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Fashionable Minds
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone SDA Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-10-11 21:08Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-10-11 21:08Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-1peterpt04.php
In a moment, we shall continue our study of First Peter, today venturing through verses 1:13-16.
But first, a word on the global financial meltdown. We have all heard the news in recent days as the stock market has experienced its worst days since its creation 112 years ago. In just ten days it has lost more than 20% of its value. Nor is it clear where the bottom is and what will happen next. But it may help to keep in mind some things that do not change. No matter what happens on the stock market...
- The Bible will still have the answers.
- Prayer will still work.
- The Holy Spirit will still move.
- God will still inhabit the praises of His people.
- There will still be God-anointed preaching.
- There will still be singing of praise to God.
- God will still pour out blessings upon His people.
- There will still be room at the Cross.
- Jesus will still love you.
- Our Lord will still save the lost when they come to Him.
The economy goes up, the economy goes down, but the love of our God toward us endures forever. Whatever happens, God is love and He offers hope. Suffering and injustice and even the results of our own poor decisions—all are limited. We are in an age and this age will not last forever. God is still on His throne. Mercy is still offered. How long will these things be? Be ready. Stay tuned!
But now back to the Bible. Always, back to the Bible. No matter the problem, no matter the degeneration of our world, we know unambiguously that we need to draw close to God. We want to be right with Him. And so, His Word, which is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, beckons. Let’s get down to it.
Gird Up
In light of the previous verses (1 Peter 1:1-10), you are to “Gird up the loins” of your minds. Or as the ESV has it, you are to be “Preparing your minds for action.” Girding up means preparing.
It means being sober, that is, being serious, sensible, solemn—undrugged. If our minds are under the influence of drugs that bend our consciousness and perceptions, or if our thoughts are so dominated by this fear or that obsession or that idol worship, then we will not think clearly and use to good effect our God-given capability to making choices. The Christian should be preparing his mind for action; not just for any kind of action, but the right kind. As we listen for a message from heaven, we are preparing our minds for the right kind of action.
To be a Christian is to recognize that God is calling you to responsible living. It is not an escape from reality but a return. It is a search for God’s perspective on matters and a determined and increasingly effective steadfastness in pursuing them. In Christ we are new creatures. But this newness is better understood as meaning that no longer need we remain under the blighting, hopeless, dominating influence of fleshly patterns that we have developed. Instead of being free only to die we are freed in order that we might at last live. We are undergoing the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1, 2). We are being renewed. We are preparing our minds for action.
And Hope to the End
What kind of action then? Living by hope. We cannot live by despair. But we can live by hope.
What is hope? A dictionary definition is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, a feeling of trust. But trust must have an object. Here it is “the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Here we have space for a problem. Some are warning us that we should be careful of our language, that the revealing of Christ here is not intended to be taken literally, that Christ does not come and live within. Salvation, so these say, remains, in the last analysis, a transaction at the cross, and that any internal component is limited. Any strong expectation of internal change puts one at risk of a danger of falling into mysticism.
And look at the text here. The quick look makes it seem that the revelation of Jesus Christ is at the Second Coming. Verse 5 says that God’s salvation is ready to be revealed at “the last time.” Verse 7 speaks of our faith being tested and of the result apparently set at the future, “at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” Verse 11 mentions the sufferings of Christ and “the glory that should follow.”
The argument might have more weight were the Greek word here (both in vv. 7 and 13) parousia, which means presence or appearing. However, the Greek word in both of these verses is one more familiar to you. It is apokalupsei. This word has the same root as the one for the book of Revelation, which is the revealing or uncovering of Jesus Christ. Peter is speaking of what will be seen when Jesus is revealed. He calls us to hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to us at the uncovering of Jesus Christ. It is true that Jesus is coming again. But it is also true that His return occurs only when the character of Christ has been perfectly reproduced in His people (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 69).
It is true that the ultimate manifestation of grace will be seen when Jesus comes again, in that at that time we will receive changed, glorified bodies. Then we will see Jesus face to face (1 John 3:1-3). Then we will ascend to meet our Lord in the air and henceforth never be parted (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Then we will know our forgiveness is made sure and that we are in the kingdom. Then we will at last see the nail prints in Jesus’ hands. Then it will be clear that the character of God has been vindicated before the universe (Romans 3:4, 26; Job 1, 2; Revelation 14:1-5, 12; Daniel 8:14; 9: etc.). However, let us take care before accepting that the revelation of Jesus only is seen at His Second Coming.
Actually, if we are hoping to the end, then we will be recipients of God’s grace to the end. If we are recipients of His grace until the end, then we will be being changed by Him until the end. Grace is a gift but it is also active. Yes, we are to prepare our minds for action but also it is the grace of God that enables us to introduce into the world godly action. We are His witnesses that He is God (Isaiah 43:10). How? In being changed by Him.
At the very end Jesus is shown standing on Mount Zion with the 144K (Revelation 14:1-15). What do they have? His Father’s name in their foreheads. That is, in them the character of Christ has been reproduced. There is internal change. Revelation 14:5 says that there is no guile in their hearts. That is, they are changed people. Not merely externally, but internally, they are new people. They are Christlike. They stand with Him because they are His witnesses.
Fashionable Minds
The next three verses (1 Peter 1:14-16) are all about internal change. True obedience is always internal, it always reaches all the way to the heart; it leaves nothing untouched, no handholds for sin, no bifurcated cubby-holes and shelves for hidden trinkets and idols. All is exposed in the heart that is given to Christ. John 3:19-21 makes it clear. Jesus came as light into our world. More particularly, he came as a light into your world. If you have chosen to lay hold on His strength, chosen to make peace with Him, He will make peace with you (Isaiah 27:5). If you have made peace with Him, then you are coming to the light; to His light You are coming so that your deeds may be seen, so that it may become entirely evident that they are wrought in God.
