1 Peter, 2:11-12
Bradley W. Maston · Dec 17, 2006
1 & 2 Peter (2006-07), No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926011253167

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Generally speaking, and Vern read my mind and put it up on here, I was going to have you turn to page 2, which is where the first verse is, and then page 4, where the second verse is, so we could read them all together, but this is easier, so we'll do that. If we just want to read all the way through once, all together, that way we're all seeing it. Ready? 1, 2, 3, go.

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against your soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the things which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

So started off with this title, Little Green Men, because you know referencing the alien thing. It's funny because then in this whole section here, I never even say why I said Little Green Men. So I hope that it was you know pretty well implicit. that as a culture, we're kind of nuts about aliens. We really like to watch, you know, Independence Day, go back, War of the Worlds is a recent remake they did of a movie that used to be good. I mean, they just, you know, we love, we dig this alien thing, and it's so fascinating to me that really, you know, as the earth goes, as we really know, we're the aliens. We're the only otherworldly thing walking around on this planet right now.

So yeah, I just wanted to encourage us to continue to think about it like that. So Peter's writing in these verses, as we get to the handout, about who we are as Christians and who we are as Christians in the world. Peter lived in a time and in an area and a place, just as you kind of imagine back to that point in time when sojourners and nomadic tribes were still really about. Furthermore, Peter's Jewish roots put him in a place of just this deep understanding of what it's like to be a foreigner not in your own homeland, away from all you're familiar with, away from your own place, away from your own land. So Peter's national history and cultural history was built to absorb this, was built to talk this way and understand what he was saying.

So his Jewish readers would have had an intimate understanding of it, but so also would his Gentile readers in this day and time, I'm sorry in the time in which he was writing, It wasn't uncommon to have to travel for work or move to a different city.

Do we know exactly how many Jews relocated because the Romans said, hey, no taxes if you live over here. Oh, it was about 2,000 Jewish families who moved to the area around Ephesus and Colossae and that area. So 2,000 people moved because you get a tax break.

I'd do it. But I mean, as Americans, we really don't have Necessarily a huge, huge, huge understanding of that. As Americans, most times, unless your city's just dying, or you're in a really niche career, and you need to be in a certain place at a certain time, you can usually make a living in most cities. You can usually find a job whether it's, you know, laying bricks or just doing construction, or else if you're an engineer you can usually find a firm to work for. We don't need to leave America to make money. Generally speaking we don't need to leave America. In fact if we have to move to Seattle or another city, granted there should still be kind of a culture shock there, but we don't need to leave just to make a living. In the rest of the world that's really not the case.

See, we spend a fair amount of time in Korea and people were leaving all the time. I got a friend who's now in Qatar, who's in Korea with us. I just moved to Qatar so I could make some money. My boss had lived in the Middle East and done engineering projects for years and years. We're like, wow, you went to the Middle East for three years?

The only reason Americans usually do stuff like that is because they're in the service. and they don't even think anything of it, don't even bat an eye. We had to go there to make our living and then we could come back or not. So it's something that as Americans is a bit foreign to us and it's easy enough to impose our current culture back on their time. We have this thing we call PC, it's politically correct, and so anytime we have a foreigner in or come through, we want to be politically correct, respectful of the culture and all this stuff and that's a great thing, but I offered you that that idea wasn't quite as developed in this time. Like now, you know, a foreigner, whether Yeah, a foreigner can come to America and expect to be respected, and expect to have their culture respected. If they want to wear a veil, they can expect that people won't, you know, throw rocks or make fun or anything like that.

I don't think we can impose that value, impose that likelihood. So when Peter writes his... to us of being aliens and strangers in the world. He's not talking about the kind of friendly, oh my gosh we had the nice Korean couple down the street over for dinner, like the American context, but it was far more of an alienated situation. This kind of idea of one world, one planet, traveler of the world thing, doesn't quite transpose back into that time.

So yeah, in any event. So let's consider what it takes, or what it is to be an alien or a foreigner in another place. Firstly, the culture, which is sometimes defined, or which Vern wants to find, as that which we do without thinking about it. I don't know who to credit originally for that, but it may have been Vern.

