wishes,
she might know joy right now.
She has a future which is guaranteed to be the fullness of joy when
she steps foot into his presence.
And so getting from our temporal hope to our eternal hope is not
just about when life is great.
It's also, in fact, maybe, perhaps even more important for us to
get there when life is hard.
And eternal hope doesn't take away the sting, the disappointment, the
betrayal, the frustration, the confusion.
It doesn't take those things away.
It doesn't fix the situations, but it's rooted in a certain future that we have
with Jesus, which enables us to get up tomorrow to put one foot in front
of the other, because this world isn't all there is for us to find hope in.
When your earthly hopes do come through, remember they are but a
foreshadowing of your living hope.
They're not the ultimate hope.
The foreshadowing of the much greater certain future hope that
you have that will be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Find the eternal hope beyond the temporal hope.
And again, it's, it's not easy to do that.
It requires discipline.
And Peter's about to tell us that it requires discipline
that begins with the mind.
Again, the mind is the most important part of our battle for hope, and that's
where we go back to the beginning of our verse, these two parles, which help
us understand what it looks like for us to set our hope fully on the grace.
This would be ours of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
He says, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded.
Preparing your minds for action and being sober minded.
We're gonna begin with this first, uh, this first part of simple
here in this second point, to prepare our minds for action.
Literally in the Greek, it's to gird up the loins of your minds.
This is what was done to prepare for battle or to prepare for work.
Uh, remember when we studied John's gospel, if you were with us when
Jesus was on the shore and Peter saw Jesus on the shore, Peter
girded up his loins and jumped in the water to swim to get to Jesus.
S it's something that they would do because they wore the long clothes.
They didn't want them impeding them in their, their action, impeding them in
their labor, impeding them in their work.
And so Peter, knowing that to set our whole Foley on the graces to be ours,
that the revelation of Jesus Christ is going to entail work, he tells us.
Gge, your minds, the loins of your minds for action.
Prepare your minds for action.
Get ready for work.
Get ready for battle.
Both I think of those elements are in view here in one Peter one 13.
But before we continue, let's talk about the mind for just a second.
What is the mind?
Well, the mind is not the same thing as the brain.
I think we, we can all agree with that.
The, the brain is the physical organ that is in our cranium.
The, the brain receives and processes sensory information, cognitive
information, emotional data.
The, the, the brain is the input source.
The mind then takes the data that's received and produces the
thoughts and the memories and the emotions that we experience.
You could look at it this way.
The, the mind is the immaterial to the brain's material.
So, lemme give you an example when you smell your favorite Christmas scent.
My wife and I went with a fake Christmas tree for the first time in
our marriage last year, and it was a big decision because I grew up with
real trees and yet it's, it's, we've, we've gone the fake route and so we've
joined the rest of the imposters in the room and, uh, and it's great.
I, I, I love so much about it.
I love that I don't have to water it.
I love that.
I don't have to worry about it burning down.
I love that, uh, that it gets stored away upstairs.
I love that I don't have to spend money on a, on a tree that's gonna die.
That that is, that is gonna be thrown out afterwards.
That's gonna be, uh, in my living room.
It, it's great.
There's so many good things about it.
You know what I, I miss though, is the smell of a real tree.
I don't miss the smell of a real tree because I, I like pine.
I could just pour some pine salt in a bucket and, and
enjoy some things that way.
Don't do that, by the way.
That's horrible to do.
Don't, that's not being sober minded.
We'll talk about that in 0.3.
It's not the smell of pine in and of itself.
It's everything that that does.
So the brain receives the scent and I think back to what
Christmas has meant to me.
The memories that I have, the emotions that come with that, the relationships
that represent there, that's how the mind and the brain can work together, right?
The immaterial mind can influence our material bodies, and
likewise, our material bodies can influence our immaterial minds.
And Peter says here that the mind has a lot to do with how we set our hope
fully on the grace that will be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Or as I put it this morning, the mind matters most in our battle for hope.
As human beings we're com comprised primarily of, of two parts.
We are body and spirit.
Body and soul.
Again, the material and the immaterial and the mind being part of the immaterial.
Uh, Peter says, what the, what we do with the immaterial part impacts us.
It, it impacts our, our personhood and impacts our our hope and how
we set our minds on this hope that we're gonna have in the future.
So what are we expected to do with our minds?
To gird, gird up the loins of our minds where to prepare our minds.
Nobody prepares your mind to take a nap, right?
Nobody prepares their mind to go on vacation.
