Transcript generated by AI, expect errors.
As I was preparing for this sermon, there was a memory, a vivid memory that kept coming back to me that made me feel intuitively what I think this text is trying to communicate. So when I was in high school, I had the privilege to go to Ireland, of all places,
and I got to go with my family and my best friend and a couple other people. It was awesome. It was a great time. One of the places we visited in Ireland is called the Cliffs of Moher. Any of you who have been there, which, you know, shout out if you have been. It is essentially,
you climb to the top of these cliffs and it is a sheer drop into the ocean that’s about a mile high. So we go to these cliffs and we look over the edge and you’re actually looking down upon birds soaring through the air, which is a very...
I’m looking down at a bird maybe 500, 600, 700 feet below me, and that is unusual. The view is stunning. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s one of one, and I remember just being in awe of the natural beauty of the ocean, of the rocks, of God’s creation, and marveling.
And yet at the same time, my best friend at the time, a guy named Tim, was a little bit of a daredevil. And so... On these cliffs, there is essentially a fence that’s bolted into the rock that you can kind of walk along with. It’s secure. It’s been put there.
I’m squarely behind the fence because I’m afraid of heights in every way. But I also know that the fence is secure. This is my security. I can trust it. I’m grabbing it. I’m holding it. I’m taking baby steps as I hold the thing. And so this is my security. This is my hope. But my buddy...
Who later joined the Marines, maybe related, maybe not. Goes past the fence, because he wants to get a better view. And at one point, he’s literally going like, this on the edge, and this is a sheer drop a mile down. And I remember just being like, oh, this could go really, really bad. This could go horribly.
So I’m feeling all these things at once. The glory and the holiness of seeing the view, the security that I feel behind my fence, and kind of a fearful reverence of the power of what we’re standing on. Because you could die at any moment with one false step.
And that’s what we’re going to see in our text today. We’re going to see this reverence that we have to have for our Holy Father, the holiness of God that we have to strive after, and a command to be hopeful. We’re going to see these three themes. Hope, holiness, and reverence for our Heavenly Father.
So the big idea, what I want to argue today, what I’m putting before you as the main emphasis of this set of verses is simply this. Be hopeful in God’s grace. Be holy, because God is holy. And conduct yourselves with fear while living in exile. I’ll say that again. Be hopeful in Christ’s grace.
Be holy because God is holy and conduct yourselves with fear while living in exile. We’ll see three commands from this text right in line with the main idea. We’re commanded to be hopeful, we’re commanded to be holy, and we’re commanded to revere our Heavenly Father. Let’s start with verse 13, the command to be hopeful. Be hopeful. 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. This word, therefore, is a connecting word. It’s connective tissue to the set of verses that came right before this.
So we’re going to get three commands, but these commands don’t come out of anywhere They rest on the truths of the first 12 verses. And this is what we typically see in Scripture. We don’t start with the command. We don’t start with the works.
We start with truths about God and Christ and what He has done for us. And then the command comes out of our obedience and out of the grace that comes from Jesus Christ. So... Alright, so what I’m saying is verse 13, this therefore means that this command to be hopeful,
to set our hope fully on the grace that will be revealed, rests on the truths expressed in the first 12 verses. What are those things? I’m not going to re-preach the sermon I did a few weeks ago, but I am going to highlight again for us some of these truths that this command rests on.
In verse 3, We see that Christ has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Our hope is not dead, but it is living because it’s connected to Christ who came out of the grave. And we are given an inheritance that is imperishable, meaning it cannot be destroyed. It’s undefiled,
meaning it’s not dirtied or sullied or stained by sin and unfading, which means it will never lessen. This inheritance is kept for us by God’s power. Not ours, but His. Which means it’s absolutely secure. And as we suffer, if necessary, for a little while,
we do so so that the tested genuineness of our faith can be found to result in glory and honor and praise at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So for all these reasons... For the fact that we have this secure inheritance. Because we have obtained salvation for our souls through faith.
