02 Living Hope in a Broken World (1 Peter 1:1-13)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast on the book of First Peter. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'm really glad you joined us today. Well, welcome. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the second talk in our series on First Peter, but the first time we're actually going to get into the book. Last week we just looked at an introduction. Who was Peter and what did it mean to be apostle? Today we're going to look at 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 through 13. So in the field of psychology, there's this term called locus of control. And it refers to the extent to which a person believes they can control the world around them. So people have either an internal locus of control or an external locus of control. And if you have a strong internal locus of control, you think that the outcome of your life, the events in your life are under your control. So they result from your own hard work, your abilities, your skill, your effort. If you're have a strong external locus of control, you tend to attribute the outcome of events to things you can't control or external circumstances like fate or luck or chance. So if you fail an exam and you're external, you think, oh, it was just too hard, everybody would have failed. If you fail and you're an internal, you think, oh, I didn't study enough. Now, most people are neither entirely one nor the other. So while there are a few outliers, most people lean to one side or the other. It's not, it's a spectrum. So I bring that up not to debate personality theory, but to point out that the one thing they agree on, psychologists, is there's this locus of control. There's this big picture that you believe and it changes how you see the world around you. So if you're an external, you view it one way, if you're an internal, you view it one the other way. But you have this locus of control or this big picture. And what I'm going to argue this fall is that 1 Peter is about that big picture, the locus of control. So to stretch my analogy, he is writing to give us a gospel locus of control. And what he wants is for us to have such a thorough understanding of the gospel that it changes the way we view the world. It changes how we act and what we think. So I would argue that he's not primarily primarily a moralist. He's not writing to give us a list of here's good behavior, here's bad behavior, here's do's and don'ts, here's how to how to handle a certain situation. But he's writing to make sure that whatever situation we're in, we have the right perspective on it. So it's grounded in what we're gonna see today as a living hope, this thorough understanding of the gospel. And if you have the a gospel locus of control, then you can face anything. So we have a lot of verses to cover today. Those of you that don't know me, you'll find out really quickly my favorite thing to do is just walk through the verses section by section, and that's what we're gonna do today. So if you have your Bibles or your study guide or the text, and we'll turn to 1 Peter chapter 1, and we're gonna look at 1 through 13 today. We're gonna start with the greeting, which is 1 and 2. Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bethania, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. May grace and peace be multiplied to you. So this is a typical salutation for a New Testament letter. New Testament letters, you're probably familiar with, they usually begin from X to Y, and then greetings, some kind of greetings. And that's what we have here. So we know that this is a letter from Peter. He's an apostle of Jesus Christ, and we talked about who he was last week and what it means to be an apostle. And it's written to the elect exiles in this region, and then the greeting is may grace and peace be multiplied to you. So just a reminder from last week: an apostle is someone who is sent with authority. So he was given the authority by Jesus to speak about Jesus, to speak for Jesus, and on his behalf, like we would think of an ambassador today. The cities he mentions were part of Asia Minor, which is modern Turkey. And we don't really know how Peter was connected to that area. Like we know, for instance, that Paul went to Corinth. He founded a church in Corinth, so we know something about his relationship to Corinth when we study Corinthians. We know something about Paul's relationship to Thessalonica, but we don't know how Peter was connected to this area. We don't know if he ever visited them or he just wrote because they needed encouragement. And he identifies his readers as aliens or strangers or exiles, those outsiders in the dispersion. And the New American Standard translated aliens who are chosen, and I like that phrase better. And that theme of being aliens or being sojourners is gonna run throughout the letter. We're gonna see him refer back to this idea that believers are different and that we are different from the world around us, and there's a sense in which we are outsiders even if we're living in the same place we grew up in our entire lives. He's gonna argue that we no longer fit, that we have changed and we're different now. There's some debate whether he's writing to a largely Jewish audience or a largely Gentile audience. If you read through the letter, you can see verses that indicate one or the other. For instance, 212, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, kind of points to a Jewish audience. On the other hand, um 14, as obedient children, don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Um suggests a Gentile audience. So there's all kinds of debate. Who was his primary audience? My personal opinion, which is worth nothing, but I'll tell you anyway, is that he's writing to believers of all sorts. And that the distinction that's important to him is this