What Does Trust in God Actually Look Like?

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Thanks for joining us. Good.

Morning guys, how we doing? All right, if you have your

Bibles, you can go to first Peter and go there.

This morning we're continuing our conversation about a long

obedience. Last Sunday we talked about

trust. We talked about trust and we

said God is forming us to be people who trust him.

He's not just after compliance, He's not just after compliance.

He's not trying to make us into a bunch of robots.

He's after people who trust his heart, who trust his character

and trust his ways. We said last week, we said this

was very important, that the life God invites you into is not

a life based on your faithfulness.

And even though this is what many of us think Christianity

is, I got to be faithful. I got to be good.

The life that God invites you into, into is not a life based

on your faithfulness, but a life based on God's faithfulness to

you. God is faithful to you.

And today we want to answer this question.

So if you're wondering where this message is going, if you

take notes, here's the question we want to answer today.

If I'm trusting God fully like we talked about last week, if

I'm trusting him fully, if I'm saying, hey, God, I trust you,

you have my life. How is that showing up in my

everyday life? In other words, what's changing

about Tuesday at work? What's changing about the the

neighbors that I have a hard time getting along with?

Like what's changing in my life? Because I trust God fully.

That's the question we're going to answer today.

Now this is where our text is going to take us this morning.

All right, It's going to answer this question, and you can go

there first Peter, chapter 1. I do.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bibles, it'll be on the screen.

But if you have your phone, you can go to the Bible app.

It'd be helpful for you to see it.

This context of this is #1 Peter is a letter.

So when you see first Peter, it's a letter.

Don't be, don't be weirded out by the Bible.

It's just Peter's writing a letter to some Christians in

Asia Minor. And these Christians are under

some persecution. Their lobs are very difficult,

some very difficult circumstances that they're going

through. And Peter tells these believers

that God calls them to live faithfully even though the

culture is opposed to them. Now, the persecution that these

Christians in Asia Minor were facing was not like a state

persecution yet. That hasn't quite started yet in

the history of the church. It was like a soft persecution.

It was kind of like Christians were not able to get good paying

jobs. It this happens around the world

today, like there are certain countries where if you're a

Christian, you're, you can be a janitor and like, that's it.

OK, That, that's, that's a reality now in places.

Well, this is what was happening then when Peter's writing this

letter, Christians couldn't get good jobs or kids couldn't get

into good schools, like that type of thing.

It was they couldn't live in certain parts of town.

It was a soft persecution simply because they were Christians.

And Peter tells these believers in the midst of this

persecution, he says, remain faithful to God even though,

even though the culture is opposed to you and doesn't

appreciate your faith and is even hostile towards it.

And so the question then is, how can you remain faithful to God

in the middle of that persecution?

How can you remain faithful to God in the middle of those

difficult circumstances? And what's interesting is when

Peter begins to answer this question throughout his letter,

he doesn't list, he doesn't make a list of behaviors like if you

want to be faithful to God in the middle of this persecution,

then do this and do this and do this and do this and don't do

this. Don't do this and don't do this.

That's not where he starts at all.

He doesn't start with like a list of behaviors that they need

to be doing in order to be faithful to God.

No, actually he starts with hope.

Hope. Now imagine your life is hard.

You're poor. And if you just.

Abandoned your faith in Christ. If you just said, I don't

believe Jesus resurrected from the dead, your life would get

easier. Imagine that all you had to do

was get up one day and be like, hey, our family's not Christian

anymore and now your life will get easier.

What would you need somebody to tell you in order to help you

get through that? So Peter offers them the word

hope. He says hope is what you need

now. Hope is always about the future.

Hope is never about the present. And that's exactly how he uses

the word hope. He tells them to have hope about

the future that is promised to them.

That there is a there is a future that's coming for you

have hope in that. And that hope you have about the

future changes your perspective of the present.

Your hope about the future changes your present

perspective. Or you could say it this way it

changes. Where your heart is devoted,

what your heart is committed to. Let me say it this way.

