Rise Up and Be Different | Rise Up | Pastor Joe Coffey

This is a reading from 1 Peter 1:13

1 Peter 1:13–21

through 21.

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.

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's written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

And if you call on him as Father, who judges impartially

according to each one's deeds.

Conduct yourself 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 was for known 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 bring God.

Everybody, good morning

and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.

Really, really glad you're here.

And I know you can feel it.

I mean, the 10:00 hour is just packed, and that's great.

I just want you to let the let you know the 8:30 service has a little more room.

If anybody wants to switch to the 8:30 service.

It'd be great.

But we understand, all right.

But it's good to have everybody here.

The transition is now official.

With the senior pastor position moving from me to Pastor Zach.

Just one final thing on September 28th, we have a members meeting.

We do this every year.

If you're a member, we ask you to come.

We celebrate what God has done.

We are looking forward to the next year and giving you the plans

for the year to come.

It's it's a great time to be together.

It's fun. It's informative.

After that, we're going to have a reception to celebrate the transition.

So if you love Zach, you can come to the reception, congratulate him.

If you love me, you can come congratulate me.

If you love us both,

it could be the greatest night of your whole life.

All right,

I've got

I've got that joke landed because, you know, it's weird.

All right.

This is the second message

of our ten week series we're calling Rise Up.

We're looking at, the book of first Peter.

And, Zach set it up really well last week

when he said first Peter was written to, a group of Christians

who are living in a hostile culture.

It seems pretty timely.

And I just want to encourage

you try to get as much as you can out of the next ten weeks.

Take advantage of what we offer to try to really dive

in, to this book of first Peter,

because I feel like First Peter is probably more relevant

this week than it was last week,

and it could be more relevant next week than it is this week.

So dive it.

So go ahead.

If you have your Bibles, turn to First Peter chapter one.

If you're going to use one of our, church Bibles, I can tell you it's on page 953.

Page 953.

And if you do use one of our church Bibles, just so you know,

there's a there's a header right before the passage

we had read to us, it's the same header that I have in my Bible,

and the header just says called to be

Holy, called to be holy, because Peter uses the word

holy four times in just a couple of verses.

But the whole concept of being holy is a little bit of a tough concept.

I've been reading the book on monks and monasteries and,

you know, monks built monasteries to try to isolate themselves

from the culture, and they would spend

all their time reading the Bible and praying and meditating.

And that was their way of trying to be holy.

And I, I don't know, I don't think that's what Peter's after.

I actually went to a working monastery a few years ago down in Kentucky, and,

I spent

72 hours there was it was a silent monastery.

So you went there?

There were other people there, but you weren't supposed to speak to anybody.

You were just supposed to spend time with you and God.

So I was doing that, and I only spoke one time

in that whole 72 hours, I was sitting at a table.

I had my Bible in front of me.

I was writing in my journal, and I said, I realized there was a monk

standing right next to me.

He was dressed in the brown robe with the rope

tied around his waist, the whole shebang.

And I looked up at him and he looked down at me and he said this.

Do you want a Coke?

I swear, that's what he said.

And I said, sure, that'd be great.

That's the only time I spoke. Right. But.

When Peter

says to be holy, I don't think that's what it after.

Let me give you a different analogy.

My wife, Karen, and I love to go on walks, particularly this time of year,

and it's been a just a beautiful last week.

But sometimes it's hard for me to pick out exactly what to wear,

because sometimes I underestimate

the how warm the sun is going to be.

And I'll dress to warm and are other times right.

I don't get the wind chill and I dress too lightly,

but every once while I am dressed exactly right and I realize

that about halfway through the walk that I just think, you know what?

This is exactly the way I'm meant to feel on this walk.

This is as good as it can be right here, right now.

That's holiness.

Not for a walk, but for life.

You were made to be holy

at your very best.

You are holding the holy you are.

The more you were prepared for whatever tomorrow brings, whatever

next year brings, it's the way God made it.

And when I started thinking about it like that,

it may be long to be holy,

but then the question is how does anyone get holy?

And that's what this passage is about.

Peter gives us the formula

for being holy, and he gives it to us in kind of three steps.

And they go in this order.

He says, if you want to be holy,

it's determined by first what you think

and then what you want,

and finally what you do,

what you think, your mind, what you want in your heart, what you do

in your conduct.

Start with what you think.

This is what Peter says.

Therefore, this is verse 13, preparing your minds for action.

Being sober minded.

Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you

at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He says, prepare your minds for action.

You know it's written in Greek.

And if you were going to translate the Greek word for word,

what it says is gird up the loins of your mind.

That's what he says.

And I like that. Gird up y'all.

It sounds strong.

It does sound weird,

but it's written like that because in the first century,

men wore robes, and when they went to action,

they would hike up the robes and they would tuck it in.

That was girding up your loins.

What Peter says

is you need to gird up the loins of your mind.

You need to be prepared if you're going to live as a Christian

in a hostile culture, you need to use your head.