distinction of being an alien because you're a believer. So they're outsiders, not for political reasons. They're not outsiders because they are Jews who are outside of Jerusalem or Gentiles who have converted to the faith. They are outsiders because they are believers, and that marks them out and makes them different. And he's gonna develop that a lot. We're gonna see what that means with ever increasing clarity as we go through the letter. Then verse 2 so believers who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling with his blood. Right off the bat, we get foreknowledge, and we're not gonna get into the foreknowledge debate, um, partly because we have way too many verses to cover, but mostly because I think his emphasis in verse two is not on how we are chosen, but what we are chosen for. And so that's what I want to spend our time on. That he's not really getting into the hows and whys of how God chose us or who chose first, but the fact that we are chosen means something. It changes us, it gives us an identity that marks us as different. And Peter is concerned with that. What has God chosen us for? So let's look at that. He says, We're chosen in sanctification for obedience and sprinkling. Well, that clarifies it, right? So let's figure that one out. We're gonna start with sanctification. There's a sense in which you can divide the world in two parts, the holy and the profane. So the stuff that belongs to God is holy. There's another big theological word there. The stuff that belongs to God is holy, the stuff that does not belong to God is pr is profane. So to be sanctified is to be set apart in that which belongs to God. So we are set apart as belonging to God and marked as his children. That's the first aspect of sanctification. We are now bully now belong to God. The second part is we are now being made like him in character and more moral, um, being made holy. So we are being made morally different than the profane world around us. We now have a heart that desires righteousness, that longs for the things of God, that's committed to the things of God, and the Spirit is working in our lives, leading us toward obedience to make us more like Christ. So to be sanctified is to be set apart as belonging to God and start this process of becoming more like him in character. Now he's got this sprinkling and obedience, and we've got to figure that out. That language comes from the Old Testament. And in your, if you did your homework, you I had you look at Exodus 24, which is uh describes Moses sprinkling, taking the blood of a ram, sprinkling it on the altar and then on the people. And in that passage, the people of Israel made a covenant. They pledged, we're gonna be obedient, we're gonna believe all the things that you have commanded us to do, we're gonna try to do them. And Moses sprinkles this blood on the altar and then on the people. And that's kind of like signing a contract, like we would think today. That is a sign that we have made this pledge and we intend to keep it. We belong to God, we have submitted ourselves to obey God and his covenant. And then in the New Testament, that language comes up again. In the upper room, Jesus refers to his blood as the blood of the covenant. So the idea is that God has chosen believers to belong to him, he set them apart to be sanctified, and the mark of that is we are sanctified by the blood of Christ. So what gets us, what marks us as gods, what brings us into his family is that we are now we have trust in Jesus Christ, his death, resurrection, and what he did for us on the cross, and then we are metaphorically sprinkled with his blood as a to signify that belonging. So we learn in the greeting this letter's from Peter. He's an apostle, he has the authority to speak for and about Jesus. He's writing to people who are living as aliens in a and strangers among unbelievers, and they are aliens because they now belong to God and they have been changed as a result. And that theme's gonna come up, this idea of being aliens is gonna come up over and over. So let's move into the heart of the letter. That's the greeting. I think 3 through 13 functions both as the introduction and the foundation for the rest of the letter. And as I said, I think his purpose is to give them the right perspective on their situation. They're facing hardship, they have difficult choices to make in response to that hardship, and he wants to give them the right perspective to make those choices. So as he writes this, the persecutions under the Roman Emperor Nero are in their early stages. And if you've studied anything about that, it was a horrific time for believers. So at first, Christians were considered this rather strange, weird cult of Judaism. It was like this odd sect that, and people thought, well, there was just kind of this infighting in the Jewish faith. But then they, as they grew in their faith, it became more and more obvious they don't fit into the Jewish world because they think the Messiah's already come, and they don't fit into the Gentile world. And there was this climate of everybody started hating them. So in 64 AD, the city of Rome burned for six days and seven nights. Three-fourths of the city was leveled by the fire. And it was rumored that Nero started the fire himself in order to burn down all the slums and the ghettos so that he could build a great monument to his name. So when that rumor started taking off, he looked for a scapegoat to blame it on, to deflect all the criticism against him, and he found that in the Christians. He said, Oh, they did it. And everyone was ready to believe it because the Christians were universally hated. So this is the time when Christians were thrown to the lions in the arenas, when they were burned alive as human torches, and just you can read about their all manner of horrible atrocities. So Peter's writing before the fire, but the