Holy Like Him

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If you would, go ahead and turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. If you have your Bible, if you don’t have one right there with you in print, if you can pull one up on a computer screen or on a device, please do that.

1 Peter 1. We’re going to look at a few verses this morning from this passage. We’re continuing with where we left off, but it’s a different series.

We’re going to spend a few weeks talking about how God calls us to holiness. We begin in 1 Peter with a few weeks of talking about hope, because that’s where 1 Peter chapter 1 begins. Peter was talking to these Christian refugees about the hope that for them, in the midst of their ever-changing and unpleasant circumstances, the hope that was unfailing and unending.

that we find in Jesus Christ. A few verses in, though, he transitions to talk about something else, and that’s the call to holiness. And what it is, essentially, is we are called to show the influence of God in our lives as believers. I was thinking about this this week, this passage, because I’d been studying about it, and I was out working in my garden, which at this point my garden is in my driveway.

I planted everything in five-gallon buckets this year, like I’ve done most things in previous years. And right before Easter, there was a cold snap. So my wife and I made several trips loading buckets from our backyard into the back of the truck and dragging them around to the front yard, put them in the driveway so we could move them into the garage under work lights during the cold snap in order to not lose everything.

And it just stayed in the driveway because they’re heavy and it’s a lot of work to move them. So they’re out in the driveway now. The problem there is that we have a maple tree in our front yard.

And that maple tree produces helicopters. I don’t know that that’s the technical term for them, but that’s what we call them as kids. They’re those things with the, they’ve got the seed of the maple tree and they’ve got this little one side of a propeller attached and you can throw them up and they spin coming down.

You know what I’m talking about? Okay. At least somebody knows what I’m talking about.

And so they produce these helicopters. I grew up with a maple tree in the front yard of our house, but I have never seen a maple tree that produces helicopters like this tree produces helicopters. They are everywhere.

and they gather in these buckets. They collect in the buckets. They totally missed the driveway somehow, but they collect in the buckets.

And I have spent hours digging helicopters out of the buckets. And still I miss some, and I have to pull tiny little maple trees out of the buckets around my green beans and my okra. I have to pull these maple trees out.

Yesterday, the kids were cleaning out my flower bed. They were helping with that. because they’ve decided they like planting flowers for Mama for Mother’s Day.

And so we got them out there and got some help in the flower beds. And what I thought was mulch, because I’ve put mulch all out in the flower beds, what I thought was mulch on closer inspection turned out to be helicopters. And they were just everywhere, and the maple trees were growing.

It was a mess. But here’s what I realized. Anywhere where there’s a maple tree, you’re going to get helicopters.

And if you can’t tell otherwise, if you can’t tell by looking at it what it is, you’re going to know it’s a maple tree because of its influence, because those helicopters are going to be there. The very presence of that maple tree near my garden, my driveway garden, or my front flower beds, the very presence of that maple tree near there results in a virtual forest of these little maple trees growing in every pot, every bucket, every square inch of my flower bed, all over the yard. The only reason they’re not taken over the yard is because I mow twice a week.

They are everywhere. The influence of that maple tree is found all over the place because it deposits those helicopters into those buckets and they begin to sprout. And it’s the same way where God lives and where God takes up residence and where God is at work.

His influence is going to be felt because His influence goes into us. His Spirit lives within us, and we as a result are going to show evidence of His holiness at work within us. Wherever His Spirit is, we’re going to see the fruits of the Spirit grow.

And I thought about this the other day as I was digging helicopters out of the buckets, and as my kids and my mother-in-law were pulling helicopters out of the flower beds yesterday. Wherever the influence is felt, you’re going to see evidence, whether it’s a maple tree or whether it’s God. And that fits with what he says, with what Peter wrote next in 1 Peter 1.

We pick up this morning in verse 13. He says, Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, Be holy, for I am holy. Now Peter, again, like I said earlier, he transitioned here from the subject of hope to the subject of holiness.

In verses 1 through 12, he’s really reassuring these believers of the fact that God is at work in their lives, and as a result, they can have hope even in the midst of the darkest of circumstances. But he transitions when we get to verse 13 to talk about how, because God is in their lives, this same presence of God that produces hope in their lives should also produce holiness in their lives. Where they stood with God and where they were in relation to God and the work that God was doing in their life would inevitably impact what they should do about it.

I want to make sure I’m clear on that point. Where they stood with God led them to do something about it, led them to show some evidence of what God was doing in their lives. And when he says, therefore, in verse 13, it means that what they were about to be told, It’s sort of a center point around which everything rotates here.

