When is something worth nothing? Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note -- enough to buy just two loaves of bread – as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation. Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation now officially estimated at 231 million percent, and its currency is fast losing its value. As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion. When the government issued a $10 billion note just three (weeks ago, it bought 20 loaves of bread. That note now can purchase less than half of one loaf.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:9-12)
What these two verses make clear is that there are two tremendous issues in the world. Yet, the majority of the world’s population see these two things as worthless. The two issues that dominate these two verses — and indeed dominate the whole New Testament — are the salvation of the human soul and the glory of God. The two great issues of the Bible are how our sinful soul might not be destroyed and God’s great name might not be disparaged.
If the world believed this, the newspaper and the television and the theater and the university and popular music and industry mission statements and government goals would look and sound very different than they do: The salvation of the human soul and the glory of God. But in fact we live in a world that shows by its priorities and values that it does not regard these two issues as paramount. In fact, they are not even on the list of the world's priorities.
Sermon in Summary: Peter encourages believers to live as aliens in a hostile world. Believers in Christ are to conquer the evil desires inside of them so that nonbelievers will take notice of their behavior. Peter also hopes that the lives of Christ-followers will be so attractive to nonbelievers that they will come to place their faith in Jesus Christ. Lastly, this will bring great glory to God when He judges the entire world.
1. Live Godly
“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). My goal is to get you to want to live godly rather than just adhering to a list of external commands.
Coach Billy Donovan kicked the Florida Gator basketball team out of gym this past week. When the Florida Gators lost in the first round of the Southeastern Conference tournament, they knew it knocked them out of the NCAA tournament field. They had no idea it also would get them kicked out of their practice facility. Coach Billy Donovan felt like his players had settled into a state of complacency and entitlement after losing 8 of the last 11 games. So he banned them from Florida University’s $12 million facility. He also told them they couldn’t wear any Florida attire. Commenting on his 2007-8 team after the Gators had won the previous two national championships, Donovan commented: “Probably in some respects the confetti is still falling down around them. When you have great success like we’ve had I think it’s very, very easy to become complacent and to lose sight of how good things are around here and to have an attitude of, ‘I’m at Florida. This is just what’s going to happen.’” Donavan pointed back to his team’s desires.
I want you to see from verse eleven that what we are talking about is important: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The ultimate issue in that verse is that the human soul is in danger of being destroyed. A war is being waged against the soul in this world. If the war is successful, the soul is lost. Verse eleven tells you that the believing life is not passive: “which wage war against your soul….” Our faith lives in a hostile world. Jesus said, “What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul? For what can a man give in exchange for his soul” (Matthew 16:26)? If the soul is lost, the whole person is lost. And there is no way to negotiate to get it back. When this war against the soul is over, it’s over. There is a great gulf fixed and none can cross one way or the other—from heaven or from hell (Luke 16:26).
When you see yourself as an alien and an exile with your citizenship in heaven, and God as your only Sovereign, you stop drifting with the current of the day. You ponder what is good for the soul and what honors God in everything: food, cars, videos, bathing suits, birth control, driving speeds, bed times, financial savings, education for the children, unreached peoples, famine, refugee camps, sports, death, and everything else.
Aliens get their cue from God and not the world: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:11-13). So one way to make God visible and weighty for the sake of our world is to see ourselves as exiles and refugees from heaven: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Another thing to notice in this text is that the battle for the soul and the battle for the glory of God is fought first at the level of our desires and then at the level of our behavior. First at the level of what we feel, and then at the level of what we do. Peter has said the same thing in 1 Peter 1:14-15: “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…” (1 Peter 1:14-15).
Why is desires first and then behavior that follows? “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25).
It doesn’t do any good to try to shine up the conduct on the outside without changing the desires on the inside. What they see is some external action, and what they ask about is your internal hope: “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15). What they see is some external action, and what they ask about is your internal hope. What Peter is saying here is that when people look at you, what they see expressed in your actions is what you hope in.
So they see a certain way of acting — some humble act of love (Galatians 5:6) or some righteous act of courage (Hebrews 10:34) or some self-denying act of generosity (2 Corinthians 8:1-2) and they notice that you must not be hoping in what people usually hope in self-exaltation, safety, money and they are puzzled as to where your hope is.
