Arm Yourselves

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn over in your Bibles with me to 1 Peter chapter 4. 1 Peter chapter 4, we'll be looking at verses 1 through 6 this morning. For context, we're going to read the passage that we just finished, verses 18 through 22 in chapter 3. So the reading will be verses chapter 3, verse 18, through chapter 4, verse 6. And the sermon will come from 1 Peter 4, 1 through 6. Brothers and sisters, this is God's perfect Word.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust. He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit. By whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine long-suffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us, baptism. Not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.

Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.

For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

Prayer for Illumination

As soon as this portion of the reading of God's word, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Perfect and true. sweeter than honey, more precious than gold. Lord, we pray that your spirit might attend to both the reading and the preaching of your word. Father, we pray that you would help us, that these words would not just be explained for us to understand intellectually, but Lord, we pray that you would please apply these words to our very lives. by the power of your spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

Being a Christian comes with it something inherently offensive. Being a Christian carries with it, following after our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, carries with it being counter-cultural. And that is not something that's always liked. And it's something that I think often as Christians, we wish we could be more winsome, we wish we could erase away some of that counter-culturalism. We don't want to be fundamentalists and yet we want to fit in as much as we can.

But when push comes to shove, you know what it's like to be around people and in friendships, social settings and groups where you can't laugh at the same jokes You can't do the same things. There's something in you that stops you from going along with the flow. Just the other day, I was talking with my kids in the car, and one of them said to me, they said, they were talking amongst each other, and it was interesting, kind of eavesdropping in on one of their conversations, and one of them said, you know, if you become a lawyer, and you find out that the person you're defending is guilty, and you become convinced of that, you still have to defend them. And they were talking about this for a few seconds, I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, press the brakes, back up. No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't have to go against your conscience. You may deal with the consequences of that, you may lose your clients, you may lose your license, but you may have to go against the culture or the norm.

What we find is there's a norm that fills the world in which Peter's people lived, and there's a norm in which rules the day even today. And God is calling us to walk in a different way than the norm of the world. And so we need to arm ourselves. We need to arm ourselves with insight. And what does it mean that Christ suffered in the flesh, and what does that mean for us? How does that change our lives today?

So what we're going to do is we're going to work through verses 1 through 6, verse by verse. And I've listed in your outlines a series of different questions you can ask yourselves as we go through. And so as we think about this counter-cultural call that God has given us in His Word, I want us to start looking at verse 1, Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind.

For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. Therefore, It means there's a logical connection to what has gone before this in the previous section. I'm not going to rehearse everything that we've gone through, but the point being the Christians were suffering, the Christians were under persecution and trials, but the Christians also knew that this was God's plan for them as a refining fire. And that God had not saved them and taken them out of society, but he left them in society to be a saver of life unto a dying generation. And that as the people were living in their different employments and in their different relationships, that they had obligations and duties that they got to fulfill to show people Christ. And that Jesus Christ, just like they were being blasphemed and ridiculed, slandered, so had Christ. But Christ suffered for a reason.

That's what we spent a lot of time last week on. Verse 18, Christ also suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. So God had sent His only beloved Son to redeem His people. The just one for unjust people. Because He loved them.

And so now they were to take this knowledge. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, what were they to do with this knowledge that Jesus Christ suffered for them? Arm yourselves also with the same mind. This was the idea of, you're going to battle.

I remember when I went to boot camp, You went into this room, and you were all wearing your civilian clothes. And then they marched you all into this room, and there were a number of different tables. And every single item of clothing or personal belonging that you had was gone. And instead, you got all your uniforms, boom, right there. They literally had you put everything in a box. My mom cried when she got my box in the mail, because she said it looked like I just melted. All that was in there was just my clothes, because I didn't need those clothes. Now I had new clothes. You are clothed in Christ and you are being armed, you are being equipped, you are being supplied for the battle that's in front of you, for the walk of your life now. And you are given this new mind, the same mind that is also in Christ Jesus.

