Sermon 20200920

All right, well, good evening. I'm used to saying good morning. It's strange. Open your Bibles to 1 Peter, please. It is a pleasure to be here, to be with you here today. I'm trying to get myself situated here, sorry.

This thing makes me nervous. It wobbles. with that last song we sang by the crazy monk Martin Luther. The ending, have you ever heard the ending where it goes real high? Has anyone sang it that way before? His kingdom is forever. You go way high.

Has anyone ever sang it that way? No. Does anyone not like it that way? You don't like it? Your face is... It's too high.

It's too high. Well, the whole song's really low, though, so I kind of like the counterbalance, you know? Well, my kids, we like to sing it that way at the table for family worship, just to spice things up, I guess. So I could tell Silas was thinking we were going to do it, and when we didn't, he kind of looked around like, what, they just sang it wrong.

So I know there's all sorts of different ways. We sang it at a conference before, and you could tell it was a men's conference. And you could tell that not everyone knew how we were going to do this, because not everyone sings it high at the end. And so I think about half the people sang it high, half the people didn't. So it was kind of interesting. But nevertheless, it was great to sing with you guys, great to worship with you guys.

We are going to continue with 1 Peter, as you guys have been. So let me read the verses that we will be going over, and then I'll go to the Lord in prayer. And then we shall begin. So 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1 we'll start in verse 13. 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.

And 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 is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. God in heaven, I ask that you would be with me as I preach. I ask that you be with the people before me, as was already noted. Lord, we're desperate for your spirit of understanding, for of our own fleshly selves we can do no good but we can only do good as far as the Spirit gives us ability to do good.

And so I just pray God that today we would come humbled. Humbled at just the prospect that we would even know anything at all. And we know this is the grace of yours. And so please be with me as I preach your word. I pray that I would preach what's true and I pray that you'd be with the people before me that their hearts would be ready and open. And that it would be more than just simply words but rather it would be your word that transforms our minds and our hearts and our attitudes so that we would live obediently to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's in the Lord Jesus Christ we do pray. It says in his name we pray. Amen. Amen. So 1 Peter 1, 16. I'm going to put this down.

How do I put this down? It's a spell I've got to put on it. Sorry. Thank you. Right here is perfect. Thank you so much.

Yeah. I got one right here. So Peter says in verse 16, you shall be holy for I am holy. I'm a big fan of, and I say this often from my own pulpit, of not missing the forest for the trees. I say this often to my own people at Radnor because I think it's very easy for us when we read Scripture, when we approach God's Word, it's very easy for us to miss the forest for the trees.

And what I mean is we get so bogged down in little details that we forget the big picture that God is saying of the whole storyline. We can say all these cool Bible stories of the Old Testament, but we don't see how they actually point to Christ, as Michael said earlier. We can know all these minor details. We can know all the stories in the world, but yet we do not know how they all come together in a beautiful forest because we have missed the forest for the trees.

And here we get a statement, here in verse 16, and this is a big picture, a big forest kind of idea, that you are to be holy, for I am holy. In other words, be like God because he is worthy to be imitated. If all of scripture you read, if all that you know understand Christianity, if you don't understand that God desires his people to be holy, you have missed it.

If you don't understand that we are to be holy, we are to be set apart. We are to be unique. It's a lot of debate as to how you actually define holy, but it's along the lines of being unique, being different, and with that being pure, being good and righteous. And so we are to be apart, called apart, be separate, and to be holy, to be pure, to be perfect.

And really the only reason why we are to do it, or the main reason we would say, And we could get lost in the weeds here too. The reason why we are to be holy is why? Because God is holy. And anytime we try to make anything higher than that, we have missed the boat. How many people that I talk to trying to get off drugs in jail, they think that they are to be holy or good because that will help them to live a better life, to not be on drugs finally.

No, that's not it. They need to go deeper. We are to be holy because that's who God is. And the whole scripture is coming together for us to be like that. That is his design, his purpose for his creatures, is that they would be holy. For no other reason but the fact that he is holy.

That is who God is. He's thrice holy in Revelation. He is holy, holy, holy. And so our purpose being his creatures everyone is to be like him It the greatest fulfillment you can find for yourself is to be holy as He is holy But here's the problem though, is it easy? When we read that, we're like, oh, I got that figured out, that's already, that's an easy one.