handwriting is on the wall. The climate is in place in which Christians can be blamed, and everyone will say, Oh yeah, it has to be them. They're the ones we all don't like. So the I think he can see there's persecutions coming, and he wants to give them this perspective. How are you going to get through that? How are you going to respond? You're going to have really difficult choices to make. How are you going to face it? So he's writing to give that gospel locus of control, to extend my analogy, to say, what is your hope? What are you counting on? Where are you headed in life? What gives you meaning and perspective? And if you get that right, then you can face whatever circumstances come your way. All right, so let's look at this. Verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So God is blessed. God is worthy to be praised for everything he is, and one of the reasons he's worthy to be praised is what he has done for us. In his mercy, he reached out to us. He caused us to be born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So if God hadn't intervened, we'd be lost. We would be without hope. We'd be spiritually dead. We would one day face God's judgment, and we would fail. But because God is rich in mercy, he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place, to pay the penalty for our sins, to redeem us from our sins, and trust in him makes us God's children. So he has shown us mercy. He didn't respond in wrath, he could have. He didn't respond in judgment, he could have. Rather, he responded in grace and forgiveness by sending Christ to give us this new birth. So we were spiritually dead, now we're spiritually alive, and we have this living hope. And he describes this as new birth, and that's probably pretty familiar language to most of you. It's in just about every book of the New Testament. And the idea is that if we were born, it's as if we'd been born a second time. So we were hostile to God, we were blind to the truth, we thought we understood, but we didn't understand. Now our eyes have been opened, now we see the truth, now we understand, now we want to follow God instead of rejecting Him. And that new orientation is so radical, it's such a big radical change that it's as if we've been born a second time. So there's a willingness to believe God where before there was hostility. There's a longing to follow Him and to trust Him where before there was rebellion. So it's as if we've been given this new birth. And when being given new birth, we've been given a new life, and we might be tempted to think, well, this is it. Now we have this new life, and that's a big deal. But Peter says it's not the biggest deal. The biggest deal is this living hope. It's so this being born again is not the end of the process, it's the beginning of the process. And there's something we're waiting for that has not yet come about. It's this living hope. So we're still waiting for it. It changes, there is the change that has happened is real, but there's more to come. So we're living with hope, this confident expectation that there is more to come. Now, hope in the New Testament is not wishful thinking. So if I say, Oh, I hope it doesn't rain tonight, I'm expressing a wish or a desire that may or may not come to pass, and I have no clue whether it will or not. That's the way we use hope in English. But in the New Testament, hope was never wishful thinking. It was something I expected to happen, I had confidence that would happen, and I eagerly awaited for it, waited for it to happen. So I would hope for Christmas Day. It will happen, I expect it to happen, I am absolutely confident it's coming, and I eagerly and joyously awaited. But what we're waiting for is not Christmas, it's what he says in verse 4: our inheritance. We have a living hope to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, and kept in heaven for you. So our present situation is having been born again, we are now heirs, and as heirs we stand to inherit. We have been promised something that we don't yet have. So as an heir, I belong to the family. What is my father's will one day be mine, but it is not mine yet. My place in the family gives me this confident expectation that my future is secure, that the inheritance is coming. So I may be in a tight spot now, but I know in the future I'm going to inherit something truly valuable. And he tells us this inheritance is better than anything we might inherit in the world. So it's imperishable. It can't be lost to death, destruction, or taxes. It is undefiled, it's not corrupted, it's not stained, it's not compromised or blemished in any way, and it's unfading. It will not lose its value, it won't, inflation won't wear it away, it won't erode, it won't get worse over time, and it is reserved in heaven for you. So it's kept for you, it's waiting for you. It's not here yet, it is in the age to come, but you have this confident, eager expectation that it's coming. So verse 5, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. So this inheritance is kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. So that's the best news. I think it's up to God to get you there. God is guarding you, God is making sure you're going to get this salvation, this if you by making you a person of faith. So it is through your faith that God is guarding you. Your faith is the manifestation or one of the manifestations of his power at work in your life. So as you grow in faith, as your faith strengthens and matures, that is one way God makes sure you will arrive at your inheritance. And this fits with what Peter's already said about new birth. It's the mercy of God that reached out to us, gave us this new birth. That new birth is the making of our heart, making our hearts new so that we are people of faith. And as we grow in faith, that is evidence that God is at work in my life, strengthening me. And if I have