Zealous for Doing Good?

It's beautiful. If you remain standing, I'll read from 1 Peter 3, verse 8. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good you may be seated I mentioned before that when Peter wrote this letter he certainly had the 34th psalm in mind because of some difference between the Hebrew Bible and the one we use now he actually would have thought of it as the 33rd Psalm which is kind of weird so when you're reading commentaries on this passage sometimes it refers to Psalm 33 and it's actually kind of funny because it's referring to something else but Psalm 34 is where we find this big chunk of a block quote that you have in your Bible and so let's remember the context here of 1 Peter and then we're going to go dig into Psalm 34 and we're actually going to go look at another passage that Peter's quoting from and is about to quote from, from Isaiah 8 the context is that people are in the Christian church and they're sojourners in a strange land and God is predicting because God knows the end from the beginning that they're going to suffer they're going to suffer at the hands of evildoers and they're going to suffer even for righteousness sake and God's command is to be holy as I am holy it matters not to God that your circumstances are difficult what matters to God is that you are to be holy because he is holy and if you wondered if it was something that was a legitimate request of his or command of his or not he sent his son into the world to endure far more suffering than any of us will ever even imagine and Jesus remained holy.

We, being represented by a perfect representative in the Garden of Eden with all of our needs met, with only one positive command to have to worry about, not to eat from a single tree, chose evil over good in Adam. This is important when we talk about holiness in our context because what a lot of people will tell you, and I'm not thinking of the evildoers so much right now, pagans, people outside the church, they do evil because they like evil, and a lot of them will admit that. But there's Christians who will excuse their sin and say, well, it's my circumstance.

If only my husband listened better. If only my wife would submit to me. if only my children would obey it's always if only somebody else out there did something different I wouldn't commit the sins I commit whether they're in my mind alone or whether I actually commit outward sins and yet when each and every one of us had the opportunity in the Garden of Eden because you were represented by Adam perfectly we choose to sin even if our circumstances are perfect how much more will we choose to sin when we're conceived in sin now born with a sin nature and so get it out of your mind that your circumstances have anything to do with your sin what your circumstances do is they pull out the sin that's in you the circumstances quicken it and enliven it for you and your sin deceives you into thinking that that's what made you sin. So if you remember that.

Because Peter's about to give us some very, very hard words. Some very hard commands to follow. And yet it doesn't change that God actually does expect you to obey them. no you will not lose your salvation if you fail we are going to sin we're not sinless perfectionists so we're not Roman Catholics and we're not sinless perfectionists we believe we're justified by faith alone and that is how we enter into the new covenant we're granted the spirit of God who enables us to do some righteous things we also recognize that we still live in this body of death and we still will struggle with sin every day of our life.

The day that you think you're no longer struggling against sin, chances are you're not struggling against it. You've yielded to it. That is not a good day for you. But the day that you die and this flesh that you carry around dies you will be finally dead to sin But your spirit is dead to sin now So Peter tells us some very hard things And it's hard for me, as the preacher, to tell you the hard things sometimes, because there's some part of me that wants to create a balance.

Like, well, I better make sure I give them a lot of encouragement also, because I don't want everybody to think that I'm just mean or just giving them the law. I'm not trying to be like the next Paul Washer and just saying really hard things and go viral. It's not the goal. But my goal is to follow the text. And if this portion of text is hard, and I think it is, I think if you really consider it, it's harder than it reads on the surface.

I want you to understand that from my perspective my desire is to get done and everybody clap and say what a great guy, that's my little desire that's called sin that's not the goal, the goal is to take you through the same text that I've been going through to try to explain what it really says and let the spirit of God work in our hearts that we would all grow in holiness together because that's what we want and so with that in mind Peter tells the people in verse 9 do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling and I'm reminded of chapter 2 in verse 22 and 23 the same book describing Jesus Christ going to the cross and living a life for us. He says, he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. He says, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten. Can you imagine the meekness of Christ for a moment? He has all power and authority in heaven and on earth. And Pontius Pilate is standing there commanding other people to flog him, commanding him to carry this cross. And Jesus Christ, with all power, just stood and did it. He did not even threaten them.