This is why Paul in Romans chapter 12 verse 1 will talk about how you need to be renewed in your mind. We don't go with the old ways of thinking, we go with the new ways of thinking. And specifically tied with this is Romans chapter 5. that your suffering is for good because it produces character and character hope. And hope doesn't disappoint.

The suffering that you may be experiencing in the flesh now is teaching you to look to Christ, to have a hope that will not disappoint you because you're trusting in Him. Because you notice in verse one, as we are equipped with the same mind as Christ.

For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. That he there is not speaking of Christ, but speaking of the one who has this mind and yet still suffers. There's a purpose to those who suffer in the flesh now. Your suffering isn't just to refine you so that you're pretty like gold, but your suffering actually teaches you something else.

It teaches you how to cease from sin. Have you ever thought about that before? That's a hard pill to swallow for me sometimes. God, you want me to suffer so I'll stop sinning? You want me to be tired and in pain? You want me to be ridiculed and mocked? You want me to be hungry and cold and thirsty and destitute because you don't want me to sin anymore?

Isn't that natural? If you're tired, right? in the flesh, when Olivia and I would photograph weddings, and it would come right before dinner time, I'd be doing some project and I'd get a little bit short with her, and she'd come and she'd hand me some type of granola bar, and she'd say, I think you need to eat this, you're getting a little hangry. And I was just suffering a little bit. But you know what it's like sometimes when you're in pain and patience gets thin. Or you're tired and you get cranky.

Some of you have suffered tremendously, and you know what it's like to be tested and tried, even through that suffering, but God is doing something in you. He is teaching you how, in that suffering, His Spirit is able to work to put to death sinful desires in you.

One of my favorite things is going to nursing homes and visiting aged saints. They have all sorts of problems. They have all sorts of reasons to be bitter and to be in pain and to be impatient and grumpy. I know I probably would be in their situations.

But I love going into shut-ins and homes and into nursing homes when I meet those godly saints who will just sit there and they just want to pray. And they sit there and they pray all day for people in the church. They pray for their pastors and they pray for the people in the church. And they love people and they want to care for others even though they themselves feel neglected and are in pain. Because see, that's what suffering does. It says, here's what's going on temporally in my life at this time, but there's something bigger than myself. There's something greater than me to live for.

And this passage is not teaching somehow that we're going to not sin anymore. No, we are the unjust and Jesus is the just one. But what it does mean is that you, Christian, as you put on that same mind of Christ, you're no longer under the yoke, under the tyranny of sin. I need you to hear this. Maybe this is a declaration statement you need to hear this morning.

You do not have to serve sin. If you have the same mind which is in Christ Jesus, you do not have to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, serve sin anymore. You're free from that slavery. You're free from that tyrant. And suffering is one of the things the Holy Spirit brings into our lives to show us that you are not a slave to your emotions or your circumstance. You can serve the Lord. And you can love others. 4, verse 2. That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men, but for the will of God. You don't have to live this life anymore.

Maybe you have found yourself caught in a web of sin, and you're worried that if you start telling the truth, or if you start fighting against sin, or you start being honest about who you truly are, when nobody else is looking, that you're worried your life will unravel, and you've caught yourself in this web of sin, and you don't know how to get out. I'm telling you right now, you can. You can. But the question is, what do you desire? What are you spending your life for? Is it for, as the text tells us, the flesh, time in the flesh for the lust of men? Or is it for the will of God? What are you spending your life for?

When it says in verse 2 that he no longer should live the rest of his life Live the rest of his time. This is not just the normal word for living. This is like life as a transaction. As you get a bank account, a certain amount of time in your life, and none of us know exactly how much is in that bank account of time. You are making withdrawals from that time bank every single day. And you are giving it to some desire, some passion, some affection, some love.

What are you spending your life's currency on? Is it on the things that God wills or on the common desires, the fleshly lusts of all people? What are you living for? What's driving us? What's motivating you? Is there any difference between your life What you're chasing after, and your unbelieving neighbor next door, doesn't seem to be any different motivating love. Because the clock is running out.