faith, then that inheritance is mine, that hope is mine. All the promises that we see in the New Testament are mine. He has this strange phrase for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We tend to equate the word salvation with conversion, and sometimes it is, that's exactly what the New Testament is talking about, the moment of conversion. But sometimes it's talking about more than that. To be saved is to be rescued, to be rescued from something in particular. So right now I've been rescued from God's wrath, from my hardness of heart and from guilt. So the process has begun, but there's more to be rescued from. There's more that I'm waiting for. There's a further rescue coming. So there's still a final judgment that is coming, and I have to pass through that. I have to be rescued from that. And I still need to be saved from all the effects of sin and the presence of sin in my life and in the world around me. And all of that rescue is still in front of us. That's the salvation yet to come. That's what's going to be revealed one day. So now you may be looking at that going, okay, that sounds great, but where does that leave me now? What do I do today when life is hard? And what about tomorrow when things don't go my way? So that's what he's about to answer. Look at six and seven. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So gold is the kind of thing that you can test with fire. If someone comes up to you and they have a block of gold and they said, This is the real deal, it's 24 karat gold, how do you know for sure it's pure gold? Well, you take it through the fire. You measure it and you see how much it weighs, then you take it through the fire, and then you measure it again. And if you have as much the second time that you had after the fire that's as that you have them, let me see if I can say that. If you have as much as you started with, then you've got 24 karat gold. If you have less than you started with, then something got burned off. There were impurities in it that was filler and wasn't real gold. So that's how they're measuring it. And that's the analogy he's using. Is that God takes us through these trials that test our faith like fire? And the fire is used to see how much is the real thing. So the issue being tested is do I have faith or not? Has this new birth actually happened in me? Has faith been born? So the fire comes, the pressure mounts, and faith remains at the end of it. And that's the analogy. That the trials God takes us through are like this testing fire. Now notice what is not being tested. The trial is not testing, am I worthy for salvation? It is not a test of my character, am I a good person, a patient person? It is not a test of how nice I am, how patient I am, how good I am. Sorry, the results of that test are in, and we all failed. So that's not the test. The test is not, am I worthy? I'm not worthy. The test is not, am I good enough? I'm not good enough. We are all sinners, our characters are flawed, we are selfish, every corner of our being was marked by sin. We all fall short of the glory of God, so we are broken sinners, trapped in our sin, unable to change ourselves apart from the blood of Christ and the grace of God. We have no hope. So the test is not am I worthy of salvation? Test is over. The test in the thing in question now is do I have real, genuine saving faith or not? Has that changed? Has that new birth happened? And knowing that I have genuine saving faith, Peter says that's more precious than all the gold in the world. Because gold seems very permanent, it seems durable, you can take it through a fire and it survives. But there's a fire coming in which not even gold will survive. So even though gold seems valuable and permanent now, and ultimately it's going to burn away in this coming fire. But one thing will last that coming fire, and that is faith, a tested faith. A faith that has been shown through a trial, to be test tested through a trial and shown to be the real deal, and that's worth all the gold in the world. Because that living hope, that inheritance he just talked about, that comes to the person of faith. That inheritance and that faith is going to survive even the coming fire and it will last. So it may seem like having all the gold in the world is a great valuable thing, but it's not nearly as valuable as having a faith that has been tested and shown to be worthy. Because the person of faith stands to inherit something that will last eternally. That is a fundamentally New Test important New Testament concept. I think it's hard to find a book in the New Testament that doesn't either directly or indirectly talk about trials testing our faith. It is just God's purpose in this life that take us through difficult situations that force us to ask the question, who am I really trusting? What am I counting on? Where am I looking for for my hope? Who is going to get me through this? Those basic questions of life that show that I have faith. And how is faith proved? It survives. So I'm faced with those questions. Am I going to follow God's way or the world's way? Who am I really counting on? Am I going to set my heart and my hope on the things of God or not, even when it costs me? Now I may fail, I may be disobedient, I may have made the wrong choice and looked foolish and done something stupid or selfish, but if at the other end of the process I say, I really want to do it God's way, I regret that, I repent of that, I want to be different, then that is a tested faith. So God is going to put you in situations that cause you to grow. And that's what Christianity is all about, I think. Now, as we go through the book, Peter's going to have some very specific trials in mind. He's going to talk about being maligned by our unbelieving Gentiles, having to deal with a corrupt government, with unjust masters, and so on. But trials come in all shapes