I think

it's not uncommon for somebody to come to me

and they say, I've been sharing, Jesus with a friend.

And they don't.

They reject it and then they'll add something like this.

My friend is very smart, and they've read a lot.

And the implication is that

if you're going to be a Christian, faith means you just work with your heart.

You don't use your head, you don't use your mind.

And I don't believe that's true.

Let me tell you why.

There there are four major questions of existence

that every human being should think about,

but very few human beings really do.

Here are the four questions.

Where did I come from?

That's the question of origin.

Where am I going?

That's the question of destiny.

Why am I here?

That's the question of purpose.

And then how shall I live?

That's the question of morality.

Where did I come from? Where am I going?

Why am I here?

How shall I live when I'm talking to somebody who's a skeptic

and they are rejecting Christianity, and I get the feeling that it's

because they think that faith means you don't use your head.

I'll usually say, hey, can I ask you a question?

And they'll say, sure.

And I say, okay, why are you here?

What's your purpose for existence?

Nine times out of ten, they look at me with completely blank eyes

because they've never really thought about it, and then they'll fumble around

and they'll come up with an answer that sounds good to them.

The problem is this if you're going to have intellectual integrity,

the answers to those four questions have to match up.

They have to be coherent.

They have to lead one to the other.

You can't jump somewhere else.

However, you answer the first question, where did I come from?

Has implications on your last question.

How shall I live in your morality?

I read an article where Ben Shapiro, who's Jewish, was talking to Bill Marr,

who's a liberal commentator, talking about morality,

and Ben Shapiro was there.

They were talking about how how similar their moralities were.

And Ben Shapiro told Bill Marr, you know, your morality comes from the Bible.

And boy, Bill Marr, that really frustrated him

because he ridicules the Bible.

But Ben Shapiro was right.

Bill Maher said, no, my morality comes from the enlightenment.

But that's not true because Bill Maher is a champion for human rights.

Most people are.

Most people believe in human rights.

You know where human rights come from.

It's the way you answer the first question,

the way a Christian answers the first question, where did I come from?

I was made the image of God, and so were you.

And so is everybody around you.

Every human being has dignity and value simply

because they're made in the image of God.

People you love, people you hate,

everybody.

The whole idea of human rights

comes from the Bible.

Like if you answer the first question, evolution.

Where did I come from? I came from evolution.

You cannot get to human rights from there,

not if you have intellectual integrity, because evolution says the exact opposite.

The strong are much more valuable than the weak.

The best thing it can happen is the strong survive and thrive in the weak.

Die off.

Because that's the way evolution works.

As a human rights

watch, somebody ask me, why do you believe in Jesus?

You know, I told it's because I've looked at the evidence

and I'm convinced that it's true, especially the resurrection of Jesus,

which is the cornerstone of our faith.

And so when I say I looked at the evidence, I don't just mean

the four gospels that give us eyewitness account.

I'm talking about other historians, Roman historians,

Jewish historians, Greek historians who talk about the

the resurrection, the rumor of the resurrection of Jesus.

I'm talking about how thousands upon thousands and the people

who were fiercely monotheistic began to talk about Jesus

as if he were God incarnate because of the resurrection of Jesus.

I've looked at the theories for the empty tomb, and I'll tell you,

those are harder to believe for me

than the idea that Jesus resurrected.

But it's not just that.

It's when I fully gave myself to Jesus, something happened inside my soul.

It's like something clicked into place.

Like the game Tetris for those blocks come down and they match up

just perfectly.

It's like something was out of joint in my soul, and it snapped into place

and all of a sudden things inside made sense to me.

And when I talk to other people

who fully give themselves to Jesus, they talk about it in the same way.

When I

read about people who are Christians hundreds of years ago,

they talk about it the same way.

So I tell you all that because don't let anyone,

if you're a follower of Jesus, don't let anyone tell you

that faith is based on just your heart and not your mind.

And if you are a skeptic, I want you to know I'm really glad you're here,

but I would just challenge you to look at the evidence, right?

And if you look at all the evidence and you're still convinced

that it's wrong, that it's not true, then that's okay.

But at least you have had the integrity

to look at all the evidence.

They said, I'm going to give you an assignment for the next ten weeks.

Those of you who are Christians, this is part of just getting the most

out of this series.

The passage I love the

passage that Zach preached on last week, so let me read it to you.

I want you to read this once a week for the next ten weeks.

This is what it says.

This is first Peter

chapter one, verses three through nine, because I want you to get this

in your mind.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy.

He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection

of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance

that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

who by God's power are being guarded through faith

for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you

rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary.

You have been grieved by various trials,

so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold

that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result

in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him,

though you do not see him now you believe in him

and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Peter says, if you're going to live

as a Christian in a hostile culture,

prepare your mind

because your mind, what goes on in your head will determine

what you really want.

That brings me to my second point.

And that's verse 14.

Peter says, as obedient children, do not be conformed

to the passions of your former ignorance.

