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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from 1 Peter 1:13
through 21.
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.
As obedient children, do not be conformed
to the passions of your former ignorance,
but as he who called you is holy,
you also be holy in all your conduct.
Since it's written, you shall be holy, for
I am holy.
And if you call on him as Father,
who judges impartially
according to each one's deeds.
Conduct yourself with fear
throughout the time of your exile,
knowing that you were ransomed
from the futile ways
inherited from your forefathers,
not with perishable things
such as silver or gold,
but with the precious blood of Christ,
like that of a lamb
without blemish or spot.
He was for known
before the foundation of the world,
but was made manifest in the last times.
For the sake of you,
who through him are believers in God,
who raised him from the dead
and gave him glory,
so that your faith and hope bring God.
Everybody, good morning
and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
Really, really glad you're here.
And I know you can feel it.
I mean, the 10:00 hour is just packed,
and that's great.
I just want you to let the let you know
the 8:30 service has a little more room.
If anybody wants to switch to the 8:30
service.
It'd be great.
But we understand, all right.
But it's good to have everybody here.
The transition is now official.
With the senior pastor position
moving from me to Pastor Zach.
Just one final thing on September 28th,
we have a members meeting.
We do this every year.
If you're a member, we ask you to come.
We celebrate what God has done.
We are looking forward to the next year
and giving you the plans
for the year to come.
It's it's a great time to be together.
It's fun. It's informative.
After that, we're going to have
a reception to celebrate the transition.
So if you love Zach, you can come
to the reception, congratulate him.
If you love me,
you can come congratulate me.
If you love us both,
it could be the greatest night of
your whole life.
All right,
I've got
I've got that joke landed because,
you know, it's weird.
All right.
This is the second message
of our ten week series
we're calling Rise Up.
We're looking at, the book of first Peter.
And, Zach set it up really well last week
when he said first Peter was written to,
a group of Christians
who are living in a hostile culture.
It seems pretty timely.
And I just want to encourage
you try to get as much as you can
out of the next ten weeks.
Take advantage of what we offer
to try to really dive
in, to this book of first Peter,
because I feel like First Peter
is probably more relevant
this week than it was last week,
and it could be more relevant
next week than it is this week.
So dive it.
So go ahead.
If you have your Bibles, turn to First
Peter chapter one.
If you're going to use one of our, church
Bibles, I can tell you it's on page 953.
Page 953.
And if you do use one of our church
Bibles, just so you know,
there's a
there's a header right before the passage
we had read to us, it's the same header
that I have in my Bible,
and the header just says called to be
Holy, called to be holy,
because Peter uses the word
holy four times
in just a couple of verses.
But the whole concept of being holy
is a little bit of a tough concept.
I've been reading the book on monks
and monasteries and,
you know, monks built monasteries
to try to isolate themselves
from the culture, and they would spend
all their time reading the Bible
and praying and meditating.
And that was their way
of trying to be holy.
And I, I don't know,
I don't think that's what Peter's after.
I actually went to a working monastery
a few years ago down in Kentucky, and,
I spent
72 hours
there was it was a silent monastery.
So you went there?
There were other people there, but
you weren't supposed to speak to anybody.
You were just supposed to spend time
with you and God.
So I was doing that,
and I only spoke one time
in that whole 72 hours,
I was sitting at a table.
I had my Bible in front of me.
I was writing in my journal,
and I said, I realized there was a monk
standing right next to me.
He was dressed in the brown robe
with the rope
tied around his waist, the whole shebang.
And I looked up at him
and he looked down at me and he said this.
Do you want a Coke?
I swear, that's what he said.
And I said, sure, that'd be great.
That's the only time I spoke. Right. But.
When Peter
says to be holy, I don't think that's
what it after.
Let me give you a different analogy.
My wife, Karen, and I love to go on walks,
particularly this time of year,
and it's been a
just a beautiful last week.
But sometimes it's hard for me to pick out
exactly what to wear,
because sometimes I underestimate
the how warm the sun is going to be.