Mentally, you, you prepare your mind for action.
Back in Exodus chapter 12, before the Israelites were going to leave the
promised land, after the Passover, Moses told them to git up their loins
and to to eat their meal with their shoes on so that they were ready to go.
In Luke chapter 12, Jesus told the parable of saying, we need to be
ready for his return, and said that we need to be dressed for action.
It's the same concept there.
Same word.
So to, to prepare our minds for action is something that's gonna
mean that, that we have to be ready to, to be active with our minds.
In a world that finds it so easy for us to, to just kick back and, and
not have to fight because we can be satisfied with the cheap invitations
of hope that the world offers us.
And so we have to fight for hope.
We have to battle for hope.
And that was easy for Peter's original audience, or at least easier.
Because why?
They were elect exiles.
They were literal exiles.
You and I have to embrace our reality as spiritual exiles, as the exiled
church, not the vacationing church, so that we can think about what it looks
like for us to have to fight with our minds, to hold onto our future hope.
See, our living hope that we have in Jesus is not gonna be naturally
incubated by the world in which we live.
The living hope that you have is not gonna be nurtured by this world.
In fact, that's the last thing that the world wants you to
entertain is your future with Jesus.
We're strangers and foreigners and aliens in this world, and that the hope that we
have is foreign to this world as well.
In fact, John says in one John two 15, he tells us, do not love the
world or the things in the world because they are not from God.
It's, it's, it's opposed to God, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the
flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
And those three categories, think about how those envelop so many of
the earthly hopes that we can have.
So that means what I've already said a couple times so far this morning, our,
our task is not gonna be an easy one if the world is, is opposed to our task.
If the world is gonna do everything to distract you from the hope that you
should have in Christ, it means that your task is going to be difficult.
As Christians, we're not the only ones fighting for hope in this world, but as
Christians, we have to fight differently.
Ours isn't just a battle with our bodies or our circumstances.
Ours is a battle that involves preparing our minds for action to set our hope
fully on the grace that will be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Along those lines, point number two this morning is this enlist
your mind to fight daily for hope.
Enlist your mind to fight daily.
For hope for what?
Hope for your living.
Hope for the hope that's to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This broken world makes it so hard to maintain that hope for
anyone, Christians included.
And so often our, our world's response to struggles for hope is, is a naturalistic
response, meaning the primary focus is often more on the physical side of things
than on the spiritual side of things.
To understand what it means to enlist our minds, to fight for hope, or
to prepare our minds for action, we have to understand what's known
as the concept of a worldview.
A worldview is this, A worldview is the lens through which we interpret reality.
And so a person's worldview has a lot to say about what their hope is actually in,
for example, a.
A Muslim's hope is going to be informed by their worldview about a
future in what they term as paradise.
A Hindu is gonna have hope in nirvana or moksha in breaking
free from the cycle of rebirth.
That's their hope, informed by their worldview.
An atheist is gonna hope for a good life.
And to get as much outta their life as they possibly can before they die.
That's their hope.
That's informed by their worldview.
Christians we're called to have a hope that's informed by a biblical worldview.
Our reality, in other words, that which we see in the way we interpret it has to be
informed through the lens of God's word.
Paul says in Romans 12 that we need to be transformed by the renewal of our mind
to think biblically about what happens.
And so here's the thing, as we look at a world where it's difficult
to find hope, it, it's not that a secular worldview can't recognize
that there are times we have to fight for hope in the world they do.
Right?
This world understands what it is to have a crisis of not
being able to hope in something.
It's not that the, the observation is wrong, but the interpretation
and the conclusions are gonna be what we take issue with.
It's more than the solutions offered up by them in their response.
And, and even when the naturalistic world tries to
engage the immaterial mind, right?
For example, one of the leading forms of therapy out there today is what's known
as cognitive behavioral therapy, which suggests that if you change your mind
about your circumstances, right, the mind, the immaterial, if you change your mind
about your circumstances and your behavior in re as a response of that, then, then
you can change the way that you feel about the circumstances that you're in.
Even the world understands, man, we, we've gotta try to get after the
mind in, in addressing hopelessness.
But the problem is cognitive behavioral therapy and, and there are other solutions
are simply going to be band-aids because they're not dealing with the ultimate
vacuum of hope in the person's life, which is that we need a hope in Jesus.
And so CBT might get you from one crisis to the next crisis, to the next crisis,
but it's never gonna be something that at the end of the day you say, I
have an abiding hope that I never am going to have shatter underneath me.