Look with me at verse three. For we have spent enough of our pastime in doing the will of the Gentiles. We're walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. Every sport has a game clock, almost every sport has a game clock. And eventually the time runs out. And you know that as a game or a match gets closer and closer to the finish line, there's more and more fervency because you gotta really push hard and win. Anybody can play really well in the first two periods, but what are you gonna do when the time is running out?

The game clock's running out in our life and I gotta say, I don't know about you, but I spent enough of my time living like the rest of the world. There's two paths. There's two paths in this life, the one of least resistance, and the one that's swimming upstream, going against the current, going the way of progressive holiness, desiring what God desires, putting to death the sinful desires of the flesh and living unto God. Which path are you gonna take?

Because we're making intentional choices. Notice in verse three, for we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles. When I stand up here before you, I told Olivia yesterday, I spent most of my early week just praying over this passage. Because as I was researching and going through each one of these sins, just having to confess to the Lord how much of a Gentile I was and how much my heart still leans in these directions naturally. And as the Lord brought more and more memories back, it was like nightmares coming back from my past.

We have spent enough of our past lifetimes going after the intentions, the wills, and the desires of the Gentiles. We cannot stand with pride, acting as if these things have never categorized our lives. We can't stand in self-righteousness with a type of hypocritical and pharisaical judgmentalism, saying that I've never committed or wanted any one of these things. No, when we look at each one of these things and we're honest with ourselves because the Spirit has worked in our hearts, we're able to say, no, I was this person and I don't want to spend my life there anymore.

This was us, we walked in this way. And lewdness and lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, disgusting idolatry. The way of the Gentile sounds like Spring Break, sounds like Mardi Gras. Lewdness is this idea of no self-restraint. Lust, yes, there is part of this that is a sexual idea, but it's an unbridled passionate desire. Drunkenness. Excessive feasting and partying. Drunken parties is the idea that it's almost like you're drinking wine out of pots, there's so much alcohol available.

Pouring out libations onto idols. Roman parties would often start with, let's have fun. And the gods will forgive us. And we can even drink unto the gods. And they would start their parties not drinking a cup of wine, but pouring it out onto the ground for the gods.

And as I mentioned, I was talking to Olivia about this. I didn't wanna get too autobiographical in this sermon, but I remember, I'm gonna speak vaguely here, Young people, this was my heart's desire was for these things. The world makes the drinking parties and the revelries, the vanity fair seem like it's so much fun.

But at the end of it is misery and failure, bad choices and regret, sin and the pain of sin. Don't spend your day walking in the intentions and the wills of the Gentiles. But there will be a consequence for coming to that position in your life. Make no doubt about it, this is not welcomed in our world.

You shouldn't be surprised by it, but it was a surprise to me. I became a Christian and I felt like I lost all my friends. Look with me at verse four. In regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. It means to be surprised. Think it odd. This fellow once ran with us. He went to the parties with us. She could hold her own with the guys. And now she won't go party.

Who do you think you are? You think you're better than us now? Oh, you high and righteous? Oh, you mighty? Oh, you think you're better than us? See, when it says that in verse four, in regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation. But notice it's not just that, oh, this is odd, like they're kind of gotten a little bit weird, right? What does it turn towards? Do you notice that second part of this?

Speaking evil of you. The Greek there is the Greek word blaspheming you. This is exactly why Nero had Christians put to death. Do you know what the charge for Emperor Nero, what he gave to Christians, why the Christians deserved to die right around the time that Peter is writing this letter? The charge was that they were haters of humanity. That Christians had become haters of humanity.

Because they would no longer worship the gods or partake in the ways of the Greeks and the Romans. They would no longer pour out the libations. They would no longer frequent the temples. They would no longer go after the idols and after the Roman gods and commit the fornications and idolatries and evil things that happened in the temples and their courtyards. And so he literally lined up the road up to his palace crucifying Christians because they would no longer go to the drinking parties, no longer sacrifice to the idols, and if crucifying them along the road wasn't enough, he lit them on fire at night, saying they were haters of humanity. Don't be surprised if this world hates you. They hated our Savior first.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 8 speaks of this flood of dissipation, this flood of wasteful drinking and spending. It says, a son who's like this, who's drunken and wasteful, is ashamed of his father. This is a heavy sermon. It's a hard one. It's a hard one because none of us are righteous. It's a hard one because the Holy Spirit lays it thick on our hearts that we've got to change. We cannot keep spending the rest of our lives looking like the rest of the world. But it's hard because I know that when I talk to you and some of you, you have to take biblical positions and stances in your life that are unpopular in your family and in your culture. And people will say that you are unloving. People will say that you're uncaring. People will say that, well, if you hold this position, you're judging me and judging is wrong.

