Holy Resistance | 1 Peter 1:13-2:3 | Justin Leitch

Well, good afternoon. If we haven't met, my name is Justin. I'm one of the pastors here. And we're grateful you're worshiping with us. And I want to start off today just acknowledging what is on so many of our hearts and minds this week and over the past couple of weeks.

Just two weeks ago, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Charlie Kirk was publicly and just violently assassinated. Just a heinous act that really shook the foundation of our culture in a lot of ways and left many of us unsure how to feel, how to respond, filled with anger and just asking tons of questions about the world that we live in. But that just the craziest going on in our world right now didn't stay way out there. It came here to our community as well.

Incredibly high tension at UNCW over the past week with the free expression rock and then this threat of online violence that I know left a number of you students just shaking to your core for your safety and wondering what the next hours were going to hold. And this week, these past couple of weeks, they reminded us what the scriptures know to be true, that the world is a dark and broken place. The problem in our world is sin. And there's just no denying it over this past couple of weeks. But we as followers of Jesus, we gather each week to worship and to remember together that we have a certain and living hope in Jesus Christ.

We have the answer to the world's brokenness and to the world's problems. We have the light of the world. And Jesus, who gave himself on the cross so that we could have life. And as our world, as our community, as our campus, is asking big questions right now, we do have, not because we are awesome, but because God is good answers to the questions that they're asking. Sin has made the world a broken place.

And through Jesus, we can be put back together. So what I want to do to start our time together this evening is just pray. I want to pray for a few different groups. I want to pray for the Kirk family and these kids that are going to grow up without a dad. I want to pray for our community in uncw, that anyone filled with anxiety and fear would just be ministered to by the church and be filled with the peace of Christ.

And then I want to pray for churches here in our community around the nation that in this moment that we'd step up and minister to people looking for hope. So pray with me, Father. We mourn the just senseless violence that took place last week with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We are frustrated and angry about the brokenness in our culture and in our world, the intense division and the hatred that's spewing everywhere we look. God, I pray that you would, in your mercy and in your grace, give us a steady foundation to stand on in your gospel, to find peace and hope and courage in times that are really scary.

God, I pray for the Kirk family. I pray for Charlie's wife and kids, that a church would rally around them and care for them in this time of just immense, painful loss. God, I pray for our students over at UNCW that you'd fill them with peace that surpasses understanding as they cast their anxieties on you and trust in you. God, I pray that they even would have opportunities to speak the hope of the gospel into broken places because of these events. God, we know that you bring beauty out of brokenness, and we pray that you would do that on UNCW's campus even this week.

God, I pray for churches around our country and around our city, Gospel believing, Bible proclaiming churches to step up in this season of uncertainty and fear and brokenness and proclaim the hope that's found only in Christ, God, move in power, bring revival that's true and lasting and glorify your name even through these dark times. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, UNCW crew, I know we got a number of you here this evening.

We love you guys. We want to pray for you. That was obviously a prayer altogether. After the service, Pastor Connor and I will be up here. We'd love to pray with you after the service and just encourage you in the Gospel.

But as Connor mentioned this evening, we're going to be continuing through our series that we're calling the Resistance, this study in first Peter. So we'll be in the second half of 1 Peter 1. You can turn there now. And this book, this letter really, that Peter the Apostle wrote to churches in Galatia was written to a group of people who faced so much pressure to conform. They had internal pressure that we all have pressure to sin and choose instant gratification rather than the good and right thing.

They also had external pressure. They had opponents, people hostile to the way of Jesus that wanted them to change their beliefs and their actions not dissimilar from us today. So their problems are the same as our problems. And the Apostle Peter wrote to them to show them how to become a people of gospel resistance in the midst of that world that was pressuring them to conform. So we're going to start in verse 13 today.

And this verse really is a hinge verse in this book that transitions us from the doctrine and the theology that Peter taugh the church last week to some of how we live in response to it. So I'll start reading. In verse 13, it says this. 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. This passage kicks off with the word therefore.

Therefore is that hinge word that kind of pulls back into our mind everything that Pastor Connor showed us from the first 12 verses last week and tells us that what we're going to see this week, then these next verses, is the implications of the truths that he laid out. We saw that we are elect exiles in the world, but not of it. We saw that we have a living and certain hope, not just a wish and a prayer, just winging it. We've got a living and certain hope in Christ. He showed us that we have the resources in the gospel to have joy even in the midst of deep darkness and suffering.

