Prepare Your Minds For Action - 1 Peter Series Part 2 -1 Peter 1:13-25

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. Therefore, as we all know, whenever you see this word "therefore," it indicates that there's something that was written or said beforehand that is important to the current subject.

So let's look, let's see where we left off the last time so we can have a little bit of an idea of what Peter's talking about as we move on here. Now jump back to 1 Peter 1:10-12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which the angels long to look. Simply and in short, so much sacrifice and effort has gone into the preparation for the coming of our Lord and his kingdom, and all this on our behalf. That's what Peter says.

You know, we are all greatly privileged to have been born at this point in time. I know some of us may feel like in our day that we're wonder—I find myself asking myself, why was I born in this time? Why couldn't I have been born 30 years earlier or 50 years ago for that matter? Why do I have to be in this time slot where everything seems like it's going haywire?

But when I read this, I see that I'm privileged. I'm greatly blessed to be in this time. We get to submerge ourselves in the beauty, joy, and delight of being a part of Christ's kingdom here and now. Many have longed to see our day. Many have labored in preparation for this day. And as we saw in the prior verse, the angels are intrigued. They really wish they could know a little more about what's going on. For this reason, he says, therefore, and we'll see what he says next here.

Prepare your minds for action, or as some of the other versions say, gird up the loins of your minds. Reign in those wandering thoughts. Concentrate your potential. Bring them into subjection. Because our minds and our mental energies always want to drift in different directions. And so often it takes away from what God would really have for us. We talked about that yesterday morning in our discipleship development about how we take from one part of our day, we take time to do one thing, and then it takes time away from something else. Well, Peter's trying to help us, trying to help these believers remember to reign in their minds, to bring in subjection their minds, prepare their minds for action because something's happening.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6. For though we walk in the flesh, we're not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. That's the verse I was looking for. Every thought captive to obey Christ. That's what it means to gird up the loins of our mind, to be sober, as many translations say.

Being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. And I can't say I understand exactly what that means, but the idea that I get from this here is that before we go to judge or to do anything else, let's make sure our obedience is complete, that we're doing what we should be doing as we read the word of God. Being sober-minded.

The Strong's dictionary says to abstain from wine and to be discreet, to watch. There's a couple of different things you could think of as you think of being sober-minded. There again, it goes very well with girding up the loins of our mind, not being overtaken by things that are going to occupy the space in our minds and make us so we can't focus on God's kingdom and his work for us.

And 1 Thessalonians 5:1-9. Now, concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.

For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night. Just get the idea that when people are sleeping, they're in darkness a lot of times. And those who get drunk are drunk in the night. A lot of people get drunk at night.

But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The next thought here is set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you. What I see in this phrase is the idea of resting all our trust and confidence in the fact that all the battles we face now will be more than worth the effort in that day when God's kingdom and his kingdom plan is fully revealed. We're still just seeing it in part. Someday we're going to see everything.

I think what we're seeing now is actually very glorious, very beautiful. But it says, set your hope fully, rest on that, like a good chair. Go settle down in it and relax in that.

1 John 2:24-29. Let what you have heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, it is true and it is no lie, just as it is taught you, abide in him. And now, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. Next thing we want to look at is as obedient children. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the compassions 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. What does obedient mean? But the child that believes that their parents are the best, that is something that is very precious. It's very precious when I sense from my children that they think I'm the greatest or I'm the best, even though I know better.

It's something special. Obedience can mean attentiveness. It also means submission. When we submit in the truest sense of the word, we are from the heart doing our part for the greater good of a mission or purpose. An obedient, trusting child participates with joy in the work of their parents, being attentive to each directive. And he says, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. In other words, we do not allow your passions and desires of your former life in bondage to shape you now. You don't let them.

John Martin said, we make our decisions and our decisions make us. That's something that sticks in my mind. Each decision I make, I tend to think about that. I make my decision and my decision makes me. You also be holy in all your conduct. God does not make us holy. He forgives us of our sins. He gives us a clean slate. But then we choose what we allow to be written on that slate, that slate of our heart.

One of the definitions of the word holy is the idea of being set apart for a specific use, consecrated, like the consecrated bread. It was set apart. We're consecrated for a specific use, for a specific purpose. God is holy. He has a purpose. He does all that is good, righteous, and just. He seeks to bless. He loves what he has created. God, our Father, is not a God like those gods in Greek mythology. These were vindictive, arbitrary, self-absorbed, ruled by all their baser passions. I can't believe sometimes how these people wanted to worship these gods that were even worse than real human beings.

Our God has a kingdom and he longs to bless those who are his subjects. He keeps them safe. He watches out for their well-being. He is devoted to all that is pure, beautiful, just, right. He is holy. He has focused all his energy and efforts on something. And he asks us to do the same thing. He calls us to imitate him so that over time we become more and more like him. 1 Peter 1:17-19. And 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, 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.

