St Theodore's Sermon

	St Theodore's Wattle Park

Sermon of the Week

16/5/99

Living Holy Lives 1 Pet 1:13-25

Zig Ziegler, an American motivational expert once said "Attitude is far more important than aptitude." Charles Swindol writes, "the longer I live, the more convinced I am that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond to it." Both of those writers are saying the same thing: the way you look at your circumstances, the frame of mind you're in makes much more difference than the external circumstances themselves. That's why Peter says here: "Therefore prepare your minds for action." He knows that if we're to live faithful lives, we'll need to be in the right frame of mind. He also knows that if our minds are prepared for action, for the right sort of action that is, we'll be able to do anything.

Most of you know that I go to the gym fairly regularly. I know there are a few others in the congregation who also go. Well, do you know what I've discovered is the hardest exercise to do? It's exercising your will power to actually get there. Putting on your gym clothes, getting in the car and driving there. Once you're there the exercise might be tough, but you just do it. The hard part is getting your mind ready for the pain! Peter understands that. He says if you're going to succeed, you first need to have your mind prepared for the sort of action that's needed.

I wonder how many of you have seen the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'. For those who haven't, it tells the story of a banker who's wrongly convicted of killing his wife and is sent to prison for life. There he meets and befriends another long term prisoner. This man has been in prison so long that he's lost all hope of ever getting out. Each time he appears before the parole board it's as though he knows the decision before he enters the room. He's never going to get free. And because he enters the room with that frame of mind his request ends up being denied. The banker, on the other hand, isn't going to give in. Out of his friendship for this other prisoner, he plants within him the seed of hope. He tells him about a certain place where there's a tin, containing a great treasure, buried at the base of a dry stone wall on the edge of a cornfield. This awakens in this man a renewed hope for the future. The possibility that perhaps there is something outside the walls of the prison worth living for. In the end this change of attitude is such that he's finally granted his parole, and his life starts again in hope. Well, that's a very brief retelling of what's a much more complex movie, but it's enough to set the scene for what we're looking at today.

That is, the way that knowing the hope we have in Jesus Christ can change our attitude to life, and how that can then prepare us for life as a Christian.

   Remember that Peter is writing to them to reassure them of the living hope that is theirs. Last week we read: 'By his great mercy God has given us a new birth into a living hope'. This living hope is based on the living Lord Jesus. That is on the past resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's also based on the promise of a future inheritance that can never fail, kept in heaven for us, and it's a hope that the OT prophets spoke about as they prophesied the death and resurrection of Christ, and as they looked beyond that event to the future glorification of the people of God, a hope that we too, still look forward to. So he begins this new section with "Therefore." On the basis of what we saw last week, here's how you should live. Here's what you should do.

   We can see from what he's said in the first 12 verses of this chapter that all that's required is for us to persevere and the reward of living in God's presence is ours. But that's easier said than done isn't it? How are we going to persevere when we meet opposition? How are we going to persevere when we're tempted to give in, or when we're tempted to ignore the way God wants us to live? How are we going to respond? Well, he says, the first step is to prepare your mind for action.

   I remember going to a dinner a few years ago where the speaker was Professor Arch Hart, a psychologist from Fuller Seminary in the States. His topic was something like 'Unlocking the inner self' or 'the emotions within.' But what he talked about was the way our thoughts affect our emotions. This was more than just the power of positive thinking. He talked about feeding our minds with what's good and healthy. In fact he took as his text Phil 4:8. (It's unusual for a psychologist to take a Scripture verse as the text for a talk isn't it! These days it's usually the other way around - preachers take psychology books as their text.) Anyway his text was "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." And he showed how feeding good things into our minds affects how we react to the world. Well, here in 1 Peter we find a similar thought. 'Prepare your minds for action.' Get your minds ready, so that when you face opposition you're prepared; so that when life gets tough you're not taken by surprise.