Without understanding y'all, that we are spiritual beings created in
the image of God and a hope that transcends that the here and now.
That's not altered or lessened by our circumstances or enhanced
or improved by them either.
We're left to cobble together a framework that will provide some semblance of
hope as we move through our lives.
And so what I want us to see in this point here y'all, is
that the world does the best.
It knows how, but the best it knows how isn't always what's best.
Especially for believers.
Lemme give you an example.
You may walk in for a, a, a routine checkup with your primary care
physician, and you're just there because you need a physical.
And so you go in, you meet with your primary care physician,
they're checking everything.
Your ECG comes back, okay?
They're listening to your heart, they're checking your breathing,
everything seems fine, and then your doc sits down with you and says, well,
how have you been sleeping recently?
I'm okay, I guess.
Six outta 10.
Oh, okay.
Well, let's talk about that a little bit more.
Are you, are there some stress points in your life right now?
Are you battling anything you, you're, you're anxious about?
Worried about, and because you're a human being, you answer, well, actually,
now that you mentioned it, yeah.
There are some stress points in my life right now.
Maybe you're having some marital conflict at home, or maybe you're
having a difficulty with your kids.
Maybe you've got a concern at work with your relationship with your
boss, and that's causing you to feel anxious about that situation.
Next thing you know, your, your doc says, you know what?
I, I could, I could help in that.
And, and there's, there's medications that actually can help with that.
And before you know it, you, you're walking out of your doctor's office
with a prescription for anti-anxiety medication and an assurance from your
doctor that that's gonna hope that, that you can hope in this medication
to help your marriage and help your parenting and help your work situation.
See what's happened here in this example is that the spiritual component of who
we are as those created in God's image has been bypassed by the physical.
And let me just say, I know I'm preaching through a minefield on this.
I readily admit that.
I also know I'm not a doctor, not a real one.
At least I tell my wife I am.
But that's a different kind of doctor.
I'm not a medical doctor.
I do know enough about God's word that maybe the reason you are anxious
and struggling with your sleep is you've got areas of your life
that you're not trusting God with.
That's a spiritual problem, not a physical problem.
That's something for you to go to the mat and wrestle with God over, not for
you to go to the Rx counter to pick up an over the over-the-counter prescription
or a or a doctor's note prescription for you to be able to sleep better at night.
Our world wants us to think therapeutically, medicinally, and
naturalistically in our search for hope, because that's the best they can offer
you.
The Bible has more.
The Bible has better.
We have a living hope that we can set our minds on fully.
God's word says in Second Peter one, three, that his divine power has granted
to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who
called us to his own glory and excellence.
I understand that that verse can be a cliche bandaid that we throw
out when people are hurting.
Man, I'm so sorry that you're, you're feeling depressed right now, but hey,
God's word sufficient for all things necessary for life and godliness.
So go be warm, be filled.
Listen, that that's not okay when we do that church, but neither is
it okay for us to take the baby and throw it out with the bath water.
This verse is true.
God's word is sufficient for all things that pertain to life and godliness.
There are some areas of a life where it's harder for us to find that, and that's
why I'm saying that we have to enlist our minds daily in the battle for hope.
That's why Peter is saying we have to prepare our minds for action.
There are gonna be times where you have to mind the word of God to say,
God, I need to understand how I'm struggling with depression right now,
and your word has an answer for me.
I need to understand how I'm struggling to sleep at night right now.
And your word has an answer.
For me, and yet we have to confess that it does because the Bible says that it does.
And we as a church need to not just own that for ourselves, but for one another
and be willing to get into the trenches with our brothers and sisters in Christ
to help them see where the, the Bible, where God's word can offer them hope and
can help them as they're going through the valley of the shadow of death.
And so let's say you have someone who's struggling to sleep.
And they may hear from their doctor, well, you know what?
You, you can just take some sleep aids and yeah, maybe those are
gonna help them get to sleep.
But, but what about what's going on spiritually, perhaps
in that person's life?
What if God's keeping them up at night because he's
trying to get their attention?
What if they need to know what David knew in Psalm three, five when David
said, I lay down and slept and I awoke for the Lord sustained me.
Maybe that's the truth that needs to be brought into their life in that moment.
Or maybe they need Philippians four, eight, whatever's true and right, and
honorable and noble and worthy of praise and excellent and commendable that these
are the things you need to think about.
Because maybe what's keeping them up at night is their anxieties over
everything else and all the what ifs and all the if onlys that are flooding
their mind when they're laying there in their bed at night and unable to sleep.