Because these things can’t be taken from us and are completely secure in Christ. Because of all these things, 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. Now why? Why, because of these things, do we set our hope fully,
entirely, completely in the grace that will be revealed to us? In short, because that hope is the only thing that makes good on every single promise that is given to us by God. There are many things in the world that will make promises to you Of safety, of security, of blessing, of joy, of delight.
And ultimately, in one way or the other, these things will let you down. Only one person can hold the weight of your hope. And it’s Jesus Christ. So when we’re tempted to set our hope on other things, this text would call us to say, no, set your hope fully on the grace that will be revealed to you
at Jesus Christ’s return. Because this is a hope that can’t be taken. Everything else that you stake your hopes on will at some point let you down. These can even be good things. We set our hope on family or on health or on working hard. While these can be good things,
if our hope is fully on those things, they will let us down because they don’t have the power to last forever. They didn’t rise from the dead. Only Christ did that on our behalf. Christ is the one that can carry the weight of our hopes.
And we’re commanded to set our hope on Christ’s grace with a particular mindset. The text says to prepare our minds for action and be sober-minded. What do we mean by this? So preparing our minds for action is It means that by setting our hope fully on the grace that will be revealed to us,
this prepares our mind and we also want our minds to be ready to put our hope into action. We want to live out our faith. It’s not enough to just think rightly. Right thinking translates into right action. So setting our hope on Christ encourages us, exhorts us,
helps us leap into action to live out our faith with the people around us. And secondly, it calls us to be sober-minded. And the sober is very much intentionally there to make us think of the opposite, which is drunk people. What do drunk people do? They are not self-controlled. They make foolish decisions.
They’re really overconfident in their own ability to do things. They can’t see clearly. They can’t think clearly. They can’t reason clearly. And so they make foolish decisions. And that’s not what needs to mark the mind of a Christian. Christians are to be sober-minded. There’s a seriousness to the way that we think, the way that we process things.
The way that we take in information, we need to do so seriously with our hope in Christ being foremost as we intake these things. We’re prepared to live out our faith and we need to have clarity of mind. Clear and serious Christian minds are constantly putting the future hope of
the grace that is going to be revealed in Christ’s return. And what does this mean? Or why is this? The reason we look ahead to help us live out our faith today is because on that day, on the last day, you will not regret for a single moment,
instant, millisecond, putting an end to any sin that plagues you. On that day, you will not regret sacrificing your time, your talent, You will not regret pursuing the Lord in prayer. You will not regret serving your fellow saints, loving them, sacrificing for them.
The Bible tells us that even giving a glass of water to somebody else is a good act that will be recorded and rewarded at the end of all things. That small, that minute. So when you do the things of the Lord, when you glorify Him with what you do,
you will see the full consummation of the joy from that in the return of Christ. You will not regret anything you lay down to be with Jesus. So we have to remember Christ’s coming and the future joy that waits for the Christian. We set our hope fully on this reality.
And that ought to be an encouragement because it means that the Christian’s future is incredibly bright. Our future is secured. Our inheritance is secured. The salvation of our souls has been obtained by faith in Jesus Christ. But in the meantime, let our minds guide our hearts. So what I mean is these affections that we have,
these emotions, these hopes, these feelings, these are guided by our minds. As the mind leads, the affections will start to follow. Not always, not perfectly. There’s lots of caveats there, but right thinking leads to right feeling, which leads to right actions. So our minds need to be focused, sober-minded, and full of the Word of God.
Our hearts follow our minds. And very simply, what we behold is what we become. And so we need to be mindful and disciplined in speaking the Word of God to ourselves. We have to intake the Word of God to help our minds grow. Think his thoughts after him. We need to know the word.
We need to study it. We need to be in it. If possible, we should memorize it because these are the ways in which our minds become clear and we’re prepared to live out our faith by having God’s word foremost in our minds. But this is not something we simply do on our own, as important as that is.