and sizes. It's not just the ones he's going to give us. It's not just the big health and wealth issues or the tragedies of life, though those do obviously force us to choose whether I believe God or not, but it could be anything. It could be maybe I will appear foolish in someone else's eyes. Maybe I have to look different or dress different or speak differently, or maybe I lose a friend or give up the treasures or the rewards of this world. All those things can be tests of my faith. Will I stay chaste before marriage or faithful after? Will I lie on a job application? Will I cheat on a test? All of those can be questions of who am I really counting on? Where am I placing my hope? Will I strive for money or beauty above everything else? What am I looking toward? What do I think is the purpose in life? So any situation can be a test of my faith of who do I trust. So then he tells us proving our faith will ultimately result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ in verse 7. And there are two kinds of glory I think he could be talking about here: praise, glory, and honor. There are two ways to think about that. I'm not sure it matters which one you choose, they're both true and they both happen at the same time, but I'll give you both of them. One way to think about what he means by praise, glory, and honor is the desire I have to be freed from my sin and my selfishness and my corruption and become a glorious and honorable person. So I think all of us have a certain amount of self-hatred because we recognize we're sinful. We're not the people we want to be. I don't want to be conflicted, I don't want to be embarrassed by the selfish words I said yet again, or my thoughtless actions. So part of what I'm looking for is that loss of shame, getting back to Genesis 2, where we can be naked and not ashamed because we're worthy, because we're not flawed, we're not selfish, we're not sinful, we're not defiled. So being in that state where I deserve an appropriate measure of praise and glory and honor because God has made me that kind of a person. So that's one idea he could be talking about. The other one is that he could be talking about the kind of praise and glory and honor that comes from hearing, well done, good and faithful servant. So getting to the end of the process of standing before Jesus and saying, You made it, good job, well done. That kind of praise and glory and honor. And I think all of us long to hear that. So to remain steadfast and persevere in the faith. And both of those are appropriate desires for believers. Peter could mean either, as I said, I'm not sure it matters which one you pick. They're both part of the inheritance that has been promised to us, and they will both result from finally being freed from sin. So he gives us this interesting contrast, though, that we are to rejoice in our trials even though we are made sorrowful or distressed by them. So we have this tension of we're both joyful and sorrowful. And he's not saying that the trials you go through are a piece of cake. You know, not a big deal. You can be happy in the midst of them. That is not what he's saying. He says trials are making you sorrowful. It's actually a very strong word. It's grieved, it's distressed, it's weighed down. So he's not, this is not making you happy. This is this is a trial. This hurts. This is pain and your and grief in your soul. But he says, even in the midst of that, there's a kind of joy that you can have. And that tension is important to recognize. I think we err if we emphasize one over the other, if we emphasize the the grieving at the expense of the joy, or the joy at the expense of the grieving. So I think that tension takes us into verses eight and nine, because it's where he's going to expand on it. Let's look at those. Though you have not seen him, you love him, though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. So this is the kind of joy he's describing, the kind that can coexist with suffering and sorrow. And this tension of, I haven't physically seen Jesus, but I love him. I haven't, I don't see him now. He's not physically present with me, but I believe in him. So there's this tension of, I believe, but I don't have the physical evidence right in front of me. And this, it mirrors that tension of there is sorrow and yet there is joy. And he's picturing people who suffer, but yet they are not broken. They're not weighed down. They may groan under the pressures of life, they may feel like at any moment they're going to break, but ultimately they're going to come out the other end with their faith intact. And that hope gives me confidence. That hope of the inheritance, the promises of being freed ultimately from my sin and seeing my Savior face to face and being welcomed into his kingdom, those give me an anchor to stand on. They give me something to cling to when the storm hits and threatens to knock me over. So we don't see Jesus physically now, but we love him. We don't have him physically present, but we keep on believing. And ultimately we're gonna then rejoice with this joy inexpressible. So we will pass through that coming fire in here. Well done. And I think there's part of what he's saying is your our job now is to cling to that. That's the big picture. That's the gospel locus of control that we're supposed to hang on to with all our hearts. How are we doing on time? Okay, we're gonna move on. So let's look at 10 through 12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you in these things that now have been announced to you, through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Now he steps back and he gives this historical perspective, and he says, basically, look, God stepped into history and he explained himself. So back in the Old Testament, he explained himself to the prophets, and the prophets announced his message to the Jewish people, and they