In other words, something is happening—internally. Listen again to verse 14: “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.”
In our hoping, in our girding up loins, we are to manifest obedience. Peter says that we are “not fashioning ourselves according to the former lusts.” You see, we are fashioning ourselves. The only question is how we go about the fashioning.
The obedient child seeks his Father God’s will and obeys it. We learn by doing. Our God looks for knowing obedience, our worship freely given, intelligently, given. As in all things, we need both elements: intention and intelligence. Some are quite intentional about going to church, yet worship they know not what. Their faith is superficial. God looks for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth—not in thoughtless rote and tradition untempered by God’s Word.
God is Creator and He gave to us free will. Because our choices shape us, it is inescapable that we are fashioning ourselves, and all our choices, even fleshly ones, are made above the neck. We have fashionable minds. We decide what goes in. We decide when we operate on autopilot.
When our lives become imbalanced, our mind-fashioning becomes imbalanced. We tend to have more to do than energy to do it. Tired people stay up late and become more tired turning on the television to keep them company. People settle down for some veg-out time and watch a movie or the news or some carnal production. At last they go to bed, and are too tired to pray or to read a few verses before laying down.
Our goal is not to lead anyone to feel guilty, but to remind us of God’s plan. You are responsible to fashion your mind. You are to co-operate with God in all this. He has the help, He has the power, He has optimum content, the best plan for organizing your life. He has balance for His people, because it is necessary in guiding us to His goal: holiness.
Holy Behavior
Peter continues our passage with a direct call to holiness:
But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
The argument is straightforward: God is holy. God has called you. He has called you to holiness in all that you do (“all manner of conversation”). God made His intention known for us already in the garden of Eden, when He included a prohibition for mankind. But they sinned. We see His plan in more detail in Exodus 19:6. His people were to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. This they could not be without His character and thus without His law. And so, He presents the Ten Commandments in the very next chapter. The command to holiness from which Peter quotes is found in Leviticus 11:44, 45. Just after the unclean foods have been listed, comes the following:
For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
There it is again: fashionable minds. God says to His creatures, “ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves.” We are made in His image. We are capable of holiness. The butterfly is beautiful, but it is not capable of holiness. It is not made in His image. Consider also that holiness is linked with deliverance from bondage. God delivered His people from Egypt. He did this “to be your God.” Under the bondage of external force, the policy and law of the Egyptian state, getting to personal holiness was an enormous challenge at best. Relentless slave labor meant forced work on the sabbath. On every side one saw the ideas, symbols, and emblems of pagan worship; society was permeated with it.
The greatest temptation for the Hebrews in that situation was still to defile themselves with the things of earth. It was the whole situation: the false worship, the policies of state, the lifestyle that surrounded the Jews, all added up to a bondage that was more than just raw slavery. The bondage in Egypt was everything that surrounded and infiltrated the people of God, every idea that bent their thought and behavior away from His kingdom was bondage. Extraction from raw slavery would be of little benefit if His people were still eating and drinking and thinking and worshipping and living like egyptians in every other respect. There must be an exit, an Exodus. There must be a bringing out from Egypt. Before they could see and imitate God in high resolution, the Egyptian glasses must come off. And so, “I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”
When we are out of Egypt, holiness, the wholehearted imitation of God by His power, at last becomes a possibility. When we at last see God, being godly becomes possible.
When Jesus is RevealedBefore concluding, we should return to the idea of when Christ is revealed. We are to prepare our minds for action, to be sober, and to live in hope of the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Having explored this passage, we see that God is granting His people special opportunities for being holy. In Hebrews the warning was given that we seek peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Peace and holiness are necessary components in the pursuit of the Christian life. But we do not live unto ourselves alone, but we are part of a holiness-seeking people.
We saw that the root word for the revealing or uncovering of Christ here in 1 Peter (vv. 1:7, 13) was the same as in the title of the book of Revelation. Revelation is about our seeing Jesus delivering His people through the ages and especially in the last day. His followers are presented as those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, as the remnant persecuted down through time, as those who follow Jesus wherever He goes, who are sealed by Him in their foreheads, and as those who give the Third Angel’s Message. But the essence of it all is that we are each one miniature apocalypses. Like the book of Revelation which uncovers, unveils Jesus in His power, we are those who in the end-time uncover, unveil Jesus in His power. We are His witnesses. We are His examples of those who have Christ formed within. We are His example of fashionable minds delivered from a situation of bondage and recreated by the finger of God.
But many are still in Egypt. They think holiness unnecessary. They think any uncovering of Christ that might happen in our lives is not only unnecessary, but even risky. Because in seeking to do good, inadvertently we may come to think that we are contributing to saving ourselves.
Peter does not address this concern in His text. But he does urge us to fashion our minds anew in Christ. Peter never drank the kool-aid of Satan’s subtle, end-time deceptions that some of us have. He is zealous to see Christ revealed.
Conclusion
The call is in. The Holy Spirit through Peter calls us to personal holiness. He calls us to reveal Jesus Christ by co-operating with Him so that our fashionable minds are emptied of Egypt. We are to be holy because God has delivered us to be holy. Our lives, the only gospel some will ever see, are little books to reveal Christ to the world. We are in a personal way, the book of Revelation for others. Then let us permit Him to reveal His grace in us. Let’s move so that not only hearts but heads are in order. He calls us to have fashionable minds. And to Him be the glory. GCO
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