He didn't say, hey, by the way, I'm coming back and I'm going to judge everyone and you're going to get... He didn't do any of that. He didn't threaten. he suffered and he did that as an example to us it tells us right here in verse 21 it says he was an example I'm not saying he's just an example there's a version of Christianity that says Jesus is just a good example that's not what I'm saying but I'm saying he is an example and so when he suffered he did not threaten and what did he do? the Bible has a lot of commands the Bible has a lot of what I'll call negative commands where it says don't do this so don't look at porn you hear me? don't do it, don't steal don't lie there's a lot of don'ts Christianity is a rule there's a lot of rules people like to turn it into it's not about rules, it's a relationship that's not Christianity, Christianity has tons of rules they're all just really good ones that God loves.

Nothing wrong with rules. Anybody here who's a parent knows you have rules. I saw a TikTok video today. I wasn't on TikTok, I promise. Somebody posted a video. But anyway, the point is this.

This girl had her little baby and the whole video was about how she's not going to make her baby sleep in a crib because it's like a little prison. And it's like, well, some of the reasons you put the baby in the crib are to protect the baby from things the baby's not ready to be exposed to yet. She's not going to put her baby behind the wheel of her car.

So she creates her own compartments for her baby, I'm sure. But the point is, those rules aren't inherently bad. But when we're told not to revile, what Jesus did, and we went over this a month ago or so, he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. That was 1 Peter 2.23. Jesus did not revile those who reviled him and he didn't threaten those that caused him to suffer he instead trusted God and now Jesus had a little special access to God he knew God's will in a way that is way better than we do but Jesus has through the Holy Spirit provided for us his will Paul says you have the mind of Christ He wasn't writing to Jesus.

He was writing to believers in Corinth when he says that. And you have the mind of Christ if your mind is renewed and washed by his word on a constant basis. This is why there's some areas of your life, if you've been a Christian for a little while, you still struggle in. But there's other areas that you used to struggle in, and now your initial thoughts about it are better.

Your initial reaction to certain things is better. not because you've necessarily become much better but your thoughts are more aligned with God's thoughts and so Jesus Christ knowing God's will knew that this was not the time to fight back I mean Jesus avoided death a few times he hid himself the one time where they were going to throw him off a cliff and suddenly he just walks through them and they don't even know where he is Jesus had power to do some things but at the appointed time that he would have understood. He would have done God's will. He entrusted himself to what God's plan was.

And God's plan for Jesus was that Jesus would die. A horrible suffering bloody death A horrendous death by all human standards The most gruesome death you could imagine He went to the cross The Latin word for cross is crux It's where we get the word excruciating from. It's from the cross. It was excruciating. It was meant to be severely torturous. It's thought of as barbaric.

And it was meant to be a huge deterrent to anyone that would walk by and see it. Because it was done publicly. And yet Jesus did all that, and his physical suffering doesn't compare to the suffering of being forsaken by his father. It was more bothersome to Jesus to be treated as if he was a sinner than it was to actually suffer the physical pain of it.

He did that for his people. He entrusted himself to God. So even though the plan that God had, so, you know, what do they say? God has a wonderful plan for your life? Isn't that one of the sayings of a lot of American Christians now? Well, if everything God does is wonderful, which it is, then yeah, I guess technically we can tell that to people, but that's not what people mean.

If God's plan for Jesus Christ was immense suffering and difficulty, if his plan for Jesus Christ was to live a life of basically shame, he suffered shame. He was treated like a capital criminal and he opened up his mouth. Can you imagine if somebody falsely accused you of something? I mean I would defend myself immediately almost. And so we have this example rather than revile those who revile us which is being predicted by God, rather than repaying evil for evil, when we get treated with evil, rather than maybe thinking of the whole eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth thing maybe, he says, on the contrary, bless.

And he says, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. Your way of getting blessed is to bless others, particularly those who persecute you. Romans 12, we're told, bless those who persecute you. bless and do not curse them. In Matthew 5, Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

And I've heard some people play with that. Oh, I pray for my enemies. I pray the imprecatory psalms for them. Some of you are looking at me like, what's imprecatory? the imprecatory psalms are the ones where David asked for God to come and smite his enemies where David asked God to come and bring judgment on the people that are his enemies they're legitimate psalms and I've heard different commentary from different people and I think we can definitely pray for things that are evil to end but what God I think really desires of you is that you would pray that people would be forgiven of their sins like you have.