What you're devoted to, what you're committed to changes

because of the hope you have. So write that down.

What you're devoted to changes because of the hope you have.

And the hope is about the future, but the devotion is

about the present. So my present devotion changes

about about my future. Hope did we get that.

OK, we'll talk about that more. So let's jump into this text a

little more first Peter chapter one, verse 13 through 16.

Let's let's read this. Everybody got the context all

right. Therefore, with minds that are

alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought

to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at His coming.

As obedient children do not conform to the evil desires you

had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who has called

you as holy, so be holy and all you do.

For it is written, be holy because I am holy.

All right, we're going to pause here for a second.

We're going to say a prayer and I have this.

I don't know, I don't really normally have these types of

things happening when I'm on stage or preaching.

I have this sense that the Lord just wants me to pray for, for

any of you who are dealing with some illnesses, whether it's

emotional, mental, physical, any of you are just walking through

something that's just illness. So if you're here and you're

walking through illness, there's just a pressing on me to pray

for you. So if you're here and you're

walking through illness, the Lord is having me pray for you.

All right, so let's let's just do that together.

Or if you're online, maybe you're watching right now and

that's why the Lord's pressing this.

So let's pray as we've read this text and let's ask the Lord to

be in this message. And let's pray for wholeness and

healing for those who are walking through illness.

Father, out of obedience, I just pause here and and just say

thank you that you love us so much.

And I pray, Father, that that we would remember your devotion to

us. That you've met our greatest.

Need in that you gave your son Jesus to die for our sins.

The Lord, there are, there are those among us and those who are

tending a line who are facing illnesses, physical things like

with their bodies, with their hearts, with their hands.

Like there's, there's illness and then there's just, there's

mental health. Lord, there's the struggle

around anxiety and depression and just the stress of life.

And so Lord, I, I, I pray for healing over whoever it is

that's walking through these things now.

And you get to define healing, Father, whatever healing is, is

you define it. We just, we just want your will

to be done in their lives. And so we pray that they would

have wholeness. They would have your presence

that you would be there with them that they would know you're

you're, you're part of you're part of this story that they're

not alone and at this moment would confirm that to them.

So Lord, we pray your will be done in their lives and we pray

they'd be comforted by the truth that you are aware of what

they're walking through. And Lord, we pray you teach us

through Peter's words this morning what a gift it is we

have them. In the name of Christ, we Perry.

Amen. OK, so in this text that we just

read, there were three ideas. You know, I like to do this.

Three ideas. It helps you take notes.

And I like to say it helps you know how close we are to being

finished. All right, so three ideas.

OK #1 hope in God's grace #1 hope in God's grace #2 live as

God's children, live as God's children, and #3 reflect God's

character. You got it.

Hope in God's grace. Live as God's children reflect

God's character. So let's jump in to the first

one. All right #1 hope in God's

grace. That's verse 13.

So the command in verse 13 is for you to set your hope on the

grace that is coming in the future.

Now what he's saying is, hey, guys that are under persecution

in the future, a new reality is coming.

Something's going to change. Like the world is broken and

it's messed up and there's pain and there's difficulties, but

God is bringing a new future where where the pain of this

moment will be forgotten and the pain of this current existence

that you have will be behind you.

Something better is coming. Peter's saying we set our hope

on our future promise. Now it's interesting.

Look at the text. OK, what does he say we set our

hope with? He doesn't say with our hearts.

He doesn't say set your hope on the future with your hearts.

He says to do it with your, what everybody say, minds with your

minds. So he says with your thinking,

set your hope on this future promise that's coming.

And he says with minds that are fully alert and minds that are

fully sober. In other words, you've thought

this through. You've worked through the logic

and you've said, OK, the world is broken and it's messed up.

And if my heart is not home, if my life is not home in this

world, then surely I must have been made for a different world.

I've worked this out. And so that now in my mind, I'm

thinking about the fact that there's a future hope, that that

is a filter that I run. Everything else I'm working

through, everything else I'm living through, I run it through

that filter. That's what Peter's telling

these believers, hey, you're going through some tough times.

