Staying Clean When Living In The Pig Pen Series

INTRODUCTION

„X SLIDE #1

„X How many times have you thought how easy it is to live for Jesus, to pray, to read His word, to treat others as He wants us to treat them, to live a holy life, WHEN YOU ARE IN CHURCH?

„X Why is it so much easier to live for Jesus when we are at church than when we leave this place?

„X The world around us not too pure.

„X One of the most difficult things for the Christian can be trying to stay pure. I believe this gets more difficult as time passes because of the way society is today.

„X Each year, television, movies, and commercials are putting images into our heads that we do not need. The internet is traffics a lot of stuff that can cause us problems.

„X Our society is becoming increasingly more permissive in what we consider ¡§decent¡¨, we are introducing things to children at younger ages that they are not ready to have to deal with.

„X God has called us to be different. He has called us to live our lives chosen ones who belong to Him.

„X We are born again to a living hope as 1 Peter 1:3 reminds us.

„X Remember as we study 1 Peter that this book was written to those who were being persecuted and were suffering great loss because of their faith. Peter is trying to encourage them not to leave the faith and stay strong.

„X It is hard to stay unstained by the world. It is hard not to fall prey to the temptations the world has to offer.

„X We all hear what we should and should not do; we all know what happens when we follow the pattern of the world. SLIDE # 2

„X James 1:27 says: Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

„X What do you do to keep yourself pure, clean or unstained by the world? Does it happened by accident or do you have a game plan to make it happen?

„X Today I want us to look to God¡¦s Word for help with keeping ourselves clean as we live in this unclean world.

„X Today we are going to look at how we can stay clean when we live in the pig pen.

„X Let¡¦s turn to 1 Peter 1:13-16 together today.

„X SLIDE #3

SERMON

If we are going to stay clean while living in the pig pen we must be:

I. MENTALLY FOCUSED. V13

„X Most anything in life we endeavor to do takes a certain amount of mental focus. You must be focused on the task at hand. If you are going to hit a free throw, you must be mentally focused on what you are doing.

„X Many times we struggle and fail in our efforts to stay clean or pure in this world because we are not mentally prepared to do it.

„X How many of you have decided to go on a diet, only to fail. Then later you do it again only to succeed.

„X What was the difference between success and failure? Being mentally prepared for the challenge.

„X How many times have we done things only to fail or do poorly because our head was not in it? I spend a lot of time encouraging my softball team to keep their focus.

„X In verse 13 Peter gives us three things to do. SLIDE #3 CLICK

„X We are told first to prepare the mind for action. Some translations say we are to ¡§gird our minds for action.

„X During Jesus day people would wear a long robe, if they were going to run or do any hard work, they would take the bottom part of the robe and pull it up into their belt so they could run unencumbered.

„X The implication of this phrase is that we are to prepare our minds for strenuous activity. Today we would say, ¡§roll up your sleeves¡¨.

„X The word ¡§action¡¨ implies the action we are preparing our minds for is actions that will be to our benefit if we carry them out.

„X We must guard what we let into our minds; we must watch our thought process. SLIDE #4

„X 2 Corinthians 10:5 says: We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, SLIDE #5

„X The second thing we are told is that we are to keep sober in spirit.

„X The word ¡§sober¡¨ means to be balanced, steady, self-restrained.

„X A sober spirit is on that is able to consider matters in a careful and sensible way so as to make wise decisions.