Living Out Your Salvation: Action Motivated by Grace - 1 Peter 1:13-16

0:43And as he made very clear in the second verse, the love of the Father, that sanctifying work of the Spirit, and the sacrifices of the Son bring about one thing, and that is obedience to Jesus Christ. It's a new regime. With all the powers of the heaven itself, the triune God working in concert to bring about obedience to the new king. And some don't like that king. As the audience that Peter writes to found out very quickly, they found themselves outcast, found themselves outside. Of the stream of society, and that put them at odds. So, in light of all this, this regime change and what God is doing, be prepared for action. And that's what he says. Look at verse 13: get ready for action. Therefore, in light of all that's been said in the first 12 verses, get ready for action, prepare your minds for action, prepare your minds.

2:03Those of you who have been born again into a living hope, who have a new master, a new king, get ready for action. In fact, the image here is gird up the loins of your mind. That's literally what it's saying: gird up the loins of your mind. It's a strange image. Gird up, it's like cinching a belt or like tying something down, getting ready for action. It means get ready. In Exodus 12:11, we read about how the Passover was to be eaten. Now you shall eat it in this manner, with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat in haste. In other words, be ready.

2:541 King 18:46, the hand of the Lord was upon Elijah, and he Girded up his loins and out ran Ahab to Jezreel. That is, he tucked in his garments, cinched it up so that he could run unhindered. And he ran like the wind. Well, this image of gathering up a person's robe and tucking it in in order to avoid hindrances really doesn't apply to the physical. It replies to your mind. Gird up your mind for action. That is, you need to get hold of all of your loose, dangling, stray, and misguided thoughts that hinder your mind from properly responding to your salvation.

3:47You see, we are to gird up our minds. We are to think like saved people. We are to discipline our thoughts. We are to avoid the sinful hindrances of this present age. Look, you and I only have a certain amount of time given to us each day. You don't have time to waste them with stray thoughts, misguided aspirations. You'll never be able to run the race that God has called you to run if you are tangled up in all of your misguided thoughts. Don't squander your thought lives, thought life, by focusing upon the hindrances of our day.

4:30There's a second image there. Look, be sober. Be sober in your mind, in your thinking. Really, it's keep sober. In spirit, really isn't there, but it's implied. Keep sober in spirit. So, what's the opposite of being sober? We all understand this image pretty well, right? Being drunk. A drunk person, one who has come under the influence of alcohol, loses control of his thoughts and his body. In fact, we have last year in our homeschool, we turned a corner, didn't really know what to do with high school. So, what we did is we took our 14-year-old and our 16-year-old and put them in Glenn College and said, Okay, this is now going to be your high school. And there was a lot of education that came along with that decision. And one of them was the study group that my oldest son got involved with. He had never been in such a study group. Well, one guy in their pre-calculus was having, was struggling in the class. One problem is he really liked to drink and really get drunk. And on one particular occasion, he's relaying his latest adventure to his study group, which my son's a part of. And he said, Yeah, man, I just the other night just decided no more beer. I'm not drinking any more beer.

6:00And then I put my hand in my pocket and found three more dollars. So I had to go get another beer. Needless to say, the guy was flunking out of the class, used up all his cue drops very early in his college career. And the last word from somebody else in the study group was, We don't know what happened to that guy. Well, I can assure you, it's kind of funny if it's not your kid. I see somebody back there crying. Maybe it is your kid.

6:32But you understand, you're not going to do well in math if you're so preoccupied with getting drunk, and then you go out and you get drunk, and then you spend time recuperating from being drunk, and then you enjoy talking about getting drunk the other night. It leaves very little time to really take in the critical concepts of college life. But Peter isn't talking about the intoxicating influence of alcohol here, though there's application for that. But he's talking about the intoxication of a worldly pattern of thinking. Be sober in your spirit. Imbibing the world's concerns and the values and the entertainment and the definitions of success will impair your ability to live out your salvation in a Christ-honoring way.

