Ready for Action | 1 Peter 1 & 4 | Noah Diestelkamp

Well, good morning.

I encourage you to be turning to 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

We're going to be spending our time in that context this morning.

While you're turning over there, I have a few words that I want to say before we get into the Word of God.

First of all, what a pleasure and what a wonderful joy it is to worship our Lord together.

I have a great appreciation for this group, for this group of Christians.

Last year I had the privilege of being here for the men's conference.

And on my way out of town, I was already looking forward to this year.

You have been such an encouragement to me, even from afar.

And I appreciate your work that you're doing here, the way that you are bringing God glory in your lives and in his kingdom.

So thank you for the work that you do.

This year was a special pleasure because I got to reunite with uh one of my favorite preachers and a mentor of mine, Ricky Jenkins, who some of you got to hear in class, and you'll get to hear him speak this evening.

He is a special man with a love for God, and I commend him to you in every way.

So thank you for welcoming him this year as well.

Uh and thank you for this opportunity.

I appreciate the fact that the elders uh entrusted me with another opportunity to speak to this to this group, and I pray that it will be an encouragement to you.

When I travel, and I am blessed to be able to travel from time to time, I do carry the greetings of the Christians in Cedar Park with me.

There is something special knowing that no matter where we are, and no matter who else we may be with, there are others who are faithful in the Lord, serving him, worshiping him, and laboring in his kingdom.

And so I greet you on behalf of the Christians in Cedar Park.

And unless many of you vehemently come up to me afterwards and say I cannot, I will be carrying your greetings back to them when I return tomorrow.

Happy to do that.

One final thing that I feel like I do need to say before we dive into 1 Peter is that when you see me, you're not seeing all of me.

And uh the original plan was that these special people would be with me this weekend and you would have the pleasure of knowing them, which is a far greater pleasure than knowing me.

Uh, but what you can't tell in this picture, because it was taken several months ago, is that there's a fourth one on the way who's gonna rock our world because it's a girl.

And uh we are nearing the time.

And so my wife was not able to make the trip with me this time.

But when you when you speak to me, when you see me in this context, you're not you're only getting half the picture, not even half the picture, because this is my better 90%.

And um I want you to know that this is this is the the team that supports whatever good is being done in my work.

Um it's by the grace of God and it's with the support of these people.

So uh with that note, let's talk about 1 Peter.

In a room this size, I doubt that I am the only person who has gone through um this process, finding myself uh in the middle of the day, maybe, just going into great detail in my mind through some hypothetical situation.

Uh and it can be any number of things.

Uh sometimes it's I'm on a plane and the plane crashes, and there's a deserted island, and I wash up what's the first thing I'm gonna do?

How am I going to survive?

And so I start thinking: do I look for water first?

Do I make shelter first?

What did all those survivalist shows say?

I don't remember.

I don't even know what an edible plant looks like.

But I nonetheless, I go into great detail.

Here's how I would how I would you know approach that situation.

Or another one that has has crossed my mind is my family and I are at a mall.

I don't know if people still go to malls, but my family and I are at a mall, having a nice family day, and all of a sudden some hostile militant force just shuts down the mall.

They block all the entrances, we're all trapped inside, and I have to become McGiver.

And I am figuring out, you know, okay, what's the next step?

How would I, you know, where would I sequester myself?

How am I gonna cut the power, you know, and I don't know any of these things, by the way.

Uh maybe you found yourself thinking in those kinds of situations, it maybe not so dire uh that you have to become some mixture of McGyver and Jason Bourne to get out of it.

But we have this tendency to think through these kinds of situations.

But we know in the back of our minds that if it really came down to it, I have no idea what to do in those situations.

I may have an idea in my head, I may have a plan that I come up with, but in reality, I'm not prepared for that kind of a situation.

I don't have the knowledge or the skill set to do half of the things that I might imagine.

And that's okay.

Lord willing, I'll never be on a deserted island or in a mall that's been taken over, or whatever your hypothetical situation that you might run through is.

My fear, however, is that we can do the same thing spiritually.

That we we think in hypotheticals into some future situation that could develop.

What if what if someone at church needed help in this way?

They needed service in this way, they would they maybe it's a cancer diagnosis or a homelessness problem or a storm comes through and wipes out.

And I think about all of these ways that I could serve and I could spiritually develop people.

What I want for the young people of this congregation, what I want for the old people of this congregation, and we we think about these hypothetical situations because, in theory, we want to be ready, spiritually ready.