And the world says, don't worry about it.
You don't need to fight through that.
We've got a pill for that.
The person battling severe depression may need medical intervention
for a time, although we would still provide a a caveat to that.
And if you just want to know my blunt and honest opinion, and I sent an email
out with my loom to everybody in the church, so why not just tell you anyways?
By the way, if you got that, that goes to our community group
leaders on a regular basis.
You can watch the video.
There's nothing in there that it wouldn't say in front of you.
Hence what I'm about to say.
If you want to know where we stand as a church, if you were to come to us and
say, Hey, pastor, my doc recommended that I get on antidepressants, we're
gonna counsel you against that.
And there's reasons behind that.
Pastor OT is actually pursuing his, his doctorate in biblical
counseling right now, so punt to him.
Okay.
You got questions?
Go talk to him.
No, I'm just kidding.
He is, and, and he's very knowledgeable, more knowledgeable
than I am on this front, but still he's, he's helped me even this week
think about some of these things.
The, the studies are, are inconclusive at best on the long-term effects of
antidepressants in people's lives.
There are studies that have shown that placebo groups are showing improvement in,
in their depression just as much as those on antidepressant medications, plus the
dangers of getting on these medications.
Suicidal ideations are high when you get on them and high
when you try to get off them.
And so church, we, we want to walk with you.
We want to be with you, we want to help you.
We want to get in the trenches with you.
We're not just gonna throw a platitude at you and walk away.
And because of all that we're gonna say to you, if you're gonna ask our
opinion, we're gonna say, I wouldn't get on them in the first place.
Hear me also say this, if you are on them, and I trust in a room like
this, there are are those that are, I'm not a medical doctor and I'm
not telling you to get off them.
That's a conversation that can be had offline.
That's a conversation that needs to be had with your medical doctors as well.
We can talk through that.
Here's my point in all this, y'all.
My concern is that we are medicating
what God is is trying to accomplish in our lives.
That that, that we're not preparing our minds for action.
We're not doing the hard work to fight for hope when it seems hard to fight for hope.
And instead we're going to the world that hates Jesus and doesn't want us to set
our minds on the hope that's fully to, to come the, the grace that's gonna be
ours of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This world doesn't want you to be sustained through the dark times by
trusting in Jesus 'cause the prince of the power, the air of this world doesn't
want you to be confident in Jesus.
So this world is more than happy to cause you to not have to work
to find that hope, but instead to medicate you so you don't have to.
And I'm just saying at, at minimum we have to understand that
it's, it's more than physical.
And we have to, and cannot neglect, we cannot neglect the spiritual side of
things when we're battling things like depression, anxiety, struggling to sleep.
Anything else that's out there?
This is the extreme, but, but let me give you the extreme because
I think it'll, it will help here.
And it's appropriate given what happened this last weekend or
this last week on Wednesday.
We live in a world where.
A child can go into their school counselor, and the school counselor
is not only gonna ask them questions, but leading questions.
And when that child says, well, I'm, I'm not happy.
We live in a world where the school counselor's gonna suggest that
maybe their gender is different than their biological sex.
And then that counselor is going to let the parents know that unless you provide
puberty blockers and hormone therapy, that this child is going to take their life
and you're gonna be responsible for that.
And so we have parents that are putting their children through things
as, as the, the book by Abigail Schreyer is titled Irreversible
Damage in a lot of these situations.
For what?
For the offer of hope that they're gonna be happy once they go through this.
Y'all, this last week, somebody went into a church and shot up a
bunch of kids because they went through it and realized it didn't
satisfy them, and they were crushed.
I understand that's different than taking Prozac,
but there's some parts of the, the, the heart of it that are the same issue
we're trying to treat spiritually.
We're trying to treat physically rather, something that is inherently spiritual.
Your fight, your battle, your quest for hope is about your future with Christ.
And it's going to inquire or require you to enlist your mind
daily to fight for that, that hope.
Listen, I, I, I, I love you guys and I, I hope I'm not coming across as pejorative
towards anybody in, in the room on this.
I told Kelly earlier this week, my admin, I said, I'm gonna
offend everybody this weekend.
I just need to do so gently.
We, we love you and, and my concern more than anything else, no matter where you
are on this equation, is that you are doing what Peter's calling you to do, that
you're preparing for your mind for action.
That you're thinking, how do I fight today for the hope of being with Jesus?
What does that look like for me today?
I speak to these other issues because they're evergreen issues.