And the last thing we saw last week was that we are seated in an incredible story, the story of God's history, where one day we will be with him again. We have a certain hope. So what the Apostle Peter is doing is saying, therefore, because all of that is true, engage your minds and choose to set your hope on the glory that is coming back one day. Did you know that you could choose to set your hope on something? With the fearful circumstances in our world right now, you don't have to be dominated by the anxious thoughts that come from thinking about those, but by the power of the Spirit that Jesus has given you.

You can choose through prayer and dependence, wrestling over time to set your hope more and more on the future that is coming. What the Apostle Peter is telling those churches is, we talked a lot about doctrine last week, these incredible truths that are available to us as followers of Jesus. Therefore, set your hope on that. That hinge verse that therefore kind of continues throughout the rest of this passage. So we'll pick up again in verse 14.

It says this 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 in Leviticus, you shall be holy, for I am holy. Peter's answer to fighting back in the world, to resisting in the world, is not the world's answer to fight fire with fire, but Peter's answer is something so much more beautiful and so much richer. Peter says, if you are going to be people of gospel resistance in this world, that puts pressure on you to conform, you need to be a people of holiness.

All right? The way that we as followers of Jesus resist the world is by pursuing holiness. In those verses that I just read, the phrase holy is used four times, right? He's just taking us right there. We're talking about holiness in this passage today.

And one of the things you'll notice is that the command that he gives us is to be holy as God is holy, to reflect something about the character of God through our lives after we believe in Him. Be holy as I am holy. So what we're going to do during our time today as we look at the rest of these verses, we're going to answer three questions about holiness. We're going to answer, what is God's holiness? It starts there.

Second, we're going to answer, what is our holiness and what's the expectation on us? And then third, how do we get it? All right, how do we get it? That's the flow that Peter walks through. We'll walk through these verses together.

So the first question. All right, first question. What is God's holiness? What does it mean that God is holy? When we think of the word holy and as it relates to God and us as well, we often first call to mind the idea that God is morally perfect, right?

That God does all of the good things at every chance, and God does not do any of the bad things at every chance. And that is for sure true. Like first John 1:5 says as much. It says God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. There's no corruption, there is no wickedness.

And that's incredibly good news for you and for me, because we don't always have to, like, check our six with God. Like God, you still holy up there? You still like doing the right thing up there? Do I have to worry that you're going to take care of me or come through on your promises for me? No.

We see in 1st John 1:5 that he is holy. In him there is no darkness at all. He is morally perfect. That's true of God. But when we talk about the holiness of God, we actually mean something more than just that God is morally perfect.

God's holiness means something even bigger and grander than that. This came home in Isaiah chapter 6, which Pastor Connor preached at the previous services that we had in August. And one of the things that we saw in Isaiah chapter 6 was the angels crying out before the throne of God all day, all night, repetitively saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Holy, holy, holy. Here's a question for you, and I find this interesting.

Hopefully you will as well. Are the angels sinless? Yes is the right answer. Are the angels morally perfect? Yes is the answer.

But they still, as creatures, are separated from the Creator, like we are. So often we think that what separates us from God is sin, and it is our sin separates us from God. But even if we lived sinless and perfect lives like the angels, we would still be looking across the great chasm of the creature and creator divide. All right, God's holiness does not just mean that he's morally perfect in some kind of sterile operating room, bright white light sense. God's holiness means that he is completely distinct and set apart from us.

Categorically different. All right, the Hebrew word, the Old Testament word for this will help it come home. And we're going to have a little game because I know it's like nap time in the afternoon here. The Hebrew word is kadosh. So you tell your neighbor, kadosh.

Say it to your neighbor. Now we'll wake up together. Kadosh. Kadosh. That word.

That is the word holy. It describes God's character as holy. It means set apart, it means distinct. It means separate. It means different.

God is holy. It does mean that he's sinless and perfect. But even more than that, it means he's categorically different and separate from us. Bailey and I, we've got this pesky street lamp just outside our bedroom window. I don't know if any of you got something like that, but we got to figure some kind of blackout curtain.