We also do this in community, so we have to speak the Word of God to one another. That means among friends, in small groups, on the phone, online, we want to share the Word of God with one another. We want to encourage each other with the Word of God.
And this can feel a touch awkward in the midst of conversation when you’re like, I think the Bible says something about this. Lean into the awkwardness. Don’t be afraid to open your Bible when you’re talking with a brother or sister from church and say, wait, what is that passage that deals with the thing that you’re talking about?
Let’s investigate the Scriptures together. Because we have to speak the Word to ourselves and to one another so we can have clear minds that are ready to live out our faith. And part of being ready to live out our faith is being ready to do it at a moment’s notice. And the best or simplest, not best,
simplest application of this that I can give you is when we are with one another and we want to live out our faith with our brothers and sisters. If they share something that is a struggle or a difficulty or you just don’t know what to do,
a simple way to put your faith into action is to simply stop and say, can I pray for you right now? Lean into the awkwardness and say, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do, but we’re in the Word. Let’s pray. Let me pray for you. Let me pray with you right now.
Another point of application here that seems self-evident from the text is we have to remind ourselves of the hope of Christ. Some of you may know, may be tracking, and some of you are not paying attention to this at all, potentially. There’s an election this November. It’s a midterm election,
usually way less popular than the presidential election for all sorts of reasons, mainly because the president’s not on the ballot. And there are a lot of people who are running for office. And these men and women, I would bet you all the money in Bill Deckard’s bank account that they are making a whole lot of promises.
A whole lot. And I would bet you all the money in Luis Ortiz’s bank account They won’t keep all those promises. In fact, some of them won’t keep any. But our Lord is not like that. Jesus isn’t like that. He’s the only one who keeps every single promise he’s made to his people.
Every single promise he’s ever made to anyone. He can do this because he is God. He has the power to To make good on what he says. What’s interesting is as much as I want to keep my promises, I actually don’t have the power or the authority to do so. For instance,
we’ve invited somebody over for lunch today and I can say, I promise I will drive home at about 12.45 and we will have lunch together. That’s my promise. That’s my word. I cannot guarantee that my car is going to start. Can I guarantee I get a phone call that takes me elsewhere?
I cannot guarantee I will actually make it to that lunch. But Jesus can because he’s God. This is how he keeps every single promise. And if your hope is elsewhere, it’s in things like the amount of money you see in your bank account, getting to vacation at the end of the year,
Having the person you want to be interested in you be interested in dating you. If your hope is in these things, prepare to be disappointed. If your hope is in yourself or your own actions, these things cannot make good. They cannot deliver you. So put your hope in something that can hold it, that can answer it.
The person of Jesus Christ’s. So we’re commanded to set our hope on the grace that we have received and the grace that will be fully revealed. By setting our hope on this future grace, we will be sober-minded and ready to serve the Lord. So be hopeful. But the text also calls us to be holy.
This is what we see in verses 14 through 16. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. This word holy is interesting.
It’s a very religious word. If you’ve been around church for any amount of time, you’ve heard the word holy. And we can take it as second nature of like, oh, this is, you know, God is holy and Doing good stuff is holy. It almost becomes a church word that you don’t think about very often.
But the word holy means utterly distinct, transcendent, one of one. It describes God. God is holy. He’s holy because he is not like us. He’s something completely different. Completely transcendent, bigger, higher, wider, stronger, over, superlative, whatever word you want to use, does not capture how wholly different, amazing, transcendent that he is than us. He’s something else.