Whether it's for a spiritual attack on our lives or physical problems that test our faith and the faith of those around us, we want to be spiritually rock solid.

We want to be the people that other people can lean on, can depend on, can learn from.

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.

Peter talks about our hope in this passage as being a hope in the resurrection of Jesus.

By God's mercy and through the resurrection of Christ, we have what Peter calls a living hope.

And he says it's a hope that can't be corrupted, it can't be destroyed, and it will never disappear.

I want you to appreciate the fact that something that cannot be corrupted, cannot be destroyed, and will never disappear is more real than 99% of the things we see.

This hope is as real as it gets.

And so Peter says, in this hope, we're able to rejoice.

Even when we face difficult times, even when we face trials, we can rejoice.

These trials test our faith, but Peter says that like gold coming through fire, our faith comes out the other side, proven, refined, and unlike gold, which can go through that process, but eventually will still be destroyed.

Our faith, he says, that never perishes.

Our faith in this hope of resurrection.

Instead, when Jesus returns, our faith will be vindicated, will be shown that our faith was never in vain, and that is all to the praise and the glory of God.

And so faithful living, this faithful way of living and enduring, that's rooted in hope.

And all of it centers on Jesus.

He's at the heart of all of this.

Our living hope is in his resurrection, and our rejoicing is in the inheritance that we have in him, and our faith will be vindicated by his return.

That's what lets us know our faith is not in vain.

But the original recipients of this letter that for that that Peter writes here has something in common with us.

They had never seen Jesus.

Keep reading in verse 8.

Peter says to these people, though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, 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.

See, this is the nature of hope.

It's something we cannot see, it's something that we have not yet experienced or received, and yet we are confident in.

So confident that it changes the way we live.

Look at how Peter describes what they're doing, how they're living, though they have not seen him.

Though they have not seen him, they rejoice.

Though they have not seen him, they love.

True hope.

True hope changes the way that we live.

And if it doesn't change the way we live, it's worth asking whether or not it's actually hope.

The classic example is the farmer in the rain.

You've probably heard this in sermons or in books or articles or whatever else.

The farmer has no control over the weather.

He can look at the forecast, he can pull out the almanac and see what kind of year it's supposed to be, but he can't control what happens.

All he can do is get ready for rain.

He has to prepare with the hope that rain will come.

But if he hopes for rain and he doesn't prepare for it, he never goes out in the field and plows.

He never plants the seed.

When that rain comes, can he be surprised that nothing happens in his fields?

In fact, it would be totally legitimate for his friends to say, you never really believed it would rain in the first place.

Because if you had believed, you would have acted.

True hope changes the way we live.

One way in which it does that is it gives us direction, it informs how we live.

So in our case, when our hope is in the resurrection and the return of Jesus, that instructs how we live.

If that is a future reality that we truly believe is going to happen, then our lives are going to be lived according to that hope.

And our actions and our decisions are going to be chosen in alignment with that hope because that's our North Star.

That's what's giving us direction.

Jesus is coming back.

And I hope in that.

And also motivates why we live the way that we do.

We said just a moment ago that real hope drives us to action.

That farmer in the rain illustration, our hope has to have real world consequences.

If we truly believe in this hope of future resurrection that Peter talks about in 1 Peter chapter 1, that changes how we live today.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

That's not some hypothetical thing.

That is going to happen.

So I want you to consider for a moment this statement.

I believe that Jesus will return and will raise me to new life that does not end?

How does that change today?

How does that change how I speak to my neighbors?

How does that change the way that I think about money?

How does that change what I teach my kids?

How does that change the very attitude with which I approach everyday tasks, the daily in-and-out grind of life?

See, future hope gives us new eyes.

Eyes that look around at the people around us, at the situations around us, and it gives us a desire to do something.

To act, to do the next right thing.

So if we want to do the next right thing, we have to make sure first we're working from the right foundation.

Because doing the next right thing, that's going to be informed by, it's going to be motivated by this hope that we have in Jesus.

But starting with the right foundation is just the start.

It's the beginning.

To be truly ready to act as God's people, it's going to require us to prepare.

It comes back to the illustration that I gave at the beginning of this lesson.

And for the men that were at the conference this weekend, you know that we've talked a lot about preparation.

Peter's letter here gives us an idea of what it looks like to prepare, starting in verse 13.

Read just the beginning of verse 13 with me.

We'll continue reading in just a moment.

But notice he says, Therefore, preparing your minds for action.

