Holiness In The Midst Of Hostility

I Peter 2:11-12

Transcript

The two verses that we just read function as kind of a key transitional point in
this letter. In the preceding verses, Peter had just said these wonderful words
to the church in verses nine through 10. He said to them, you are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may
proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. Once you were not a people, now you are God's people. Once you
had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. And that language to
these non-Jewish people tells us that the church is the new Israel in the world
and that God has called them and set them apart so that they might proclaim the
excellencies of Jesus. And if you were reading, if you were one of these people
in Asia Minor hearing this letter read to you in the first century, think about
what the readers have heard so far. They've heard that they've been born again
to a living hope. They've heard that they had this incorruptible spiritual
inheritance waiting for them. They've been made living stones into the house
that God is building. And they've been called out of darkness into light.
They've been given these amazing and exalted spiritual privileges. And we've
seen that Christians are called to be holy. They've been set apart to proclaim
the excellencies of Jesus. And they've been set apart, but they have not been
taken out of this world. They're still living in the Roman Empire. And now this
is kind of where Peter shifts and starts to talk about how they are to function.
They need to know how to live in holiness in the midst of a hostile world. They
are anticipating the inheritance of the life to come, but they also need to know
how to live right now. So the letter's moving from the general to the specific.
And in the upcoming weeks, Peter's gonna address things like how we live in
society, how we relate to government, how we function as employees. When he
talks about servants and masters, the relationship of husbands and wives. But
the passage is now focusing on this theme of holiness in the midst of an
unbelieving world, holiness in the midst of hostility. This was a challenge to
these small, scattered churches across the Roman Empire. It's a challenge to us
today. Because we've been set apart, but we haven't been taken away. We're
called to be holy in the midst of. That means holiness in the workplace, or at
school, or with our neighbors, and with one another, or with our relatives. So
to help us get oriented to the passage, let me make a couple observations to
help us understand what's going on. There are two commands in this short passage
in verses 11 through 12. You'll notice one command is negative, and one command
is positive. So the negative one, verse 11, that negative command is abstain.
Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. It's
in verse 11. And the second, the positive command is keep. Keep your conduct
among the Gentiles honorable. So we're starting to get this idea. There are
things that we need to not do to live in holiness in the midst of this world.
Then there are things that we need to do positively to live holy in this world.
Both those commands, to abstain and to keep your conduct honorable, they flow
out of a self-identification. And by that I mean, Peter calls his audience
sojourners and exiles. If we are going to obey the commands to abstain and to
keep our conduct honorable, it will be because we understand our identity as
sojourners and exiles. Then the last thing I'll say is these commands also have
a purpose so that the Gentiles may see your good deeds and glorify God on the
day of visitation. So our big idea this morning is we are called to be holy in
the midst of hostility. So we've got four points that we're gonna move through.
First, that identity piece that grounds the commands. Then the two commands,
abstain and keep your conduct honorable. And then why it all matters. So that
the Gentiles may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Let's talk about identity first. You may have noticed by now as you read 1 Peter
that this is a letter packed with identity statements. He's just called these
people a chosen race, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people for his own
possession. And now he does it again. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and
exiles. The idea here is someone who loves these people strongly, that's Peter,
calling them beloved, is now strongly urging them. He's calling them sojourners
and exiles. So let's talk about what that means. We've seen in the letter
already how critical this is. When Peter opens the letter, he refers to his
audience as elect exiles. An exile is a person who lives in a place that's not
his true home. A sojourner is on a journey, on a pilgrimage, in process, on
their way to their true home. That is a phrase that's used other places in
scripture. But for example, when the writer of the Hebrews talks about Abraham
and Sarah, the writer says this in Hebrews 11, 13. These all died in faith, not
having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from
afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. So
Peter urges his readers to abstain from the passions of the flesh, and to keep
their conduct honorable, but he's pressing on them to do this. He's pressing on
them their identity as sojourners and exiles. I'll use an illustration to try
and explain why this is important and why that idea is connected. Couple years
ago our family went on vacation to Quebec, near Montreal. Probably you know that
Quebec is a French-speaking province. Sure enough, we went there. It turns out
they don't speak that much English. So I had some awkward moments with people
where I just kind of pointed and smiled, and we tried to get my point across.