We are limited creatures. He is an ultimate, powerful creator of all things. He’s so holy and different that He speaks and the universe is created. I cannot comprehend what kind of being can do that. But that’s what God does. He is holy. We are not like Him. In Isaiah 6,
the prophet has a vision that Of God’s holiness that is so overwhelming that he cries out, Woe is me, for I’m a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. I’ve seen the glory of the Lord. He is undone because he sees something so holy and righteous
that he’s immediately made aware of his lack of that righteousness and he falls on his face. This ought to be our response to a holy God. There’s something odd going on in this text, though. I just told you that the command is to be holy, but if God is holy, and he’s wholly different, transcendent,
and we can’t do that, being holy is part of his godness, how do I do that? How do I be holy if it’s part of who God is? There’s almost a paradox, if you will, a seeming contradiction. And this is a command, and it’s in the... Peter says, since it is written, so this is in the Scriptures,
this is a command from God, be holy, and yet at the same time, God is holy in ways that we cannot be. We cannot be holy like He is holy. So how do we achieve this command that the Bible... He gives us. In short, we can’t. We can’t make ourselves holy. But Christ can.
This is one of the mysteries of the work that he does on the cross. By living a perfect life, laying it down on our behalf, rising again and inviting us to trust him, he offers his holiness to us. And so if we trust Christ and turn from our sins, we get His righteousness and He takes our sin.
He makes us holy. So when you become a Christian, positionally, in your being, you are holy. As God is holy. Why? Because it’s not your righteousness. It’s His. So we can’t achieve the command to be holy, but He achieves it on our behalf. We need only believe.
Christ’s saving work comes before our own spirit-driven efforts to be holy. I don’t think it’s an accident that this chapter begins with 12 verses on the truth of what Christ has done for us before it gives us a command. Because in the same way, we’re to do holy things, we’re to pursue holiness, not first...
But as a result of what Christ has done for us. The order matters. We can’t save ourselves. But if we are saved by Christ, what we do changes. Because we’re different. The text reminds us of what we were. It says we were ignorant. And we served our passions. We served our passions.
That’s because we didn’t know the Lord. We couldn’t see His glorious reality. And so what do we do instead? We follow our own selfish passions because we don’t see the truth of what the Lord says. Ephesians 4, 17-19 describes it like this. Now this I say and testify in the Lord,
that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
This is how we used to be, slaves to passions that are born out of ignorance. And the more that we pursue these things, the more deadened we become to the things of the Lord. That’s how we used to be. But now, we’re children of God. It’s a small word in the text, as obedient children. But we’re children.
One word that is an earth-shattering change for the Christian is Changes our reality, the fact that we are children of the Heavenly Father, a Most High God who loves us enough to send Christ to save us. We are children. And because of that, we inherit.
Romans 8.14-17 says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father.
The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. As children of God, as heirs with Christ, we inherit... That which Christ inherit.
We suffer now in our exile. We will be glorified with Him in eternity. We will rule and reign with Jesus with joy complete in Him. But what do we do in the meantime? We strive for holiness. Not to save ourselves. Not because we can attain for ourselves some measure of godness and But
because he’s done the work for us and we delight to do the things that delight him. So practically speaking, how does one pursue holiness? The first thing I would say is simply strive for holiness out of your identity as a child of God. Truth comes before the command. Christ’s work comes before our efforts.
So we need to know that I’m striving to be holy, not on my own strength, but in the Spirit’s strength in me. Secondly, I would highlight that the battle for holiness begins in the mind. This is why verse 13 says, being sober-minded and being prepared for action, it begins up here.
Our sinful passions used to pull us in one direction or another. In fact, if we’re trapped in a sinful pattern, oftentimes we just go into autopilot. We’re not actually thinking. We’re just being pulled along by some desire to do something wicked, and we don’t stop ourselves by thinking about Wait a minute,
I don’t actually want to do this. The consequences of this won’t be worth it. It dishonors God. I need to stop. We just let ourselves be led by vile passions. So the battle for holiness begins in the mind. Examine yourself then. What are the ways? What are the people? What are the places?
What are the things that you watch that pull you into sinful patterns of thought? It could be any number of things. There could be a friend that you have that regularly encourages you to focus on sinful things. It could be a workplace or a group of friends at work who constantly pull you down
as opposed to you pulling them up. It could be things that you watch or listen to that spark unhealthy patterns of sinful thinking in your mind. Examine yourself. What are the things that They’ll pull you towards those sinful passions and remove your clarity of mind and rob you of your hope in Christ.