There's an attitude behind people that pray imprecatory psalms. And I'm not saying everybody that does it is like this. But we can be susceptible to self-righteousness. Where we forget that if somebody else's imprecatory psalm against us had been answered before we got saved, we'd be dead and in hell right now. I'm not saying there isn't a place for them and I want to see an end to evil I pray for an end to abortion and I know that that prayer could get answered a couple of ways and one of them is not good for a lot of people but the specific people who are at the abortion clinic I pray that God would save their souls those ladies that stand outside if you can call them ladies and they escort people in and they try to protect them from having to hear the preacher I pray that those people get saved because I deserve the same judgment they deserve turn to Psalm 34 and let's get a look at this wonderful psalm this was my favorite psalm when I became a new Christian it's my favorite chapter of the Bible and it still might be but I've read a lot more scripture a lot more times now so I don't really play so many favorites but David escapes some affliction and he says he's going to bless Yahweh at all times his praise shall continually be in my mouth so he's going to boast in the Lord he wants you to magnify the Lord with him but look down here Psalm 34 and we'll look at verse 11.

He says, Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of Yahweh. Listen to me, he says. I'm going to teach you the fear of Yahweh. He's teaching them about salvation. Fearing Yahweh in the Old Testament has a little more meaning than this, But in general, it's a reference to believing God and trusting him for your salvation and trusting your soul to your faithful creator while doing good.

And then this is what Peter quotes. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? So we have this rhetorical question introducing a section of scripture where David is going to describe a man who loves life. and loves many days. This is what a blessed man will look like. A person who's trying to walk in wisdom. This is what he going to look like The first commandment with the promise honor your father and mother that it may go well with you that you may live long in the land Obeying God has good consequences for people.

This is why the United States was really a somewhat prosperous country for a while. We followed the Bible. It wasn't all believers that did everything, but the United States did the things the way God said. God's ways are just always better. Even if you don't necessarily believe God, even if you're not faithful as you should be in your heart, doing things His way just works out better.

Foolishness is a reproach. But what does He tell them? He tells them, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Same thing Peter quotes. Turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.

Interestingly enough, Peter quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament when Peter quoted it. So that's why it's a little bit different. And to me, that validates translations as legitimate copies of God's Word. Not that they're inerrant and infallible, because translations often have errors. And we can know what those are, but they're certainly valuable.

Can you imagine? Hey, you want to become a Christian? Yeah, okay, well let's go learn Greek and Hebrew first. Can you imagine? what a stumbling block that would be for a very long time it was a curse on people the Jews had access to this stuff and nobody else did right praise the Lord he's opened it up the eyes of Yahweh verse 15 are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry the face of Yahweh is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth so you have this idea here of the righteous crying for help and Peter talks about that you keep your lips from speaking deceit seek peace and pursue it turn away from evil and do good and then guess what God's going to hear your prayers the prayers of a righteous man availeth much and I don't think that that only refers to the fact that Jesus is your righteousness I think we have a practical righteousness that we work out in our salvation in our sanctification, which is part of the big word, salvation.

And I think that your prayers are effective. Peter told husbands, love your wives and live with them in an understanding way and all that stuff. He said, so that your prayers will not be hindered. And then the next verse, he says, have unity of mind and brotherly love. And a couple of verses later, he says, seek peace and pursue it, quoting the Old Testament.

Interesting. you pursue peace with people you don't wait for it it's an active thing that we're supposed to work for, we're in a little tiny little church here you guys could all fit in two rows maybe I think, maybe three maybe not with social distancing we can't but we're a little tiny church and you know what as long as there's two of us here we're big enough to have conflict and the more people decide to join the church and then more people come from another place where they needed to get saved and come or maybe somebody is at a church where they're not confident the word's being preached and they decide to join us you have more and more times that conflict comes up more and more minor disagreements that can become major really quickly and it's incumbent upon us to seek peace and God gives us all the tools to do it including the Holy Spirit and yet not everybody does it I haven't been a Christian for as long as some people have but I've been a Christian long enough and I've attended church long enough that I've seen over and over people that aren't seeking peace people who would rather ignore the fact that conflict exists than just work it out or even hear each other out but the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth in verse 16 his face it says in the previous verse his anthropomorphic face in 16 still is against those who do evil David cries to God make your face shine upon your servant and teach me your statutes in Psalm 119 God turns his face away from Jesus, metaphorically speaking, on the cross. I think we all know what this means. It's the idea of God smiling upon you.