I can, like, see it through my eyelids. You know what I mean? And so the difference between, though this street lamp and the sun is in some sense, a difference of degree. The street lamp puts out a little bit of light, and the sun puts out a lot of light and a really high temperature, and it's very powerful. So it's different, but in another way.

The sun is not just a bigger, better street lamp. It's categorically different. It's just totally different. The street lamp is manufactured. It's created by somebody.

It consumes electricity to put out light. But the sun, it has its own internal source of energy, this nuclear fusion that's happening, creating immense amounts of energy. The light on the street lights up a small little block with creepy shadows outside at night, whereas the sun warms and lights our entire solar system. So There is a sense in which the street light and the sun are difference in degree, but more, they are just a completely different category. When the sun rises millions of miles away, don't check me on that.

Geology, astrology, people, I don't know how far it is. The street lamp becomes completely obsolete, right? Useless, pointless. It completely is overwhelmed by the sun. In the same way, God is not a slightly bigger and wiser version of us, but God is categorically different altogether.

God is utterly and completely holy. There's so many problems that come up in our discipleship, in our following of Jesus, when we start to have a casual view of the character of God. There's so many problems that come up in our discipleship when we start to view God as just a slightly wiser, slightly more powerful version of who we are, slightly more moral. A couple of them would be this. You know, when we think of God not as holy, but it's just a little different than us and bigger.

It's going to impact our worship, right? If we come in, it's going to impact our worship, because we'll come into worship and we'll say, hey, my goal today is to get the butterflies in my tummy, to get some release of emotions so that I can feel better about myself. But that's not what the point of worship is. The point of worship is creatures bowing before an awesome God who is categorically different from us, returning to him the praise that is due his name. Another issue that will come up in your discipleship, if you think casually about God is in prayer and in obedience, you'll start negotiating with God instead of bowing before him, right, God, I'll pray to you, if you take care of this, I'll do that.

Or God, I'll obey that command if you make sure to take care of this. When we understand the holiness of God, we would never come before him like that. As if we could negotiate with the God who spoke a word in the entire cosmos spun into existence. We will not negotiate with God. We also, if we're having a casual view of God, we're going to minimize our sin, right, God, this sin over here, I'm not really seeing it impact anybody.

So it's not that big of a deal. God won't be too upset with that one. But who are we to say that it's ever a small deal for us to hear God's word and choose to his face to say, no, God, I'm not going to take that one seriously. I'm going to go my own way One of the core issues with your discipleship right now, if the Christian life isn't as powerful as you desire it to be, or if you're kind of in this half in, half out apathetic relationship with Jesus, might just be that you don't understand the holiness of God. You don't understand the holiness of God.

It's so important to understand if you're going to live the fullness of the Christian life. God is so completely and utterly holy and other. This is why in the Old Testament, the Jewish people had the sacrificial system that God gave them. Right? If you remember it from reading your Old Testament, what happened was through a series of religious practices and cleansings and sacrifices of animals, one man once a year was able to enter into the presence of this holy God to make atonement through a special sacrifice for the people.

I mean, even at that point, tradition tells us that they would put bells around his foot and tie a rope to his foot in case he went into the presence of a holy God in an unworthy manner and was struck dead so they could pull him out. Right? God is holy, he is other. He is categorically different from us. So the question that we need to ask as we approach God is why in the world could I, sinful, imperfect person ever be okay in your presence?

How could it be possible, even if I lived a perfect life, to relate to you and I don't live a perfect life. Right, you don't live a perfect life. Rather than giving God the praise and the honor and the glory that he deserves, we show up to church with apathy and struggle to find motivation to read our Bibles. Or we go around to the other people around us who are created in the image of God, who God desires to be blessed and live a fulfilling life. And if we're honest, from time to time, we manipulate them and use them for our own selfish ends.

How could we, how could we expect to survive an encounter with that holy God? Well, this actually gets us right to the heart of one of the most beautiful things about the holiness of God. You see, in the Old Way, in the Old Testament, when the unholy met the holy, when the unclean came into contact with the holy, it defiled it, right? Then they had to take it out and cleanse it again and restart the whole process. But when Jesus came, he flipped that equation on its head.

Jesus, instead of being infected by uncleanliness, his holiness was contagious. So Jesus showed up in the Gospels and he ate with tax collectors and sinners with Gentiles. And instead of being defiled, he made righteousness available to them, right? Jesus would go and heal a leper, touching a leper, which was not legal because of how easy it was to spread leprosy to other people. But Jesus, instead of becoming sick when he touched the leper, healed the leper.