The culture around you is something you're not familiar with. If you've ever been in a foreign culture, it's like swimming upstream. It's like going the wrong way on a tide. I mean, everything that comes really naturally to those around you, doesn't come naturally to you. It's the most infuriating thing in the world. I mean, or infuriating, or difficult, or trying. It's amazing.

The examples, all my examples are going to be from Korea, because that's where we were. In Korea, they don't do lines, for the most part. So if you go to the bank, you can expect to see, or any place, you can expect to see a kind of a bunch of people around the counter, and then they'll kind of slowly file off, and everyone gets through, and everyone gets handled basically in the order that they arrive, but you know you could find yourself getting nuzzled, and you know, come on grandma don't push so much, you know what I mean?

As Westerners, we think, that's the rudest thing in the world. So, you know, on a bad day, I weigh all of you by 150 pounds. I'm going to push through. So, and you push through and they look at you and they just say, no, you got it all wrong. Like, we're not being rude. We're not pushing. We're not fighting. We're not trying to offend. But you, in your culture, who's, you know, we line up, I'm sorry, I was first. Could you stand back there?

All that business just doesn't translate. I mean, imagine that in every aspect of your life, even going out to buy a gallon of milk can be a huge challenge or a huge opportunity for stress. Just the simplest situations, where's the bathroom? Just the most easy thing, I mean, can become a moment of tension or difficulty as an alien. So often this causes rubbing and bumping that is uncomfortable in every way.

Something that is rude in one culture could be totally acceptable in another. For example, if you go to Japan, and you point at someone, they're going to be displeased to say the least. Yet here, you're walking down the street, and you say, oh that lady over there, I know her, and I know that guy over there, and it's just no big deal. But there it's considered rude. The Korean example of this is if you go to the market, there's quite a bit of haggling.

A lot of foreigners wind up making the mistake of haggling with someone. They ask for a large price and they say, oh, you're crazy. The gentleman selling it to you or the woman selling it to you will just go nuts if they understand any English at all. They're so offended because to them, crazy is a pretty significant curse. You don't call someone crazy without starting a fight. But Americans, we just throw it around, right? Oh, that's crazy. Oh, stop being crazy.

Oh, we just say crazy, crazy up and down. So we'd have angry mothers calling our academy where we're teaching English every week because some American said, you kids, you're so crazy. And all the kids went home and the teacher said, we're crazy. And the moms call and flip out. It's nuts. It's wonderful.

So anyway, Those differences in culture are so prevalent and so prominent in everything. Furthermore, the language is undoubtedly an obstacle. Even if you go to an English-speaking country like Australia or the United Kingdoms, you find yourself surprised at the expressions and figures of speech that are used. in certain words that are used to communicate different things. I have a friend who went to New Zealand and was working as a missionary there. It was the same time we were in Korea. So we'd call and compare notes and say what it's like to live in a foreign culture and all this stuff.

I would swear up and down that he was having a harder time than I was a lot of the time. Because it was so close. Everybody looked more or less American. And everybody spoke English, you understood all the words, so it wasn't like there was this huge grace provided to you. But everything was so black and white different that it was even harder on him. because he expected that since so many things were similar, the language, some of the same movies, and all that sort of thing, that everything else would be the same as well. And when the cultural differences hit, it was just kind of a rude awakening. So that's another interesting part about being an alien if you haven't been in that situation.

All I can say about language though is that what the Lord did at the Tower of Babel, he did it right. He showed how effective he can be. If you've ever tried to learn a second language, oh my gosh, it's a nightmare. Korean especially, oh wow. Okay, these different factors also buy interesting grace for a foreigner. Once again, I can't, as I said earlier, I don't know how much we can really impose this back onto the previous time, but I think it is legitimate.

When you see a person, you know, walking around in full robe and scarfed head, you don't think, oh wow, what a freak. You think, she's probably Muslim or she's probably from the Middle East somewhere. So there's this kind of grace and if you have people from a certain culture that doesn't eat beef over to your house, Generally speaking, you won't, if you knew about it, make steak and eggs, right? There's a certain amount of grace provided to them.