I think there's an old Irish prayer for God smiling. But you don't want God's face set against you when you're doing evil. It has the imagery that He sees it. so while you're suffering for righteousness sake God sees the evil around you and he's telling you not to repay the evil for evil he's telling you not to threaten those who are causing you to suffer because vengeance is mine I will repay says the Lord you don't have to take vengeance in this life for the evil done against you in fact you're trusting him against the evil that occurs is evidence of your salvation and of your opponent's destruction.

Paul tells us that at the end of Philippians chapter 1. You can read it yourself. It's right there. You go through the New Testament books. I dare you. Read through the New Testament epistles of Paul and find one of them where it doesn't mention suffering and how we're supposed to respond to it. it's not the theme of everyone like 1 Peter might be but it's there it's all over the place Verse 17 of Psalm 34, he says, When the righteous cry for help, Yahweh hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

Peter calls it, Yahweh hears their prayers. He says, The Lord hears the prayers. In 1 Peter 3. That doesn't mean you're going to escape every suffering in this life. The whole point of what we've discussed in 1 Peter is that you've got suffering coming. you're going to be delivered from it one way or another you may even be delivered from it through a martyr's death this psalm was still true even when Jesus died on the cross he was raised again he was delivered from all the troubles he experienced so here's where I want you to get your encouragement, verse 18 Yahweh is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

The biggest question that you get when people are suffering is where's God? Where's God in all my suffering? Where was God when the bad thing happened basically? I could name a bunch of bad things if you wanted. Where was God when something got stolen? Where was God when grandma died?

Where was God when I got raped? Where was God when my dad was drunk and hit me? Where was God when my brother died? we'd go on forever of bad things, right? I'm sure all of you have stories that if you all wrote the bad thing in your life that's hardest for you to deal with, and we all threw them in the middle, we'd all just take ours back. That's kind of how things work.

So we all have bad things that have happened. We've all suffered great injustice at times. We've all committed great injustice as well. but the point here is if you're broken hearted if your spirit's been crushed God's near to you God's near and because God forsake his own son you can be near to him so can you endure a temporary suffering for his sake and for some of you, maybe if you're being honest, the answer is no, I can't.

There's a difference between will you, will you in your heart say, wow, I do want to suffer for Christ if that's His will for me. I want to do it without complaining and I want to be as holy as I can throughout the process. Throughout the process. If that's your attitude towards your suffering, that's great. But if your answer is, well, my answer is no, I can't.

I can't do it, well good, because you can't do it on your own. I had a friend, I'll tell you a quick story. I'm not a big storyteller during sermons, so forgive me if this one ruins it for you, but I have a friend that he used to have a ministry, still has a ministry, and on the ministry website when you registered, you wanted to be part of the ministry, it asked you questions like, when did you get saved, and you know, all that kind of stuff.

And one of the questions was, do you think, do you have the gift of martyrdom? And it was kind of a test, right? To see if people would say yes, oh yeah, I think I do. Because if you know somebody who thinks they have the gift of martyrdom, don't bring them with you anywhere, alright? We don't need that guy. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen in God's will.

We're not going to bring it upon ourselves. So you don't have the gift of martyrdom. What you have is you have a weakness that can only be supplied by God's all-sufficient grace. Okay? you're not stronger than Paul. You're not stronger than John the Baptist. You're weak.

You may be crushed in spirit. You're so weak. There may be a part of you that wonders, am I really saved? I struggle so much against my sin. And know this, as long as you still struggle, that's your indicator. That's your hope.

The fact that you war against it, even if you fail sometimes. That's what you hope for. Some of you should yield to the Spirit more times. But the Lord is near to the broken heart and saves the crushed spirit. Look at verse 19. Here's your promise.

You want a promise from Scripture? There's all sorts of promise books. Go to the store and buy a book of Bible promises and I'll bet you this one's not in there. many are the afflictions of the righteous but Yahweh delivers them out of them all his deliverance is a great promise but the afflictions are the promise also that what you not going to get on your 365 promises one for each day calendar okay And I love God promise I think it great to believe God promises But the thing that God seems to promise the most, especially as we're going through 1 Peter and then the related passages, is that He promises almost nothing good in this life, except peace beyond understanding if you know Jesus Christ.

That's what you're promised. You're promised the hope that no matter what people do to you, no matter what they do to your body, he who can kill body and soul in hell is going to take you to heaven. That's what he promises you. That's what you cling to. He doesn't promise your football team is going to win. He doesn't promise your wife is going to come back.