And I'll dress to warm and are other times
right.
I don't get the wind chill
and I dress too lightly,
but every once while I am dressed exactly
right and I realize
that about halfway through the walk
that I just think, you know what?
This is exactly the way
I'm meant to feel on this walk.
This is as good as it can be
right here, right now.
That's holiness.
Not for a walk, but for life.
You were made to be holy
at your very best.
You are holding the holy you are.
The more you were prepared
for whatever tomorrow brings, whatever
next year
brings, it's the way God made it.
And when I started thinking about it
like that,
it may be long to be holy,
but then the question is
how does anyone get holy?
And that's what this passage is about.
Peter gives us the formula
for being holy, and he gives it to us
in kind of three steps.
And they go in this order.
He says, if you want to be holy,
it's determined by first what you think
and then what you want,
and finally what you do,
what you think, your mind,
what you want in your heart, what you do
in your conduct.
Start with what you think.
This is what Peter says.
Therefore, this is verse 13,
preparing your minds for action.
Being sober minded.
Set your hope fully on the grace
that will be brought to you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
He says, prepare your minds for action.
You know it's written in Greek.
And if you were going to translate
the Greek word for word,
what it says is gird up
the loins of your mind.
That's what he says.
And I like that. Gird up y'all.
It sounds strong.
It does sound weird,
but it's written like that
because in the first century,
men wore robes,
and when they went to action,
they would hike up the robes
and they would tuck it in.
That was girding up your loins.
What Peter says
is you need to gird up
the loins of your mind.
You need to be prepared
if you're going to live as a Christian
in a hostile culture,
you need to use your head.
I think
it's not uncommon
for somebody to come to me
and they say, I've been sharing,
Jesus with a friend.
And they don't.
They reject it
and then they'll add something like this.
My friend is very smart,
and they've read a lot.
And the implication is that
if you're going to be a Christian, faith
means you just work with your heart.
You don't use your head,
you don't use your mind.
And I don't believe that's true.
Let me tell you why.
There there are four major questions
of existence
that every human being should think about,
but very few human beings really do.
Here are the four questions.
Where did I come from?
That's the question of origin.
Where am I going?
That's the question of destiny.
Why am I here?
That's the question of purpose.
And then how shall I live?
That's the question of morality.
Where did I come from? Where am I going?
Why am I here?
How shall I live when I'm talking to
somebody who's a skeptic
and they are rejecting Christianity,
and I get the feeling that it's
because they think that faith means
you don't use your head.
I'll usually say, hey,
can I ask you a question?
And they'll say, sure.
And I say, okay, why are you here?
What's your purpose for existence?
Nine times out of ten,
they look at me with completely blank eyes
because they've never really thought
about it, and then they'll fumble around
and they'll come up with an answer
that sounds good to them.
The problem is this if you're going
to have intellectual integrity,
the answers to those four questions
have to match up.
They have to be coherent.
They have to lead one to the other.
You can't jump somewhere else.
However, you answer the first question,
where did I come from?
Has implications on your last question.
How shall I live in your morality?
I read an article where Ben Shapiro, who's
Jewish, was talking to Bill Marr,
who's a liberal commentator,
talking about morality,
and Ben Shapiro was there.
They were talking about how how similar
their moralities were.
And Ben Shapiro told Bill Marr, you know,
your morality comes from the Bible.
And boy, Bill Marr,
that really frustrated him
because he ridicules the Bible.
But Ben Shapiro was right.
Bill Maher said, no,
my morality comes from the enlightenment.
But that's not true because Bill Maher
is a champion for human rights.
Most people are.
Most people believe in human rights.
You know where human rights come from.
It's the way
you answer the first question,
the way a Christian answers
the first question, where did I come from?
I was made the image of God,
and so were you.
And so is everybody around you.
Every human being has dignity and value
simply
because they're made in the image of God.
People you love, people you hate,
everybody.
