Latest / HBCWestminster / 7.31.22 1 Peter 1:13 Dr Eric Zeller

Transcript

7.31.22 1 Peter 1:13 Dr Eric Zeller · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Father God, thank you for this church. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the privilege of opening your word together. And we just pray that you would be at work in this place as your word is opened. Help us to see what's here. Help us, if this is a familiar passage, may we see with fresh eyes today as we look at this text and look at its context and see why you gave us these words. May our minds be clear. May our hearts be open. May you be at work in us, helping us to see in what way
• 0:29
  we can follow you more faithfully, and what way we can glorify Christ in our lives as a result of this word. And so we pray that you would glorify Christ today, and we pray in his name, amen. Well, my musical career was a short one. I believe I've had one public musical performance. I think Danny and Hallie were there. That was a long time ago. But before that, at one time, I was 16 years old, and I thought it would be really cool to be a musician.
• 1:02
  And so specifically what I thought was, I'm going to play the bass guitar. I don't know why I chose the bass, but it looked cool, so I got my life savings, I went to the store, I bought a bass guitar. And so I got it, and I started messing around, and we didn't really have too much internet or YouTube back then, and so I found some books, and maybe I found some people who knew how to do it, and I picked up a few things along the way, and I kind of tried hard for a little while.
• 1:31
  and I had a really cool wall mount, and it hung up in my room, and people could see that Eric's a bass guitar player. But I guess it kind of just sort of petered out, I guess you might say. I didn't really make progress. I didn't have a strategy to keep growing in my ability to play. And so, honestly, I didn't work hard enough to figure it out. I didn't find out how to grow and how to learn.
• 2:00
  And so, as I already said, I did not become an expert bass player or even a competent bass player. I had the bass for a long time. I had it for years. It's up on the wall. I take it down. I mess around with it. But I just never became any good at it. It was fun to have. It was fun to look at. It was rarely played. And so I just never invested the effort to use it and to gain the full advantage of it.
• 2:26
  Having that bass, it's not designed to be looked at. It's designed to be played, and I never figured out how to play. And I think for a lot of us, Christianity can be kind of like me with that bass guitar, which is to say it's kind of present in your life. It's there somewhere. You kind of like having it around in some ways, but you've never really invested the effort in order to learn how to...
• 2:53
  to use it properly, to take maximum advantage of it, to gain the full benefits of participating with it. And I say all that because as we go into 1 Peter, that's where I want to go today, to 1 Peter. Turn there if you would. One of the things we're going to see in 1 Peter is that incredible blessing, incredible advantage is available for every single Christian. Peter has this vision of the Christian life where we don't just have some kind of thread of optimism.
• 3:23
  But we have, he says in 1.3, a living hope. And as he goes on to 1.4, he says that hope is imperishable and undefiled and unfading that is kept in heaven for you. He's saying we have a hope that can rejoice even in the midst of trials. He's writing to people who are suffering and he's saying, but you can rejoice even as you're suffering. And he's going to go on to say that even as you're rejoicing in the midst of suffering, it's that very, very...
• 3:51
  counterintuitive, countercultural joy through suffering that God is going to use to make himself known in the world. That's what he's teaching us in 1 Peter. It's a powerful hope. It's an imperishable hope. But Peter is going to convey this concern. He also has a concern. And the concern is that even though in Christ we have this incredible, powerful...
• 4:15
  hope that can sustain us through pain, through suffering, can advance his gospel, even though we have that, his concern is that to make use of that is going to take some work, and we're not putting in the work. We're not doing what we need to be doing, just like me with that bass guitar. That's his concern. And so what I really want to do here, there's a lot we could look at, and we'll get to some of it, but I really want to focus on one verse. I really want to wrap our minds around one verse,
• 4:45
  That's chapter 1, verse 13. Look how it begins. He says, therefore, preparing your minds for action. I'm reading the ESV, preparing your minds for action. That's what my Bible says. Does your Bible say anything different than that? No? Self-control? All right. So you might have a footnote. Anybody have a footnote under that verse in your Bible? I got a footnote, and it says this. My footnote says, Greek.
• 5:14
  girding up the loins of your mind. Anybody have a note like that? Yeah, so what that's saying is that in the original, the literal translation is girding up the loins of your mind. It's kind of a word picture, you might say, a metaphor. And what the translators did, the translators looked at that word picture and they said, okay, well, we've got people, readers in 2022.