He flipped it on its head. There is a defiled woman in a crowd who had faith in Jesus. So though it was against the law of God and the people in the Old Testament, she ran up to Jesus and grabbed the garment. And it says, power flowed out from Jesus and she was healed, defiled, becoming cleansed through an encounter with Jesus. Jesus is so holy that he flipped the holiness of God on its head.

Right before in the Old Testament, God's holiness kept us separate from him, but now in Christ, God's holy love through Jesus made a way for us to be brought close. This is seen most clearly, most clearly at the cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus became our sin. He took it on his shoulders so that in him and through him, you and I might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21.

The incredible good news of the Gospel is that God's holiness makes him separate, distinct and set apart from, from us. But also God's holy love makes a way for us to have access to him through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. God's holiness teaches us two things in a surprising and kind of paradoxical way, that God is separate from us and that in love and mercy, we have access to Him. God is holy. What does this all lead us to?

All right, the only, the only sensible response to a holy God giving us sinful people access to him is a response where we just crush the pride in us and respond with joy and humility and gratitude and thanksgiving, right? The truth of the Gospel is that you and I have no business being accepted, forgiven, and put back together by the grace of a holy God. But the truth of the gospel is that he did that for us at great cost to Himself. So now we ought to respond in worship, in gratitude and in joy. And we should be incredibly humble towards other people around us, right?

We say, there but for the grace of God go I. I was on that path. I was running down that course away from God and in darkness I was unholy and separate from Him. But in love and in mercy, he came and chased me down. So when we go out into our communities, when we see people who look different than us, believe different than us, talk different than us, behave different than us. We don't turn our nose up.

And in arrogance we say, I found a God who saw me in my brokenness and sin. I found a God who saw me in my shame and I should have been cast out from his presence. But in love he made a way for me to come home. And that hope is available for you too. We don't turn our nose up in arrogance, but we share as one beggar sharing with another beggar where we found a free source of bread.

Amen. Church the message of the Gospel and the holiness of God should instill in us a gratitude and a humility and joy in the way that we interact with the world. God is holy. God's holiness tells us those two things. He is utterly distinct, separate and apart from us categorically.

And also in his holy love he's made a way for us to be near to Him. So, second question. Let's move on to question two. God is holy. So what is our holiness?

I'll read verses 14 to 16 again. 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. Christians in the Bible are called holy ones.

The Greek word is hagios. It means literally holy. Once in the Gospel, God has declared believers to be holy. He has declared us to be righteous. Let's get this straight.

Practically on the day to day level we are not perfectly righteous. Believers are stuck in a struggle between the passions of the flesh and our old way of life and the power of the Spirit. The Christian life is seeking more and more to make true of us practically today what is true of us positionally by God. All right, God has declared us righteous. He treats us as forgiven and adopted children.

And now by the Spirit we have the privilege of working out that holiness in our day to day life. All right, get this. If holiness is earning a position before God, it will always be selfish fear based drudgery. But if we understand the truth of the gospel, that God has declared us to be righteous, then we can understand the pursuit of practical holiness in our lives as a joyful pursuit of more of God's presence, a joyful walking in the way that God designed us to walk and enjoying the fullness of life that he has for us in Jesus. So what does it look like for us to be practically holy more and more in response to the Gospel?

Well, it simply means bearing a family resemblance. In verse 14 it uses that word. Children, as obedient children, do this. Our Father, we resemble him. In verse 17, it's going to refer to God as Father as well.

In a family, you resemble your dad. If you have kids, you've seen it happen. Right? Now, my son loves golf. He's five and he loves golf.

Because I love golf, we get to get out there and play quite a bit. It's a ton of fun. So he's bearing the family resemblance. He's looking like me. He does it more and more.

So every time we go play golf, he grabs his five iron and his bald cap. Right? He's just looking like me more and more. No, we don't put him through that. But I do need to make sure he does not think that golf is about getting as many strokes as possible, because you might pick up on that plane with me.

But really, all jokes aside, my son loves spending time with me. And as he spends time with me, he becomes like me more and more, for better or for worse. It's the same way for us with God. We spend time with him, we enjoy his presence, and we become like Jesus, like our. Like the Father more and more.