I mean, we've got to consider this, this is the whole thing, the shebang, the main thing of scriptures, is to be holy as I am holy, and it's like, well, why does that have to be it? Why can't it be something more simple? Something I can do, right? The whole theme of Scripture, why can't it be something I can easily peg down and say, okay, I've done that.

Why does it have to be so difficult? Why does it have to be so hard? To answer that, we must go to the garden. We must go back to the garden. God made Adam. We know that.

God didn't make Adam perfect, though. He made him good. And what I mean by that is, Adam could fail. He could fall from righteousness. And so God made Adam good. but see, God is kind to Adam in that he condescends in giving him a covenant it's the Adamic covenant or the covenant of works, whatever you want to call it and it's this idea that I am going to create you, put you in a garden and I'm going to make a covenant that if you obey me, then you will be perfectly, forever, righteous and holy as I am holy but if you fail and you sin, you will what?

Die now we know it's physical death, but we also know it's spiritual death What's part of that spiritual death, though? Dying is the nature that when we see that I am to be holy for you, or you are to be holy for God is holy, we see that and we say, impossible. Why do we say that? Oh, we ought to. It's because the first Adam, our first father, failed. He sinned.

The curses of that covenant fell upon him and his posterity. So when we see that for 1 Peter, and we see that this is what we are to be as Christians, it ought to create in us a great calamity of saying, that is impossible. Because it's impossible for Adam. he failed. He's dead in a sense. His posterity is dead in a sense. It's literally, totally impossible.

The problem is, in our death, we can try to start becoming legalistic. We say, well, to be holy, it doesn't quite mean perfect and everything like that. And you start making a law, your own law, that you can keep yourself. And we can start making errors like that. No, no, no. This is to completely, perfectly keep God's law, to love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the love of your neighbor as yourself, right?

The heart of it. We can't do it. We can't do it. We can't be holy like God because of this fall that we have in the garden. And this death that was brought is the curses of Adam in which this idea of being holy as God is holy is impossible. In other words, the reason why the forest is so hard, the reason why the main theme of Scripture for us to be is so impossible is because of what happened to the first Adam.

Death, if you want to know what spiritual death is, death is imitating sin and not God. You are to be holy for I am holy. We are to imitate God. That is life. You want to know what death is? Death is when we go from imitating God, because He is holy, to imitating Satan and doing sin instead.

That is death indeed. And so the first Adam, our first father, he went from life and imitating God to death and imitating Satan. Right? For you are dead and your trespasses and sins according to the... Oh, I'm going to mix it up because I'm trying to say it in front of people. For you're dead in your trespasses.

It's according to the prince of the... Yep, there it is. I'm just going to go into it before I embarrass myself even further. I can say it whenever I'm just chilling, you know, but whenever I'm in front of people, it's impossible. Ephesians 2, right? We see this in Ephesians 2.

I quote Ephesians 2 all the time. Paul, he gives a description of our problem. and he says in Ephesians 2, For you are dead, and the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. And who are we following? No longer God. No longer are we trying to be holy for he is holy, but no. Death is the fact that we are following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now in the work of the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.

So what is death? Death is going from following God, being holy as he is holy, to following Satan, and sinning according to our natural lusts. This is death indeed. But you see what's wonderful is it goes on in verse 4 though, But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive, what?

Together with Christ. What is being alive? It is to be holy as he is holy. And so we are alive, not of our own power. That's done. Adam failed.

But by the second Adam, that is Christ. He has made us alive. So that impossibility of be holy for I am holy, all of a sudden becomes possible, but that is in Christ. And anytime we separate that from in Christ, we're in very bad territory. Like I've already said, we typically start creating our own law, and we start doing our own thing, and we fall deeper into our error.

So to go from death to life means to be able to go back to the main reason for our existence, to be holy, for God is holy. Such a breach, in other words, has been repaired. And this is why, when we look at this, we don't get frightened. when we look at this command from Peter we don't get frightened because such a breach has been repaired and that is in Christ and Christ alone he came in history, he came in history 2,000 years ago to come and live a righteous life and to die an unrighteous way of dying in fact to die at all would mean that he was unrighteous but he did so to bring those curses of Adam upon himself he died to forgive the curse that fell upon us.