7:24You see, we often come under the influence of worldly thinking more than we do. No, right? Whether it has to do with this person or this position or this situation, we can very easily start thinking like the world. Even in our matters of our Christianity, we can start developing worldly thoughts. Even when it comes to the Lord's Supper, right? We can all say, man, look at those bozos passing out the elements. Man, you know, it would have been better if he had gone this way. That's kind of a worldly way of thinking, or even thinking about the Lord's return. We can even take something as glorious and wonderful as the Lord's return, and we can think worldly about it. Like, man, I cannot wait until the Lord returns because I finally want to win an election. You know, we can start, I want my regime in place. And we can very easily start taking the good things, and we can even think worldly about them. Last week, I had a, got together with a bunch of pastors in the area. We had a pastor's roundtable, and we discussed what are the measurements of success in ministry. It's a very profound question, especially when you get a bunch of pastors who've been through the mill and a whole, from all different walks. One individual pastor will not forget this story. He He was a pastor down in Galveston, and his church was doing very well. It was in the growth path of town. His house was close to the beach. The church was growing, it was thriving. He was in the growth path. And I mean, he was saying, Man, I was doing things right, and things were happening. And then Hurricane Ike came, totally leveled my house, picked it up, scattered it. I lost everything. And the church was damaged incredibly. And now I'm pastoring a little church in an obscure town. And through all that, I wonder, God, what, where, why, how, I was doing this, what, this happened, what happened?

9:49He had an amazing story about how God showed him what success is in ministry. But it's very important that we realize how susceptible we are to being intoxicated by the world's system of thinking. Shows up in everything. And this is what Peter's message is: think like a saved person. That's what he's telling his audience. Think like a saved person. Don't think like a lost person. You're not lost anymore. So don't think like a lost person. You see, your salvation is not something you go out and you get and you put in your back pocket. And then you go back to your former way of life. That's how the rich young ruler viewed salvation, but that is not salvation. Salvation involves a regime change, and living it out involves a mind change. So living out your salvation begins by thinking like a saved person.

10:54So, how does one prepare his or her mind for action? Well, that's the subject of our passage this morning. And a mind that is prepared for action is characterized by two things: the right focus and the right standard. And I want to look at both of these this morning so that you will prepare your mind for action. First of all, the right focus. The right focus. Look back at 1 Peter 13. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You know, there's a difference between trust and hope. Trust deals with the present.

11:35Trust is an expression of faith in the present. Do you trust God in your present circumstance? That's an expression of faith in the present. Hope is an expression of faith that involves the future. Do you trust God with your future? Or do you hope in the right things? It's an expression of faith for the future. Trust involves the present. Hope involves the future. And there are wrong hopes. There are wrong hopes. And we're so easily intoxicated by them. There's worldly hopes. Those hopes that involve power or position or a certain amount of possessions or a certain level of pleasure or a certain level of prestige, a certain level of ease, a certain level of comfort. Or maybe it has to do with your posterity, your children. There are certain hopes that we vest ourselves in that have to do totally with this worldly system.

12:43And when we don't get them, we respond in sin. That's evidence that you hope in the wrong thing. When something doesn't go your way and you respond in sin, that's evidence that you are hoping in the wrong things. You see, when you don't get them, you respond in a way that is unbecoming. When we fall short of our hopes, we sometimes will get depressed or get mad or take it out on God. God, I was really hoping this would come through. It didn't.

13:17God, where were you? Or when someone achieves something that we would like, we get envious or bitter. We can't be joyful for them, but on the contrary, we get bitter. Towards Him. It's evidence you've got your hopes in the wrong place. Or when we're wronged, we retaliate. When someone lets us down, we divorce. Right? Okay, fine, if that's the way you're going to be, I'm not going to fool with you anymore. That is evidence that you've got misguided hopes and your mind is not prepared for action. Your mind is not prepared for the life that God has called you to walk in as a saved child of Him.

14:04See, wrong hopes are thought, intoxicating things. We get our minds preoccupied with them. One of the things I loved about my time in San Diego was on a clear day, on a very rare day, like when a cold front blew through and all this dry air pushed all the marine layer out to sea, you could see these beautiful islands, the islands of San Clemente and the islands of Cat and the Catalina Islands. You could see out there, and it's like you feel like you're in a whole nother world, just a beauty. But most of the time, you're there, that marine layer is a fog, and you can't see them.

14:47And so, as we go through life, the question becomes: what is the right thing to hope for? What can we see that we need to focus on, that is so crystal clear in our minds? What is it that we are to set our minds upon? So that we're not intoxicated or in a fog. Well, the answer is given to us in our text. There are wrong hopes, but then there is a right hope. 1 Peter says, Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. There are two imperative commands in this passage, and this is the first one: fix your hope, set your mind, dial it in, hardwire it to this reality completely, totally upon the grace to be brought to you. In fact, and the very interesting verb here, it's actually a present verb, and it's in the passive: fix your hope literally upon the grace which is presently being carried to you. The grace is currently being carried to you. It's the same image of Jesus bearing his cross, same word. This grace is currently being born to you. Fix your hope completely upon that. Let that be your focus in life.