were given this ability to say, Thus says the Lord, and reveal what God wanted them to say. But the Old Testament prophets came to understand that there were things they were describing that they were not going to live to see. So sometimes they were talking about the coming of Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, the giving of the Spirit, and all of that was in their future. They were not going to live to see it, and they longed to live to see it. They wanted to see it fulfilled. And Peter is saying these were big monumental events in redemptive history. The coming of Christ, the resurrection, the ascension, the giving of the Spirit, and they happened in your lifetime. You've seen them, you've heard about them. God gave you the privilege of knowing more fully than the people that lived back then. Christ has come, he announced the gospel, he explained it and revealed it in a more in a greater, deeper way than was understood previously, and you have the privilege of knowing that, of participating fully in it and understanding it. And that's what the prophets long to see, they long to experience. Now, for us, I think, 2,000 years after Christ came, we take that for granted. You know, it's like, oh yeah, we've been there, done that, heard that. We know about the resurrection, we know about the significance of the cross. We may have grown up knowing that. But Peter's perspective is you are lucky to be living at a time when that has been fully revealed and we are there. So that's what he steps back to give them. Then he's gonna wrap it up with verse 13, and we're gonna hang out on this verse quite a while. It's it's closes the introduction and introduces the next section. So I really debated: should it be today's talk or should it be next week? Because it really properly belongs in both sections. But I'm selfish, so I took it for me. Sorry, Libby. So let's look at 113. 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. So he says, if these things are really true, these things he's just been talking about, you have a living hope, you've been born again thanks to the mercy of God, you have this inheritance that is priceless beyond all measure, and it's coming to you. What do you do now? What should you do? That's his therefore. If all of that is true, what should you do? And basically he says, get serious. Stop messing around. Be like warriors preparing for battle, where you gird the loins of your mind. So the image there is a Roman warrior with they wore these tunics, and when he prepared for battle, he'd reach through his legs and grab the tunic and tuck it into his belt so that his legs were free and he could run unencumbered into the battle. And that's the image he's using with this. Well, it's the ESV says preparing your minds for actions, but the in some translations it's gird your mind for actions. It's that image of the warrior. So he's basically saying, free your mind from distractions and desires that would entangle you and encumber you, and focus on the hope that is before you. So free yourself from all the distractions of the world and be ready to do what is right, to do what you need to do in the fight. So the idea of being sober-minded, the person who gets drunk is fogging their mind with drink and distraction. The drunk is giving themselves over to confusion, distraction. And he's saying, be sober-minded, be clear, be focused, realize that there are important things at stake and keep your mind clear. How do you stay focused? You set your hope completely on the grace that is to come. That's how you do it. You set your hope on the gospel, or you have a gospel locus of control to continue my analogy. Lean on the gospel with all your mind, all your heart. So a mind that sees clearly is hoping for the right thing. And then we make choices based on that hope, based on what I think is important, where I'm going, what the purpose of trials is. So if I'm going to see clearly, I have to be hoping for the right thing and pursuing something that is truly worth having. To set my hope on something temporal is foolishness. Something that will burn in the end is just futile. So he's saying, what Jesus is bringing you, that inheritance is worth having. That inheritance is not going to fail you. That inheritance is reliable, it's valuable, it will not disappoint you. And if you don't have your mind set on that, your mind is foggy and your vision is cloudy, you're pursuing the wrong things. So that hope of freedom from sin, of being made glorious, as in lack of shame, lack of guilt, the forgiveness of my sins once and for all and completely in all aspects, and the mercy and grace. Now, if that seems irrelevant to you as you face tomorrow, I would suggest maybe you don't understand the depth of your sin. Because the New Testament is pretty clear that our inheritance is that pearl of great price, that being made holy as God is holy is the one goal worth pursuing. It is those who hunger and thirst for righteousness that will find it, who long for the release from sin that will be rewarded, and nothing else will ultimately meet the desires of our hearts. Really, nothing. So let me give you an analogy to try to explain this. Imagine that there's a person at rock bottom of life. Maybe she has a business and the business has gone bankrupt and everything has fallen apart and they've lost everything, and you know, homeless, bankrupt, penniless, all their friends of abandoned men, just truly rock bottom of life. And I come up and I say to her, Persevere and I'll take you to Disneyland. Well, Disneyland might be fun, but it's not really going to solve my problem. I mean, that particular encouragement doesn't mean a lot because it doesn't speak to the real problem as she understands it. So my bankrupt person needs more than a vacation. They need a total life makeover. They need something to change so that their life's