You're going through some difficult circumstances.

Don't set your mind on those circumstances.

Set your mind on the future hope.

Set your mind on the future reality.

You know in. Essence, what he's saying to

these suffering Christians is this.

Do not be anxious in your thinking.

I know easier said than done, but it takes practice.

But it also don't be anesthetized.

I can't say that word. Don't be, don't be asleep in

your thinking. Right.

And it so does that better? Yeah.

Somebody say anesthetized. How do you say that word?

Who's got it anesthetized? I can't do it.

That that that that my tongue just turns it on itself.

So don't, don't, don't be anxious.

Like don't be like, Oh my gosh, everything's falling apart and

and don't be asleep in your thinking.

And, and if you think about it, this is kind of where most

people are. They're either like panicking

and worried about the future all the time, or they're just like,

whatever man happens, I don't care.

You know, I just this is going to unfold.

They're asleep thinking about the future, right?

It's one or the other. Don't you guys agree with that?

It's kind of like, is this kind of where you, I mean, this is

kind of this is the pendulum I live in.

Like I'm trying to solve everything.

I got to figure it out. Oh, it doesn't matter.

Whatever is going to happen, what's going to happen, you

know, right? Peter says.

Don't do either of those. Don't don't be asleep in your

thinking and don't be anxious in your thinking.

Be sober and be alert with your mind on the.

Hope. The future hope that is coming,

that there is a new day, new day coming.

And let that future hope in God's grace that's coming,

meaning there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth.

This future promise. Let that guide you in the way

you think. So let me say this this way, if

I set my if I set my mind or the future hope and I'm and I'm, I'm

mindful of the fact that the world will be made right, that

everything will be put to right. So this is not the only life I'm

going to get that I'm going to get a whole nother life.

If I'm setting my mind to that, then that will change how I

react to my present. That would change to I will know

what's really important in life. I will know how to respond to

what's really happening in my life.

So let me say it this simply hope for your future changes

your present. Hope for your future changes

your present. Hope you.

You can take a massive disappointment because you know

this life is not all there is. You can take a massive victory

and not get practical and arrogant because you know this

life is not all there is. Does this make sense?

Hope for your future changes our present.

Now we understand this, we get this.

I don't. You don't have to like think

about you don't have to think about this theologically.

Have you ever had on your calendar a cruise or a vacation

that was well into the future? Does it ever change your

thinking a little bit leading up to it?

Do you find yourself thinking about it a lot?

Do you find yourself like buying extra things here and there?

Do you find yourself, especially if you're going like on a beach

vacation, you're trying to find yourself trying to lose a little

weight before you go? Anybody know?

I'm talking about you're like, we're going, we're going to the

beach and we're going to the beach in July and it's February.

I need to try to lose 80 lbs before now and then, you know

what I mean? Why?

Why is that happening? Because you have a future hope

that you believe is going to happen and you're having

circumstance, you're, you're changing your present

circumstances because of that future hope.

You believe in that future hope so much so that you're doing

things in the present. Because of that.

Think about kids who are in school right now.

If you're in high school right now or middle school right now,

do you probably know how many days are left in school or how

many weeks are? Left in school.

Right. Do you guys remember that when

you were in school? You know, do you know how many

you guys know how much time is left in school?

Look, look, right here, He's like to how many 10 weeks is

what he's saying, 6-6 weeks, 10 days, 10 days.

Yeah, man. Now, listen, so if you know

there's only 10 days, you know there's only 10 days left in

school. What are you thinking about

between now and those 10 days? Like, you're you're thinking

about the fact that you're going to be done soon, right?

You know it's all going to be over.

Yeah. You got to finish your papers

and you got to do your tests, all that kind of stuff.

But you are imagining yourself. And when I was in high school,

doing nothing all summer, right? Doing nothing.

It didn't actually work out that way.

But that's what you're imagining yourself, right?

In other words, when you know something in the future is

coming, it changes your present, changes the way you think.