So what are some different ways that Peter points out? Here we bear this family resemblance. The first way is that holiness looks like complete devotion and just utter surrender to God. All right, how is this bearing the family resemblance of God? Well, God is entirely devoted to his purposes in the world, so we bear the family resemblance.

When we are devoted to him, we're set apart for his purposes. 1 Corinthians 6 tells us that our body and our lives are not our own because we were bought with a price that belongs to Him. When you become a Christian, you need to have a Copernican revolution of the soul. What do I mean? Well, for all of history, astronomers thought that the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around the Earth.

Copernicus was the scientist that discovered it was the other way around. In fact, the sun was the center of our solar system, and the Earth revolved around the sun. When we start following Jesus, being utterly and completely devoted to him, because he is a holy God and we're bearing the resemblance of our Father, it means that we realize God is not one planet rotating around us, the center of the universe, but that he is the center of all life and history, and we are one part to play revolving around Him. Right. When you become a Christian, God does not just get a chunk of the pie chart of your time.

Even 51%. That's not what he's asking for. When you become a follower of Jesus, we give everything to him in total and complete surrender because he is a holy God who made a way in love for us to follow Him. The only thing that makes sense is to respond in complete surrender. Every aspect of our lives is first defined by being a follower of Jesus, as a parent follower of Jesus, as a sibling follower of Jesus, as a student or professional follower of Jesus.

In every aspect, we are follower of Jesus first, not just one chunk of our lives. This plays out in every aspect of our lives. And one that I'll point you to is your career. We've got a lot of college students here, a lot of people in the early stages of their career, and I just want to remind you that you are not first your career ambition are. You are first a follower of Jesus.

Here's what it means to use your career to honor Jesus. It means that you do just that. You use your career as a tool to serve King Jesus rather than first serving your career. All right, from the outside, you can't tell much of a difference, right? Do I work 40, 50, 60 hours a week?

I don't know. That's between you and God. Do I move to take this job or that job? I don't know. That's between you and God.

But at the heart level and the heart posture, a healthy relationship for a follower of Jesus is I am a follower of Jesus first and my career is second. So what does that mean? It means that you need to work incredibly hard to be successful in your career under the lordship of Jesus. Because as you do that, you're gonna have opportunities to bring kingdom blessings and influence into so many people that you get to supervise and manage and help and support. Proverbs tells us that as you're successful, you'll stand before kings.

And I trust on that day you'll be ready to proclaim the hope of the the gospel when you have those opportunities. So do your job well, steward it for the kingdom and make a great impact. You know what else about your profession? When you are successful, when you do a good job in your career, it's going to open doors for you to share the hope of the gospel with people around you. You know the last person your co worker wants to hear about Jesus from, the one who is terrible at their job, the one who's always late on deadlines, the one who does not follow through, the one who always leaves the extra work to everyone else and heads out early.

But when you do a good job in your role. There will be people in your workplace who would never darken the door of a church, who Pastor Connor and I would never have an opportunity as professional Christians to come into contact with, that you will be able to share the hope of Christ with. Holiness looks like complete devotion and surrender to God in every aspect of life, in your career and everywhere else that is holy resistance in our world. It resembles our Father holiness. Also here looks like self control.

All right, Self control. God is steadfast, never changing, always faithful. And look back at verse 14. Peter says, don't walk in the passions of your former ignorance. The opposite of those passions is self control.

And here's one of the biggest lies, one of the biggest lies that our culture has fed us and many of us have internalized over the years. Here's the lie. Following God's laws is prison. And finding escape from God's laws is freedom. All right?

God's laws are prison bars that keep you from experiencing joy in life. And if you really want to experience fullness of life, don't follow those, but follow your passions. But here's the problem, all right? God loves you. God created you and he has the operating manual to your life.

God's commands show us how to live in his world, how life will work best. And when we walk outside of God's will and God's commands, it is not escaping a prison, it is escaping train tracks. It is not freedom. It's a train wreck. I know many of you can speak from personal experience on this.

I can. The end of high school, beginning of college, I was just, I was completely dominated by the passions of my flesh. Like my belly made my decisions. What do I want? What do I feel in this moment?

I'm gonna go do that thing. And all it led me to over time was a series of bad decisions, broken relationships and piling up regrets. Right? Cause I followed the passions of my belly and just did whatever felt right in the moment. And I cannot tell you, I hope this is encouraging to someone here today.