Notice too that the text says, in all your conduct. Which means I think we can’t be compartmentalized Christians. I can’t show you one face on Sunday and my co-workers a different face on Tuesday. Can’t show my family one face during family worship and a jerk on the internet a different face. All my conduct, everywhere,
every nook and cranny of my life, whether it be stuck in traffic or at the gym, in church with my family, all of life, we need to be pursuing holiness. I’d also remind us that as we pursue holiness that when you fail, because you will fail to be holy, remember that you have Christ’s holiness, not your own.
Rest in His holiness and be quick to repent. One of the temptations for a Christian is to try to clean yourself up before you return to Christ and say, I am stuck in this dead-end sinful pattern. I’m going to fix it before I actually repent. As if somehow that will make it better.
The reality is that repentance is the way that we pursue holiness. So don’t rely on yourself, but rely on Christ’s holiness that he’s given to you. And then finally, coming right out of the first point, I would say hope feeds holiness.
So as we look ahead to Christ’s return to the grace that’s coming, knowing that the end is set. We know how this ends. Christ returns. We’ll join Him in glory. This hope that is guaranteed fuels our ability to pursue holiness. Remembering the last day is motivation to avoid things that we’ll be ashamed to tell everyone.
Because every thought that you’ve had, every word that you’ve said, everything that you’ve done, your entirety of life will be laid bare and For everyone, and most importantly, the Lord Almighty to see. That is motivation for holiness. If you were to put up on a screen every thought that I had for the last seven days,
I would be ashamed. It’s that kind of clarity that we’re going to have on the last day. So pursue holiness and be quick to repent. Be hopeful, be holy, be And revere our Heavenly Father, verses 17 through 21. And if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,
conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot,
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world that was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. So we are children and he is our father.
We call on Him as Father, but He’s not just that. He’s also the impartial, good, perfect, just judge. And so we have to remember that, that He does not show partiality. That He is perfect in His judgments. The text also tells us that we ought to conduct our entire lives with fear.
Our exile as Christians is the here and now. This world is not our home. Every single human being has some longing for a place. Many of us confuse that longing to be wanting to go back home, maybe a childhood home or someplace where we felt that we had rest, that we had peace.
Others of us who know very well that our childhood home was not that place at all long for some other place where we think we could finally have rest. This nostalgia, this desire for home Is a desire for heaven. For the Christian, this life is our exile and we are going home. Home with Christ.
Home with Him forever. But in the meantime, during our exile, we have to conduct ourselves with fear. Now why is that? As I read this text, there’s this seeming incongruity or this disconnect. We just spent many verses focusing on the hope that we have in Christ. We’re even commanded to be hopeful.
And now the text is telling us, well, also you have to live in fear. These things seem at odds. How can I hope and also fear? There’s a pastor, a theologian, John Piper, who gave an illustration that I found to be incredibly helpful in kind of understanding this seeming duality. The illustration he gave goes something like this.
He said, imagine that you’re a father or a parent. You have a daughter who’s high school age or college age and Lately, she’s been struggling with some of the things of God. Still faithful, as far as you can tell, but just struggling. Less interested. And this daughter, who’s struggling, you still love her more than anything.
She’s her baby. She’s a little girl. You love her. She’s precious. And one day, some evil men Thugs, criminals, the worst kind of people, they kidnap her. They take her off the street, they grab her, throw her in her van, take her to some undisclosed location, and you are beside yourself.
They send you a note and they say, you need to pay this amount as ransom. But you don’t have it. It’s more money than you have. And so what do you do? You take out a second mortgage on the house. You find any antique that you can sell. You sell wedding rings, engagement rings.
You cash out your retirement. You do any and everything you can to pay the cost of what they’re asking. You sell all these things and you wire these criminals, these wicked men, the money. And at a pre-appointed place, they bring your daughter back.