That confident belief in a future reality changes how you

act and think in the present. And this is what Peter is

describing. And Peter says, hey, this is not

accidental. This is not passive.

He says this is intentional. You purposely set your mind, you

purposely think on these things. You have habits.

You wake up every day and you have some type of habit where

it's reading the Bible or spending some time in prayer or

spending some time in quiet. You have habits that help you.

Set your mind to help you set your mind on the hope that is

coming. And that habit keeps you in the,

in the, in the present of living like there's a future that's

coming that's better. Now.

It's interesting to me that Peter's not describing emotions

or feelings Like feel, if you just, if you just feel hope

you'll be OK. No, he says, this is something

you think about. You use your mind for this.

We think actively and soberly about the reality that this life

is not all there is, that there is a coming future.

And when you do that, it will change your commitments.

It will change your actions. It will change the way you live

in the present. If I believe a new life is

coming, my devotion of what I live for now changes.

So number one, first of all, we put our hope in God's future

promise of grace. That's number one.

We put our hope in God's future promise of grace at the Christ

coming. And then secondly.

So hope in God's grace #2 live as God's children, live as God's

children. Now we get more specific, more

specific about how our. Day-to-day lives begin to change

when we set our hope on the future.

Grace. If I've said this morning so

far, set your mind, get your thinking about the future,

promise. OK, now let's get more specific

about how that changes our day-to-day life.

Look at verse 14. OK, verse 14, it says this as

obedient children do not conform to the evil desires you had when

you lived in ignorance. Now again, he's writing to

people who are Christians and Asia Minor who used to not be

Christians. And Peter says, first of all, if

you set your hope on God, you will begin to look like an

obedient child of God. You see how that works.

What what we tend to think is if I want to be an obedient child

of God, I got to really, really like get disciplined and try

hard and get myself together. But what Peter says is now the

way this starts is you set your hope on God.

You set your hope on his future. People who hope in God live

their lives like obedient children in God's house.

I'm. Going to say that again.

People who hope in God live their lives like obedient

children in God's house. It's a correlation.

It's disconnected. Now, there are two things I've

got to address about this text. First of all, notice how Peter

addresses them. He says as obedient children.

He doesn't say as faithful servants.

That's what you hear. But that's not what he said.

You hear as faithful servants, be obedient.

That's what you heard. That's what all these preachers

you've heard your that's what you heard in your head, but

that's not what he said. He calls us children.

He doesn't say as faithful employees or faithful servants.

He says as obedient children. Now this matters because think

about this. A servant obeys out of fear.

A servant obeys out of fear because what can happen to a

servant? He can be dismissed, she can be

dismissed, she can be removed. And so a servant obeys out of

fear, out of losing their position or losing their reward.

But a child doesn't obey out of fear.

A child obeys from a place of security and safety.

A child says, I belong in this home.

They're they're a child's not trying to earn their place in

the home by trying to be good. They already have a place in the

home. This is why Peter calls us

obedient children. This is on purpose.

You belong in the home. So Peter is saying hey, we obey

God in our day-to-day lives not to get into the family of God,

but because we are already in the family of God.

We we recognize how loved we are by this future hope in this

future devote this future promise of grace that Christ is

returning. There is a new heaven and a new

earth. I will get a whole new life.

I realize that that God has loved me so much that as an

obedient. Child I want to.

Honor the God who loves me so much.

This is what children do. And now are there any perfect

children? No, they're not.

They're just not any perfect children.

I mean, maybe 30 seconds after they're born.

I don't know well. There are no perfect children.

You and I are not perfect. We're we're not going to be

perfectly obedient to God. Like I figured all this out.

That's that's not, this is how we think Christianity works.

If I'm good, God accepts me. Peter's flipping that over and

he's saying, no, you're in the house.

You're in the house. And the fact that you've been

accepted and the fact that you set your hope on God, that

begins to change you. That's how he flips it.