I can't tell you the freedom that I found when the Holy Spirit filled me and I had a new ability to say no to the passions of my belly and start saying yes to the design of God for my life. Now this plays out in romance. The passion of loneliness screams that your worth is found in your relationship status. But spirit empowered self control says you can find your worth in Christ. So you're free to make a decision about that boy or that girl based on, on contentment and not out of desperation.

All right? It plays out in finances. The passion of consumerism screams that the good life is found in buying the next thing so that you can always have whatever you want whenever you want it. But holy Spirit empowered self control says, I'm satisfying in Christ. I know how to be brought low.

I know how to abound. I'm content in Christ. I'm not looking to my possessions to make me content. All right. In every area of life and every moment, holiness looks like self control.

The spirit empowered ability to feel that passion in your belly and submit it to the word of God and walk in his design for your life. That is holy resistance. All right. Holiness resembling our Father also looks like loving others. First, John tells us that God is love.

So we resemble our Father Father by loving the people around us. These verses go into the verses that we're in now, flow a little bit later into talking about love, because it's an implication of holiness. Look at verse 22. It says, Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. In chapter two, it tells us what love looks like here in this context.

Put away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy, envy and all slander. Just as God is love, we are called to bear the family resemblance through loving the people around us. And holiness, I hope you know, is not a solo sport. It has to be done in the context of other people. One of the greatest discouragements.

Sometimes I feel like every time we bring up the word holiness, we automatically go to what you do with your computer screen late at night. And sexual purity is definitely of walking in holiness before God. But holiness is also all consuming in our life about how we treat other people. Are we going to resemble our Father in the way that he sacrificially pays the cost for the good of other people? Or are we going to walk in selfishness?

Right. One of the ways that you will express holiness most deeply and be most countercultural is putting up with someone in this room and loving and serving them even when you don't want to. Right? Holiness. Holy love becomes the fullest expression of God's love.

When it's hard to love that person, when you enjoy them, when you're on the front end of a bromance, when you get along and the chemistry is there and everything's clicking, you can love. But when it's hard, right as Jesus was going to the cross, that's true love that a man laid down his life for his friends. When it's hard, when it's sacrificial, when it's just challenging. That's when you have an opportunity to show countercultural holy resistance love. So what relationship in your life right now is God using to invite you into deeper holiness?

A spouse, a child, someone else in the church, a co worker. And how can you love them? This week, that is holy resistance holiness looks like resembling the characteristics of our Father. Full hearted devotion to God, self control, loving the people around us, even when it's hard. And that brings us to answering those first two questions we answered.

What is the holiness of God? What is the holiness expected of us? As Peter is writing here, but you may be stopping at this point. Be like Justin, I would love to be those things. I would love to be devoted to God.

I'd love to be full of self control. I'd love to love the people around me. But I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and roll over and my spouse is going to have really bad breath and it's going to irritate me. Right? Tomorrow is coming.

Where do I get this holiness actually into my life? I want that. Well, Peter goes through a couple hows, really three hows as we close out to how we get holiness into us. So let's pick back up. In verse 17, he says, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

The end of 16 and 17. If you call on him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. This verse states very plainly a truth that we as 21st century Western American Christians do not like to hear. And it's one of the avenues to holiness in our life is the fear of God. The truth is that even as followers of Jesus, covered by the blood of Jesus, forgiven and safe with him for eternity, the truth is that we are going to give an answer for our actions.

So what Peter says here is, while you are living as elect exiles away from home with your Heavenly Father, live with fear because God sees and you'll have to give an answer for your wrongdoings. All right? When you are tempted to sin, one of the motivations to choose not to sin is a fear of God. It's the thought process. I don't want to answer for that one day.

So I'm going to do the good and right thing. I don't know exactly how that judgment moment or judgment seat will play out. When we as followers of Jesus are standing before the throne of God, I know it's going to be joyful to Be in his presence. I know we are going to be with him forever. But the scripture also does here and many other places remind us to be aware of the fear of God as a motivation to obey Him.

There is someone bigger than us, and there is someone stronger than us that we will have to answer to. This does sound scary, but you know what? This ultimately is very good news in the life of the believer because it means that God judges all people that way. And as we look around the world and see violence and unrepentant sin and hatred and the strong taking advantage of the weak, God sees that too. And all sin will be made right one day, either through repentance and faith it was put on Jesus, or God will correct it on that last day.