work prospers and to mean something to be a success and to maybe build the business again. So Disneyland may speak to the rest and relaxation we might need, but not my deepest fundamental desires. And I think for a lot of us, the gospel is like Disneyland. We we take it for granted. It's like it sounds great, but it's not really a big deal. You know, going to heaven, being with Jesus, yeah, that'll be fun someday. But right now, I've got these other important things. And that's the perspective Peter's trying to change. He's saying, if that's for your perspective, if the gospel seems remote and like a promise of something that I don't really care about or I don't really need, then you have the wrong perspective. You have the wrong locus of control or big picture because we've lost sight of what the real problem is. See, we think our real problem is uh will be solved by things like financial security or circumstances changing or coming to an end or health or beauty or romance or the perfect marriage or perfect grades or the perfect career or being a perfect parent or whatever it is. We think that if I just had that, that would solve my problem. And those may be good gifts from God, but that's not the big problem. The big problem, to quote Jonathan Edwards, is we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. There is a fire coming in which nothing will survive. It's all gonna burn and we are gonna walk right into the midst of it. And the only way to survive that fire is having a tested, genuine faith in Jesus Christ. Now you've probably it's a very common experience to get exactly what you wanted in life, and then you find out, wait, this isn't so great. This has problems, this won't last. It death takes it away, or it gets defiled, or it gets corrupted, or it's or you or you say something thoughtless and you break it or whatever, it's perishable, whatever it is. And that's part of what Peter's point is. Whatever you manage to scrape together in this life, you're gonna lose because that's really not what it's all about. Nothing in this world is gonna fulfill you the way the gospel will fulfill you. So all your basic human desires will find their fulfillment in the kingdom of God. So freedom from death, freedom from guilt, freedom from sin, that means freedom from everything that robs us of fulfillment now. So if you think, oh, you want love and security, you're gonna be loved and loved deeply in return in the kingdom of God. If you want security, you will be unshakably secure in the kingdom of God. Meaning and purpose, your lives will have great meaning and glorious purpose in the kingdom of God. We will know complete peace of mind, contentment, rest. That's all part of the living hope. And that is to be found in the inheritance God has promised. And it's what He has in store for us. So the solution, the big problem is our sin, and the solution is faith in Jesus, that is our ticket to the kingdom of God. And I think that's his foundations. That's why he says, setting your hope on that. That's what's important. That brings clarity to your mind, that gives you the right perspective on the circumstances you face, because you've set your hope on something truly valuable and unshakable. But we get so distracted by the things of the world, we we sometimes we just don't get it. But the process is we're gonna get it. The trials are gonna burn it into us, so to speak. Because God in his mercy has started this process, the ball is rolling, and he will make sure it gets complete. So the reality of this new birth, this new faith, that started the process, it's in motion, the process has begun, and the trials are taking me to that end that I want. And that's the perspective to have, I think, on trials is not how am I well, sometimes we have to ask the question, how am I going to get through tomorrow? But to remember, this is taking me someplace I really want to go. As hard as it is, and they are hard, and I know some of you in this room are going through awfully hard and difficult trials. I don't, I'm not trying to minimize how hard they are, but there is a point to them. They are not futile. This is not random chance, this is not a vindictive God after you. There is a truly wonderful, glorious point and a purpose behind them. And that's what we want to cling to when life gets hard is where is this taking me? What is the hope that this is going to bring about? Because if I have faith, then my hope is secure. If I have faith, then I stand to inherit all the promises of the gospel that will, the freedom from death, freedom from guilt, freedom from sin, the things that will ultimately fulfill me. Sometimes we're just too foolish to see it. You know, God has to pry our fingers out of the mud to lift our eyes to the glories that He has promised. But Peter's saying, cling to that living hope. Let it change your perspective, let it change the way you view the world, influence how what you think, how you act, what you say, what you do, what you value, because that's what's going to get you through. All right, let me pray for us. Father, we confess that we're not the people we should be. That sometimes we lose our faith. At least we think we do. We have doubts, we have confusion. We are too foolish to see the end of the race and focus too much on the next curve. We just pray that as we go through the days, the hours, the minutes of our lives, that you would be making this truth real to us, that this would not be theology on a page or words to study, but that these would be the guiding principles of our lives, the anchors we stand on in the storm that get us through. And I just pray for each woman here that you would be um giving her more faith, strengthening it, giving her the patience, the joy, the perspective, whatever it takes to get through the next day, to learn to love you more and to trust you more, and to entertain it.