And we did the best that we could for those six, seven days. But during the time
that we were there, I did not learn French. I did not start wearing a beret. We
were just passing through. We were only there for a week. It was a temporary
stay, so it wouldn't make sense for me to start adopting the local customs. If I
thought that Quebec was going to be my permanent home, then it would be right
for me to change my lifestyle on a deeper level. But if I'm just passing
through, I'm not gonna change my lifestyle to fit the local customs. Does that
make sense? When Peter lovingly urges his readers to abstain from the passions
of the flesh, it's based on this idea they're not permanent residents of this
world. They're sojourners and exiles. If you think that this world is all that
there is, and this is your permanent home, then this world really is a pleasure
grab, and you need to get all you can before you run out of time, money, or
willpower to do that. If that's what you think, then really why would you
abstain from anything? But if you understand your identity as a sojourner and an
exile, then you'll hear the command to abstain differently. It's not gonna get
easy, but you'll hear it differently. So with that in mind, let's talk about
this command to abstain. Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war
against your soul. So Peter's trying to provide these Christians with
instruction how to live as holy people in the midst of this hostile world. He
tells them abstain, abstain from the passions of the flesh. And if we're honest,
abstain's not a very fun word. It means to hold oneself back. It means to
distance yourself. If you had 15 minutes to daydream, you might think about what
you would like to do, what you would like to experience, who you might like to
become. You probably would not take that 15 minutes and start daydreaming about
what you would like to abstain from. But we are to abstain from the passions of
the flesh, and passions refer to desires. The flesh refers to the old sinful
man. It refers to the old nature, before you were indwelt by the Holy Spirit,
before you met Jesus Christ. It refers to the old way of doing things. It refers
to seeking satisfaction and happiness and pleasure outside of Christ. That's the
flesh, the flesh. Finding satisfaction, purpose, pleasure, all outside of
Christ. The passions of the flesh are referred to already in this letter. If you
look in chapter one, look at verse 14, it says, as obedient children, do not be
conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. And chapter two gets more
specific about what those passions were. Chapter two, verse one says, so put
away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Then
those passions get described in more detail in chapter four. This is where we
start to see even more about what we are to abstain from. Look at chapter four,
one through five. Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves
with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased
from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for
human passions, but for the will of God. For the time is past, the time that is
past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality,
passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With
respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood
of debauchery and they malign you, but they will give an account to him who is
ready to judge the living and the dead. So we are to abstain from sensuality,
physical lusts, sinful desires, that's pretty all-encompassing, drunkenness,
that would include, of course, excessive alcohol, but it would include gluttony
and excess of other various kinds, orgies, drinking parties, lawless idolatry,
and Peter says, to underline this, look at what the sinful passions, the
passions of the flesh are doing to you. Peter says it very clearly. They are
waging war against your soul. So let's be real clear. We're called to be holy in
a world that is not conducive or set up to pursue holiness. We're called to be
holy in the midst of a world that's not pursuing holiness at all. And the
temptation to seek fulfillment, happiness, pleasure, in the desires of the flesh
is everywhere. But Peter is making it very clear. The welfare of your soul is at
stake. Look at the end of the letter, 1 Peter 5, 8 through 9. Be sober-minded,
be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion,
seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same
kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the
world. What's at stake, according to Peter, is your soul. Those sinful desires
are waging war against your soul. If we thought, if there was something in our
physical body that we discovered was malignant, we would all of a sudden feel an
urgency to remove it. But we have a mistaken feeling sometimes that we can
entertain and allow malignant spiritual, we can allow malignant passions that
will harm and ultimately destroy our souls. When I read the passage, there's a
lot of, there's a lot of, like the idea of desires of the flesh is a big
category. But when I read this passage, I think about the countless
conversations I've had over the past 20 plus years with people who have
confessed to me their struggle or sometimes their full-on addiction to
pornography. I can remember sitting and talking with one young man, super
likable, very bright, great musician, dating a nice girl, active in our church,
taking, about to take a trip to Africa, this was a different church context. And
he confessed to me what he was looking at and the frequency that he was doing
it, and he hated it and he felt bad about it. But I did not sense that there was
a great resolve in him to change. And I don't remember if I was thinking about
this passage at the time, but I told him very, very directly, this is going to
kill you, you need to fight it. It did. He has since walked away from the
Christian faith. That is one example of countless ones, so many that I could
give you. We foolishly think that it's not necessary for us to full-on abstain,
but we can actually just kind of manage our sinful desires and just kind of
indulge periodically. But the scripture tells us all the way at the beginning of
the Bible that it just doesn't work that way. Remember what God said to Cain?
