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Each year, Gospel and Life offers a daily devotional during the season of Lent, the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday. You can sign up to receive these daily devotionals by email@gospelandlife.com lent. That's gospelandlife.com lent. Now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching.
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We're going through the book of First Peter in the evening sermons and the evening teaching this year. And the section we're going to be looking at for several weeks is this section here, verses 13 to 21 of the first chapter. Tonight, however, we're only going to do an overview. It's a major section and it has a great deal to do with holiness, the holiness of God and our own holiness, our own personal holiness. And tonight, because we're going to be celebrating the Lord's Supper, what I'm going to do is say some things in a preliminary way, lay out some real basics, just very, very broad basics, and do so in such a way that prepares us to come to the Lord's table tonight. Now, the section that's printed is from verse 13 to 21, and it is a whole section. It is of a piece. But tonight, especially, because we're really going to just talk about preliminaries, I'm only going to read from verse 13 through 16. Let's read. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed as obedient children. Do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, be holy because I am holy. This is God's word. Let's not forget that First Peter is about how we can live in such a way that troubles and pain and suffering that inevitably come into our lives would not crush us or make us weaker things, but make us stronger, refine our character, turn us into great people. How can you live in such a way? How can you be in such a condition that the troubles and the pains and the sufferings of life actually are tools that hone you and polish you and refine you? Everybody knows, for example, when a doctor comes in and says, now I've got to, I'm going to do this incision right here in your forehead. I'm going to get this little tumor out. I'm going to get this little scar out. I'm going to change things. I'm going to get this, this, this piece of metal out that was there. As a result of an accident, you know, the doctor comes in and is doing this incision. And the one thing you don't do is, where are you going? You know, you don't change. You don't move unless you're in the right condition. And the very same stroke, the very same hand, the very same blade can kill you instead of heal you. And it depends not completely on the skill of the hand, of the surgeon's hand, but it depends on whether you stay put, depends on your position, it depends on your condition. And that's what the whole book of one Peter is about. How can you be the kind of person, how can you live in such a condition? So. So that the surgical tools of the troubles and trials of life don't kill you, but instead actually heal you. Now, we've been looking to the first 12 verses of various things that Peter's been saying about this. And now in verse 13, there's a new section. And the purpose of the new section is to really begin in earnest to tell us what it means to be the kind of people that will experience this. This refinement and this healing. And the basic point of this passage is, you've got to be holy. What does it mean to sit still on the surgical bed of life? What does it mean to sit still under the blade of the troubles of life so that you're actually helped and refined by them instead of destroyed? You have to be holy. In fact, verse 13 tells us, therefore. See, in other words, since you want to be the kind of people who can rejoice, rejoice in your tribulations. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Now, in the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the various sections here, and we'll get back to this. But in the old authorized version, it says, gird up the loins of your mind. Now, that's literally what it says in Greek. It's what Peter actually wrote. Literally, it says, gird up the loins of your mind. You know what that means? It's a very picturesque statement. You know, of course, that the men and women of those days didn't work, wear what we wear today. But they wore flowing robes, and flowing robes were not conducive to strenuous action. They weren't good for running and for jumping and for climbing and for carrying. They got in the way. So when you wanted to prepare yourself for action, what you had to do is you had to pull together the flowing robes, all the flowing robes, and you had to put them into that which girded you, which was your belt. There'd always be a sash or a belt around you. That was what girded you. Well, you would pull up all of the flowing robes and stick them into the belt so that your bare legs were showing and you were ready to run if you had to, ready to jump, to climb, to carry. You were ready for strenuous action. So what Peter is trying to say is, if you want to be the kind of people who can rejoice in tribulations and can grow during the troubles, you better get ready for some strenuous work. You better focus. See, to gird up the loins of your mind means, ah, you're distracted in every direction, are you not? You're thinking about a lot of things. You've got so many goals, you've got so many relationships, and so you give a little corner of your mind to seeking God. You give a little corner of your mind to the pursuit after God. No, Peter says you've got to gird up the loins of your mind. You've got to get it all together. You've got to focus totally and get ready for action. This is not a hobby, seeking God. And not only that, he says it's not just seeking God. What you need to be is right here in verse 16, Be ye holy, for I am holy. Now, what I want to do is just look at that phrase, because that's the heart of the passage, and lay out two principles, just two. Be ye holy, for I am holy. Be holy because I am holy. That teaches us two things. In a way, it teaches us three. Maybe I'll worm a third one in there. First of all, it teaches us that God's holy. Secondly, it teaches us that we can be. In fact, we must be. It doesn't say you can be holy, it says you must be holy. Be holy. So first God's holy. Secondly, we must be holy. And thirdly, I guess there is a third thing, and that is that we can be holy because God is holy. No hope otherwise. Let me just run through this and lay out some basic principles, all of which I will return to later. I mean, not later tonight, but later on in the series. First of all, the thing we see here obviously is God is holy. Let's just spend a few moments thinking about what that is. Peter quotes, be ye holy, for I am holy. And he quotes out of Leviticus. There's actually four or five places in the book of Leviticus where God says this. Be ye holy for I am holy. The word holy in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word kadosh, which actually, it's one of those words that it almost sounds like what it means. What it actually means is to be separate, to be cut. Kadosh, to be cut off, to be cut loose. And what the word holiness really means is that God, if you want to revere him as holy, if you want to understand him as holy, if you want to see him as holy, you have to see him as infinitely above and beyond you and me. The Bible tells us that what makes him God is not that he's powerful, not that he's wise, not that he's loving, but that his power is holy power. His love is holy love. His wisdom is holy wisdom. And as soon as you put the word holy on God, what that means is God is off the scale. Whenever God wants to rebuke his people in the Old Testament, he very often says something like this. You thought I was one like yourself For a couple moments. I want you to consider that you might not think that's such a serious thing. Don't we have to think of God as like ourselves? And in a sense, we do because. And God actually encourages it because he uses metaphors for. So we can understand him, uses metaphors to describe Himself that are similes. He says, I'm a father, so he's like the earthly father. He says, I'm a shepherd, like the shepherd. And yet what it means to honor him as holy is that we mustn't forget that inside all those metaphors, God is infinitely above and beyond us. So that what makes he is not at the top end of the scale of power. He's not the top end of the scale of love. He's not at the top end of the scale of wisdom, but he is infinitely exalted above us off the scale. Now, what does that mean? A couple of important, very important issues. What it means here is to honor him as holy. For example, all the places where I talk about him being holy talks about him being transcendently unique. 1st Samuel 2:20. There is none holy like the Lord. Or we sing it here, Exodus 15:11. Who is like unto thee? Now, by the way, that's my Middle Son's name. If you read it in Hebrew, when it says, who is like unto thee? What he's saying is. Mikael. Michael. Anybody here named Michael? Do you know what that word. You know what Michael means in Hebrew? Mikaela?