That word, therefore, means that what they were about to be told in the subsequent verses is the direct result of what they had already heard. Everything that comes in verses 13 through 16 and really subsequent to that comes about because of what they’d heard in verses 1 through 12. What they were being told basically was, God is in control of your circumstances, bringing you life, bringing you hope.

Therefore, as a result, your only concern is to go and be obedient, go and be holy. Now, why that matters is because sometimes we get in a place where we’re called on to make a decision. Should we do what God wants?

Should we not? And sometimes we’ll use it as an excuse. Well, I can’t step out on faith and do what God wants me to do here because I’ve got this practical concern to take care of.

I’ve got to earn a living. I’ve got to protect my family. I’ve got to do this.

And don’t get me wrong, those are all vitally important concerns. But what Peter was telling them is they could trust God with their needs, and if they understood that they could trust God with their needs, if they understood that God was at work in their lives to bring them hope, to bring them life, to bring them a future, if they understood that God was at work in that way, and that they could trust Him with that, then they could come to the point of saying, God, I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t know what you’re going to do here.

I don’t know how you’re going to take care of these circumstances, but I believe that you will. So I’m just going to be obedient to what you told me to do. I’m going to let you worry about the end result.

I’m going to let you worry about the implications. My only concern here is to be obedient and let you do what I know you can do. And so that was spoken to, that was written to people who were, again, refugees.

They were running for their lives. Daily survival sometimes was a struggle for them. And yet Peter’s saying, if you can trust God, if you can trust the God who works in your life to bring you hope, then you can realize I can be obedient to Him and not have to say, no, Lord, I can’t do that because I’ve got to take care of this concern.

God’s got that. You just go be obedient to what He’s told you to do, and you let Him do what He said He would. So God told them to be holy.

Peter pointed out, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, He pointed out that they could be holy, that they were called to this. So we need to ask, what does it mean when God tells us to be holy in verse 16? Holiness means separation.

When we say that God is holy, we mean God is separate from us. God is altogether different from us. It’s not just that He behaves differently from us, but God altogether, by His nature, down at the core of who He is, God is different from us.

God is different from all of His creations. There’s a separation there. On top of which there’s a moral separation there because we are sinners and He is sinless.

Sin is the complete opposite of who He is and what He does. And so when we say God is holy, we mean God is on a completely different level from us. There’s a separation there.

And for us, holiness means being separated to God and it means being separated from sin. When we talk about holiness in the Christian life, there’s this sense in which we are made holy at the moment of conversion. We’re separated to God.

At that point, we are marked out. We are stamped by the Holy Spirit. Paul describes it in one of his letters as us being stamped as we are God’s property.

We belong to Him. We are separated to God. We no longer run with the world.

We may be in the world, but we are no longer of the world. And so we are separated. We’re marked out.

And God says, they’re mine and I’ve got a purpose for them. So there’s this holiness means this separation to God where we’ve been pulled aside for his purpose. Now, that’s important because that’s where God declares us holy.

But there’s also holiness in the Christian life in the sense of, OK, God has marked you out and separated you. Now you need to act like it. There’s not only the separation to God.

there’s also the separation from sin. We are called to resist sin. We are called to struggle against sin.

We’re called to turn our backs on sin. Now, none of this means that we ever become sinless and perfect on this side of eternity. Even the Apostle Paul talked about how the things that he would do, he doesn’t do, and the things he would not do.

Meaning, Paul’s having this conversation, essentially, where he says, the stuff I shouldn’t do and I don’t want to do anymore, I keep doing, and the stuff I want to do, I can’t bring myself to do. The Bible describes how the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. See, we have this sin nature that trips us up from time to time.

But the goal in holiness to act like it is to separate from sin, to resist against it, to struggle against it, and say, I don’t want to do this anymore. And that should be the goal of the Christian life, even if we know we’re never going to be sinless. We’re never going to be perfect on this side of eternity.

Holiness means we are struggling against that sin, and there’s a desire there to be separated from that sin as we embrace this separation to God. And so Peter’s talking to them about the subject of holiness, and he’s saying if you’ve got this hope in God, then your concern is not the mundane things that you know God’s going to take care of those. Your concern is just being obedient to what He’s called you to do.

Your concern is to go out and serve Him and live a holy life. So by trusting God with the consequences, it frees us up to live lives of holiness because we don’t have to worry at that point about what are the implications. You know, God, is this going to cause me problems?

Am I going to put myself in jeopardy by choosing to do this your way? Because there is often a cost to doing things God’s way. But it’s no longer something we have to worry about because we know no matter what cost is incurred, we know no matter what difficulty we face, that God’s ultimately in control of it, and He’s working it out for our good and for His glory.