If we want to call ourselves Christians and children of God, we must pause to remember that God, our Father, is an impartial judge. Now, you may ask, what does this have to do with me? Okay, we know, and I think most of us believe that God is going to judge the world of sin. And I think many of us also realize that no one shall escape his eagle eye.

So if I call myself a child of God, I have put myself in the spotlight. God wants his children to be an accurate example of his righteousness, goodness, and purity. Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

We're not in our country. We're outside of our country. We're exiled in a sense from where we belong. But we have to remember we don't belong here. So we're focusing on something else. When we cling to God as our Father, we automatically alienate ourselves from Satan and his kingdom. So Satan is going to watch for an opportunity to try and trap us once again.

So we live and walk with great carefulness, daily examining ourselves to see if we are living, doing, being worthy of that name of God, our Father. Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers. Whether it's dead religion or the cycle of sin and failure, we have been redeemed from the power of redundant futility because of our sin nature, which we inherited from birth, by birth from our fathers.

We were not ransomed by the payment of a large sum of money, which in and of itself is the futile currency of this world. That also runs in circles, a frustrating circle. This redemption from bondage to sin and self has been bought at a great price, the eternal currency of God's kingdom, the blood of Christ.

Verse 20 through 21. He was foreknown before the foundations of the world, but was made manifest in these 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.

He was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Before our world, as we know it today, was even on the drawing board, Christ, his death, his resurrection were part of God's plan. The wonder of it all is, as Peter puts it, but he was made manifest in the last times for your sakes.

This was made manifest in the last times for our sakes. In other words, Christ and his purpose have been revealed in our day, just like we said at the beginning. This, brothers and sisters, is good news and is always fresh and new.

Who through him are believers in God. It is now through Christ that we today have the substance of truth and reality that enables us to believe, hope, and trust in God, our Father, who is the author of all life. And life has been made manifest to us through the resurrection of Christ Jesus. So we have the connection with the author of life, the one who also raised Jesus from the dead. We have that connection because Jesus resurrected from the dead, whom God raised from the dead, he says at the end of the verse there.

22 to 25. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. I will just want you to look at that verse and let it burn into your minds.

Since 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 that was preached to you.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth. Jesus said to his disciples in one time, he says, you are clean now by the words that I've spoken to you. They were sitting there under his teaching, listening to his word. And I think Jesus knew that they were going to apply that to their lives. And that was going to cleanse them. It was going to be a progressive work in their life.

Yes, Christ, through his sacrifice for us, has made us free from the law of sin and death. But it is through our obedience to him, who is the word and the will of the Father incarnate, that our very souls are cleansed. We are born again, not through something that ceases to be or becomes null and void over time, such as the old cut, the Mosaic law, but through the imperishable, undying, eternal seed, the blood of Christ.

I love this last part here. For a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. And he connects this with what we were talking about before. Many of the commands of our Lord have to do with our relationships with other people because spiritual family relationship is really high on our Lord's agenda, you could say. God longs to see familial relationship, love, and loyalty. And it's his desire that each of us experience it. He wants to see it, and he wants us to experience it.

We may ask, why do we run into this phrase so often in the New Testament, love one another? I believe the answer to this is that true love is a choice. The love of any true love of any kind is demonstrated by actions and deeds. Otherwise, what you feel on the inside towards another person benefits them nothing. My feelings really do not benefit anybody. It's what I'm doing.

It's what I'm doing that benefits them. This is why Peter says, love one another with a pure heart earnestly. Love is purposeful and intentional. It's not just something that happened to me today and is gone tomorrow.

Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. The very center of our love for one another is a great sacrifice of love made on all of our behalf. And we know what that is. That was Christ. And then as we think through it, we also realize that was his disciples as well, giving their life blood for God and his kingdom.

Self-sacrifice, the giving of one's life, the spilling of one's blood for another becomes eternal seed for God's kingdom. We have all been repurposed through and in Christ. Once again, he is that living word sent to us from the Father. And you know, I think the older I get, the more I realize when I read about the word of God, like especially in the book of John, that it's really hard for me to separate the written word of God from the person, the person that is the word of God. I think you can't separate them.

All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. There is much that grows from our life and our emotions that has its moments of beauty. That is from our flesh, that which grows of its own accord. But like the flower of the grass, it has its moment in time. But when the heat of the day comes upon it, it withers. Its beauty is soon lost. However, true love and true inner beauty is strengthened and purified by heat and by fire.

But the word of the Lord remains forever, he says. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Do you want to build something that is eternal, ever beautiful, ever timely? The word of our Lord, God's eternal purpose, God's family, God's kingdom, this will never cease to be relevant.