The whole idea of human rights
comes from the Bible.
Like if you answer the first question,
evolution.
Where did I come from?
I came from evolution.
You cannot get to human rights from there,
not if you have intellectual integrity,
because evolution says the exact opposite.
The strong are much more valuable
than the weak.
The best thing it can happen is the strong
survive and thrive in the weak.
Die off.
Because that's the way evolution works.
As a human rights
watch, somebody ask me,
why do you believe in Jesus?
You know, I told it's
because I've looked at the evidence
and I'm convinced that it's true,
especially the resurrection of Jesus,
which is the cornerstone of our faith.
And so when I say I looked
at the evidence, I don't just mean
the four gospels
that give us eyewitness account.
I'm talking about other historians, Roman
historians,
Jewish historians, Greek historians
who talk about the
the resurrection,
the rumor of the resurrection of Jesus.
I'm talking about how thousands
upon thousands and the people
who were fiercely monotheistic
began to talk about Jesus
as if he were God incarnate
because of the resurrection of Jesus.
I've looked at the theories
for the empty tomb, and I'll tell you,
those are harder to believe for me
than the idea that Jesus resurrected.
But it's not just that.
It's when I fully gave myself to Jesus,
something happened inside my soul.
It's like something clicked into place.
Like the game Tetris for those blocks
come down and they match up
just perfectly.
It's like something was out of joint
in my soul, and it snapped into place
and all of a sudden things
inside made sense to me.
And when I talk to other people
who fully give themselves to Jesus,
they talk about it in the same way.
When I
read about people who are Christians
hundreds of years ago,
they talk about it the same way.
So I tell you all that
because don't let anyone,
if you're a follower of Jesus, don't
let anyone tell you
that faith is based on just your heart
and not your mind.
And if you are a skeptic, I want you
to know I'm really glad you're here,
but I would just challenge you
to look at the evidence, right?
And if you look at all the evidence
and you're still convinced
that it's wrong,
that it's not true, then that's okay.
But at least you have had the integrity
to look at all the evidence.
They said, I'm going to give you
an assignment for the next ten weeks.
Those of you who are Christians,
this is part of just getting the most
out of this series.
The passage I love the
passage that Zach preached on last week,
so let me read it to you.
I want you to read this once a week
for the next ten weeks.
This is what it says.
This is first Peter
chapter one, verses three through nine,
because I want you to get this
in your mind.
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 to an inheritance
that is imperishable, undefiled
and unfading, 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.
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.
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.
Peter says, if you're going to live
as a Christian in a hostile culture,
prepare your mind
because your mind, what goes on in
your head will determine
what you really want.
That brings me to my second point.
And that's verse 14.
Peter says, as obedient
children, do not be conformed
to the passions of your former ignorance.
That word
passions is the Greek word through media.
Through media is the word for desire.
Epi is a prefix that means over something
you want too much.
It's not necessarily a bad thing.
It's not. It's just not
made to be an ultimate thing,
timed to bring out the will.
I've not brought this out for a while.
If you have not been here
when I've talked about the will,
you're in for a treat.
The will is, the best way
for me to think about the way
the human heart works.
This is the way your heart works.
The way my heart works.
This, folks, are all the different things
that we value in our lives.
My family and children
and marriage to a job success.
What people think of us. Approval,
all those things.
But in every human heart,
there is one thing
that is more important than anything else,
and that organizes everything else.
Jonathan Edwards was a man who wrote
a book called The Freedom of the Will.
And what he says in that book, basically,
is that
every human being
really does what they want.
They do.
Every decision you make is something
you want more than the other.
If you decide to
eat dessert means you want dessert
more than you want to lose weight.
If you're trying to lose weight,
if you have a chance to make $20,000,
if you kind of bend the truth,
you have a decision
and you will do what you really want to do
and what Peter says
is that if you really understand
who Jesus is and what I mean by something
snapping into place in my soul is that
Jesus becomes the most important thing.