And if you think about it, man, I'm telling you, there's stories

and testimonies people can get up and share about how the

devotion and the love of a parent or a friend change their

lives. My younger brother Mess had a

mess going on in his life just. When he was in his early 20s, I

don't want to put his junk in the street, but everything you

can think about early 20s being a mess.

And my dad, my dad went to him and he put this out there

publicly. So my, he, my dad bailed him out

of jail and in the parking lot began to weep.

And my dad was not a crier. He didn't he wouldn't like me.

He didn't cry weeping in the parking lot.

He said, son, you're killing me. I love you so much and I can't

live. I can't live, please, I'm

begging you, start making some changes in your life.

And my brother, not on the flip of a switch, not overnight from

that point, he he marks it to that point is when his life

began to change. And today he has a good career

and two beautiful boys and a beautiful wife, living a

wonderful life, faithful to the Lord.

My dad did not say I'm tired of you.

I always get in trouble. You're an idiot.

He said, I love you. I can't live this way anymore

like this. This is what it means.

This is how God loves us. This is how he calls us into

obedience. He accepts you and He loves you

and he puts you in the family through Jesus Christ and that

acceptance and that hope of the future.

Begins to change us who can say that's true who can say I can't

deny the changes that have taken place in me since I've come down

to the Lord You can say it right you can say it right you can't

deny it you can't you can't now it didn't happen overnight it

wasn't like a switch flip and you're like man, I used to be a

total jerk and I'm less of a jerk today, you know no, it's

like slowly over time it's like oh I can't and then you look

back over the long arc and you realize man, look at what the

Lord has done in my life you know what the one thing that

changed was it wasn't your effort it was your.

Faith that he actually accepted you, that he actually loves you.

You actually believe that and that's what brought the change.

So that's the first thing. Peter addresses them as children

when he calls them obedient, to be obedient.

Now, I the second thing I need to say about this verse is this.

Peter does indeed call us to obedience.

He does indeed call us to obedience like this.

This is in the Bible and he begins by describing obedience

in a negative way. He says do not conform to your

evil desires. Now, that phrase evil desires is

a little bit misleading, and I think it's a poor translation.

And I've always point out to you guys poor translations.

There's one word there in the Greek for desires, all right,

And Peter uses that word desires or passions.

What we all know is that not all desires or all passions are bad.

Some passions, some desires are good.

The issue is not that we desire evil things.

The issue is that our desires are disordered.

Did you hear what I just said? Peter says.

That in the past, in the past, your issue wasn't that your

desires were evil, it was that your desires were disordered.

Let me, let me read you. This is the new Revised standard

version of this same verse, verse 14.

And I think this translation captures it very well.

It says, like obedient children, do not be conformed to the

desires that you formerly had in ignorance.

All right. In other words, you had some

desires that were out of order. You, you, you, they weren't

necessarily evil, they were just out of order.

Now, there's an assumption that Peter makes.

Do you guys hear the assumption in this verse?

The assumption is that our desires form us because he says

do not conform to your former desires.

All right, That you had an ignorance.

Well, what's the assumption? That what you desire, what you,

what you set your heart and your mind on has a way of forming

you, forming your character and forming your way.

That that's an assumption that he makes all right.

And what Peter is saying is, hey guys, before you knew God

before, before you had a relationship with God, your

desires were void of God. In other words, all your desires

and think about your life before you knew the Lord your you had

desires and they weren't necessarily evil.

They just didn't include God, right?

They didn't include God. And Peter says when you had

these desires that did not include God, those desires were

shaping you. And so therefore you were being

shaped by desires that did not include God.

And those desires gave us those desires, gave us direction, they

gave us purpose, They gave us meaning.

And, and Peter says in ignorance, like we didn't know

any better, we looked at things like comfort, approval, success,

and control to give us what only God can give.

These weren't always bad things. They were just things that we

trusted in more than we trusted God.

We had what Augustine called disordered loves.

This is what Peter is saying. Like before you came to know

God, you, you, you had your desires.