That word passions is the Greek word through media.

Through media is the word for desire.

Epi is a prefix that means over something you want too much.

It's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's not. It's just not

made to be an ultimate thing,

timed to bring out the will.

I've not brought this out for a while.

If you have not been here when I've talked about the will,

you're in for a treat.

The will is, the best way

for me to think about the way the human heart works.

This is the way your heart works.

The way my heart works.

This, folks, are all the different things that we value in our lives.

My family and children and marriage to a job success.

What people think of us. Approval, all those things.

But in every human heart,

there is one thing that is more important than anything else,

and that organizes everything else.

Jonathan Edwards was a man who wrote a book called The Freedom of the Will.

And what he says in that book, basically, is that

every human being really does what they want.

They do.

Every decision you make is something you want more than the other.

If you decide to

eat dessert means you want dessert more than you want to lose weight.

If you're trying to lose weight,

if you have a chance to make $20,000,

if you kind of bend the truth, you have a decision

and you will do what you really want to do

and what Peter says

is that if you really understand who Jesus is and what I mean by something

snapping into place in my soul is that Jesus becomes the most important thing.

He becomes the thing that organizes everything else.

That's why, just so you know, you can't say,

I obey Jesus in every other area of my life,

but not with my sexuality, where I obey Jesus, everybody,

everything and everything else, but not with my money.

Because whatever you say when you say

I'll be Jesus, except for that's the center thing.

What makes me different as a Christian?

What makes you different as a Christian is not that you want things that

non-Christians want.

You want the I want the same thing.

I want my children to be healthy and happy.

I want to be successful.

I want to have a good marriage.

I want people to like me.

I want the approval of people.

I want plenty of money.

I want all those things.

The thing that makes a Christian different is that Jesus is here

so that all those things

fall and subject to him.

And that means that if I lose one of those things,

if I lose my marriage, something happens to my wife.

It'll make me very, very sad,

but it won't destroy me

because my

relationship with her is not the most important.

It's Jesus.

And what Peter says is nothing can take that away.

So Peter says, if you're going to live

in a hostile culture, it starts

with what you think.

If you want to be holy, it starts with your mind.

You have to remind yourself all the time of who Jesus is and what he did.

That will work its way out in your heart,

and what you really want will help you make decisions.

When you come to decisions.

And then finally, what you do, what you do.

And that's the next verse, verse 15,

it says, but is he who called you is holy?

You also be holy in all your conduct,

your mind, your heart,

and then your conduct.

You know, that's the last thing.

I used to think that was the hardest thing because, for most of my life,

when I thought about being holy, I was trying to white knuckle it.

I remember hearing a preacher say something one time, and I.

I wrote it in the flyleaf of one of my Bibles.

And what he said was this.

You are as holy today as you've ever really wanted to be.

And when I even when I wrote that I was going, oh man,

I am such a loser, right?

Because I just couldn't.

I mean, I was trying to, but I don't think Conde UT is the hardest thing.

It's the easiest thing.

Let me go back to the analogy of going for a walk.

But when I go for a walk, if I check my weather app

and I really believe that that's what the weather's going to be like,

then what I want more than anything is to dress accordingly.

To dress.

I'm absolutely in the best shape that I can be for the walk.

And then I lay out the clothes I get in the clothes I go for my walk.

Right now, what the Bible says is that Jesus is the one that

when you really believe Jesus, then he lays out the clothes for you.

And that's what it that's what the Bible is all about.

We're going to get more into that.

And first, Peter, but then you just dress

in the way that God has made for you, and then you go out into your life.

There is a fourth century

monk of all things named Augustine.

We call him Saint Augustine.

He was famous for saying this

Love God

and then do what you want.

Very simple.

Love God. Do what you want.

It was Saint Augustine's way of talking about the will.

He said, if you really convinced of who Jesus is

and he becomes the most important thing to you,

then what you do, how you live,

the choices you make will just seem

natural.

They'll seem easy

because the hard work is done in your mind

and in your heart

is if you're going to live

as a Christian in a hostile culture,

then what Peter says is the best way to do that is to be holy.

If you're going to be prepared for tomorrow,

what tomorrow brings, what next week brings, what the next year brings,

it says is be holy.

It's what you think.

And then what you want

and then what you do.

Be holy

as God is holy.

You pray with me.

Our father in heaven, we come to you.

And, I am grateful.

I'm grateful that in this passage you say as obedient

children, not obedient servants, but you say children

because you have loved us and adopted us as your own.

And you do this, you give us this call to be holy because you love us,

because you want what is absolutely best for us.

And I pray for every person here.

I pray that you would convince us more

and more in our minds of who you are,

so we can prepare our minds for action.

Then I pray that you will change our hearts so that every day we will wake up

and want

you more than anything else, want you,

and then that you will order our lives in such a way that we will live

in the very best way that we can

to be what you made us to be.

Thanks for everybody here.

I pray your deep blessing on them

and I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.