So let's think of that in the context of what we read in 1 Peter so far.

We have a hope.

And it's a hope that we've placed our confidence in.

There's this good news we didn't read verses 10 through 12, but Peter talks about this good news in which we place our trust.

So there's this hope, there's this good news that we've put our confidence in.

And Peter's conclusion, he says, therefore prepare our minds for action.

The literal phrase here that you may have heard before is to gird up the loins of your mind.

And we don't gird up our loins anymore.

But if you're familiar with that concept, in a time when everyone wear robes and they needed to do something physically challenging, maybe it was laboring in a field, or maybe it was something like running.

They would gather up their robes and belt them.

They would gird up their loins so that they could engage in something strenuous.

And here Peter says, that's what we're supposed to be doing with our minds.

There is work to do.

There is action that God expects us to take.

And Peter says here that we have to get ourselves and specifically our minds ready for it.

We need to get ready to go out and be about the work and the business of God.

And the question that I hope comes to our mind when we hear that is what does that look like?

How do we prepare to work in God's kingdom?

How can we be best prepared for right action?

So this morning we're going to look at two.

There are lots of probably good answers to that question, but we're going to look at two answers that we find here in the following verses in 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

First, in order to prepare for right action, we need to be aware.

In verse 13, Peter says, 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.

Notice he says sober-minded.

The idea here is that of being carefully observant, vigilant, watchful, and of clear mind.

In any situation, not just what we would typically call spiritual situations, right action begins with awareness, being thoughtful and discerning, and a fun word that we don't ever use, circumspect.

All it means is looking around at the situation, assessing.

If we are not aware, we'll act.

But it will be acting in blind ignorance.

And we won't have any particular direction to what we're doing.

We'll just be acting for the sake of acting.

We'll be doing for the sake of doing without knowledge.

Being aware means that we will have a direction.

We have to be conscious of where we are in life and where we're going.

Right action doesn't happen from drifting aimlessly about.

You don't just wander into it.

We have to come back to our hope.

Notice that Peter talks about that here in verse 13.

Being sober-minded and setting your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

This is what we've been saying the whole time.

Our future hope in Jesus informs the way we live, it gives us direction.

But being aware isn't just about having a direction, it's also about getting outside of ourselves.

An observant person, a sober-minded person, notices things and people other than themselves.

They look around and they see.

A clear mind is not a selfish mind.

So to be ready for right action, we have to be aware enough to look outside of ourselves.

Or maybe, since we're sitting in an auditorium right now, outside of our pew.

If we want to be ready for action, first we need to make ourselves aware.

And if we do not make ourselves aware, it is not that we will not have opportunity to do what is right.

It is not that we will not have opportunity to do good and to serve and to do all the things that we in our minds say we want to do.

It's that those opportunities will come and we will miss them.

We won't even see them go by.

So I want you to read these next few verses with this idea in mind of being equipped.

Continue reading in verse 14.

Peter says, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.

But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy.

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.

Like I said, there's a lot in those verses.

What I want you to notice, Peter fleshing out here, is this hope that we've talked about all morning, this hope that he talked about at the beginning of the chapter, embedded in this hope that we have through Christ is a call.

And that call is be like your father.

Peter says, as obedient children, we're to leave that old selfish way of living behind, and we are to be holy just as he who called us is holy.

We've been ransomed, purchased from those old ways of living with the most valuable possible price, and that is the blood of Jesus.

We've been purchased from our sinful way of living, and we have been shown both through God's actions toward us and Jesus' own life.

We have been shown what is righteous.

We have been shown what it looks like to live holy lives.

And we have been called to live those lives, to be holy as our Father is holy.

We have been given what we need.

Or you could say we've been equipped to live this new life that we're called to.

We've been equipped, we've been given what we need to take action and to do the next right thing because we have been shown what that looks like in the person of Christ.

Being equipped means our goal is to grow.

God's intention is that we be moving constantly further and further from that old way of life that Peter talks about.

And instead growing into the holiness of God.

So being equipped, I want us to clarify this: being equipped doesn't mean that, like one moment we have nothing, no tools in our tool bag, uh, no idea of what to do in life.

And the next moment, we now have everything we could ever need in order to uh to understand what good living looks like, and we're perfectly equipped to live that way.

The process that's being talked about is one of growth.

It means we've been set on a path that we've been purchased from the old path and put on a new path.

And that path is one where we ever grow in God's image.

And that growth doesn't come from passive osmosis.