And so realizing I don’t have to be in charge of the consequences really is sort of liberating. It frees us up to say, God, I’m just going to be obedient. I’m going to do whatever I can to live a life of holiness that you’ve called me to live, And I’m going to let you worry about the consequences.

I’m going to let you work out the ramifications of that. You be in charge of my life. It’s just about me making the choice to be obedient, and I’m trusting you with everything else.

And so they could commit themselves to him with confidence because their future hope was certain in him. I mean, Peter has spent the first 12 verses laying out the certainty of that future hope. And that’s not just pie in the sky, heaven someday thinking.

I mean, that has real world implications. If you can trust God with your future, then you can commit your present to Him, and you can obey Him in the present. And this all leads us to the realization that there’s supposed to be a definite change in the life of a believer.

This idea of holiness means that there’s going to be a definite change in the believer’s life, and we can see that outlined in verse 14. There’s this change from the person we were in the world to the person that we are in Christ. Because he tells them in verse 14 that they are not supposed to any longer conform themselves to the former lusts, to the old way of living, to the old wicked ways, as in their ignorance. There was a time in their ignorance of God when they just embraced the wickedness of the world and didn’t care.

Now that idea of ignorance doesn’t mean they didn’t know God existed. It doesn’t mean they had no knowledge of right and wrong. The Bible tells us that God has revealed His existence and creation.

We can look at the world around us and see evidence that there’s a God. The Bible describes how His law is written on our hearts. There are some things about right and wrong that we just sort of know instinctively because God has put them there.

So I believe that these people knew that there was a higher power than themselves. They knew there was right and wrong, but they went ahead and chose wrong anyway. This ignorance means that there was a tremendous ignorance, not of God’s existence or of every aspect of right and wrong, but that there was a tremendous ignorance about God’s truth.

There was so much about God that they didn’t know. There was so much about their own lost condition they didn’t understand. And there was a lot about the eternal implications of their decisions.

They didn’t understand the consequences of separation from God. It was just a time of absolute ignorance. It was a time of foolishness.

And he said, back in that time, you lived according to these old lustful, wicked ways, and you just embraced whatever kind of sin you wanted to, whatever felt right in the moment, that’s what you did. And he said, you’re not supposed to do that anymore. That’s the person they were.

Those are the people that they were in the world, as he’s writing to these believers. And he said instead they’re supposed to reflect the person that they are in Christ. In verse 14, he tells them that they’re supposed to be as obedient children. Or some translations would render the Greek there as the children of obedience.

They’re supposed to live lives that reflect obedience to God. And they’re only able to do that because of Jesus Christ. He’s the reason for this change. But in the life of any believer, there should be a degree of change.

Now, again, I’ve said already in this message, that doesn’t mean we become sinless. That doesn’t mean we become perfect. And it doesn’t mean that overnight we become everything that we’re going to be.

But the life of the believer should be marked by some degree of change. There should be some evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. There should be some evidence of God at work bringing about this holiness, and many times even from day one.

And I’ve given the example before, but with my oldest son. I’ve learned over years of ministry to be very cautious in dealing with children about the gospel, because I’ve heard so many testimonies of people who say, well, I got saved at a young age, or I thought I got saved at a young age, and I was walking around for years thinking I was saved, And I was 30 years old. I was 40 years old and realized I didn’t understand and I needed Christ. And all this time they had false assurance.

So we wanted to be very careful with children and be very careful with our kids. And for that reason, I told my wife when he made a profession of faith, I told her, we’re going to hold off on baptism because I want to make sure. I want to watch.

I want to see some evidence. My son did not become sinless. My son did not become perfect.

We could have a testimony meeting. Benjamin, if you’re watching, you know you’re not perfect. We all know.

None of us are perfect. But I saw a change of attitude in the week, two weeks, three weeks following that, that not too long after that profession of faith, I looked at my wife and I said, I am more certain, as much as I can be, because I’m not Him, it’s between Him and God. But based on the evidence I’m seeing, I am more certain of a conversion here than in any other person I’ve ever led to faith in Christ. And we move forward with the baptism.

Why was that? Because we saw the evidence. We started seeing evidence of a changed life.

And I’ve seen it in other people too. Over years, the person who we become in Christ is not the person we started out as in the world. And it’s not just people cleaning up their lives.

I’ve seen people who are not Christians decide to try to be better people. But there’s a difference. when it’s the Holy Spirit of God working in us and changing us.

There’s a noticeable, discernible difference. And it’s because God empowers us to become men and women of holiness, not for our own sake, but so that we will reflect His holiness to the world around us. See, us becoming holy, us being separated to God and being separated from sin, is not there to glorify us.