He doesn't promise that your husband is going to become nice or whatever he needs to do. He doesn't promise all your kids will get saved. So now everybody knows it's a Baptist church if you're listening online. That was a Presbyterian joke for those of you who didn't get it. I see some people looking like, what's he doing? There's a lot of really good things in this life that we really hope for, we pray for.

You're not promised you're going to make it to your car. We've got a nation full of people wearing masks because of COVID. and I think we're like 30 times more likely that someone will choke tonight. Statistically at least. So many are the afflictions of the righteous. Yahweh delivers them out of the mall and then look, he keeps all his bones. Not one of them is broken.

What do you see here? This is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who hung on the cross where routinely they would make people suffer for I think up to 72 hours. and in order to finally kill people because they refused to die, they'd have to break their legs so that the people would no longer be able to push themselves up to catch a breath. And hundreds of years before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, it was predicted his bones wouldn't get broken.

And I don't think it's necessarily a promise to you that you'll never break a bone. but I think the point is that evil doers whoever do get their hands on you they will go no farther than the Lord has decreed they will and it may be very very bad read Fox's book of martyrs there have been some horrendous Christian deaths and those are the ones we know about there's a whole slew of people you're going to meet in heaven that were faithful to the end in a lot harder conditions than you might ever face so prepare your minds one of the gifts of God verse 21 that the affliction will slay the wicked those who hate the righteous will be condemned you don't have to worry about those that are persecuting you, those who are hurting your body because God himself is going to slay them Revelation 6 verse 10 we'll just read verse 9 first when he opened the fifth seal I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne they cried out with a loud voice oh sovereign Lord holy and true how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer. Notice they're resting. I like that.

Until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete who were to be killed as they themselves had been. I want to say I'm sorry, but I don't say I'm sorry when I'm teaching God's word. But I... it's hard to tell you. There's a lot more killing of the righteous that looks like still has to happen in this world. And for some of you, this should be a wake-up call to warn your children, to warn your family, to prepare people around you, to have some kind of plan.

I'm not one of those big planners. I did like a planning thing where you learn how to store wheat and buy enough ammo to take over a small country and all the different things that some of these guys do. I'm counting on the fact that I hopefully have a talent or a skill that someone else will keep me alive for because I'm not much of like a gardener or herder or whatever.

But you can prepare your family for the possibility that an evildoer separates you someday. You can instill in your children these songs that we're singing. and memorizing scripture. You don have to have a ton It may be great Little kids can easily memorize one verse a day probably two Easily By the time a kid's ten, they can easily have 7,000 verses of the Bible memorized.

Easily. I mean, these kids memorize everything. But even if they just memorize something like Psalm 34 and John chapter 3, just something. and teach them the scripture. That's what matters. It's not going to help them that they know the names of all the Paw Patrol guys if something happens and they get separated. I know it's fun.

I get it. My kid knows that stuff. But prioritize these things. And I don't want you to be scared. But I want you to be able to be sober about it. If you went to a doctor and the doctor knew that there was bad things coming, and he failed to warn you about it, he would have failed his job.

If the doctor knew that your lifestyle was going to cause you sickness or death or heartache, and he didn't warn you about it because he was worried that maybe you wouldn't like him, or maybe your feelings would get hurt, or maybe you'd point back at him and say, Hey, doc, you don't eat so good yourself. Whatever it is, he'd be a failure at his job. So I want you to be sober-minded.

That's what Peter tells us multiple times in this letter. Be sober-minded as you await the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's what the whole letter is about. I hope you're rereading it once in a while instead of just showing up Sunday and hoping I'm on the next verse. It's not a long book. It's 105 verses.

You can probably read Peter. I mean, depending on your other stuff you've got going on, you can probably read it at least every other week. Just read the whole thing. You know, one chapter every other day or something. Just keep familiar with it. But that's what he says over and over.

Jesus Christ is coming back, so live this way while you wait for him. And be sober minded, you're going to suffer. But verse 13 has a couple different elements in it that I want to go over. And then next week we'll continue with verse 13. And try to get to verse 16 probably. But he says, now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?

So what I want to leave you with today is zealousness for good works. So turn to Titus. Titus chapter 2. The question is asked, now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for good works? and I've heard so many different answers. It's like I can say whatever I want and I've got somebody who can agree with me. One guy said, lots of people.