• 5:36
  who don't know much about girding or loins is not really a word we use just every day. And so maybe let's just say preparing your minds for action and you get the idea. And we do get the idea. It's a pretty good translation. But I think it would help us if we just took a minute to think about the metaphor as Peter wrote it. And so what you've got to do is you've got to picture the kind of clothes.
• 6:00
  that men would wear in biblical times and so what that's going to look like it's not going to be you know pants and a shirt and a jacket or whatever but they're going to have like a robe on right a flowing garment kind of like a a long dress that a woman might wear today or like where i live in dubai the arab men often wear these long flowing garments they call kendara a long white robe and so it's kind of like that that's how people would dress you've seen the pictures in your your picture bible right and so
• 6:26
  the nice thing about that garment if it's hot outside it keeps you cool the air flows it's comfortable but it's not a very good garment for battle just picture it just picture i'm wearing this long robe i'm in a fight and my robe gets caught on a bush and i trip and fall on my face or somebody grabs me by it and stabs me in the back or you know all kinds of bad things can happen if you have these long clothes on in the midst of battle so what do you do well when you see okay we're about like in 10 minutes here we're gonna have a fight
• 6:54
  You got to say, okay, I'm going to get my robe. I'm going to hoist it up above my knees. And I'm going to wrap it around and kind of tie it off. And now it's kind of like a pair of shorts. And now I can move. I can run around. I can fight. And my robe is not going to hold me back. That's the idea of girding up your loins. And so he says, in other words, you're taking your clothing and you're doing what it takes to move from this place where you're relaxed and comfortable. You're moving from there.
• 7:24
  to being in a place where you're ready for war. And what Peter's saying here is that, hey, church, you need to get ready for war. That's what he's calling us to. But he's saying that we need to get ready for a war, and it's not the kind of war that's against flesh and blood. It's not the kind of war that's going to be fought with swords on a battlefield. But he says there's a battle upon us, and this war is going to be waged with our minds.
• 7:50
  with our minds. And so the question he's asking is, how do you prepare your mind for war? How do we do that as Christians? I think we're going to see in the text three answers to that question. Three practices, we could say, of a prepared Christian, one who is ready for the battle in front of us, ready to live for Christ and advance his mission. And the first practice is resist mental weakness. Number one, resist mental weakness.
• 8:21
  So back to the guy wearing the robe, girding up the loins. Why do you do that? Why do you gird your loins? The answer is because you're anticipating something. You're anticipating a coming battle. If I'm girding my loins, I'm knowing that a battle is coming, and I know that when that battle comes, I want to be as ready as I possibly can be. I don't want to be, you know, just chilling out and getting dead. I want to be ready.
• 8:49
  And I know that my current clothing is not the right kind of clothing for the fight. So I'm going to do something about it. I'm not just going to say, oh, well, I got the wrong clothes on. Oh, well. But I'm going to do something about it. That's the idea. See, what makes you prepare for something is that you fear the consequences of non-preparedness. That's what he's talking about. And you see those consequences coming, and you resist them. You resist mental weakness.
• 9:18
  Look at the next verse, verse 14. It says, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Your former ignorance, it's kind of insulting. Kind of like Pastor Danny talking about Texas. But he's saying before you were a Christian, something was wrong with your mind. You were ignorant. You weren't thinking right in your mind. It doesn't necessarily mean you were stupid, but maybe you thought things were true that were not true.
• 9:52
  Or maybe you thought things were not true that were true. But your mind wasn't working right. Again, in 2.15, Peter says, part of doing good as a Christian is putting to silence the ignorance, there it is again, of foolish people. You used to be one of those foolish people, he's saying. That used to be you. And so before you were a Christian, you, me, all of us, you were in this state of ignorance. And guess what? Here's the warning. He's saying there's a temptation.
• 10:22
  And right now, as you see here today as a Christian, there's a temptation. The temptation is for all of us to drift back into this former state of ignorance. We're trying to get pulled back into the ignorance that we had before we knew Christ. That's the point of 1.14. What should we do? What does it say in the verse? He says there's this temptation to be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, and he's saying resist that.