They're things that are important.
There are things that that come up in our society on a regular basis.
We have to be preparing our minds for action and, and the way
that we do that is where we go.
Finally here, by being sober minded, by being sober minded, the text says,
and being sober minded, but there are other translations like the net Bible
that says, therefore, get your minds ready for action by being fully sober.
Or the Lex English Bible, which says, therefore, when you have prepared your
minds for action by being self-controlled.
So in other words, we set our hope fully on the graceless to be
ours by preparing our minds for action, by being sober minded.
So all of these things in one Peter one 13, they, they build upon one another.
And so we come to this and we think, well, if I'm going to prepare my
mind for action, certainly that means that I need to be sober minded.
My mind isn't ready for action if it's not in my control, if it's not sober minded.
What is sober minded?
This Greek lexicon said it's a, a broader range of soberness or
sobriety, namely, restraint and moderation, which avoids excess
impassion in rashness and in confusion.
In, in passion, meaning the the things that happen to us in life,
our highs aren't gonna be too high, and our lows aren't gonna be too low.
We have a steadfast, abiding hope in Jesus Christ.
Our joy is fixated on that.
It's not tossed to and fro by the waves of everything that happens to us in life.
It's not an excess in, in rashness.
In other words, we have such a confidence in Jesus and our future with him that
when something happens to us in life, we're not prone to be impulsive in
our decision making to do something that's going to end up being something
damaging to us or damaging to others.
As a result, it's also not given to an excess of confusion.
Meaning that when we are struggling, perhaps to find hope, we're not gonna
open ourselves up to every single voice that's out there about how we
can find hope, but we are gonna fixate our, our minds and set our minds on
the word of God, the, the word of God.
That is such a, a vital component to our biblical worldview of how we look
at interpret and understand reality.
This is what it is to be sober minded.
And Peter's gonna call for this later on in the book as well.
He is gonna be, he's gonna say in one Peter five, be sober minded
and be watchful for your adversary.
The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
And a lot of of his activity is he's devouring our hope on a regular basis.
So we need to be sober minded.
The application of this third point is pretty straightforward.
There's no hidden meaning here behind Peter's words in our battle for hope
in the future, grace that's gonna be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We cannot allow ourselves to be derailed by counterfeit offers of
mental or physical, or whatever intoxication that are so readily
accessible to us in this world.
Our final point this morning is this, defend your mind at all costs.
If the mind matters most in our battle for hope, then we need to defend our minds.
At all costs.
This is what it is to be sober minded and there are the, the big ticket items
to defend our minds against, right?
You think about alcoholism, you think about drugs, you think about other
things that are, are, we can give our thoughts to, we can numb ourselves.
We can escape from reality by pursuing these things, even maybe binge
watching Netflix for hours on end.
We're struggling with hope.
We think, well, I'm just gonna turn my, my mind off.
I, I don't wanna think about this.
And there's things that we can literally be intoxicated by and, and
even metaphorically intoxicated by that allow us to escape reality that
is, is not an option for a Christian, because that is not being sober minded.
We understand this.
This is evident, this is clear.
And then there should be a certain fear that we have about those things
because we don't wanna do anything that when Christ returns would cause us, as
John talks about in one John 2 28, to shrink from him in shame at his coming.
We wanna be sober minded when Jesus comes back.
We wanna be dressed for action when Jesus comes back.
Paul's gonna talk about that in First Thessalonians chapter five.
He's gonna say, you're not children of darkness to walk as
they do, you're children of light.
So walk in the light and be sober minded.
He's gonna say.
Those are the obvious ones, but Christian, there's also some less obvious ones
that we have to guard our minds against.
You may say, well, I, I don't give myself over to those big ticket items,
and so I'm, I'm, I'm sober minded.
But there are other threats to being sober minded, other threats to our
battle for hope that we have to guard ourselves against threats like the
excusing and rationalization of sin.
You're having a bad season, a bad stretch.
You're at work and your boss is just making your life miserable.
So you come home and you blow up at your kids and your wife and your family, and
you excuse it, and you rationalize it by saying, well, if I didn't have this
thing going on over here, I wouldn't be so upset and so angry over here.
That's not being sober minded.
We also have to guard against laziness not being willing to put in the work.
To set our minds fully on the hope that's to be ours of the
revelation of Jesus Christ.
We have to be willing to do the hard work of putting off sin and
putting on Christ's likeness.
So we need to guard against laziness.
We need to get guard against wrong thinking and defeatism.