I mean, the classic examples, you go to Korea, they know you're American, they're not going to feed you dog. They won't, because they know that to us, that's really weird and offensive. But to them, that's commonplace, normal, everyday thing. So anyway, another good example is men in Korea have no qualms, for the most part, amongst close friends, about holding hands or putting a hand on the other person's knee or leg. It's just no stigma to it. So it's not an uncomfortable social situation, but when you're a foreigner in that situation, they won't necessarily force that upon you or if you say no, You know, where I come from, men don't do the hand-holding thing. So we'll just, you know, not do that. And they're usually respectful. You have this certain grace as a foreigner to say almost which parts of the culture you're going to participate in and which ones you're not. What you're going to be a part of and what you're not.

Yes. Here's a question. Should we expect that the world is going to receive us graciously? I think that's a great question. I think we'll definitely hit on that as we go along. I think the answer is definitely not. I think with that in mind, I think that should remind us to stick to our guns.

Remind us to remember where we are from, which we'll discuss a little bit more as we get on. So, obviously we don't have any dietary restrictions as believers. However, we find that our true citizenship, being a heavenly citizenship, also has a culture.

And that culture is in stark contrast to the culture of the world, to our American culture, to the world culture, and to any other culture you go to. I guarantee you're going to find things about it that you say, yeah, no. There's some things that you say, we want to be respectful of that part of your culture. There's other things that you say, no, that's just ungodly and awful. And it is part of your culture, but it's evil.

Actually, I was thinking about that just after learning the question, that should we expect the world to be gracious to us? No. But also, in that, we can't expect the world to act like us. We can't expect to impose our Christian values on the world because they don't understand them. Now there are a lot of them that just because of our country's history being founded on some Judeo-Christian principles, there are a lot of things that are already there that most unbelievers today have no clue that they're being affected by.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's absolutely it. We can't conform the world to us. That's not what the Bible prescribes. It doesn't say, therefore brothers, conform all your friends immediately. Be conformed. So anyway, that's absolutely the case. That's awesome. Thanks. So we would not want to conform ourselves to the culture around us. It's so clearly in opposition to the culture of our homeland.

We must not be conformed in terms of language or carelessly adopting expressions or forms of communication or humor that conflict with our heavenly position. Just as we would respect a foreigner whose culture did not permit us to eat beef or drink an alcoholic beverage, so we must unashamedly avoid laughing at the body offensive or blasphemous jokes of our co-workers. We should not feel bashful about the fact that we refuse to watch the scores of gross and disgusting or foolish movies and television shows or listen to certain music. We don't have to be ashamed of that.

Because, I mean, even if someone's not, in the American context, even if someone is not conforming to American culture, and even if the American culture says, oh, that's bad, many, many people who are aliens here will say, you know what? I don't care if you think my culture is bad. It's my culture and it's the way I'm going to live. That's the kind of stubbornness that we need to be showing that at least I often don't. Yes?

Looking at the verse there, it's obscene from fleshly lust with wage war against the soul. And what you talked about here was looking at jokes in movies and things like that. It's interesting, but Peter addressed specifically the internal issues. And so I guess one of the things to think about here is this is outward behavior. Whereas here he's looking at the fleshly lust How do believers need to think about the connection between these other elements of culture and those lusts?

That's absolutely right. All those movies, all those television shows, they're built to inflame those awful things in us. They're built to show us, I mean, all the violent movies show us that our violence is okay, our violent responses are okay, that we should just, whatever, what is the great theme in American?

I did it myself. I built myself up from nothing. I beat everybody else out. I founded it on my own. And all those kind of self-seeking, self-defending principles are all inflamed by these negative elements of the culture. So there's definitely the internal...

I kind of view the two verses as 11 being inward and 12 being outward. You know, I think as you look at that, because I'm thinking about making the correlation between, he says it stains from the fleshly lust, and then we've got, you know, everything from jokes to movies and things like that. Ultimately, the believer needs to not be just looking at, here's a list of movies I don't watch, but to be thinking, a thinking person, not just a listing person, and thinking about Are there things that cause me to stumble? Are there things that cause my family to stumble, etc.? And ponder that ultimately in thinking rather than just making lists. As mature believers being able to discern what's good and what's bad. So let's move on to the verse.