And they return her to you, and so she gets out of the car, and she walks towards you. She then gives you the finger, turns around, and leaves arm in arm with her captor. This is what it’s like, not when an unbeliever, but when a Christian pursues sin.
Because we know at some level the amount that God has paid to redeem us. It’s the precious blood of Christ’s. This is what spilled to ransom us, to free us from slavery. But when we pursue sin, we say, I don’t want it at all. I’d rather be with these wicked men. I’d rather pursue my sin.
This is aimed at Christians who choose sin over holiness because we know what it costs. And so the text tells us to fear. I chose the word reverence But I think it works both ways. We want to fear becoming like this wayward daughter. We want to fear treating a love so expensive with disdain.
Because if we do so, if we continually, without repentance, choose sin over the costly grace of Christ, it raises the question, do I believe in Him at all? But on the flip side, It ought to create reverence for God because how loving and merciful a God pays
so great a price to redeem people who continually choose captors over him. That’s awe-inspiring. What kind of love is that to give up everything so that he could be with us? We ought to live in fear of despising the great cost that it took to save us,
but we also need to revere a Heavenly Father who is willing to pay that much. That’s how much He loves us. The word ransom here has often been commented. This is the word that was used when slaves were set free. The ancient Roman Empire...
A price would be paid to a local temple and then the person would be set free. This is what Christ has done for us. He has set us free. And that freedom also frees us from the futile ways inherited from our forefathers. What does that mean? It means a couple of things.
I think Peter has in mind both empty dead religion like that of the Pharisees that cared about the approval of men and appearing righteous rather than actually being righteous. But also the wicked pagan inheritance that Gentiles receive from idol worshipers and things of that nature. But for us, what do we inherit?
I don’t know what false things your parents have told you or the culture has told you or what things resonate or not. What Peter is saying is those things are futile. The ways of your old life, the things that you trusted in do nothing to save you Christ has ransomed you at the cost of his own blood.
We’ve all received tales and stories and ideas of things that can rescue us or give us hope, but only one thing does. Jesus Christ, his life, given for you, that you can be redeemed. That’s our hope. That’s our holiness. That’s the source of our reverence for God. And Christ laid all this down willingly.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you. What does that mean? It simply means that Christ is part of the Trinity. He is eternal. He is before us, after us. He is the great I Am.
But He was made manifest, meaning He was made a human being that we could see. He took on humanity to come rescue us so that we could see the person of Christ and trust in Him. Why does He do this? Why does the King of Heaven step off the throne and come into creation? The text tells us,
for the sake of you, for the sake of everyone in this room, Christ came for you. And so that our faith and hope are in God. You see, we end where we started, with hope. Christ’s ministry, His life, death, and resurrection are the center of our faith and our hope in God. And He is coming soon.
The text says, He made Himself manifest in the last times. Meaning, this is the last stage of Of church history, if you will. We don’t know when Christ is going to return. I won’t give you a date. If I did, Bill would have to tackle me. But we are in the end days. It’s the last times.
There’s no new Israel that’s coming. This is the last stage of salvation history. It won’t be long now. The hope of Christ will be fully revealed. We’re almost home. We’re almost home. We’ve seen that we used to be ignorant of God, but now we have knowledge of Christ.
Before we knew Jesus, we were not children of God, but now we are His children and His heirs. We used to live according to futile ways that could not save us, but now we have Christ’s ways, which is salvation. We used to be affirmed by society, but now we’re misunderstood and maligned by society.
But our hope remains in the same place, in Jesus. So be hopeful, be holy, and revere our Heavenly Father. Let’s pray. God, we do worship you as the one who gave up more than we can possibly imagine to achieve for us our salvation. We think about standing on the edge of a cliff,
the thing that stood between us and the bottom is Jesus. It’s nothing that we’ve done. It’s nothing that we can do. It’s what he’s done on our behalf. So help us to know that and out of that knowledge pursue Christ and tell the watching world around us about the glories of what he’s accomplished on our behalf.
We pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen.