Maybe you've got something in your life, you've got a, a, a sin in your life, or
you have anxiety in your life, or you have a doubt in your life and, and you've got a
defeatist mentality that denies the power of the spirit to transform your life.
That says, this is just who I am and how I'll always be.
That's not being sober minded.
We also have to guard our minds against the lies that there's
no hope or that it's too late.
Again, that denies the reality of the power of the spirit within
you to make you more like Jesus.
We have to guard against shallow and surface contemplation of things in life.
We have to allow ourselves to plumb the depths of our circumstances, the depths
of how we think about things in life.
And take those thoughts captive before the Lord, and we have to guard against
the opiate of the next dopamine rush.
Whether that's pulling out your food, scrolling or your food, scrolling.
You scroll your food.
Great.
Awesome.
Let's talk afterwards.
Your phones and scrolling food though also is another way that we do this for me.
You, you wanna know what it is?
Double stuffed Oreos and a glass of milk at night.
It is my go-to.
You will never disappoint me with a bag of devil stuff, Oreos, ever.
So if you need something from me front, load it with a bag of devil
stuff, Oreos, and we'll be friends.
No, but, but we can even escape into the, the, the food or the, the
Tillamook chocolate peanut butter ice cream tub with a spoon on the couch.
You've been there.
Don't judge.
And, and, and we just want to, to not have to think about it.
Right.
So maybe it's not the big ticket items or the drugs and alcohol, but we're,
we're really accomplishing the same thing with Instagram and the Oreos.
Listen, y'all, again, the word of God is, is sufficient for life and godliness.
The word of God is sufficient to help us get through.
The overwhelm, the stress of the start of a new school year.
You don't know what's going on.
Your family feels like it's being pulled in 10 different directions.
You've got sports practices, you've got adventure club on Wednesday nights.
You've got community group you're involved in in your, your local PTA.
You've been asked by your, your.
Neighborhood to be on the board of the the HOA.
Your work is ramping up.
You've got all these things and you're just paralyzed,
and you're overwhelmed by it.
And rather than doing the hard work to think through it, you're tempted
to pick up the remote and escape back into the world Netflix for the night
only to wake up tomorrow and find that all those things are still there.
Listen,
y'all being sober reminded, and that situation looks like doing the hard
work of sitting down, evaluating your priorities, priorities that
you have for your family and for your kids, and for your marriage.
And saying, okay, what of those priorities align with what God
wants me to be doing right now?
All these things demanding my time.
I need to think sober mindedly about these things.
I can't do it all, so what do I need to do?
Maybe you find you've been struggling with sleep at night.
You're waking up tired, struggling to get through your day, crawling into bed,
tired only to force and face another restless night of tossing and turning.
You've been short, you've been angry with your coworkers and your family.
You've out outburst of anger on the road, but you excuse it
because of just, I'm just tired.
I'm just not sleeping well.
So I'm sorry that I'm the way I am, but I'm just tired.
Being sober reminded looks like doing the hard work of confessing that anger is sin.
Repenting from that.
Seeking a trusted brother or sister in Christ that can hold you accountable to
those things looks like remembering that your physical exhaustion isn't a get
outta jail free card for sinful behavior.
Being so reminded looks like doing what you can do physically to say, okay,
I'm gonna try to get to bed early.
I'm gonna try to give myself the best chance, best shot
at a good night's rest here.
Looks like praying and asking, God.
God, will you reveal if there's anything happening spiritually that
might be causing this leading to this?
Is there something that you're trying to get my attention over?
It looks like praying and asking him for rest.
Say, God, please give me rest.
Patience with others and grace beyond what might come naturally.
That's a way to stay sober minded and fight through things like that 'cause Why?
'cause we have an enemy, y'all who is prowling around roaring and like
a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and he's coming after you, and
he's coming after your hope, and he's going to do that through your mind.
The mind is the most important thing in your battle for hope.
The mind matters most in your battle for hope.
That's why we have to defend it at all costs.
In the coming weeks, we're gonna unpack more of what it means to respond to our
living hope, but we can't respond to something that we don't have, and so
Peter writes what he does in verse 13.
He says, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope
fully on the graceless to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
When it comes to earthly hopes, again, hope is such a fragile thing.
We love it when we have it.
But we also are terrified that it's gonna shatter underneath us, and
we'll be left to pick up the pieces.
Jesus never breaks your hope in Christ will never let you
down and never disappoint.
It's a battle for that hope this week, will you stand with me and let's pray.