   Then he tells us what that will mean in practical terms. In fact there are 3 things he says here that form the groundwork for this new attitude of mind. There'll be other instructions later in the letter about the way to live in the light of the hope to which we look forward, but here there are just 3 main items to think about. We're to discipline ourselves. We're to set or hope fully on the grace to be revealed to us when Jesus Christ is revealed. And we're to be holy the way God is holy.

   Discipline yourself

   You know, you see footballers going for a mark and you wonder sometimes how they can survive the battering they get. But it's because they've prepared their minds for it. They're not taken by surprise when someone else bumps into them. Their bodies are ready. And they've disciplined themselves. Their bodies are trained to withstand the knocks. Well we're to be the same. We're to be prepared and disciplined.

   How are we to discipline ourselves? Listen to what Proverbs 5 Says: (Prov 5:1-12 NRSV) "My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, ²so that you may hold on to prudence, and your lips may guard knowledge." Why? Because otherwise "⁹you will give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless, ¹⁰and strangers will take their fill of your wealth, and your labors will go to the house of an alien; ¹¹and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, ¹²and you say, "Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!" So according to Proverbs, discipline involves paying attention to what God says, to his word. Following the wisdom that we find there. But it also involves being careful about what we do with our bodies. Listen to what Paul said to the Corinthians: (1 Cor 9:24-27 NRSV) "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified." Those footballers I just mentioned follow a specific program of exercises that prepare them for what they're going to do. I imagine a forward does different exercises to a rover. Well Paul takes that analogy and applies it not to working out at the gym but to training his body to do the things that God wants him to do with it. As we go on further into 1 Peter we'll see some of those things. Let's quickly glance ahead: 2:1: rid yourselves of all malice, guile, insincerity, envy, slander. That takes discipline doesn't it? It's very easy to be insincere in our culture isn't it? It's easy to be envious of those who have more than we do. It's equally easy to gossip about people. The only way to stop doing these things is if we discipline ourselves. Similarly in 2:11,12 he urges us to abstain from sinful desires and to conduct ourselves honourably among unbelievers so that our lives will glorify God. In chapter 3 he speaks to married people about how they're to relate to their spouses, he talks about living in harmony and mutual love, having a tender heart and a humble mind. All those things take discipline don't they? None of them come naturally to us. On the other hand, they all become easier with practice, which of course is integral to the idea of discipline.

   Set your mind on the grace of God.

   But as I said last week, it's a lot easier to discipline yourself if you can see where your discipline, your training is going. That's why he says "Set all your hope" or "set your hope fully, on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed." Where do you set your hope? Do you hope you'll be able to persevere to the end but aren't quite sure? Or is your hope set fully, absolutely, on the grace of God, on his ability to see you through? Is your hope a mix of confidence in Christ and confidence in your own abilities? Or are you like some, whose hope rests in their bank balance or their share portfolio, or their intelligence, or their children, or their status in the community? Is there a bit of that in you? I certainly feel the temptation to trust in some of those things at times. But where does God point us? What is the living hope that he directs our focus to? To the grace that awaits us when Jesus Christ is revealed.

   Remember that grace is something that God gives us freely and without merit. It's what God does for us through Jesus Christ, that we neither deserve nor can earn. The power of that idea is that it can never be taken away from us. You see, we'll inevitably fail in our attempt to follow Christ faithfully, but he won't let us go. Oh, some of the time we'll do OK, but in the long run only the grace that Jesus Christ will bring us will suffice. Only the freely offered and undeserved forgiveness of Christ will be enough.

   But having said that we're not talking here about unconditional grace. You can't just say, "I'm right now. Jesus Christ has died for me so now I can do what I like. No, the prospect of the grace that will be ours when Christ is revealed, that is, on the day of judgement, leads us to want to obey him now, to lead holy lives.