It's not as if we could just sit around all day thinking about righteousness, maybe talking about righteousness.

And if we just keep doing that, suddenly our lives will change to match the righteousness and the holiness of God.

That's not how it happens.

Instead, a holy life, a truly holy life, comes from consistently submitting ourselves and our thoughts and our choices and our actions and our will to the will of God.

And we will try and we will fail and we'll try again.

God has given us what we need to grow.

He has equipped us to live the life that He has called us to live.

And so truly being equipped for the work that God has given us and the life that God has called us to, it's not just something that happens to us, it's something that we participate in.

So if we want to be ready for action, then let's equip ourselves with what God has given us.

And if we do not, we will find ourselves unprepared for the opportunities that God gives us.

Again, the opportunities to serve, the opportunities to teach, the opportunities to grow, they will be there.

But if we refuse to be equipped by God's holiness, we will miss those opportunities.

Now, at this point in the lesson, it may have occurred to you, even by the way that we've talked about it this morning, that a challenge with this kind of a topic, the idea of being prepared and ready to act how God wants us to, is that it's really easy to leave that in that hypothetical realm.

Just like the deserted island or the self-defense in the mall.

It's really easy to talk about it and leave it there.

Wanting to do the next right thing, that sounds good.

I want to do that.

Finding motivation and our hope in Jesus and being motivated to do good because of that hope, that sounds good.

I really like how that sounds.

Preparing for action, that sounds great.

I want to be ready.

In theory.

And it's really easy to leave it in theory.

So, what about right now?

Right here.

How can we keep ourselves from just kicking the can further down the road?

Saying, yeah, I always wanted to be prepared.

I always wanted to be able to do that.

I always wanted to be able to serve and teach and do all of these things.

I just never got around to it.

I want to give you one brief encouragement and then a couple of observations from 1 Peter.

We just talked about the importance of being aware and being equipped and how those prepare us to take action in God's kingdom.

But we also talked about it in terms of growth, that it's a process.

So I want to encourage you that maybe you think of you, you look at yourself and you think, well, you know what?

That's right.

I'm not aware enough of my circumstances, and I really need to grow in that area, or I'm not equipped to live this holy life yet, and I need to grow in that area.

And so until I get there, I'm just gonna hold off.

I'm not ready yet.

You may not be as aware as you want, you may not be as equipped as you want, but you have some, you have something to give.

So I want to encourage you to use that sum.

If you wait until you are perfectly equipped, that day will never come.

There will always be more room to grow.

So use the sum that you have.

Because later in Peter's letter, Peter again tells his readers to be sober-minded.

He tells them to be aware, to be carefully observant, to be clear-minded.

So when we talk about being ready for action here and now, I want us to keep chapter one as our backdrop.

All of the hope that Peter talks about in chapter one, everything, the old life, the new life that he talks about in chapter one, keep that as the backdrop.

And read with me in 1 Peter chapter 4, beginning in verse 7.

1 Peter 4 · chapter mention

Peter says, the end of all things is at hand.

Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's very grace.

Whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies, in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.

What I want to do in this section of Scripture is really simple.

I want us to see ways that Peter says we can make ourselves ready for action.

And the first one is that we can serve one another.

Peter instructs three things in a row in these verses.

He says to love one another, to show hospitality to one another, and to use our gifts for one another.

And all of those things can be summed up in one way or another as serving one another.

And Peter says to do this as each has received a gift.

He makes it clear, not everyone has received the same kinds of gifts, and maybe not in the same amounts as one another.

But he's equally clear that regardless of what gifts we have received and in what amounts we have received them, we are to use them.

And we're to use them to give, to serve one another.

Okay, but what does that have to do with getting ready for action?

Well, here's the thing: as we serve one another in the present, as we go about this in the present and we give of ourselves and of our time and of our resources and we serve one another now, we are also equipping one another for service.

When we demonstrate love to others, we are setting an example of what that kind of love and service looks like.

And when we give of ourselves and of our time and of our resources, yes, we're relieving a burden of a brother or sister right there in that moment, but also we are giving them something that can be passed along to bless others.

Can you appreciate the truth of this?

Those who have been blessed by the service of others are more capable to turn around and bless others.

And so by using what we have now to serve one another, we are equipping one another for future service.

And we are also preparing ourselves for future opportunities to do good.

It's like a muscle being trained through weight and through repetition.

The more that I serve now, the more that I will be able to serve greater needs in the future.