It’s not something that takes place in us so that the world can look at us and say, oh, what good godly people they are. Oh, isn’t Jared wonderful? Well, Jared’s not all that wonderful, and any wonderfulness there is because of the work of God.

But it’s not so people can look at us and say, oh, they’re really good people. It’s so that God can be glorified. Because he says in verses 15 and 16 here, but as he who called you is holy, don’t gloss over that first phrase.

But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. You see what he’s saying there? Because God is holy, because the God who called you is holy, as he is holy, you go and likewise be holy in all your conduct.

Because it is written, be holy, for I am holy. The reason for our holiness as Christians is not our own goodness. The reason for our holiness is the holiness of God.

The only reason we have any holiness in us is because God put it there. The only reason for us to do that is to please Him and to glorify Him. It’s all a reflection of His holiness.

He is the reason for all of it. Be holy as He is holy. As He who called you is holy.

Now, God’s holiness is beyond our full comprehension. I’ve been writing papers on this for theology classes. And the more I think I’ve got a grasp on the holiness of God, just when I think I’ve come to understand it, my mind is blown again and there’s more there to understand.

We can grasp aspects of the holiness of God, but as far as fully comprehending it, understanding it inside and out, it’s beyond our capabilities. I feel sometimes like we’re looking at God through a keyhole, and we can see a little bit, but there’s so much there that’s beyond our understanding. but God’s holiness.

If you look at how he’s presented in the Bible, he cannot lie. It’s not just that he doesn’t lie. He cannot lie.

And you think of all the things that the Bible outlines as sin, from what we would consider the big things like murder and adultery, on down to the little things like being inappropriately prideful. It’s not just that God does not do those things. God cannot do those things.

God is incapable of doing those things. God is incapable of doing anything wrong. God is incapable of being unfaithful.

God is incapable of breaking His Word. I know we talk about how God can do anything. God can do anything that’s consistent with His nature.

God can do anything that is in line with who He is. That’s not me coming up with weird heretical ideas, The Bible says there are some things God cannot do. God cannot lie.

God cannot sin. God is incapable of doing wrong. You and me, even on our best days, will never achieve that level of holiness.

God is an entity altogether different. Even if you were to get up in the morning and very early in the day say, wow, I haven’t sinned at all today. It’s possible you might have gone an hour without sinning, but you didn’t go an hour being incapable of sin.

God is so holy that He cannot sin. And God has called us to reflect His holiness. Now again, the Bible does not teach that we’ll ever be able to do this perfectly.

Because the Bible, far better than you or I, being the inspired Word of God, the Bible understands that we are not holy in the same sense that God is. For us, holiness means reflecting His work within us. It doesn’t mean that we become gods.

It doesn’t mean that we become incapable of sin. It means letting Him work through us to show His glory. The end result is that as God works in us in His holiness, it will shine through.

As we desire more and more to do the things that He’s called us to do, as we desire more and more to shun the things that He’s warned us against, as we desire more and more to glorify Him, It’s going to show up in our lives, and our lives are going to be changed, and so they should be. And he tells us to strive for that. We have a responsibility, you and I do, to embrace the work of holiness in our lives.

Now, I can already hear the objection, Preacher, we can’t be holy. That’s all the work of God. I understand that.

Absolutely, God does all the work of making us holy. You’ll get no objection. You’ll get no disagreement from me on that.

It’s all the work of God. I cannot make myself one more bit holy by willing it or trying harder. I cannot make myself any more acceptable to God.

God does all the work. And yet, and yet we have these commands. He says here in verse 15, you also be holy in all your conduct.

That is an imperative. That is a command. Verse 16, because it is written, be holy for I am holy.

All of these are commands. Verse 13, gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober.

Rest your hope. We’re going to talk just a little bit about what those mean. Be holy.

Be holy. These are all commands. God does the work, but He wouldn’t have made commands of us if there weren’t something for us to do.

We have a responsibility to prepare ourselves and commit ourselves and to embrace what He’s doing in us. Can God make us holy without any effort on our part? He can.

He’s God. He can do what He wants. but he has called us to embrace it.

He does the work, but he says, prepare yourself. Commit to this. Embrace what I’m doing.

So it’s the work of God, and yet there’s a command there for us to get on board with it. And when he says in verse 13, gird up the loins of your mind, he’s telling us to stand clear of any obstacles to this and be ready to move when he calls. There’s any number of things in the ancient world where they would have to gird up their loins.

All right? they would wear these long robes, these long garments, and they would wear a belt. And sometimes, I mean, I’ve never tried to run in a dress.