And all you're trying to do is follow in the way of Christ. And I know that some of you, have even faced children pulling themselves away from you and grandchildren not being able to see you. It grieves your heart. And that pain is real. But the Lord knows what you're doing for his glory, as a testimony of his grace. So yes, it's hard, but he's doing it in you for a purpose.

And those who will Make these blasphemies speak evil against you. They'll eventually someday have to make an account for what they've done and said. Nero died, just like it was appointed to happen to him. And after this, he was judged. That's what verse five is getting at. They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

Roman people thought that when they died, they just went to Hades. That even if they did evil in this life, they could just die and that was it. It was over and done. No. This is the point that Christians hold to where we could say, I don't have to extract revenge or be angry or be swallowed up by bitterness by those who revile and blaspheme me.

Because I know vengeance is the Lord's and He will repay. I can follow Him and leave them in God's hands. Because Jesus has made all things subject to Him. Angels and rulers and principalities and He will judge the living and the dead. So even though you may suffer for Christ's sake, you'll be vindicated. The Lord knows. The Lord knows.

Death doesn't remove a person from judgment, but death brings everyone face to face with the judge. Because here's the thing, Death isn't the end of the story. Those Christians who were lit on fire in Nero's garden, they're more alive today than they ever were that day. Look at verse six with me. For this reason the gospel is preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. Those Christians who when Peter is writing are now dead, he says they received the gospel. Sure they may be judged by men and they may be condemned and put to death, they may suffer horribly in this life, yet that's not the end of the story.

But live according to God in the spirit. Do you see? Jesus was raised for our justification. Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended up into heaven. This is why chapter 3 verse 21 and 22 are connected to this idea. That we are saved through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God. Our Savior is alive, and if He lives, so also we too will live.

Even if they put you in shackles or chains, blaspheming you, or even send you to the lions, or put you on a firing wall, they condemn you as haters of humanity. Yet you will live. But my question is, what are you living for today? We know that we will see him again. We know that we will live again. So how does that change how you live today? This congregation has been here for I think 179 years now, or just about to be. Roughly 65,000 days. 9,000, over 9,000 sermons preached in this congregation over those years. How many have heard these truths week in and week out?

And I'd like to propose to you that there's only two groups that walked out of those doors. Those whom the Holy Spirit took and gave the same mind as Christ, and those who walked out with hardened hearts. and decide they will live for their own passions.

Who will you be when you walk out the doors of this church this morning? What will the pattern of your life be? As you give away the currency of your days, will it be living for his will, desiring his glory because of how good he's been towards you? Or will it be spending your life on your own indulgent passions and desires? Which path will you take? Will it be the path of least resistance going along with the culture? Or will it be the path of Christ, living as Him and possibly even dying like Him? Will you have the same mind of Christ in you? Many of you decided that years and years ago. Many of you have taken covenant vows before the congregation and said that you would live a life for God's glory. Do not forget who you are living for because he died for you and he lives for you. Father, we confess to you that we are sinners. We are the unjust, but you have made us just by the suffering of your Son, Jesus Christ, for us on that cross.

And Father, we thank you that you've given us a new purpose in life. You've given us a new heart and a new love, new intention, desires, and affections. And God, we pray that we would follow you. Not out of a slavish fear, but out of a love for you. Because you have poured out your love for us in our hearts.

And have given us your spirit that cries out, Abba, Father. And so Father, please, teach us to follow you. Teach us to walk in your ways. Oh Lord, because we love you. Thank you for your son. Strengthen us by your Spirit. Sanctify us, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.