16:11You see, our ultimate hope has to be upon the divine favor. The divine favor that we're going to experience in the presence of Jesus Christ for eternity. That is where our hope needs to be. Because everything else is temporary, nothing else is eternal. And no matter how great things end up on earth for you, and I hope things go very well for each and every one of you all the days of your life. But no matter how great things go for you in this world, if you do not have that wonderful and eternal divine favor for eternity, then it's nothing. Because everything, this world is passing away. And some of you just may be able to ride the wave of earthly success. Some of you, very few of you, will ever really be able to ride that wave. And those of you who do get to ride that wave will only be able to ride it for a short while.

17:18So your hope has to be upon something other than what happens in this world, no matter who you are. And some of you have very little to hope for in this world. But the reality is, none of us have anything to hope for in this world because it is all coming to an end. And that is why our hope must be beyond this age. It must be completely upon the grace that is going to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And what is this grace? What is this grace? Well, the grace spoken of here is that full expression of God. Unrestrained favor. That's what grace is. That full expression of God's unrestrained favor, where there's no hindrances to Him giving a full expression of His favor upon you.

18:18No hindrances of sin. Nothing to hold His hand from pouring out all favor, all manner of favor. For you yourself will be a vessel that's built to handle it or to take it in and to glorify Him. And the timing of this, when is this grace going to be given? The timing is when Christ is finally revealed, when He is finally revealed for all to see, and you are revealed for being one of His. That's the timing. I mean, this is where things are going. If you are indeed a child of God, this is where things are going for you. We talk about fads, we talk about what comes in style and what goes out of style, we talk about trends, we talk about the seasons of our lives, but I tell you what, this is what is coming in vogue for your life: eternal weight of glory, where God, when His unrestrained favor is poured out upon you. That is something that puts your hope in, and everything else pales.

19:25And this grace is multifaceted. It defies a simple explanation. You know, I love the powerful telescopes of our time. Very interesting. You can look at what appears to be a very small little light upon the horizon. And under the telescope, you begin to see other worlds. That what appears to be a little speck is actually galaxies converging, emitting a light. It's beautifully. Think about if we had a spaceship to go, what starts out as a little bitty light, as a spaceship, as you move at light speed across the distance of this universe and you start coming closer to this little speck, it all of a sudden becomes two lights. And then all of a sudden, it's like, no, it's not two lights, it's many lights. And then all of a sudden, it's not many lights. You realize it is billions of lights. It is not just one galaxy, but a cluster of galaxies. Lights with an immensity and a complexity and a beauty that just staggers the mind.

20:42Such is the grace that is being brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Only we're not running to it, it's running to us. How beautiful this grace. What begins as a little light upon the horizon, like the awareness of God. We start to see this grace very small, but there's an awareness of God. There's a realization that God knows me by name, and the light starts becoming a little bit bigger. And then there's a realization that God is good and that He desires His goodness for us. Wow, and the light begins to get brighter and brighter. And the news of His love for me displayed in Jesus Christ settles in my soul. The forgiveness of sin, the fellowship with God, and this light becomes so much more beautiful and defined. We sing about it. How precious did that grace appear at hour I first believed. But that, friends, is just the speck of the light. What begins as a little speck of grace, like the light in the midnight sky, will end up a full expression of God's universal and unmitigated favor upon your life. It'll be like a galaxy, a universe of His favor expressed in so many ways. This is the hope, and that full expression comes at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And this is where our hope is to be set at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Listen, friends, the decree is final, the promise has been made, the events set in motion. However, you Want to say it. The grace of God is coming to Christ's people, and it is rapidly approaching. Everything else is fading away. This will be the new you, the new reality.

22:44So don't get intoxicated with this temporal system and worldly way of thinking. Set your mind, focus it, put it on the right focus upon the grace that is to come. Revelation 1:7 says, Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be. Amen. Except those who have put their faith in him. This is not a day of mourning, but a day of rejoicing.

23:20You know, Paul had set his mind upon this grace. 2 Corinthians 4:17, he says this, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. So the first characteristic of a mind that is prepared for action is a right focus. The second is a right standard, the right standard. Look at verse 14.