One motivation for our holiness is the fear of God as judge. We'll keep going in verse 18. Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He, Jesus, was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him, are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. The third thing Peter shows us here is that gratitude.

Or the second thing it shows us is that God gratitude for our salvation as something that should produce holiness in us. This salvation was purchased with the precious blood of Jesus. One of a kind, invaluable. It was costly. It was the only way.

It was the plan forever. But at a certain time, Jesus, for the joy that was sent before him, went to the cross so that me and you, that we could trust in God. All right? And this is so important to understand because true holiness, that is part of this gospel resistance always happens from the inside out, right? There's a couple different ways to pursue holiness.

You can kind of think of them like bending a bar, a steel bar. All right? So when I take a steel bar, there's a few different things I can do to it I can work on. If I'm real strong, I might get it to just bend a little bit. But as soon as I take off that external pressure, it's just gonna go back to right where it was, right?

Just back straight. That's one way that you can change. The second way is if you're really strong, bend that bar too. Much. And what happens snaps right in the middle, breaks, right?

There's a third way to bend a metal bar, and that's to get a welding torch, to get a welding torch and to heat up the middle of that bar. And so when it's warm and malleable, you can bend it whichever way you want and then allow it to harden in a new shape to really change, Right? And what the message of the gospel does, what gratitude for our salvation and what Jesus has done, is it warms our hearts and allows us to be changed and transformed so we're no longer relying on external pressure so that when it goes away, we just go back to who we were. We eventually snap and run away. But instead, the Gospel of Jesus Christ warms our hearts.

We say, jesus, I was a sinner. I was on the path to hell. I was running far and fast the wrong direction in darkness. And you chased me down. You called me out, you brought a friend or a family to come tell me about the hope in Jesus.

You brought me to repentance and you gave me new life, Jesus, thank you. Now I want to, from the inside out, respond in worship and gratitude and thanks for all that you have done for me. Right? Rather than bending and putting external pressure on the outside of the bar, God transforms our hearts through our salvation as we respond in gratitude. True holiness starts with the heart.

It starts on the inside and flows out and changes every aspect of. Of who we are. Holiness starts with looking at the message of the gospel and not taking our eyes away from it and looking at the Gospel. Looking at God's word is where Peter goes next. Verse 23.

He says, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news, the gospel that was preached to you. So put away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Here God's word is described as a seed that's planted in your life and grows up into righteousness. Holiness to bless the people around you. It also is compared. The word of God plays the part in our life of like. We are infants in desperate need of our mother's milk.

Right? What does that mean without the Word of God, without the Word of God, we will shrivel up and die. We'll have no sustenance. The Word of God is life for us. Just as if we were newborn infants needing our mother's milk.

God Word brings us life to our bones. If you are going to live. If you're going to live a holy life, your life has to be saturated by the Word of God. That's why we preach God's Word here. We don't just get up and come up with clever ideas or recommendations on how you ought to live your life.

We want to walk through a book of the Bible and we want to share what God's Word says so that we can feed on it and find life and joy forever. And that Word of the Lord remains forever. When you don't consistently put yourself in front of the Word of God, you know what you're doing? You're just cutting yourself off from all kinds of nutrients. So when you are going to spend time with God in the morning and opening your Bible, all right, sometimes I'm there.

I'm pastor. I get up and I'm like, it is a sleepy morning. This is really hard. I don't know what to do. Can I do this?

Can I lock in and do this? And what we need to do in that moment is not say, by the discipline that I have, I'm checking this box and we're doing it again. Sometimes, some days you might need to get by on something like that. But what we need to do in that moment is call to mind God. This is life.

Your Word is living and active. Your Word will never fall or fail. This world is going to fall away, but your Word is going to remain forever. And your Word is nourishment to my bones. If I'm going to make it through today, I need at least a snack put probably a whole feast.

To be able to love and to serve and to walk in holiness with all these people around me. If I'm going to resist the pressures that this world is putting on me and my sinful desires of my heart, I need the Word of God to nourish my spirit, to give me encouragement, to remind me of the consequences of sin and the goodness of my Savior as I gaze at his face. The Word of God is nourishment for your life. It is going to fill you with the ability to follow through with what God has for you. The apostle Peter wrote this letter to a church facing so much pressure to conform again.