Well, I'm not sure that's what Peter meant. But in the context, Peter's saying there's lots of people who are going to persecute us. Right? But I think what's implied in the question is that in general, in God's economy of how things work, those who are doing good are generally treated okay generally we understand that people will revile us for Christ and all those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, we get that but in general while people are walking around in what we'll call their average level of depravity they're not serial killers yet in general people are grateful that you do some kindness to them.

My son was pointing out today that it's interesting to him how many non-Christians will just reach out to him for prayer. People that will never otherwise talk about religion. When something happens, they'll ask you for prayer. Now granted it could be a superstitious thing with them. But I think with some people, they know there's really a God and they know that somebody knows that God and I think a lot of them realize Christians probably do.

That's why they hate them. But who is there to harm you if you're zealous for what is good? If your life is filled with loving your neighbor, which is what zealous for what is good would mean, at least half of it, you're not going to have a whole lot of angry neighbors. You might make your neighbor mad by standing up for Jesus. you may say something that your neighbor doesn't like about homosexuality or about politics or about abortion or about sex outside of marriage or about even taxation and you may say there are certain forms of taxation at least that I think are no different from thievery and that may really bother somebody that you stand up for righteousness and you may be right that's going to happen but I'll tell you what You go over to your neighbor house and you do more than just tell them they going to hell and here the gospel and then run home You mow their lawn or you help them fix something or you invite them for dinner.

You offer to watch their kids. I don't know. I'm not a really great neighbor in some of these. I'm surrounded by good neighbors. I'm the guy that's always like borrowing tools. Like I'm not the, I consider myself like the spiritual neighbor.

But I think I should do better at like making cookies or bread. My wife does that stuff and I get to deliver it, so I get credit for it, I guess. But if you're zealous for good works, who's going to harm you? Is the government going to come get you because you're feeding homeless people? Generally, no. I realize there's going to be a situation that could come right now.

But generally speaking, when you're zealous for goodness, no one's going to bother you. if you're not stealing from people, you're lower on their priority list than people they know are stealing. There's a few churches in the world being persecuted. Well, there's a bunch around the world. But in the United States right now, there's only a few churches being under anything you call persecution.

It's a small percentage still right now. So be zealous for good works. Look at Titus. Titus chapter 2 Titus says in 11 2.11 for the grace of God has appeared so Jesus Christ has appeared bringing salvation for all people for all different kinds of people the elect of all people training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions so let's turn away from what we once were in and to live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age waiting for our blessed hope So here's Paul talking about the eschaton, the end times.

Jesus Christ is coming back. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is what we're waiting for. He's not here. He's in your heart. I get it.

He's omnipresent. He's not here, though. We're waiting for him. Washing our garment, his bride. Then it says, who gave himself for us. Why? to redeem us from lawlessness and to purify himself of people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

So who is there to harm you if you're zealous for good works? Peter wants to know. There's going to be some. We'll talk a little more about it next week. But you being zealous for good works is probably going to have more of an effect of keeping you alive longer and keeping you out of trouble. than not. So my question would be, are you zealous for good works?

Are you as zealous to do good things? And when I say good things, things God defines as good. So read his law. But get the Baptist Catechism where it goes through each commandment, and it says, what is the implications of this commandment? What am I supposed to do? Because it says, thou shalt not kill.

Just walking around not killing people is not what that commandment means. There's more to it. and it's explained. But if you're zealous for good works, are you as excited to do good works as you are to revile those who revile you? I mean, I'm quick with the snark when somebody says something, you know, foolish on Facebook. I can come back real quick sometimes.

Am I that zealous to just bless people? You know what I mean? are you zealous for good works? And you can compare it by looking at the things you are zealous for. Some of us are really excited about some things. Some guys like fishing. Some guys like NFL football.

Some people like sewing. Some people like guitars. Nothing wrong with the guitar. Don't take that the wrong way. But do you love the guitar more than Jesus? Do you love fishing more than Jesus?

Do you love the NFL more than Jesus? Do you love your wife more than Jesus? Your kids? Your job? your security, your country we have a great God and he's given you ways to worship him through these good works as the result of the justification you've already been granted the gift of grace so serve him he's near to the broken hearted he saves the crushed in spirit and so this is your chance to turn to him Father we thank you that your word is always true we thank you that even in times of difficulty we can trust you and I pray that you would grant us by faith some of these abilities today to really love you and to really serve you from the heart in Christ's name I pray Amen Thank you.