You had desires for things that controlled your life, that

formed your life, things like control, things like money,

things like success. But now Peter says, now that

you've come to the Lord, now that you've become a Christian,

now something has changed. Now because you know God, he

sits at the top of all your desires.

He is your primary desire. So he sits at the top of all the

things that you want and all the things that you long for.

So just like you tend to set your heart and your mind on your

desires, Peter says, now God sits at the top of those

desires. You set your heart and your

mind. On this has.

Changed. And Peter would contend that

this changes everything now. We still have other desires.

You still have other desire. It isn't like I wake up every

day going. I desire God and only God.

That's it, right? And that's not like, well,

that's what you got to be, to be a Christian.

No, it's that I still have other desires.

I still have desires for comfort and desires for success and

desires for, you know, all of these other desires, right?

But they're not, none of them are primary now.

None of them take the place of the first position.

Who gets the place of the first position?

Now God gets the place of the first position.

Now He becomes my primary desire.

And if I put God at the top of my desire chart, if I say of all

the things I want in this world, I want my relationship with my

heavenly Father to be first in my life, this is the most

important thing. Then every other desire, every

other love becomes ordered. Does this make sense?

So this is what Peter is saying. He's saying in the past.

In the past you had you had desires that were disordered.

And so we place God at the center of our lives and he

orders our desires correctly. And we don't do this because

we're forced to or coerced to. We do this going back to verse

13. We do this because we set our

minds on the hope of his grace. We.

Go man, God has been so faithful to me, so good to me, why would

I desire anything other than Him first?

Does that make sense? You see how the mind is such a

key part of this? We think it's all about what

we're feeling. It's not.

It's all about what our mind is set on.

I set my mind on the future hope that God's going to give me.

And then I realized that my my desires are disordered.

And I put God at the top of my desires, and then all my other

desires become ordered. And this is what it means to

live. As God's children, we are secure

in His family, and we began to live with Him as a child in his

home. And he is our greatest desire,

seeking to please Him, not to earn His love because we already

have it. We don't obey to earn God's

love. We obey because we have been

loved and accepted by God. Does this make sense?

All right. So #1 we set our hope in God's

grace #2 We live as God's children, no longer shaped by

our old desires. And I don't know how we're going

to do #3 in this little bit of time, but you guys, buckle up #3

we reflect God's character. I have to do it.

So somebody text people in children's ministry and tell

them to buckle up, reflect God's character.

Look at verses 15 and 16. If you have your Bibles, your

spawns, this is what he says. So instead of conforming to your

old desires, do this instead. But just as he who called you is

holy, so be holy and all you do for it is written, be holy

because I am holy. Now remember I said his first

description of obedience was a negative description.

It was like, hey, reject your old values, reject your old

desires that you were ignorant of.

That was the negative. Now in these verses he shows us

how obedience is a positive sense and that positive sense is

a pursuit of holiness. Peter says God himself is our

model and our standard for holiness, not other people.

Peter tells us to be holy in all you do.

Print that on a card and stick it on your dashboard of your

car. I no way, bro.

Like I love Jesus except when I'm driving.

You know what I mean, That people's crazy out there.

I never do anything stupid in the car.

So he knows. Peter says be holy in all you

do. That's that's strong.

That's, that's crazy. But here's the thing.

He says being holy in everything, Yes.

But then he says the standard for our holiness is being holy

like God. And you got to get this.

Be holy like God is holy. This is important.

Because you don't get to define what Holiness is.

You don't. You don't get to decide what

holiness. I don't get to decide what

holiness is. I have to be holy like God is

holy. This is the call of my life.

All right, I think we have to stop here for just a moment.

And we got to talk about holiness.

When we think of holiness, we all tend to think about

morality, right? Morals.

So again, some of you who reject Christianity, This is why you

reject Christianity. You think it's all about morals

and we boil Christianity down to don't do bad, do good.

That's silly. Think about this.

If someone were to ask you, hey, what is God like?

Tell me about God. And you said, well, God is holy.

And they said, OK, cool. What does that mean that he's

holy? And you responded with, well,

you know, he's really moral. He's got really high morals.