• 10:52
  don't do it. He's saying that ignorance, if we could say it this way, he's saying ignorance is kind of our default setting. It's sort of like maybe if you have an electrical cord or a hose, maybe one of these cords right here, and you keep it all coiled up, and then you want to uncoil it, you want to straighten it out, and what does the hose do? It wants to kind of coil itself back up. It wants to kind of come back into that shape that it was in before, and he's saying our minds are kind of like that. They had this former shape.
• 11:20
  And God has changed that, but it's trying to kind of go back into the shape that it had before. It's that former ignorance. And the reality is that not only do our minds want to do that, but we also live in this world that's blasting us with all kinds of non-Christian thinking, whether that's coming from secular media or entertainment. And we have this torrent of words coming at us all day long, and it's like a river.
• 11:46
  It's like a current, like I was on the Colorado River a couple days ago, and it's pulling you down. It's like rapids pulling you back into ignorance. And we forget about that sometimes. We forget about this current that we're living in, and we kind of think, okay, if I just sort of like stay where I'm at, if I kind of do nothing one way or the other, if I'm not actively like, you know, listening to Muslim podcasts on the one hand, or like...
• 12:13
  Taking seminary classes, on the other hand, if I just kind of stay where I'm at, I'm going to be all right. If I just kind of love Jesus, if I come to church when the weather's bad, I'm going to be all right here. But Peter's saying, no, no, no, no. You don't stay neutral because you're in a river. The current's pulling you. It's kind of like I used to know German.
• 12:35
  I was in this program. Academically, I had to study German for a few years. I had to take exams and write articles and read stuff all in the German language. I studied hard to learn German and to be able to do all this stuff. In German, it worked out okay for a little while, but then life happened. I didn't read German anymore. I got busy with other things, and years went by. Here we are probably 15 years later, and I haven't touched German in all that time. And guess what? Do I know the same amount of German today?
• 13:04
  as I did 15 years ago when I stopped studying it? No, I don't. I didn't stay in the same place. I returned to my former ignorance. I drifted back into where I had been before. And Peter's saying that this non-Christian ignorance, it's like that. It's like an active force. It's like, you know, we have any Star Wars fans out here? Star Wars? Anyone? We've got two in the back. Thank you. So like in Empire Strikes Back, there's the wampa.
• 13:32
  that grabs Luke Skywalker and pulls him into the ice. It's like a monster with big claws and sharp teeth that's trying to eat you. He's saying ignorance is like that. It's trying to pull you in. And he's saying that this ignorance monster that's trying to pull you in, it's ultimately our adversary, the evil one, Satan himself. Look what it says in chapter 5, verse 8. Turn there. This monster would love nothing more than to eat you.
• 14:00
  Because 5.8 says this, he says, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. He's trying to devour you. Ignorance is trying to devour you. The enemy wants you to be mentally weak. He wants your mind to be ignorant so that you're vulnerable to error, so that you can think what's not true, so that you live your life without hope.
• 14:28
  and that you lose the joy that you have in Christ. He wants that for you. So what should we do? Look at 5.9. It says, resist him. Resist him. Firm in your faith. It says the word knowing. Knowing you resist this mental weakness because of what you know. Because of what you know. So if you're going to be prepared for war, Peter is saying, that's the first practice.
• 14:58
  You've got to resist mental weakness. The battle is coming. Don't leave your robe at your ankles. You've got to gird it up. You've got to get ready. You've got to start preparing. And that leads us into the second practice that a prepared Christian has, which is to choose Christian thinking. Number two, choose Christian thinking. Now, let's go back to 1.13 and think about the overall message here.
• 15:26
  So he's saying, okay, you're girding up the loins of your mind. We talked about that. And then look at the verse. He said, preparing your mind for action and being sober-minded. So you're being sober of mind, right? Your mind is not like a drunk person that's out of control, wandering here and there and acting on impulse and kind of doing whatever comes to it. Your mind's not like that. It's under control. And what do you do with that prepared, sober, controlled mind? He says,
• 15:55
  You set your hope. You see that? Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Set your hope. That's the main command in this verse. In the structure of the verse, preparing your mind, being sober-minded, that's all preparation for this imperative, this command, which is to set your hope, deliberate, and choose hope. That's what he's saying. He's saying to choose Christian thinking.
• 16:24
  Preparing your mind is how you get there. Remember that Peter's writing to people who have a lot of reasons not to hope. These people are exiles. They're poor to begin with at this time. They're being grieved by various trials, he says in 1.6. Later on, he's going to talk about the fiery trial that's consuming them. But then he's going to tell them that they're Christians. And as Christians, they have incredible reasons to hope.