When God confronted Cain in Genesis 4, the Lord says to Cain, if you do well,
will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the
door. It's desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Sin's desire is
to rule over you. And the opposite of abstaining is to hold onto something. We
are very, very prone to think that we can individually manage our problems with
our sinful desires, with the passions of the flesh. And part of this is because,
you know, after you've overeaten, you're not hungry anymore. After you have
gotten drunk, you have a hangover. After you have looked at porn, you do not
feel good. And you think in that moment, I'm not going to do it again. We don't
feel the same way that we did before the temptation, after giving in. So
therefore, we think that we will not give in the next time. And we think that
serious, ongoing patterns can be overcome with minimal effort. But happily, I
have also seen and could give countless testimonies of many people break free
from the bondage of pornography or other sinful desires of the flesh. The ones
who break free have one thing in common. They get serious. And they take serious
and difficult action to make a hard break from the desires of the flesh. Look
again at chapter four, what Peter says in chapter four. He says this, since
therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, this is verse one, arm yourselves with
the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from
sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human
passions, but for the will of God. When Peter says cease from sin, he's not
talking about sinless perfection or moral perfection. But what he's saying is
that Jesus is our strength and our example. And abstinence is going to be
painful. But when one is willing to suffer, to abstain from the passions of the
flesh, suffer the pains of self-denial, it is as though the old control center
gets overridden. It's painful, but it's possible. And I wanna be clear, like we
don't fundamentally overcome any of our desires of the flesh by mere willpower.
But there's victory through Christ. And sometimes it's gonna be painful victory.
Victory through Christ, but he gives us his Holy Spirit. He empowers us. And we
are living in a culture that thinks abstinence, and I mean abstinence related to
any desire of the flesh, is impossible or unrealistic. We think culturally, if a
desire is strong enough, then it's unhealthy to deny it. Or that we have to
inevitably give in to it, or that it would be even inauthentic, or less than
genuine to deny ourselves our passions. But if we're sojourners and exiles,
indwelt by the Spirit of God, we don't need to live according to, or dictated
by, the passions of the flesh. Paul says this in Galatians, he says, I say walk
by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the
desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are
against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing
the things that you want to do. The Holy Spirit empowers us to live, to honor
Christ, and not be dictated by the passions of the flesh. Now let me conclude
what I'm saying about abstaining, noting that abstaining, or abstinence, is not
Gnosticism. What I mean by that is Gnosticism is this kind of spiritual
worldview that says there are two dual realities going on in the world, there's
the physical world, and there's the spiritual world, and the spiritual is good,
and the physical is bad. That's not a Christian view. We do not escape the
passions of the flesh by becoming people that are hyper-spiritual, by doing
nothing but reading the Bible and praying, and escaping into this world of
hyper-spirituality. Peter was not calling these people to become monks. The
physical desires that we have are given to us by our creator, and we are
embodied people. So all of God's good gifts, food, drink, relationships, sex,
entertainment, they can all be enjoyed because we serve a God who richly gives
us all things to be enjoyed. We don't spiritualize ourselves past those desires.
However, we can only enjoy those things when we see them as his good gifts, and
we enjoy them in the context that he's laid out for us. It's the flesh, it's the
old man, the old way of doing things that says I have to have those things the
way I want them, the when I want them, whenever I want them, how I want them,
and if I can't, then I cannot be satisfied. That's idolatry. That's being ruled
by the passions of the flesh. You may know right now in your life exactly what
those are, or you may need, as Tom prayed this morning, to pray Psalm 139 and
ask God to search that out in you. But there's a second command in this short
section and it has to do with the way that we conduct ourselves in the midst of
an unbelieving world. We are to abstain, that's the negative command. The
positive command has to do with our conduct. Keep your conduct among the
Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may
see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So conduct refers
to your pattern of life, who you are day to day, the way that you behave.
Peter's audience is Gentile. These are non-Jewish readers. But once again, he's
using this new Israel language. So in this sense, Gentile refers to the
unbelieving world. We are to keep our way of life honorable, our behavior
honorable. And there's this amazing truth that's embedded in here. It's that
your conduct has the power to point people to Jesus. It actually does. It has
the power to point people to Jesus. So there's a little bit, I wanna be careful
with how I say that. Most of you have probably heard before the quote that's
probably misattributed to St. Francis to preach the gospel at all times and when
necessary use words. It's not a helpful quote. It's misleading because the
gospel, by definition, requires words. It's a message about what God has done
for us in Jesus Christ. You cannot preach the gospel without using words. So we
need to actually proclaim that in his great love, God sent his son Jesus into
the world. And Jesus is the only one who lived perfectly and did not break God's
law. And he died on the cross, taking the penalty of our sins as our substitute
and atone for our sins and was raised to life by the power of God. And one day
he will come again. And we can have a restored relationship with God through
faith in Jesus Christ. That needs to be said out loud. However, what's in mind
here is people who have publicly identified with Jesus. So the message of the
gospel is out there, so to speak. And now the conduct of these believers, of the
church, is going to amplify the message of the gospel or it's not. So like if
you look at, for example, what chapter three says, verse one says, Likewise
wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the
word, they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives. We'll deal
with that passage in detail in a couple weeks. But in this case, there's a
believing woman married to an unbelieving man. The man does not obey the word of
God, but he knows that his wife does. And he knows that his wife is a Christian.