Well, yes, God has really high morals, but does God is

perfectly moral capture that God is holy?

Are those two things equal? Isn't God being holy much deeper

than just He's perfectly moral? Well, certainly it is.

You see, God is moral. And yes, for you and I to be

holy certainly includes being morally good.

Certainly includes that. But it's deeper than that.

Holiness. Write this down.

Holiness means set apart. Holiness means being distinct.

Holiness means being different. So when we say God is holy, what

we're saying is God is not like anything else in all of

creation. He's separate.

He's distinct. There's no match for him.

He's the only one. He's he's set apart.

OK then, Steven. All right, great.

Well, then if, if, if God is holy, then that means he's set

apart and we got to be holy like God.

He's the standard. That means we're set apart,

we're distinct, we're different. What does that mean?

That we're like, we're distinct because we're so much better

morally than everybody else. And that's the kind of preaching

people talk about right? Here they go.

You got to be better and you got to stop doing those bad things

and do good things that way. We're set apart in the world,

right? And it's no like that.

That's not it at all. Like, that's not how we're set

apart is being better morally than everybody else.

Now, again, again, again, we're certainly committed to a moral

lifestyle. Don't walk out here going, I

think Steven said we don't have to worry about moralities.

Like, no, no, we're certainly committed to a moral lifestyle,

but that is not what sets Christians apart.

You guys know this, right? There are plenty of people who

do not know the Lord, who do not believe in God, who are

atheists, who are morally better than you.

They are, they are there. I mean them all the time.

I'm like, this dude is this dude is better than me.

And some of them even adhere to Christian ethics, meaning they

agree with our view on things as far as Christian ethics go, and

they adhere to them better than we do.

So if being set apart and being distinct is what holiness is,

and the Bible tells us to be holy, being set apart and be

distinct, and that doesn't mean just being morally better than

everybody else, then what does it mean?

Are you ready? Write this down.

The word whole, WHOLE, Radic WHOLE, the word whole.

So what does it mean to be distinct, to be set apart?

It means we are whole. WHOLE.

All right, I'll keep talking. We are integrated, meaning our

lives are not fractured. Fractured.

We're not trying to manage how certain people perceive us over

how other people try to perceive us.

We're not compartmentalized. Instead, we are integrated and

unified in our purpose and our nature.

Who we are is settled. OK, well, OK, OK, OK, OK, well,

what is that? What does it mean that we're,

we're settled and we're integrated and, and who like,

how, what does it mean? We're like, we're whole like

that. Well, this is how wholeness

happens in your life, when you are holy WHOLLY, when you are

wholly committed to God, committed.

When you were. Wholly committed when you say he

is my. Highest desire, when you look at

all the rooms of your house, listen to me carefully.

When you look at all the rooms of your house, and I don't mean

your literal house, I mean this house.

When you look at all the rooms of your house and you say, Lord,

you can have every room. I'm giving you authority over

every room. I'm giving you authority over

every room. I'm not going to hold any part

back of my life or my heart from you.

I'm going to strain every day to surrender every part of my

finances, every part of my physical life, every part of my

body, every part of my mind, every part of my emotions.

I'm going to do everything I can to surrender to you and thereby

being committed to God. You are becoming integrated as

His children, not fragmented as an employee who seeks to be good

when the boss is looking and does whatever he wants when the

boss is away. Do you see how that changes

everything? When I'm wholly committed to

God, WHOLL, when I'm wholly committed to God, He's first.

My life becomes integrated, becomes unified, and I am not

fragmented as an employee or servant.

Now the wholeness, this wholeness, the self wholly

committed to God, makes you and I distinct from the world.

Because that's the, that's the goal of.

Holiness to be distinct from the world.

You being whole makes you distinct from the world.

How? Well, yes, it includes good

morals, but in addition to that, you and I, as believers in

Jesus, have given to God complete and total authority

over our lives. Stay with me.

You have given to God complete and total authority to God over

your life. That means you've said to God.