1 Peter 2.11 says, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

So we start off with, who are you again? Paul, of course, makes this habit of taking the first half of a letter to really pound away the doctrine. This is who you are, this is who you are in Christ. Ephesians, three chapters of this is who you are, this is who you are, this is who you are, and this is how it's played out. Peter kind of does all that in the form of a verse, or in the space of a verse.

He's going to tell us who we are first. So the first thing he says is beloved, translating the word agapitoi. which here is translated, you know, Beloved, and in other translations, like I believe the NIV, Dear Friends, which might not be as strong as most translators would want to bring it across, not as forceful. I really like Weiss, I mean, whether you're reading 1 John or whatever, whenever he comes across this word, he refuses to allow the apostle to be saying, Beloved of me. He doesn't think that that's a big enough scope for the Apostle to be encompassing. He said, yeah, I love you, that's absolutely the truth, but what's really important, what I really want you to know, how I really want you to view yourselves, is as divinely loved ones. That's why he uses this word agape, the root word agape, instead of the root word phileo, or one of the other words for love, or ways to express affection in the culture.

He says, you divinely loved ones, the Beloved of God. That's how he wants them to realize. That's what they're stepping out of when we start to get into the behavior. You're stepping out of being the Beloved of God. That's who you already are before you do anything. So he says, Peter isn't simply telling them his personal feelings, but rather he's letting them know that they are an integral part of their identity, the Beloved of God. The next thing that Peter tells his readers who are represented in the, is represented in the NASB by the word aliens.

This word is translated from a compound word meaning essentially to dwell near as a stranger. The literal translation, as Weiss points out, is to have one's home alongside. Other references and translations bring this word across as sojourner, or one's living in a foreign place.

So someone is passing through. Someone who's just passing through. There's a story about an old hermit who lived up on a mountain or somewhere to that effect. Occasionally people would stop by to get wisdom or get his take on life. Why do you go to someone who lives all by himself all the time to get wisdom? But anyway, the point is someone stopped by to ask this guy a question and kind of do the meaning of life thing.

So he comes in and the hermit of course welcomes him in. And he says, come on in, make yourself at home. And he steps in, there's no furniture, just a small mat in the corner. He says, where are your chairs? How are we supposed to sit down? Don't you have chairs here? And he says, no, where's your chair? Didn't you bring a chair? No, I'm just a visitor. I'm just here and then I'm going to go. Herman said, me too. That's the purpose. That's the point. I think that nails something very integral about all this.

Of course not to say that we should go sell our furniture, go get rid of everything we own, move out onto the street, or anything to that extent. But our true citizenship is in heaven, and we're not to make ourselves too comfortable for this little short trip. I mean, you know, you go to a visit to the dentist's office and it's horrible and it's terrible for that, you know, 30 minutes, hour, whatever it hurts, your mouth hurts, your tooth hurts, but then you go home and it's out and it doesn't hurt anymore and it's nice. So you say, well, in that frame of mind, to be healthy, that little amount of pain is good so that I can continue to chew or whatever else I use my teeth for. Hopefully I didn't cage my tongue in. But for that little space of time, that's acceptable. That's an acceptable sacrifice, given the reward. Well, now we're looking at eternity. Eternity that, you know, other points in Scripture, ages and ages, eons and eons.

And we've got our little 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years here. I mean, as C.S. Lewis points out, most children die in infancy or die in birth. A great number of those don't make it through infancy, through childhood. So really what we call a normal life is the exception, historically speaking. Now medical science has brought us along in making more or less infant fatality. But the reality is that to make it to, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80 years on this planet to be an alien and a sojourner here for that long is the rare exception.

It should encourage us that no matter how much discomfort, no matter how unwelcome we feel here, the better off we should be. I think it's a good warning to us is that Man, if we've kind of settled down and bought our house, and feel so comfortable here, that we don't want to go, we need to re-examine ourselves, and our outlook, our perspective.

Because there's so much more to it, and there's going to be so much more to eternity. I'm going to wind up there either way, but my gosh, how much more, just as when you're in the dentist chair, Your perspective of the fact that, okay, 20 more minutes, 30 more minutes, and it's gone. Your perspective on that makes it bearable. How much more so our perspective on this life? 30 more years? 10 more years? 20 more years? Could be tomorrow. I hope so.