Some of you ladies may be able to help us understand that, but I’m sure it’s not easy. I’m sure if you were going to try to run or move uninhibited in that day, if you were going into battle, you wouldn’t necessarily want a long robe down around your ankles constricting your movement. And so what a warrior would do, or a runner, or just anybody who needed to be free to move, they would take part of this garment down at the bottom.

They would, it’s hard to do sitting down, but they would gather it up together and pull it up through that belt and tuck it through where, I guess it looked more like whatever that diaper type thing is that Gandhi used to wear. And I mean, no disrespect in calling it that. I just can’t think of any other way to describe it.

But your legs would be free. And so when he says, gird up the loins of your mind, he’s telling us that in our minds, we need to prepare ourselves. We need to embrace what he’s doing by clearing away any obstacle that’s going to prevent us from doing what he’s called us to do.

Girding up those loins and preparing ourselves to be ready to run, to be ready to do, to be ready to go when he calls. He says, be sober in verse 13. Now that’s telling us to exercise godly restraint and self-control.

Because people who are not sober really do not exercise restraint or self-control. They just don’t. Y’all have heard me talk about it enough to know one of my favorite shows is Cops.

I was watching it last night, and they had some guy that was strung out on some kind of drug. And they kept telling him to stop, kept telling him to quit reaching for their weapon. the guy was strung out on something he kept fighting.

We all know what happens when somebody gets strung out on drugs or they’re drunk. They become much less inhibited. They don’t think straight.

They don’t think through the consequences of their actions before they act or speak. Some people are that way even without drinking or drugs. We’ve got to work against that.

He says be sober here. He’s calling us to godly restraint and self-control. While God is working in us to make us holy, one of the best ways we can get on board and embrace that is to embrace restraint, to embrace self-control.

Not everything we feel like doing glorifies God. Not everything we feel like saying glorifies God. And we’ve got to learn, we’ve got to discipline ourselves, to ask before we act, before we react, before we speak.

Does this glorify God? What does this accomplish? We’ve got to exercise that restraint and not just act or react or speak from a place of the flesh.

But learn to take that second and say, does this glorify God? If not, then I’m not going to do it. And I tell you what, if we’ll be sober in that regard, we’ll save ourselves a whole lot of heartache.

And we’re more likely to glorify God. Then he says in verse 13, at the end of verse 13, Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And this he’s telling us, persist in faith. Just keep going.

Prepare yourself to run when he calls. Learn to be disciplined and restrained and keep going. Persist in faith.

There are going to be times when it’s difficult to live a life of holiness. There are going to be times when it’s difficult to keep going. There are going to be times when we are beaten down by our circumstances, or it just seems like the temptation’s too much, or whatever.

But he says, rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. If you continue on with this idea of running, girding up your loins and being prepared to run, we could look at this, this hope in the grace brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, we could look at that as the finish line. And he says, you just keep looking toward that finish line. You keep running in that direction.

Yes, it’s going to be hard to live a life of holiness. Yes, there are going to be costs incurred. Yes, there’s going to be a struggle involved.

But keep running. Keep looking toward that finish line and keep running. So when we keep in mind that holiness is God’s work in us and that He does it, what He’s essentially telling us is, this is what I’m doing in the life of the believer.

This is my plan for the life of the believer, and you need to get on board. We can’t make it happen, but he says you need to get on board and embrace what I’m doing. And we need to understand this morning that as I’m talking about holiness, do not take this as the preacher opening the Bible and telling you, go out and try harder, be good, live a better life.

That’s not it. Holiness is not a measure of our own goodness. Holiness is the product of God’s work in our lives.

Two vastly different concepts. Holiness is not the measure of our own goodness. It’s the result of God’s work in our lives.

We can only become holy like Him because He’s the one changing us. Going out and doing better does not make you holy. It cannot produce holiness in your life.

It’s just going to wear you out. He has to be the one to change us. And so this reminds those of us who are believers, this reminds us that we can’t afford to become self-righteous or self-sufficient in our view of holiness.

We could very easily get a swelled head and say, well, look at me. I’m so holy. I don’t do this.

I don’t do that. I’m a holy person. I’m a good person.

We could easily get a swelled head and get self-righteous about the whole thing. Or we could get self-sufficient and say, well, I’ve lived such a good life this long. I don’t have to stay in close communication with God.

I don’t have to work on that relationship. I’ve got this. Boy, that is a recipe for disaster in our lives.

at any point when we think, I’ve got this, I can do this holiness thing, that is a recipe for failure every time. We need to remember that it’s the work of God. He does call us to embrace what He’s doing.

He does call us to get on board with what He’s doing,