So I had this little thing I wrote out. I'm going to say it a few times because I use a lot of the same words because I'm trying to be cool. The curse of Adam for eating of the tree was placed on the second Adam on a tree so that those who eat of him could have access to the tree of life. That is the curse of Adam for eating of the tree was placed on the second Adam on a tree so that those who eat of him could have access to the tree of life So instead of eating of the tree that led to the curses we eat of Christ who was placed on the cross for us so that we can be made holy We can have access to the tree of life. based off of what Christ has done in the past and the spirit he gives at present, we taste holiness as we look ahead to the hope of the completed thing.

We look back, we look forward. In present, we are able to do what we do at present because we are people who look back and we look forward. The moment we lose focus of either our past, of what the past has done, what Christ has done for us, the moment we stop looking at the hope that we have of the resurrected Christ or coming back for us and bringing us our resurrected bodies is a moment that at present we will not be able to be in any sense of the word holy, for he is holy.

To be holy, to be holy for God, to be holy, we must remember the past and we must look forward to the future. And if you don't do this, thank you, if you don't do this, then you will lose sight of the whole thing. In fact, I would argue that 1 Peter, and if you follow along, I'm going to read through. Notice that 1 Peter chapter 1, this is what Peter's doing a lot in this first chapter.

He's banging around like a ping pong ball, talking about the past, talking about the present, and talking about the future. And the thing that we've got to understand is for us to be holy, for he is holy, we must remember the past, what Christ has done, what we're looking for in Christ in the future, and that enables us to be holy today. And this is what we see throughout this first chapter.

He says in verse 3, follow along with me, 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.

So you notice we talked about being born again, we talked about the death of Christ, and then we talk about the future that we have in which we look upon the hope we have in his resurrection. So we've already looked in the past, we've already looked in the future. In this you rejoice, though not for a little while. If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

So 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. Once more we're looking to the future of when Christ returns. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith.

Once again, we're looking forward to the outcome of our faith, the salvation, the final salvation of our souls. And now he's going to go back to the past. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. He's talking about the Old Testament prophets here. Inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

And so notice he's going back in time saying that the same gospel is what the Old Testament prophets had prophesied about in the past. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you and the things that have now 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 notice throughout the whole thing he continues to go back, he continues to talk about now, he continues to talk about the future we have in Christ returning.

And so with that mind, as Christians, we are always in that mindset. We remember, we celebrate the past, and we hope for the future, and that gives us energy, gives us ability, gives us strength for today. And so look what he says, therefore, in verse finally, as we start dissecting these verses, in verse 13, therefore, therefore, therefore what? Because of the past, because of what Christ has done, because of the inquiry that the prophets, writing about the promise of the Messiah to come, because of what has happened in the past, right?

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. Notice once more he's doing the same thing. Therefore, because of what happened in the past, now what is the main thrust of that verse? It is set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And so once again he's doing that. Past, and he's saying set your hope on the future. But notice what's sandwiched in the middle of that. He says preparing your mind for action and being sober-minded. So it's almost like a secondary thought there, isn't it? It's that because of the past and what's in the future, prepare your minds for action.

Be preparing your minds for sober action. What does he mean by that? What does he mean by preparing your minds for action? Another way to say that is, let me make sure I say this right, is girding up your loins, right? Girding up together, bring them all together. If you think about back in the first century, in order to kind of do like a long run or to do a lot of action, you kind of had to bunch your stuff all together because it was very loose.

So you had to bunch yourself together and get running, get going. You couldn't just run with it all hanging out because you would trip and fall. The things fell really loose. So the idea is when you're about to do a lot of action, when you're about to do a lot of work, you need to get it all together, bunch together, and then run with it, right? And so he's saying the same thing. because of what's happened in the past, right?

Therefore, he says, and the whole momentum of this verse is looking towards the future. He says, get yourself prepared for action. That is your mind, right? In sin, our minds are prepared for sin, isn't it? When we were slaves to sin, our minds were ready for sin. And when we get called out of that, it's still left over in that, isn't it?