What kind of sins are we to battle? Peter is already back in verse 1 Peter 2:1 told us to run from slander and envy. We could add sexual desires to that list as well. The desire to be anxious… For pride… For impatience … Bitterness … You know, you can see the passions of the flesh, don’t you? It doesn’t take a microscope to see this coming. A former president of the American Psychiatric Association said “Premarital sex relationships resulting from the so- called new morality have greatly increased the number of young people in mental hospitals.” Dr. Billy Graham said he talked to the head psychiatrist at one of our great eastern universities not long ago. He said that over fifty percent of all of the university students there are suffering psychological problems because of immoral relationships. Now listen to it again - over fifty percent of all of the students in this great eastern university suffering psychological problems because of immoral relationships.
WHY DO WE GET STUCK IN SINFUL HABITS?
1. We don’t want to give up our sin up.
2. We get some benefit from this sinful habit.
3. We don’t turn to Christ’s power to stop our sin. Too often we abuse His grace by persisting in our sin. We think, “Christ died for my sin therefore, I’ll do it just one more time.”
4. No one holds us accountable because we keep our sinful habit a secret.
5. Our conscience is seared and we become immune to the evil of our actions.
Is there a flesh and blood example of the kind of life we are talking about? Can we point to someone in the world today and say, “There. Live like that.”
Jim Elliot was eighteen years of age when he attended Wheaton College, a private Christian college in Illinois. At the age of twenty one, Elliot met a missionary to Brazil that led him to believe he was to do missions work among the tribes in South America. The missionary told him of the Auca people, an indigenous people group in Ecuador that had never had friendly contact with the outside world. Elliot soon became convinced that God was leading him to Ecuador. He and four other missionaries, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and their pilot, Nate Saint, made contact from their airplane with the Huaorani Indians using a loudspeaker and a basket to pass down gifts. After several months, the men decided to build a base a short distance from the Indian village, along the Curaray River. Elliot and his friends became instantly known worldwide as martyrs and Life Magazine published a ten-page article on their mission and death. They deaths sparked interest in missions among the youth of their time and are still considered an encouragement to Christian missionaries working throughout the world
2. Your Behavior Should Magnify God
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:9-12). The word “Gentiles” in verse twelve is used for pagans. sPeter didn’t call on Christians to defend themselves as much as to act in such a way that God is noticed. Becoming walking and talking sandwich boards to bring attention to God. You are to live in such a way to quiet any negative stereotypes associated with Christianity. This is the way to live the good life in contrast to your former way of living: “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers…” (1 Peter 1:18). People watch strangers more closely. Your actions and how you fulfill your desires will be strange to the outside world. We live with the constant knowledge that people are watching us.
Jonathan Hillman is a 25-year-old from First Baptist Church of Guymon, OK. Jonathan was recently doing mission work in Europe. Hillman was among a team of volunteers handing out packets of Gospel materials to cars passing through the port’s gates. Its purpose is to spread the Word of God across North African nations where sharing the Gospel is a criminal offense. The Muslim world has a very high wall around it. Governments across North Africa absolutely prohibit the distribution of the Bible. It is not illegal to own one, but it is illegal to give someone else one. The sentence for a first offense [in one North African country] is five years in prison and over $300,000 in fines. Instead of risking life and limb to distribute God’s Word inside North Africa, volunteers focus on the more than 18 million North Africans living and working in Europe. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of these immigrants flow through southern Europe’s ports — most returning to North Africa to visit family. Ferries carry the travelers, their cars and the Gospel, across the Mediterranean. Most of the drivers were North African Muslims headed for countries across the Mediterranean. Traffic backups were an answer to prayer because they bought volunteers time to offer the packets to every car. You say, “They’ll just throw them away once they get down the road!” Several years ago, a North African man passed through the ports and was offered a Gospel packet by a volunteer. He took it home where he studied the New Testament and watched the JESUS film. The man was considered a hajj, a title given to those fulfilling one of Islam’s five pillars by completing a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had not only traveled to Mecca once as required by the Quran, but four times -- even bringing his wife along for the journey – a mark of esteem among Muslims. His testimony is that after two years of examining the claims of the Gospel, he prayed to receive Christ and was baptized.
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)?
“Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:1-6)
The story of Elliot and his four missionary friends didn’t end with their deaths. When our lives are lived to bring attention to God rather than ourselves, then the story never ends with just us. Instead, our lives are lived on a larger platform. Their deaths saw numerous others come forward to live holy lives. Many others were inspired to reach the nations for Christ and the gospel.