   Be Holy as God is holy

   The picture he uses is that of an obedient child. A child responds to a parent's love by doing what the parent asks. So it is with us. Just as we've been given new birth into a living hope (v3) and so are now part of God's family, then we'll naturally want to take on the family characteristics. That means we'll want to be holy, just as He who called us is holy. There are two incentives here aren't there? You see, if the one you call Father is also the judge of all the earth, then you'll want to live righteous lives: both because he's your father and you want to please him, and because he's the judge of all people (v17). Both out of love and out of an awareness of his desire for justice. What's more, there's the amazing fact that we've been cleansed by the blood of Christ. How could we undo a work that was so costly. And if our obedience to the truth, that is the truth of the gospel, our faith in Jesus Christ, has purified us so that genuine love is now possible for us, then lets show it.

   What is it that stops love from being totally genuine? Isn't it that self interest, self centredness gets in the way. But now God has purified us, so that, in theory at least, our self centredness is removed. Through the work of the Spirit in us we're becoming Christ centred. And that frees us to love one another deeply from the heart. To love one another with the love of Christ. Next week we'll see how we're to "Rid ourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander." If we're to love one another with the love of Christ, then none of these things are appropriate are they? No, our love for one another is to be deep and genuine. And notice again how this is related to our minds. The way we love one another will be deeply affected by what we store up in our minds about the other person. Will it be malice, envy, slander, or will it be that which is true, noble, pure, lovely, excellent, admirable, praiseworthy?

   What is it that motivates your life? Is it guilt, or envy, or anger, or covetousness, or fear? Or is it the living hope that God has given you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? Is it the assurance of an imperishable and unfading inheritance stored up for you in God's Kingdom. Is it that grace, that free gift of eternal life with the Father that awaits you on the last day? The message of 1 Peter is that this hope is worth persevering for. That this hope is such a great treasure that it should motivate us to persevere. And if we're to do that then we'll need to prepare our minds for action, to discipline ourselves, to keep in the forefront of our minds that future grace of God, to be given to us when Jesus Christ is revealed, and like obedient children to strive to be like our Father in heaven. To be holy as he is holy, and to love the way he loves, genuinely and from the heart.