It was pressure to conform to the Selfish kind of sinful, inward desires. And they also faced hostility toward Jesus, a world that wanted them to conform and change their beliefs as well. Peter called them to this beautiful and powerful holy resistance. And you and I, we have the same call and invitation toward holiness today. God is inviting you, you into the gift of walking in holiness and righteousness.

This week, the world's answer to darkness is more darkness. Anger for anger, fear for fear. But God's answer is planting the seed of the gospel in his people's hearts so they could become a people of holy resistance resembling his character to the world. Imagine for a moment what it would look like for a church to be filled with holiness and the people of God to be filled with holiness right here in Wilmington. It would look like a generation of students who refused to be swept away by the currents of outrage and anxiety, but instead live according to the solid rock that Jesus is in his word and bring hope to a place that is dark and light, where people are in desperate need of hope.

It would look like a college ministry like King's College, where people come and hear the truths of God's word. So they come to college and instead of running away from faith during that season, put down deep roots for a lifetime of gospel impact to build a family and a legacy on into the future. Right? That is holy resistance under the gospel. Imagine homes all across our city not built on parents making God secondary or an add on, or consumed by the anxieties of their kids getting everything right and growing up.

What if parents modeled not perfection, but repentance and giving and receiving forgiveness and raised kids up to trust the message of the Gospel deeply and sent them out around the world. They would lead families in their neighborhood to come to Jesus and like a domino would start to fall over in revival here in our city. That is holy resistance. Imagine a workforce, a workforce all around Wilmington infiltrated by holiness Right? Business leaders who are known less for their profit margins and more for the way that they are impacting others in care and support and love and leading others to know Jesus.

What would it look like for people to come to get a job at your workplace and they hear the message of the Gospel and believe they would reach people who would never darken the doors of a church because they shine as light in dark places. That. That is holy resistance. Imagine this. Imagine a generation, a generation of retirees who don't see it as an exception, extended vacation, but a new opportunity to be deployed for the kingdom of God.

Right? Retirees investing in the next generation of church leaders. Giving financially of their resources to advance the kingdom of God, taking mission trips with the flexibility that they have, investing in raising up young men and young women to be pillars of the faith for generations to come in our community, that is holy resistance. And that's what God can do through a people who are part of his holy church, growing together. But that's all out there and ideas.

And I want to ask you now, what is one act of holy resistance that the Spirit is putting on your heart to take this week?

What is one act of bold and courageous faith filled in response to the holiness of God and the grace of the Gospel? What is one act that the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart to take this week? Because that picture of the college campus and the communities and the workplaces and the retirees, that doesn't happen without just taking one next step to pursue practical holiness in your life in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. So this is what I want to do. I want to ask that you bow your heads, spend a moment in prayer, and if you would, if you're comfortable, just open your hands there on your lap.

There's nothing special about this, but it's just a posture of surrender and dependence on God. And what I'd ask you to do is just ask him to empower you to take that step of bold and courageous holy resistance this week. Name it. Like right now, before God, name that one thing that he is inviting you into for deeper joy and greater impact. Impact.

The good news of the church is that you do not have to do it alone. So whatever God is calling you to this week, somebody next to you, Pastor Connor and I up front. During this last song, we want to pray the courage and the boldness of faith of the Holy Spirit into you to walk in holiness, holiness this week. So whether you want prayer for that, whether you know somebody who really needs holiness and you want prayer for them, or whether it's been a tough week and you just want prayer with one of your pastors. We'll be up here.

We'll pray up front. Grab your neighbor, have them pray for you if you want that as well. The beauty of the church is we don't have to pursue this holiness on our own. But by the grace of God and the encouragement of his people, we get to be a light in the midst of our community together. Let me pray.

No. 1 worship. Father, we thank you for the incredible grace that you've shown us. We thank you for your holiness, your otherness, and the way that understanding it frames our relationship with you correctly.

We thank you that holiness did not stay separate from us, but holy love made a way through Jesus for us to be reconciled and to walk with you. God, I pray that you would make us a spirit holy church. Not an arrogant, legalistic, stuffy church, but a church of real full wholeness. In response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that desires to put sin to death in our lives, shine as lights in a dark world and become more like our Father in heaven. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.