So in that setting, the wife does not need to share the gospel with her husband
100 more times. He's heard it. She actually needs to demonstrate with her
behavior that her hope is in God and her good conduct will actually function as
an apologetic for the truth of the gospel. Again, what's assumed here is that
the Christian witness of the gospel has been given. This is talking about people
who have publicly identified with Jesus, and once you've done that, in your
school, in your workplace, with your relatives, people are going to notice how
you behave. There's a different level of scrutiny that your life is going to
take on, that your life is going to invite. If you share the gospel with
someone, with say a coworker, they may or may not respond, but you can be sure
that they will watch you. This is not talking, so this is not talking about
people who think that if they're just good employees and good neighbors and are
kind to people and show up to work on time, that maybe in 20 years or so,
someone will ask them a question about their faith. The gospel does need to be
proclaimed, but our conduct has the power to point people to Jesus. And at the
same time, Peter tells us, we can expect criticism for our good conduct. Your
coworker probably secretly hopes that you will look like a hypocrite, because
then he or she will not have to think about what you said. Peter says, when they
speak against you as evildoers. When they speak against you as evildoers.
However, we can also expect to gain a kind of grudging respect through our good
conduct. Good conduct, holy conduct, consistent conduct, has the effect of kind
of placing a pebble in the shoe of the unbeliever. It has the effect of making
some people examine their lives and assumptions. It has the power to underline
the truth of the gospel. And here's the purpose that grounds all this. Here's
the purpose for abstaining from the passions of the flesh. Here's the purpose
for keeping our conduct honorable. This is what it's all for, verse 12. So that
when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and
glorify God on the day of visitation. The purpose of good conduct is so that the
unbelieving world might see and glorify God on the day when he visits. That's
how much it matters. And when he says this, Peter's clearly referencing Jesus'
Sermon on the Mount, which this is kind of amazing to think about. He had been
an eyewitness to 30 years earlier. And in that sermon, Jesus had said, "'You are
the light of the world. "'A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. "'Nor do people
light a lamp and put it under a basket, "'but on a stand, and it gives light to
all in the house. "'In the same way, let your light so shine before others "'so
that they may see your good works "'and glorify your Father who is in heaven.'"
Nobody is saved by their good works. We cannot save anyone by our good works.
However, the beauty of the kingdom of God is seen in the transformed lives of
the citizens of the kingdom. And how often do you talk to people who say that
the hypocrisy in the church is what pushed them away? Now granted, very often
that's just an excuse from people who do not wanna submit to the authority of
God. But many people, many people have experienced, have experienced a massive
disconnect between what they hear proclaimed and taught about and what they
experience in their actual interactions with Christians. And that is
disconcerting and it's damaging to people. Our lives, individually, corporately,
are meant to reflect the beauty of life under God's rule and God's reign so that
when God visits, the unbeliever may glorify God. Most of us, when we read that
phrase, we probably think about the return of Jesus when we think about the day
of visitation. This doesn't have to be the ultimate day of Jesus' return when we
read glorify God on the day of visitation. It could be the day when Jesus
returns to judge the living and the dead. Or it could simply be the day when God
visits. A day when God breaks in and intervenes just on an individual soul
level. It could be the day when God breaks into the heart of one sinner and
calls them to repentance and faith. The day of visitation could be today for any
sinner. But God will visit. And we are called to live in holiness in the midst
of hostility. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the power of your word and as
we've heard it, Lord, I pray that we would deeply internalize this idea that we
are sojourners and exiles. And that you would empower us by your Holy Spirit to
abstain from the passions of the flesh and to keep our conduct honorable. And
Lord, would you help us recognize wherever we go this week, whatever situation
that you place us in? That we have the power through our conduct to point people
towards Jesus. Lord, I pray that our church would function as that light
individually, as households, in our community, so that many people who do not
believe would glorify you on the day when you visit. We pray for that in Jesus'
name, amen. Thank you for listening. Would you stand, Raul? And we are gonna
respond to God's word by singing together. Thanks God.