And so in order to do this holy life, in order to be holy for God is holy we must remember the past as we look towards the future and prepare ourselves, collect ourselves get ready for our minds to be proper yes thank you but I want you to understand that this is a fruit though This is a fruit of what happens. When we are remembering the past, celebrating the past, and again, the main thrust of it is setting your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, the fruit of it is that you'll be able to then prepare your minds now for action, being sober-minded now. again, if you're not doing those other things you won't have that fruit of being able to do that so if you're not a Christian that is hopeful for the resurrection of Christ as he completes all that he has done if you're not a Christian who considers daily the gospel of Jesus Christ how he has died for sins, how he has made a way through his own righteousness if you're not doing that constantly, your mind will not be ready for anything but sin your mind will not be ready to be in righteousness but rather we will stay in our sin in our minds being sober minded we hear often that you ought to be we think of sober we think of not being drunk being sober minded means what would cause us to be drunk in our minds he's not just talking about alcohol you think about drunkenness So you think you're out of your right state of mind. You're acting foolishly outside of it.

But what would cause us to live in a way in our minds to be drunk? That would be sin, right? Sin causes our mindset, our way of thinking, the way we calculate things, the way we understand things, to be completely misguided, to be completely insane. So he says, as you consider the righteousness of Christ in the past, if you look for righteousness coming for us in the future, make your mind sober. we should always be considering is my thought process here good or is it completely defiled with sin so how often can we be thinking sinful things without even understanding that if we look to the root cause of it it would be a sin that's causing it not any kind of rational thinking so again the only way that this can happen to us though the only way that we can be in the right state of mind is if we're considering christ and his righteousness that he is one for us and what he is bringing to us in the future.

He says as obedient in the next verse. He says in verse 14, as obedient children. If you think about obedient children, we're not any longer, as Paul said in Ephesians 2, we're not children of wrath, are we? If we are truly in the Lord, we consider him, he's our delight, he's our promise. We are no longer children of wrath, are we? We are children of God.

In fact, we are adopted into his family. If you look at me with Romans 8 with me, we'll see this. Romans 8. We are adopted into the family of God. And we've got to remember when we were in the family of the first Adam, what did we receive? Death, right?

Why? Because he brought the curses of his sin upon us, right? So we've got to really understand what this is saying. He's assuming that we're obedient children. The assumption is being obedient children. And so because we are no longer in the first Adam, the first Adam brought the curse upon us.

The first Adam, as being a child of his, made us think to be holy as God is holy, impossible. But being in the second Adam, that's no longer impossible because we have been adopted. Now what does adoption bring us, though? we become fellow heirs with Christ, right? What does that mean? We get the benefits of Christ. What is the benefits of Christ?

A brand new car? A bigger house? What other things do we, the world likes to chase after? Is that what we get as being a fellow heir? Think about being, if you find out that you're, you're heir of a large fortune, you know, when people think of being an heir, they think of a large fortune. They think of all sorts of things.

We are heirs with Christ. And what do we inherit in Christ? Righteousness, right? To be holy. as he is holy. That is our inheritance. So, as obedient children, we are adopted into the family of God through the work of Christ, and our benefit that we get is to be righteous, or to be holy, as he is holy.

That is what we get. That is our prize, possession. So a Christian, by the way, who scoffs at such a thing, that has no desire for such a thing, it shows that they have no prize in righteousness. It shows that their heart truly hasn't been changed. But nevertheless, we see this in Romans 8. Look at Romans 8.

Verse 12. So then, brothers, we are debtors, but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if the Spirit, if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. You see how the Spirit does that for you? Where you were once dead in sin, the Spirit allows you to put death to sin itself.

You used to be dead in sin, and now you are dead to sin. The Spirit enables this. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of what? Adoption as sons. Because when we truly believe upon Christ, we are given the Spirit of God.

He makes us, or He kind of, He brings us into the family of God by adoption, and that Spirit is a testimony of that truth within us. By whom we cry what? Abba, Father. Right? Intimate. We cry out, Father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. We're fellow heirs. Christ gained an inheritance too. And that is righteousness, holiness, goodness, everything.