• 16:53
  We already saw this, but look at 1.3. He says, by God's mercy, you've been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of the dead. 1.4, he says, you have an inheritance that's imperishable and undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you. 1.5, he says that you, all of you, are being guarded by God's power for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In 1.7, he says that you have a faith that is...
• 17:20
  more precious than gold that perishes. And that same faith results in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And then in 1.8, he says you're going to obtain as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. In the middle of all of that, look what he says in 1.6. In 1.6, he says even though those trials are there, 1.6 he says, in this you rejoice.
• 17:48
  In this, you rejoice. You have something to rejoice in. You have a hope that you can rejoice in even when trials are there. And then look at 1.8. Look at the logic here. He says in 1.8, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and you rejoice. So you're following Christ and you don't see Jesus now, but you believe in him. There's two ways you can relate to Jesus.
• 18:15
  Right? There's two ways that as you sit here now, you can live as a follower of Jesus, the one who died for you, the one who rose from the dead, the one who now lives at the Father's right hand as your Lord. You can follow him based on your sight. What do you see now? What does life look like now? What are the struggles you have now? What are the reasons for hope based on your current situation? You can do that. Or you can relate to Christ based on what you believe.
• 18:45
  based on what you know to be true, based on what God has revealed and what you know in your mind and in your heart. And Peter's saying, it's the second one, the second one, the believing one, that's the one that leads to rejoicing. And you get that these same two options then are out there for your whole life. Whatever's going on, Peter says, and that's the same two options that verse 13 is talking about, that whatever life is throwing at you, you can set your hope, as it says in the verse,
• 19:16
  You can hope. You can think like a Christian. You can remember that imperishable salvation. You can remember that eternal inheritance. You can remember that Christ is coming back, and you can choose to hope. You can do that, he's saying. That's how a Christian thinks. And he's correcting a misunderstanding here, right? Here's how we sometimes think. Sometimes we think, well, hope, it's like...
• 19:40
  It's like a feeling, right? It's kind of a subjective thing that I'm having a good day today and I feel pretty hopeful and I don't feel so hopeful tomorrow. But he's saying, no, no, no, that's not how it is for a Christian. For a Christian, hope is something you choose. He's saying, he's giving this command, he's saying, fix your hope. Hope is choosing to act based on what you believe rather than on what you see, right? Hope for a Christian is what happens.
• 20:07
  when you have prepared your mind for battle, when you are thinking soberly. Hope is when you are deliberately, purposefully choosing to act like what God says in his word is true. That's hope. That's the life of hope, and that's going to be the life of joy. So you can choose that. You can choose hope. You can set your hope. You can think like a Christian, or you can disobey that command. You can not choose hope. You can...
• 20:36
  You can fail to think like a Christian. You can kind of be like everyone else in the culture around you who's excited or devastated based on what they see with their eyes. That's being conformed to your former ignorance. That's failing to resist mental weakness. That's not living with all of the hope and joy a Christian has available. That's when we say, you know, I don't see much reason for hope today, and I'm going to forget about what I believe.
• 21:05
  That's what we do sometimes. We have these same two choices, y'all. We have these same two choices whatever we face in life, whether it's a parenting situation, a work situation, a big decision about whether to move here or to move there, a little conversation about what do I say to make this person like me or want to work with me or be favorable towards me. Every fork in the road, we can choose hope, which means we can think like a Christian.
• 21:34
  or we cannot, or we can follow the current of non-Christian thinking. Peter gives us examples of this. He's saying we've got to make some effort like this. He's saying it can't be like me with that bass guitar. We've got to practice. We've got to deliberately do it. And look at some examples. He's saying here's these Christians. They're living as exiles among people who don't know Christ. And so how do they live? Do they live as everybody else, or do they live with this distinctive fear of God? Well, look at 117.
• 22:02
  He says, if you call on him as father, in other words, if you're a Christian, if you're a follower of God, what do you do? Conduct yourself with fear throughout the time of your exile. Well, why? Verse 18, knowing, see that? I would translate, because you know, because you know this, you know what? That you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. Next verse, with the precious blood of Christ.