23:57As obedient children do not be conformed to the former Lust which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. So, first of all, there's the wrong standard that he gives us: the former lusts, the former lusts. Look back, do not be conformed to the former lusts, which were yours in your ignorance. Lusts, the sinful desires, the sinful longings, the sinful value system of this world, your uncontrolled appetites, impulses, everything else that drives the life of fallen man. And formerly, this is what you were driven by. This is what motivated you. This is what drove you. You responded to a fleshly world in a fleshly way.

24:52And the desires of this system became your desires, and you pursued them. And you were becoming like them because you didn't know any better in your ignorance. But now, Peter is saying, Look, look, guys, you have heard the grace of God. You know the truth of eternal salvation. You walk in that now. You are under the authority of a new king. So do not walk in the pattern of your former desires. And it's important to note here that your desires have the power to shape and mold. Do not be conformed to your desires. It is your desires that shape and mold you. Whatever you feed grows. And the more you serve your desires, the more intense they become, the more insatiable they become, and the more you become like them.

25:53You remember in Mark chapter 4, parable of the soils. Remember, there were three bad soils and three good soils, right? There was the hard soil, the rocky soil, and the thorny soil, all bad soils. Then there are three good soils, those that produced 30, 60, and 100 fold. And the exhortation is, don't be like the first three. And it's an errant interpretation to say that those represented salvation or any of them. None of those first three soils are representing the one who is saved. Only those who produce the fruit, the 30, the 60, the 100.

26:32And this is what is said here. But the worries of the world, speaking about the thorny ground and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires, there's that word, for other things enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. Loss of the seed, lost of the truth. Just like on the hard ground, only it showed a little bit more promise. But the end result, no harvest. And what Peter is saying here is, don't go down that road. He's saying, as a person who is saved, you think differently. You do not conform yourself and get caught up in the toxicating system of worldly thoughts.

27:20But you're shaped by something else. Well, then there's a second image here, and that is of an obedient child. Look at verse 14. As an obedient child, I'm sorry, there's just the first image I'm coming through, verse 14. There's the image of an obedient child. As an obedient child wants to please their parents, so followers of Christ are to want what God wants. We kind of end in a, we live in a world where the tone and tenor of our times is to go after what you want. And yet we are to live like obedient child who want what their father wants, to want what their parent wants. So a mind that is prepared for action is childlike. It simply seeks to avoid those pathways of sinful desire, and it is no longer being shaped by worldly desires, but is being transformed by godly desires, to go after that which God wants. Those are the wrong standards. But then there is the right standard. Look back at verse 15. What is the right standard? Here it is, verse 15. But like The Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. See, the right standard is the holiness of God. And Peter goes from the image of an obedient child to the image of the holy God. So you're to be like a child, but you're to be like the holy God. There is your standard.

29:01The right standard is the holiness of God. And we're not talking about his incommunicable attributes, to use the big term. We're not talking about his omnipresence, his omniscience, his omnipotence, his immutability. He is God. We can't become those. We're not to imitate those. We can't. But there are some communicable attributes, and these we are to imitate. If you boil religion down to one word, it's imitation. Religion is imitation, becoming like that which you worship. True religion is imitating the true God.

29:47And Leviticus 11:44, For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. Leviticus 19:2, speak to all the congregation. Of the sons of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. You are to worship me, and so you are to become like me. That is the path of true religion. Becoming like the one true God in whom image we have been created.

30:20Tozer said it very well. Holy is the way God is. To be holy, He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because He is holy, all His attributes are holy. That is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy. So we are to imitate His moral character because every aspect of His being is set apart.

31:04It conforms to its own standard because it is its own standard. And that's what makes sitting in judgment upon God so damnable. Because it raises a standard and tries to subject God to a standard that defies who He is. Righteousness. We are to imitate His righteousness. God always acts in accordance with what is right. And He Himself is. That standard of right, so as we act with one another, we always are to deal with under with one another the standard of rightness, that which would conform to God's standard, that which would conform to God Himself, justice. We are to always act as in a just way, because that is what God is. He's perfectly just.

31:52God is a lover of truth. We are to walk in truth. God is the God of love. I love what Grudem says: God's love means that God eternally gives Himself to others, and so should we. God is a God of grace, that is His attribute. He is by nature graceful. And the grace of God is that God's goodness manifested towards those who don't deserve it. That's what grace is. If you find somebody that doesn't deserve being treated well, well, treat them well because that's what God does. But so often we get intoxicated by the world system when we react to people and we say, well, you didn't treat me right, so therefore I'm going to treat you wrong.