And we get that through him. So once more, when we look back to what Christ has done, we consider what he has done for us now and given us the Spirit, and we consider what we have laying up for us in the heavenlies in the future as he gathers us back to heaven, what are we enabled to understand now? That we can be holy as He is holy through the work of Christ.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So even Paul is doing the same thing. He's considering the past sufferings of Christ and he's considering the future glorification that we can have when we're glorified with the Lord. This is possible only by considering Christ.

Only by considering history. Only by considering the future. This is why it makes my face hurt. whenever I hear fellow Christians say they don't like history or they don't like to consider the things of history. In some degree I can understand you don't like to read all about the Revolutionary War. You don't like to read all about how the Constitution was drafted and how it had to be redrafted after the Articles failed.

You don't like to look at all the history like that. But to just be one of those people who say I have no interest in history. You better be looking in your history if you want to consider how you can have the power to be righteous today. right? That's why Christians, they look in the future and they're so afraid. What are we afraid of the future for? What is there to be afraid for?

We know the future. You know, God never promises that we for sure will be totally persecuted and we'll be thrown to the dogs, right? And he never promises that we'll have all sorts of peace and security that we'll never have to worry about that kind of persecution. But you know what he does promise us? That we will have righteousness complete. What are we afraid of the future for?

This is what I've got to tell myself whenever I start wanting to be afraid of the future. Whenever I start looking at the poll numbers and I see Biden somehow still has the edge on Trump after all this insanity, right? Whenever I want to start putting my trust in that kind of stuff, rather than putting my trust that Christ is coming and he will complete what he has started.

But if we're not mindful of this, if we're not looking in the past, if we're not looking in the future hopeful, then what we have today is not holiness. It's everything but. we must be a people who do this and do this each and every day. We have been adopted. We have been brought into the family of God by the work of Christ. And so we live our life today with that kind of power.

That inheritance that is ours. The testimony of it is the spirit within our hearts that cries out, Abba Father. And so with that being said then, going back to 1 Peter, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. I want you to notice how he calls, he says, do not act like you used to act. When? Back when you were a child of wrath.

And what does he label it as Is this something that is actually really cool to do Good to do Sin is actually very fun and everything It just we gotta darn it not live like that you know whenever we No he says that the way of living in sin it ignorant It absolutely ignorant What is it ignorant of? The fact that you think that it's okay to live in sin and not enjoy holiness, right? That's ignorance.

For someone to rather be doing all sorts of different things on the Lord's Day, rather than come and worship God, they think their joy is mowing their lawn, taking care of the lawn, and they think their joy is watching football all day, but yet they have no desire to worship with the saints. That is ignorance. That's not actual, truly happiness. Don't be conformed to that kind of ignorance.

That was what you were like when you were a child of wrath. You're no longer that way, but yet you've been given the spirit of adoption. Live in accordance with that truth. Live in accordance with truth, with not being, and I say it stupid, don't live like the pagans, for they live in their ignorance. They don't live in truth. Why?

Because to be holy as God is holy is the greatest of all existence. To live in sin is the worst of all existence. So there's a great contrast there, isn't it? It says, As obedient children, do not conform to the passions of your former ignorance when you were a child of wrath. Rather, live in the freedom of being a fellow heir with Christ as a child of God.

And he says, finally, But, rather, instead of living in the conformity of your ignorance, he says, But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. You know, all of a sudden, that doesn't seem as scary anymore. What does he say? But what? But, so instead of that, what? As he who called you, right?

As he who called you is holy. The one who has called you, where has he called you from? Well, you were once in sin. You were once dead in your sins. In the deadness of your sins, you had no hope for holiness. You had no hope of being able to live the way that God has created you to live.

But instead, he has called you out of that existence. He has called you into the family of God, in which he robes you with the righteousness found in Christ, if you have your trust and faith in him. So all of a sudden now, it doesn't seem so scary. It doesn't seem so unattainable to be holy as he is holy, because our God has called us out of sin. If you're struggling with sin, good. if you hate your sin and you see that it stops you from holiness good but let that end in the fact that you look at what Christ has done for sin and you look ahead to what he is going to do when he conquers it completely but see if we're not minded that way if we lose sight of the calling we have in God then we consider the holiness of God and we think there's no way I can attain to that and then instead of worshipping Christ because he has enabled us to attain to that and said we live in our sins of doubts And then we end up conforming to a different law anyways and that law typically leads us to more sin Martin Luther, since we have read or sang a song that he has penned, he says, If I examine myself, I find enough unholiness to shock me.