Listening patiently to somebody's difficulty with the aches and pains of life now might be preparing me to sit with somebody who is grieving a parent or a child.

Praying privately now for someone who needs encouragement might be preparing me to pray with somebody who has come confessing deep sin.

Providing a hot meal to someone whose oven is broken might be preparing me to house a family whose house was damaged or destroyed in a storm.

You see how doing what we can now prepares us to do more later.

If we want to be ready for action in the future, then we need to start with what we can do now.

And we need to do it.

Secondly, in this context, in 1 Peter chapter 4, we see the encouragement to work with one another.

1 Peter 4 · chapter mention

The gifts that Peter talks about in 1 Peter chapter 4 are not intended to be in competition with one another, they're intended to be in cooperation.

1 Peter 4 · chapter mention

And yet it's so easy to let carnal attitudes seep in: jealousy and spite and bitterness and pride and all of those things, when they seep in, they can taint how we view one another and how we view one another's gifts.

And that's not the intent.

The intent of these gifts is to bless the body of Christ.

And the antidote for that carnal mindset that so easily seeps in is to recognize that all of these gifts, no matter how great or small we feel they are, they all come from the same giver, and they're all intended for the same purpose.

Read verse 11 again.

At the very end of that verse, he says, In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

No matter what your gift is or my gift is, our goal is the same.

We want to bring God glory.

And we want to do that together.

And we can each use what we have to work toward that common goal.

And so I'm not a part of this local church.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ, but I'm not here week to week.

I don't see the things that you see, I don't deal with the things that you deal with.

But I want to encourage you this morning to consider what is possible when God's people have made a habit and a practice of diligently and patiently laboring together, side by side.

Consider what will happen when that is our habit.

When that is our practice.

Those little logistical things, when you communicate clearly about those, you're practicing to communicate well about much deeper issues, doctrinal things, spiritual things, weighty things.

When you handle little interpersonal squabbles between a brother and a sister with patience, you're preparing to handle much more difficult disagreements with grace.

Together, a local church such as this is learning what it means to function together as a body so that the whole body can grow all to the glory of God.

So if we want to be ready for action in the future, we should be working with our brothers and sisters in the little things now.

Labor together, strive together, arm in arm.

So I want you to cast your mind forward.

Cast your mind forward to a hypothetical future, and this hypothetical future has nothing to do with a deserted island.

Think about this church in the future.

There will be physical and spiritual needs that will continue to rise in this church.

And the fact is, I can say this because you're human, you will make mistakes and you will mishandle things with one another.

And you may face personal attacks, you may have to face lies and mistreatment and even persecution from people around you.

You may find yourselves as a church in a time, in a place where false teaching and false ideas are dominant and persuasive.

So how are you, as a church, going to make yourself ready for taking right action in that future?

And the answer is you start here and you start now.

You serve one another now.

You work with one another now.

This is how we grow in this way as Christians.

We look for needs that we can fill, no matter how small, and we fill them.

And we take responsibility for our mistakes and we apologize when we wrong one another.

It doesn't matter how small or insignificant it is, we treat each other with respect.

We defend each other's integrity and we speak up, even if it's just a little gossip or a rumor, we handle it and we handle it with integrity.

We speak the truth of Scripture and we do it unashamedly, we do it calmly, we do it sincerely, and we stand for the truth of God's word, and we do it now.

If we wait for some big, important time in the future to take action and to do what is right, we will find that it is too late and we were not prepared.

The time to prepare is now.

Will you pray with me?

Our Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning, and as often happens when we look at your word, we recognize the overwhelming nature of your love for us and the grace that you have shown us, and the overwhelming inadequacy of our own lives.

And yet we know we have hope in Christ and in his resurrection and in the redemption that he offers.

And so, Lord, this morning, our prayer is that you will help us as we focus on the hope we have in your son, that you will help us to be made ready for whatever tests, whatever trials, all the ups and downs that we know lie ahead for ourselves, for this church, we pray that you will help us grow into service.

And that you will direct us through your word and through your spirit to do the next right thing.

It's in your son's name that we pray.

If the time to prepare for action is now, even more so, the time of salvation is here.

Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow will never be here.

It's only today.

And so I encourage you, if you've not committed yourself to Christ, the time of salvation is now.

You can share in his death through baptism, and you will share in the hope of that life in his return.

Are you ready to make that commitment?

Jesus is ready to accept you.

And so we invite you now as we stand and sing a song of invitation this morning.