	Contact us	Preaching Program	Home		Last Week's Sermon

	Sermon of the Week
	16/5/99
	Living Holy Lives	1 Pet 1:13-25

	Zig Ziegler, an American motivational expert once said "Attitude is far more important than aptitude." Charles Swindol writes, "the longer I live, the more convinced I am that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond to it." Both of those writers are saying the same thing: the way you look at your circumstances, the frame of mind you're in makes much more difference than the external circumstances themselves. That's why Peter says here: "Therefore prepare your minds for action." He knows that if we're to live faithful lives, we'll need to be in the right frame of mind. He also knows that if our minds are prepared for action, for the right sort of action that is, we'll be able to do anything.
	Most of you know that I go to the gym fairly regularly. I know there are a few others in the congregation who also go. Well, do you know what I've discovered is the hardest exercise to do? It's exercising your will power to actually get there. Putting on your gym clothes, getting in the car and driving there. Once you're there the exercise might be tough, but you just do it. The hard part is getting your mind ready for the pain! Peter understands that. He says if you're going to succeed, you first need to have your mind prepared for the sort of action that's needed.
	I wonder how many of you have seen the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'. For those who haven't, it tells the story of a banker who's wrongly convicted of killing his wife and is sent to prison for life. There he meets and befriends another long term prisoner. This man has been in prison so long that he's lost all hope of ever getting out. Each time he appears before the parole board it's as though he knows the decision before he enters the room. He's never going to get free. And because he enters the room with that frame of mind his request ends up being denied. The banker, on the other hand, isn't going to give in. Out of his friendship for this other prisoner, he plants within him the seed of hope. He tells him about a certain place where there's a tin, containing a great treasure, buried at the base of a dry stone wall on the edge of a cornfield. This awakens in this man a renewed hope for the future. The possibility that perhaps there is something outside the walls of the prison worth living for. In the end this change of attitude is such that he's finally granted his parole, and his life starts again in hope. Well, that's a very brief retelling of what's a much more complex movie, but it's enough to set the scene for what we're looking at today.
	That is, the way that knowing the hope we have in Jesus Christ can change our attitude to life, and how that can then prepare us for life as a Christian.
	Remember that Peter is writing to them to reassure them of the living hope that is theirs. Last week we read: 'By his great mercy God has given us a new birth into a living hope'. This living hope is based on the living Lord Jesus. That is on the past resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's also based on the promise of a future inheritance that can never fail, kept in heaven for us, and it's a hope that the OT prophets spoke about as they prophesied the death and resurrection of Christ, and as they looked beyond that event to the future glorification of the people of God, a hope that we too, still look forward to. So he begins this new section with "Therefore." On the basis of what we saw last week, here's how you should live. Here's what you should do.
	We can see from what he's said in the first 12 verses of this chapter that all that's required is for us to persevere and the reward of living in God's presence is ours. But that's easier said than done isn't it? How are we going to persevere when we meet opposition? How are we going to persevere when we're tempted to give in, or when we're tempted to ignore the way God wants us to live? How are we going to respond? Well, he says, the first step is to prepare your mind for action.
	I remember going to a dinner a few years ago where the speaker was Professor Arch Hart, a psychologist from Fuller Seminary in the States. His topic was something like 'Unlocking the inner self' or 'the emotions within.' But what he talked about was the way our thoughts affect our emotions. This was more than just the power of positive thinking. He talked about feeding our minds with what's good and healthy. In fact he took as his text Phil 4:8. (It's unusual for a psychologist to take a Scripture verse as the text for a talk isn't it! These days it's usually the other way around - preachers take psychology books as their text.) Anyway his text was "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." And he showed how feeding good things into our minds affects how we react to the world. Well, here in 1 Peter we find a similar thought. 'Prepare your minds for action.' Get your minds ready, so that when you face opposition you're prepared; so that when life gets tough you're not taken by surprise.
	Then he tells us what that will mean in practical terms. In fact there are 3 things he says here that form the groundwork for this new attitude of mind. There'll be other instructions later in the letter about the way to live in the light of the hope to which we look forward, but here there are just 3 main items to think about. We're to discipline ourselves. We're to set or hope fully on the grace to be revealed to us when Jesus Christ is revealed. And we're to be holy the way God is holy.
	Discipline yourself
	You know, you see footballers going for a mark and you wonder sometimes how they can survive the battering they get. But it's because they've prepared their minds for it. They're not taken by surprise when someone else bumps into them. Their bodies are ready. And they've disciplined themselves. Their bodies are trained to withstand the knocks. Well we're to be the same. We're to be prepared and disciplined.