The written word of God, the living word, are inseparable, like I said earlier. In a sense, the written word loses its power when the living word is not present. So we need that living word. We need to have contact with the living word for that written word to come to life in us. Christ has been made evident to each one of us. He has been shared with each one of us in word and in deed. And that, my brothers and sisters, is truly good news.

And that's how that chapter ends. And I'm open to hearing any thoughts from you all or corrections.

A couple of thoughts. One, I feel like you preached like a week or so ago. So I really appreciate you taking the sacrifice and jumping in and filling in there. I think you did a really good job.

When you were talking about wonder why you were born in this time. And I've had those same types of thoughts before. And the way that you talked about the way that everything is so haywire, right?

But then all of the stuff that we've been learning for months now about all of the persecution that has taken place in history. And I've been going through a lot of the historic faith stuff. And I happen to be in a section where I've been going through all sorts of persecution. And it's like really the world has always been going haywire.

We're just experiencing our life of haywire. And now I really do feel like we live in the best time.

I know the internet has corrupted a lot of people, but we have the ability to—we don't have to go to libraries. We have every piece of thing that's ever been written at our fingertips. And I feel like time is snowballing and that the birth pains are becoming more regular and that we are coming closer to the pinnacle of time. And we just have everything at our disposal. And when you add that to air conditioning and automobiles and all the other just pleasures that we get in this time, it's just an amazing time that we live in. And we should all have fear because of the responsibility that we all have because of what has been put on our plates.

And that's right now. I really appreciate your message. It was a joy to listen to that. I appreciate your thoughts there on that. I think you're right. You said about it, you're liking it to the birth pains. And I think that's true. I think we're seeing that.

Yeah, I'm going to echo that. Jason just told my thoughts, my comment. I kind of got stuck on that when you said that in the beginning. I started thinking about that. I was trying not to get distracted the whole time because I was thinking.

I really feel like we need to have the attitude that we live in a great time. And I get very weary of all the doomsday stuff, all the, "Woe is us," and everything's going to hell in a hand, ask it like heaven always says.

I mean, he doesn't say that, as he's always pushing against that notion. But this almost thing where we just—this fear attitude, and we almost got a cringe in the corner somewhere because everything's getting so wicked. And I feel like I don't think Jesus intended that. And when I look down through this chapter and I look at the kind of grace that we're supposed to have, that's available to us right now.

And I think we should be saying, "This is a great time to be alive. It's a great time to raise a family. It's a great time to be planting churches and making disciples. It's a great time to have a purpose and to be spreading the kingdom." I don't think God ever intended that at any time in human history there was going to be a time where we should just kind of give up and feel like it's too awful. The world's just too bad.

And we should really be pushing against that. So that really caught my attention. And then I really like this. I really like this thought of being prepared for action. There's a note here in my Bible that says that Christians are to live always in the spirit of Passover, prepared for the journey of obedience and virtue. That's like this expectancy that there's a next step to take.

There's a step of obedience to take. There's a command to follow. And we need to just be constantly ready for that. What's the next step?

How am I supposed to be obeying? How am I supposed to be growing in virtue? And so that's exciting. I appreciate what you shared. Thank you.

Yeah, I can definitely testify to Sherman being very rich and a real blessing. I guess the part that stuck out to me was the verse there. We love one another with a pure love. And obviously, I would say there's different versions of love out there.

There must be an impure love or a selfish love. I think of Barry. I forget his last name. He was one of the men in Haiti, not hostage, but he was at the base. I got halfway through listening to his story.

And he was communicating with some of these gang members in hopes of getting the hostages released. And I guess it just really struck him how a lot of these gang members have never experienced love. And if they could only experience God's love, wouldn't that change everything? And I would say, isn't that the number one? We'd say a lot of things are number one problems that we have in our society. But isn't that a big major problem for children to grow up in a society or in a home without experiencing love and love, the true pure love, the caring love, which comes from God?

So may the Lord help us with that. And whatever else is happening in our world, may we be a people, not the people that are trying to make harsh judgments on whoever it is, gang members or rioters and looters, but may we be the people that try to get that God's love to these people so their lives can be changed. And where it says love covers a multitude of sins, thinking of even our church experiences, could we say that pure love covers weaknesses that we may have in our midst? Rather than a selfish love, I'll say, "Brother, I love you," with hopes I get something in return. Rather than that, "I love you because you're created in God's image.

I love you because you're a brother," with no hopes of getting anything in return. If I see a weakness in a brother, still show that love, hoping that brother will continue to grow and be encouragement. Or a gang member or a rioter and a looter, love them because they're created in God's image, with hopes I can pass that God's love on to that person so that person can be changed. Maybe that sounds a little selfish to you. We need to love people whether they change or not. But when you're desiring somebody to be a part, experience the kingdom of God, that's not selfish.

That's the greatest thing to experience in our time and in our day.