• 22:32
  He's saying, you're making a decision about how do I live today, and you decide that based on what you know, what you know about Christ, what you know about yourself in relation to Christ, that you are a redeemed person, that you've been bought with a price, which is the blood of Christ, and that because of that, that informs every moment and every decision of your life, and you're going to choose to think like a Christian today, tomorrow, next week, next year. There's going to be that mental process that comes up,
• 23:02
  He says, I could go this way, but I'm going to choose to think like a Christian. I'm going to choose hope. In the next chapter, there's a little bit different question. In the next chapter, chapter 2, you kind of, okay, what if you're a Christian servant? What if you're an employee? What if you're someone who has a boss or a master that's unreasonable, that's treating you badly, you're in a difficult workplace situation? What do you do as a Christian? Look at 2.19. He says, for this is a gracious thing when,
• 23:34
  Mindful of God, see that God's in your mind, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. See, you're suffering here. It's hard, it's really hard. But while that's happening, you're mindful of God. What's in your mind is God and what's true about God and what's true about your life in relation to God. And so you're thinking like a Christian. You're choosing hope and you're doing that because, it says a few verses down, look at verse 21.
• 24:01
  It says, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving for you an example so that you might follow in your steps. A Christian is a little Christ. You're following the example of Christ. You're thinking like Christ did, is what he says. One more example, we get to chapter four, and it's the same kind of issue. You know, we're living as a Christian, and it's hard. There's suffering here. Maybe I should just, maybe I should quit it.
• 24:27
  Maybe I should stop coming to church. Maybe I should stop going to Bible study. Maybe I should stop seeking to live a distinctively holy life and instead participate in the drinking and the parties and the non-Christian lifestyle and everybody else around me. That's the question they're facing in chapter four. But then Peter says in 4.1, he says, since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. He says, Christ suffered.
• 24:58
  And you should think like him. You should choose to have the thought and the mind of Christ as you suffer. Choose Christ's thinking. Choose Christian thinking, he says. Look at 4.12. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you. Don't be surprised. Why would we be surprised? You're surprised at a battle.
• 25:24
  when you don't anticipate it's coming. You're surprised at a trial when you don't anticipate it's coming, when you're not prepared for it. But Peter's trying to tell us we need to be prepared because it is coming. But then here's the good part. If you are prepared, if you have girded up your loins, if you have made the choice to think like a Christian, if you're recalling to mind what Christ has said in his word about his return, about the hope that we can have, what you can do then is you can set your hope. You can think like a Christian and look at...
• 25:53
  4 13 because if you're choosing to think like a christian what's the result he says remember this is fiery trial it's the context verse 13 but rejoice rejoice insofar as you share christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is to be revealed he's saying there's there's so much joy
• 26:17
  There's so much glory then at the return of Christ that that glory that comes then, you can have it now. You can enjoy it now. You can have that rejoicing now as a Christian because of what you believe. That's choosing Christian thinking. I know this guy, Wally. Wally comes from Afghanistan. And Afghanistan's a hard place. It's a hard country. It's, for many reasons, but it's one of the least reached countries in the world.
• 26:46
  99.9% of the people in Afghanistan, while he was a Muslim, at least he was, while he came to Dubai for work, he is a bricklayer, he is working on construction sites, laying bricks, and he was a man who was totally without hope. You know, there's the military stuff, the U.S. pulled out, the Taliban came in, his country is in shambles.
• 27:11
  His family is in danger. There is really no hope for a future for him, for his children. He's a hopeless man. So he's working one day on the job site in Dubai, and he comes across another guy working on the same site. This guy's name is Jerry. He happens to be a student at our seminary, one of the elders at our church. He's working on this construction site. And he starts talking to Wally and says, you seem to be someone who doesn't know what to live for.
• 27:43
  Let me tell you about where a true hope can be found. He tells them about Jesus. He brings them to church. He hears the gospel. He's willing to study the Bible so many from the church meet with him and study with him and the Lord miraculously saves this man. And he doesn't just save him, he saves others. He brings other bricklayers and other guys that he lives with and works with and they come and they learn and they study and they get saved too. And now Wally and the others like him, their life is still hard.
• 28:12
  He's still a bricklayer. He's still very poor. His country's still in a very bad place. He's got, even if anything, his life has gotten worse. He has more trials now that he's a Christian. But from the first day I met him until today, his countenance has totally changed. His demeanor has totally changed because he's a man who now has a hope and he's choosing to think like a Christian and to choose that hope every single day. And see, that same option
• 28:43
  is available for us. We can choose Christian thinking as we resist mental weakness. Those are the two things we've talked about thus far, but how do we do it? How do we make this move? How do we move from this current of non-Christian thinking around us? How do we move from there to choosing Christian thinking? Well, we do it, thirdly, by building biblical knowledge. That's the third practice, is build biblical knowledge.