32:42But you're not conforming to God's standard, His holiness. Mercy, what is mercy? Mercy is God's goodness manifested to those who are in distress or misery. That's what God does. And it's important to understand. That all of these attributes are never to be separated from His holiness. His justice is always a holy justice, and His holiness is always just. His love is always a loving holiness, and His holiness is always manifested in a love. It's never, you can't put these two against each other. His mercy is a holy mercy, His love is a holy love.

33:31And so we are to imitate God's moral character, His holiness. But look back. Look at the scope. The scope. You looked at the standard, but look at the scope. It's all your behavior. Verse 15, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourself also in all your behavior. In all your behavior. Whether it's in your business behavior, whether it's in your academic behavior, whether it's in your political behavior, or whether it's in your social behavior, whatever behavior it is, in all of it, it is to emulate the holiness of God. And thereby, you will impact your world. And this is where Peter is going to go in chapter 2. He's going to say, Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing which they slander, You as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

34:38And that day of visitation is in this world as God draws them, as they sense the presence of God drawing them there. They will remember your good deeds, and they will respond favorably to God or glorify God. Your behavior is very important. I love this phrase, holy to the Lord. Real interesting development of it in the Old Testament. You remember in Exodus 28, 36, God gives these instructions: You shall make a plate of pure gold and shall engrave on it like the engravings of a seal, holy to the Lord. You shall fasten it on a blue cord, and it shall be on the turban, and it shall be at the front of the turban. So put this gold-plated engraving that says, holy to the Lord. It shall be on Aaron's forehead, and it shall always be on his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.

35:46Then, as you fast forward, the very closing scene in Zechariah, Messiah's reign has come. Zechariah 14:9, and the Lord will be king over all the earth in that day. The Lord will be the one and only, and his name the only one. And then he goes on to describe this reign. In verse 20 of chapter 14, in that day there will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, holy to the Lord. And the cooking pots in the Lord's house will be like the bowls before the altar. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord of hosts. The bells on the horses, that was something common. The cooking pots in the households, that was something common.

36:38And what's being pictured is there is coming a time when there will be no distinction between the mundane or the secular and the sacred because it will all be holy to the Lord. All your behavior, there is to be no distinction between the secular and the sacred in all of your behavior. It is all an expression of worship. All of your behavior in every circle, at every time, is to be holy to the Lord. And this is the second imperative command in this passage: Be holy yourselves. You must be holy because your God is holy.

37:22And those who reject this commandment, friends, are rejecting God. 1 Thessalonians 4. 7, Paul says it well, for God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. You see, the right focus is the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And if you have never experienced the first rays of this grace, you can today by calling upon him, by repenting of your sins, and putting your faith and trust in him.

38:08And if you have had his grace shown in your hearts, and you know that that grace is to motivate you to action by setting your mind on the right focus, by elevating the right standard in your personal character and moral conduct. And such grace is going to prompt you to action. It's going to prompt you not to be conformed to your former lusts, but to be conformed into the very image of your Creator. You know, as you look into the stars and their courses, and the planets, and the suns, and the moons, they all follow their order. They instinctively do what they're supposed to do because they are subjected to it.

39:07As do mere creatures of instinct, as do mere laws of nature, they conform because they are subjected to it. But one day, there is coming a time when the voluntary obedience of God's people will be just as instinctive as the obedience of the created order. And that is what God's Spirit is doing. This is, as Peter remarks in verse 2, the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is that you would obey Jesus Christ and that you would obey Him just like the bodies in motion, the planets, and that one day your voluntary obedience will be as instinctive as that of the created order. That you would so prefer God's ways over the ways of fallen man that it won't even be a temptation. That is what the Spirit of God is doing in His people, and it will bring about action.

40:16It's a regime change, and some people aren't going to like it. As 1 Peter's audience understood, wow, some things came upon them because they named the name of Christ. And what he's saying. And that should encourage you because great is that day of revelation, and you are in Him. Now set your hope upon that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your sanctifying work of your Spirit that gives us a desire to want to obey Jesus Christ. Father, and where our obedience is lacking, Father, forgive us. Father, I pray this morning that as a result of the word that's been spoken, Father, that you would awaken desires and a greater desire within this body to want your ways, to be less and less conformed by the fleshly desires that wage war against our soul, to more and more desire to be conformed to the beauty of your image. Father, and where we do not see the beauty of your image, I pray for the grace that you would give us eyes that we might see and that we might desire more and more of you in our lives. Now I pray by your Holy Spirit that you would accomplish that for which you sent this word forth this morning. In Jesus' name.