He becomes the thing
that organizes everything else.
That's why,
just so you know, you can't say,
I obey Jesus
in every other area of my life,
but not with my sexuality, where I obey
Jesus, everybody,
everything and everything else,
but not with my money.
Because whatever you say when you say
I'll be Jesus,
except for that's the center thing.
What makes me different as a Christian?
What makes you different as a Christian
is not that you want things that
non-Christians want.
You want the I want the same thing.
I want my children
to be healthy and happy.
I want to be successful.
I want to have a good marriage.
I want people to like me.
I want the approval of people.
I want plenty of money.
I want all those things.
The thing that makes a Christian
different is that Jesus is here
so that all those things
fall and subject to him.
And that means that
if I lose one of those things,
if I lose my marriage,
something happens to my wife.
It'll make me very, very sad,
but it won't destroy me
because my
relationship with her
is not the most important.
It's Jesus.
And what Peter says is
nothing can take that away.
So Peter says, if you're going to live
in a hostile culture, it starts
with what you think.
If you want to be holy,
it starts with your mind.
You have to remind yourself all the time
of who Jesus is and what he did.
That will work its way out in your heart,
and what you really want
will help you make decisions.
When you come to decisions.
And then finally, what you do,
what you do.
And that's the next verse, verse 15,
it says, but is he who called you is holy?
You also be holy in all your conduct,
your mind, your heart,
and then your conduct.
You know, that's the last thing.
I used to think that was the hardest thing
because, for most of my life,
when I thought about being holy,
I was trying to white knuckle it.
I remember hearing a preacher
say something one time, and I.
I wrote it
in the flyleaf of one of my Bibles.
And what he said was this.
You are as holy today
as you've ever really wanted to be.
And when I even when I wrote that
I was going, oh man,
I am such a loser, right?
Because I just couldn't.
I mean, I was trying to, but I don't think
Conde UT is the hardest thing.
It's the easiest thing.
Let me go back to the
analogy of going for a walk.
But when
I go for a walk, if I check my weather app
and I really believe that that's
what the weather's going to be like,
then what I want more than anything
is to dress accordingly.
To dress.
I'm absolutely in the best shape
that I can be for the walk.
And then I lay out the clothes
I get in the clothes I go for my walk.
Right now, what the Bible says is that
Jesus is the one that
when you really believe Jesus,
then he lays out the clothes for you.
And that's what it
that's what the Bible is all about.
We're going to get more into that.
And first, Peter, but then you just dress
in the way that God has made for you,
and then you go out into your life.
There is a fourth century
monk of all things named Augustine.
We call him Saint Augustine.
He was famous for saying this
Love God
and then do what you want.
Very simple.
Love God. Do what you want.
It was Saint
Augustine's way of talking about the will.
He said,
if you really convinced of who Jesus is
and he becomes
the most important thing to you,
then what you do, how you live,
the choices you make will just seem
natural.
They'll seem easy
because the hard work is done in your mind
and in your heart
is if you're going to live
as a Christian in a hostile culture,
then what Peter says is the best way to do
that is to be holy.
If you're going to be prepared
for tomorrow,
what tomorrow brings, what next week
brings, what the next year brings,
it says is be holy.
It's what you think.
And then what you want
and then what you do.
Be holy
as God is holy.
You pray with me.
Our father in heaven, we come to you.
And, I am grateful.
I'm grateful that in this passage
you say as obedient
children, not obedient servants,
but you say children
because you have loved us
and adopted us as your own.
And you do this, you give us this call
to be holy because you love us,
because you want
what is absolutely best for us.
And I pray for every person here.
I pray that you would convince us more
and more in our minds of who you are,
so we can prepare our minds for action.
Then I pray that you will change our
hearts so that every day we will wake up
and want
you more than anything else, want you,
and then that you will order our lives
in such a way that we will live
in the very best way that we can
to be what you made us to be.
Thanks for everybody here.
I pray your deep blessing on them
and I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.