• 29:12
  I used to live in India. I said that already. New Delhi specifically. New Delhi is the biggest city in India. It's a huge city, a crazy city. 20 million people live there. And when I first moved there, I had this idea. We had a free evening early on. We hadn't been there very long. And I thought, hey, the evening's free. Let's go out to eat. And so if I was living here, like I was living in Texas, what I might do in such a situation is I'd...
• 29:38
  get out my phone and say, oh, where's a good pizza place? Oh, here it is, 10 miles away. I'll go over there, enjoy the pizza. That's great. Good family evening. So I tried that in India. Found a place, tried to go there, and a few hours later, we still hadn't eaten, but we had gotten stuck in a three-hour traffic jam. We had gotten lost. We had eventually found the place.
• 30:07
  but driven around the neighborhood for an hour, not been able to park anywhere. We had been hit by a motorcycle in the side of the car. We had had a gas tank fall off of a truck and hit the car. And then there was this torrential monsoon rain, and the roads flooded, and we got stuck in the water. It was not the evening that I had anticipated. And the problem there was that I was thinking like an American. I was thinking like a citizen of the place.
• 30:39
  from which I had come, I wasn't thinking like an Indian. I wasn't thinking how they would think about driving to the other side of town for an evening during monsoon season. They would say, no, that's not a good idea. Don't do that. But I didn't know that. In order to live there and have joy there and not get flooded and washed away there, I needed to build some local knowledge. I needed to gain knowledge about how does one live in this place.
• 31:07
  And see, it's the same thing for us as Christians. We need to, if we're going to think like Christians, we need to build some knowledge about how do we do that. And so in 1 Peter, in verse 13, 1-13, when he's talking about girding up the loins of your mind, about becoming prepared, how that comes before setting your hope, when he's talking about that, he's saying before you're in a position to choose Christian thinking, you've got to build that knowledge. You've got to build up this base of knowledge. Look how he says this.
• 31:37
  in 110. He says, concerning this salvation, and you say, well, which salvation? Well, it's the salvation that's mentioned in 1.9, right? The salvation that's going to cause you to hope even during trials. It's that salvation. And you say, okay, well, what about that salvation? He says, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. Okay, so we got prophets, we got the Old Testament.
• 32:05
  They're talking about the same salvation that he's talking about. But how do they know about it? Verse 11. He says they're indicating what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them. We say, okay, I'm getting it here. We've got God the Holy Spirit. God is revealing truth to prophets.
• 32:29
  He's telling them about salvation. He's telling them about the grace of God. He's telling them all this truth that Christians need to know and need to think and need to hope in. And look how this gets transmitted. Verse 12. They were serving you, he says, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. So the Holy Spirit inspired prophets to write the Bible, and he commissioned preachers to preach the Bible.
• 32:58
  And then, that's verse 12, then we get to verse 13, and notice the first word of verse 13, it says, therefore, therefore. So before we get to preparing your mind, that's therefore based on verse 12, because of what God has done through his spirit, with his word, therefore we need to prepare our minds. Because this, friends, is how God intends to guide us. This is how God intends to direct our lives. This is how we know how a Christian thinks.
• 33:27
  This is how we know how to choose Christian thinking in any given circumstance. We know how God brings his blessing to us and gives us hope through his word, through this book that he has given to us. If we want to think like a Christian, we need to know what Christ has said. Do we not? So God has given us the word of God. He's given us this Bible. Therefore, gird the loins of your mind.
• 33:54
  therefore become prepared, therefore get your mind ready, therefore take this truth from the Holy Spirit and put it into your minds and into your hearts. It does no good to possess a book that's inspired by the Holy Spirit if we do not come to understand it and to know what it means. It does no good to have a Bible that's given to us by God if we will not continue to grow in our understanding of it.
• 34:20
  Before you can choose Christian thinking, you have to know how a Christian is supposed to think. Friends, your best defense against the ignorance monster is to build biblical knowledge. We've got to build biblical knowledge. That's what he's commissioning us to do here. This text is not just a text for like...