He says again, If I examine myself, I find enough unholiness to shock me. But when I look at Christ in me, I find that I am altogether holy. So again, if I examine myself, I find enough unholiness to shock me. But when I look at Christ in me, I find that I am altogether holy. So this is why when we look upon, but you have been called out because you have been given the Holy Spirit, that you have been given Christ, the holiness of Christ within you, no longer is that scarce in the same degree.

But again, when we look at us and we see unholiness, that's still there, that's left over, that still shocks us, doesn't it? And so what do we do to purge this from us? Do we get legalistic? No. We continue to look to Christ and His righteousness. We continue to rely upon the Spirit of Christ who purges us of further sin.

So it's not like all of a sudden the Catholic dogma says that whenever someone is forgiven of sins, they are made holy as a person inside and out, right? No, no, no. We are holy because of the spirit of Christ that's within us. That's what makes us holy. And so we don't all of a sudden look at ourselves and be like, oh wow, I'm a great holy person now.

But instead, what are we looking? We're looking at Christ. We're looking at his righteousness. Always from beginning to end. And so again, when we see Peter exhort us, and he says in verse 16, since it was written, you shall be holy for I am holy. That has always been God.

When he created, he has always had that desire. That has never changed. God has always made a special people that is human beings, created in his image, to be holy. And that was a gift of his. It was a gift to be holy. It is a gift to be righteous and to live in that righteousness.

That has always been his aim. It's always been his aim. We considered the London Baptist Confession of Faith, how everything is under his sovereignty. Everything is under his control. So the fall of man, whenever the curses of the fall was falling on him, to where holiness, what is that? I can't do that.

That was part of his plan too. Why? So that Christ would come as the conqueror. And so yes, when we consider ourselves, we consider how bad we fall short of that. But that why we always look upon Christ Have you been reminded of your sin today Good Look upon Christ And one of the aspects that the Spirit does is He grows us in this holiness and He grows us more and more.

But as we grow more and more in this holiness, we get a greater glimpse of who Christ is. And so we see, I have much more to go, but it is my delight to do it. This is the holiness that God has called us to and it is only possible through Christ. Let us be a people who remind ourselves constantly of what he's done and what he is going to do in the future.

Let us be a people who praise and sing out what he has done and what he's going to do in the future. And as we do so, let it cause us to be more and more holy in the now as we rely upon the power he's given us in his spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ is so good to us. God in heaven, I thank you. Oh God, how I thank you. I consider my own unholiness, I consider just how I was prior to saving faith and I just consider how much of a pagan I was.

I truly was. And what's amazing, God, is I would have said I was a Christian. I would have said that I was a follower of Christ. But yeah, I had no desire for holiness, no desire for righteousness. We know, God, that when you do a proper work, when you do a true work in a sinner, you make them holy as Christ is holy because you put his power into them.

And so now, no longer do they long for their sin, but they long for righteousness. And so when we see Peter exhort us, be holy as God is holy. We know that he's saying that on the heels of talking about the past, of how Jesus has died for sins, and how he has in this now caused us to be born again by the Spirit, and how we look forward to when he conquers sin completely.

It's only in that context can we then see that we are to be holy as he is holy, and think that is possible. It's only possible because of the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray, God, if there's anyone in here who does not have such a desire, that their hearts have not been awakened to such a truth, to such a righteousness, that you would work in their hearts even now, that you would cause them to repent of their sins and see that there's no life in that.

There's only ignorance in that. And you would cause them to rather live in righteousness instead and rely upon Christ and the Spirit that he gives to his chosen bride. Lord, let that be who we are as a church. Let that be who we are as the saints. and where we fall short, may we consistently, may it cause us to go deeper into God, deeper into prayer, deeper into our reliance upon all the things you have laid up for us in the heavenlies.

It's in the Lord Jesus Christ's precious name that we do pray. Amen. Amen.