I have surrendered all my autonomy over my body and over

my emotions and over my mind to you as Master and King.

And that, my friend, is distinct from this current world.

Because in this current culture, the last thing you would ever do

is surrender the autonomy of yourself, your body, your mind,

your thoughts. The last.

Thing you would do in this it's it's, it is, it is sacrilege.

It is a, it is a sin in our culture.

It is a sin in our culture to sacrifice your autonomy.

To anyone else other than yourself and what Christians do

is Christians say I am holy, WHOLLY, wholly committed to God.

He has all the authority over my life.

He I have, I have 0 autonomy anymore over me and friend that

in this world will make you distinct.

It will make you stick out big time and more than perplexed.

The world will not just be perplexed by you.

Listen to me carefully. The world will be annoyed,

frustrated and angry at you. And do you know why?

Because if you've declared God as your king and the authority

of your life, no one can move in and set up another throne in

your heart. Credit card companies can't move

in and set up another throne. Mortgage companies can't move in

and set up another throne. Alcohol producing companies

can't set move in and set up another throne.

Government can't move in and set up another throne.

No one can set up another throne.

In your heart, you can't be subjugated.

You can't be. They say, what if you don't?

If you don't submit to this, you're going to be killed.

You're like, well, hey brother, let's do it.

I'm submitted. So you become a threat to the

wider culture because you are a Kingdom inside of a Kingdom.

Did you hear what I just said? You are a Kingdom inside of a

Kingdom. That's what believers are.

And so we are distinct and different not because we're

morally better than anybody else.

No, no, we're distinct and different because we have only

one ruler and it's not ourselves and it's not the government and

it's not anybody else. We have one ruler, and his name

is Jesus. He's our king.

We surrender to him alone. No one can manipulate.

Us or push us away? From our devotion to God or

frighten us into subjugation. Now why would you and I

abandoned our autonomy to a God we cannot see or touch?

Well, we believe that this God abandoned his autonomy for us.

It is wild to think about, but to say I will not be in charge

of my life. I will take whatever comes my

way, good or bad, and I'll say if it's from the hand of the

Lord, and it is because all things are from His hand, and it

is for His purposes. Well, how could you give up

wanting to be in charge of your life?

Because what I believe is God abandoned the throne of heaven.

Jesus left heaven and came to earth and surrendered his

autonomy for me. He said I won't.

I won't be my own king. I won't be in charge of my own

life. I'll become an infant.

I'll be raised as a child. I'll let men I created, men I

know everything about. I'll let them beat me with an

inch of my life. I'll let them torture me and

I'll let them crucify me naked in front of a crowd of people.

I'll surrender my autonomy. Why?

So that I can be a child of God. So you could be a child of God.

So surrendering the authority of my own life and saying, Lord,

you have, you have authority over every part of me, mind,

body, spirit. And there's some things that God

caught, you know, some things I'm not going to like about

that. And some things are going to be

challenging and difficult. But no one is hanging you naked

on a cross. He did that for us.

And so, my friend, be holy, be holy, WHOLLY holy, committed to

your Heavenly Father, and from that everything else will

change. Will you stand with me?

Let's say a prayer for us, God, this for me.

This text was challenging and convicting, and I thank you that

we have it in the Bible to wrestle with.

We're just reminded that none of us can walk out of this room

with arrogance or pride, thinking that we somehow have

figured it out, that we're somehow better than others or

not. We've simply been invited into a

childlike relationship with you. Thank you Lord.

Thank you Lord Jesus, for abandoning your autonomy so that

we could be saved, so that our sins can be forgiven, so so that

the justice of God can be met. Help us to follow you and

abandoning our autonomy so that we might be full of the joy of

the Lord. Thank you for these believers in

Asia, my honor, in the 1st century that were under

persecution. Thank you that Peter wrote them

this letter. Thank you that they will.

They withstood the persecution and they were found faithful.

Thank you for this day. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen. Thank you friends, we love you,

appreciate your. Patience with me.