	How are we to discipline ourselves? Listen to what Proverbs 5 Says: (Prov 5:1-12 NRSV) "My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, ²so that you may hold on to prudence, and your lips may guard knowledge." Why? Because otherwise "⁹you will give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless, ¹⁰and strangers will take their fill of your wealth, and your labors will go to the house of an alien; ¹¹and at the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, ¹²and you say, "Oh, how I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!" So according to Proverbs, discipline involves paying attention to what God says, to his word. Following the wisdom that we find there. But it also involves being careful about what we do with our bodies. Listen to what Paul said to the Corinthians: (1 Cor 9:24-27 NRSV) "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. ²⁵Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. ²⁶So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; ²⁷but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified." Those footballers I just mentioned follow a specific program of exercises that prepare them for what they're going to do. I imagine a forward does different exercises to a rover. Well Paul takes that analogy and applies it not to working out at the gym but to training his body to do the things that God wants him to do with it. As we go on further into 1 Peter we'll see some of those things. Let's quickly glance ahead: 2:1: rid yourselves of all malice, guile, insincerity, envy, slander. That takes discipline doesn't it? It's very easy to be insincere in our culture isn't it? It's easy to be envious of those who have more than we do. It's equally easy to gossip about people. The only way to stop doing these things is if we discipline ourselves. Similarly in 2:11,12 he urges us to abstain from sinful desires and to conduct ourselves honourably among unbelievers so that our lives will glorify God. In chapter 3 he speaks to married people about how they're to relate to their spouses, he talks about living in harmony and mutual love, having a tender heart and a humble mind. All those things take discipline don't they? None of them come naturally to us. On the other hand, they all become easier with practice, which of course is integral to the idea of discipline.
	Set your mind on the grace of God.
	But as I said last week, it's a lot easier to discipline yourself if you can see where your discipline, your training is going. That's why he says "Set all your hope" or "set your hope fully, on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed." Where do you set your hope? Do you hope you'll be able to persevere to the end but aren't quite sure? Or is your hope set fully, absolutely, on the grace of God, on his ability to see you through? Is your hope a mix of confidence in Christ and confidence in your own abilities? Or are you like some, whose hope rests in their bank balance or their share portfolio, or their intelligence, or their children, or their status in the community? Is there a bit of that in you? I certainly feel the temptation to trust in some of those things at times. But where does God point us? What is the living hope that he directs our focus to? To the grace that awaits us when Jesus Christ is revealed.
	Remember that grace is something that God gives us freely and without merit. It's what God does for us through Jesus Christ, that we neither deserve nor can earn. The power of that idea is that it can never be taken away from us. You see, we'll inevitably fail in our attempt to follow Christ faithfully, but he won't let us go. Oh, some of the time we'll do OK, but in the long run only the grace that Jesus Christ will bring us will suffice. Only the freely offered and undeserved forgiveness of Christ will be enough.
	But having said that we're not talking here about unconditional grace. You can't just say, "I'm right now. Jesus Christ has died for me so now I can do what I like. No, the prospect of the grace that will be ours when Christ is revealed, that is, on the day of judgement, leads us to want to obey him now, to lead holy lives.
	Be Holy as God is holy
	The picture he uses is that of an obedient child. A child responds to a parent's love by doing what the parent asks. So it is with us. Just as we've been given new birth into a living hope (v3) and so are now part of God's family, then we'll naturally want to take on the family characteristics. That means we'll want to be holy, just as He who called us is holy. There are two incentives here aren't there? You see, if the one you call Father is also the judge of all the earth, then you'll want to live righteous lives: both because he's your father and you want to please him, and because he's the judge of all people (v17). Both out of love and out of an awareness of his desire for justice. What's more, there's the amazing fact that we've been cleansed by the blood of Christ. How could we undo a work that was so costly. And if our obedience to the truth, that is the truth of the gospel, our faith in Jesus Christ, has purified us so that genuine love is now possible for us, then lets show it.
	What is it that stops love from being totally genuine? Isn't it that self interest, self centredness gets in the way. But now God has purified us, so that, in theory at least, our self centredness is removed. Through the work of the Spirit in us we're becoming Christ centred. And that frees us to love one another deeply from the heart. To love one another with the love of Christ. Next week we'll see how we're to "Rid ourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander." If we're to love one another with the love of Christ, then none of these things are appropriate are they? No, our love for one another is to be deep and genuine. And notice again how this is related to our minds. The way we love one another will be deeply affected by what we store up in our minds about the other person. Will it be malice, envy, slander, or will it be that which is true, noble, pure, lovely, excellent, admirable, praiseworthy?
	What is it that motivates your life? Is it guilt, or envy, or anger, or covetousness, or fear? Or is it the living hope that God has given you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? Is it the assurance of an imperishable and unfading inheritance stored up for you in God's Kingdom. Is it that grace, that free gift of eternal life with the Father that awaits you on the last day? The message of 1 Peter is that this hope is worth persevering for. That this hope is such a great treasure that it should motivate us to persevere. And if we're to do that then we'll need to prepare our minds for action, to discipline ourselves, to keep in the forefront of our minds that future grace of God, to be given to us when Jesus Christ is revealed, and like obedient children to strive to be like our Father in heaven. To be holy as he is holy, and to love the way he loves, genuinely and from the heart.

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