• 34:39
  seminary professors or for pastors and to say those guys need to build biblical knowledge but it's it's written to all christians all of us who are trying to live for christ amidst all these trials we all need to be doing this we all need to be preparing our minds by building biblical knowledge it's a call for all christians keep building biblical knowledge don't have a mindset the deadly mindset is to say i've got enough i went to sunday school i heard some sermons i went to church camp
• 35:06
  I kind of understand this stuff. I got it figured out. I got enough. That's deadly, he's saying. Don't think like that. It's not just prepare once and then you're done. But it's prepare, then keep preparing. Keep building. Keep building biblical knowledge. Don't ever think that you know enough Bible. That's mental weakness to think that way. Hope doesn't come from staying where you are. He's saying that hope comes from progress. So keep progressing. Keep learning.
• 35:36
  Long for biblical knowledge, Peter would say. In the next chapter, he says 2-2. Long for biblical knowledge like newborn infants long for their mother's milk. Or the baby crying and saying, I need that milk. We need God's word. That was scary. Let's not do that again. We need God's word. We need God's word. That's what he's saying. So what does that look like for us?
• 36:00
  Well, it looks like pursuing a greater knowledge of God's Word, reading God's Word, being in God's Word, participating in, read through the Bible, read through the whole Bible fast, or take one verse and meditate on it for a month. Read the Word, take in the Word, listen to the Word when it's proclaimed to you, seek out opportunities to study and to learn, gain resources that help you grow in your knowledge of the Word, and work at it.
• 36:24
  Work at learning, work at listening, work at reading, work at growing, because if we're going to keep preparing, if we're going to keep being ready for battle, we've got to keep building. We've got to keep building biblical knowledge. A Christian has to keep growing. That's why we started Dolph Theological Seminary. That's why we have a seminary in the Middle East, because you think the church here needs to be prepared for war? The church on the other side of the world, in the non-Christian world, really needs to be prepared for war.
• 36:51
  So Peter's telling us, sometimes we think, oh, the mission field, we just kind of give them a tract and they're good to go. They're not good to go. Peter's telling us the harder the soil is, the more difficult the resistance is, therefore the more knowledgeable the church must be. So we must be training leaders over there. We need to be training leaders here too. We need to be raising up future elders, future pastors, future ministry leaders, but we all need to be growing and learning and training our minds to know God's word.
• 37:24
  Friends, there's much we could say, but maybe I'll say this. I'm thankful for this church. I'm thankful to be here today. Thankful for all of you, for the ministry of the word here, for what God is doing among you through your pastors, through your leaders. This is a faithful place to build biblical knowledge. It's a joy to be here. It's a joy to get to know you as fellow servants of Christ. What I want to leave you with is just think this way as you go. Think about the fight.
• 37:57
  about the battle, because this world is a battle. God's word tells us that. I could tell you so many stories about the people I know that are facing real life and death persecution day by day. House church leaders who come down from Iran for training. Communities of believers who have no places to meet, about brothers and sisters from closed countries seeking baptism, knowing that it might cost them their life. We have that. It's not easy to be a Christian in our part of the world.
• 38:27
  But there's no place where it's easy to be a Christian. You know that. You live that. The world's pressures are strong. And for all of us, there's so much temptation to kind of wake up in the morning doing our best and then by the end of the day to be just as angry and frustrated and hopeless and sad and scared as everybody else. Because you and I are in a war for hope. And what we've seen today is resources given to us by God to fight and to win that war.
• 38:59
  So don't mess around with Christianity like I did with that bass guitar. Instead, let me just read you one more passage. Look what Peter says in the next book, 2 Peter 3, verse 17. He says, you therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, he's saying think like a Christian. He says, take care that you are not carried away. So resist mental weakness with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
• 39:31
  But then he says, verse 18, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He's saying build biblical knowledge. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen and amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word. Thank you for what Peter has told us about the glories of Christ, for the inheritance that is ours upon his return, about the imperishable hope that we have.
• 39:59
  And we resist the temptation to go in a different direction and instead choose to think like a Christian, to choose to live by hope. I pray that for every brother and sister here, there would be people who stand firm with hope, with joy in Christ, because we keep building biblical knowledge. Father, thank you for this church as a place where that can happen, as a place where your word is taught faithfully. May you continue to bless the work here at Highland and may it resound to the end of the earth for the glory of Christ. We pray in his name, amen.