The interesting thing about that is that, with so many ways, we're not even guaranteed our next breath. We could die tomorrow walking in front of a bus. In a car, I hate to be morbid, but driving down the street in the car, my wife and I were almost, almost died by the grace of the Lord we didn't, but in a car accident on I-25. Doctor said it's just a miracle that we even made it.

Thought, yeah, that could have been it. I'm okay with that. It could have been all for us. Furthermore, not only could, are we not guaranteed our next breath and like just inside of us, we don't know what's going on. Your liver could be rebelling against you at this moment. You never know. One morning, wake up dead and be happy. It's great. But with that threat very obviously imminent upon us, I wouldn't even call it a threat, but it's that wonderful possibility, we also are blessed with the possibility that the Lord could be coming back at any moment.

Before we take our next breath, it could be now. It could be in two years, ten years, fifty years, but it could be this moment. So why would we live? Why would we live? Or to put it more punctually, if we really believe everything that we hear at this place and read in the Bible, if we really believe it, how comfortable would we be getting? How comfortable are we?

Leave that with us. That's what's been kind of on my heart about these verses more than anything this week. So anyway, it's definitely one of the subtlest temptations of the believer to be conformed and be made at home in the world. The word translated strangers here is a good short translation, but it doesn't necessarily bring across the full meaning.

How does the meaning of to settle down alongside the strangers? It gives us the picture of ourselves as though we were here amongst pagans and godless for a span of years, maintaining our unique spiritual identity as being completely separate from those that we dwell near. We'll never be able to fit in or adapt to the culture around us.

The example that came to mind, did anybody watch Saturday Night Live like years and years ago? I know some of you did and you don't want to admit it and that's fine. But Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd had this one skit where they were Czechoslovakian exchange students or something.

They'd wear those awful loud polyester slacks and say, we're two wild and crazy guys and they were trying to be like American students and they were always talking about picking up American foxes and all this. And it was so funny. And you think about, why is that so funny? Because they're so tragically Czechoslovakian and they want to be American. And it's just absurd. Now, to them or maybe to another Czechoslovakian or another non-American, they'd say, yeah, they fit in pretty good.

But we go, that's much. We don't see it. We see that it's pathetic, that it's pathetic to try to pretend to be something you're not. And I think that that's what we do. Oh, I'm sorry. I speak for myself. That's what I do day in and day out. I try to pretend like, oh yeah, I'm figuring. I can succeed here. I can do this. Just kind of want to blend in a little bit. Kind of don't want to stick out so much, if at all possible. I think oftentimes we wind up looking like those Czechoslovakian exchange students.

Christian comics, yeah, exactly. And don't think it's not a joke to the rest of the world. I mean, don't think that we might be able to kind of lie, barter, and steal, and get ourselves accepted. And you know, those situations where someone says, I didn't know he was a Christian, because he doesn't live it at all.

We might be able to get into that, and that would be even more tragic than the alternative, which is, yeah, he hangs out with us, but he's very different. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that to light, that if we are aliens, if we are strangers, we're not called to conform. We're not called to try to fit in. We're supposed to be who God made us to be and live that out in contrast. So first, Peter explained to his readers that they're beloved, and second, that they're sojourners and strangers in this world, or second and third if you like.

But based on these ideas, based on these facts, what's the outflow? What's the effect on our behavior? It's on this basis that Peter instructs his audience that their choice to trust in the Lord and have faith in His actions and who He has made us to be makes a natural outflow into the behavior.

The first verb here is translated as verge in English. And once again, it's definitely not a bad translation. But the literal translation, it's a word that we've encountered definitely before in the main service, parakaleo, to call alongside, just to call someone alongside you. So here's Peter, this huge apostle, this apostle who's, you know, done really amazing things.

He was the conduit through which God brought salvation to the first Gentiles. He was there for that. He was a part of that thing. He was the one who stood up in Acts 2 and gave the best speech. I mean, put Billy Graham to shame, really. How many thousands of people did it say came to Christ in Acts 2?

That's a pretty impressive talk. I wouldn't mind giving that talk, but that's this Peter. And he doesn't say, I, Super Apostle Peter, command you. No. I, and later he'll say, a fellow elder with you. I mean, his humility is unbelievable. We'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But to say, you know what? Come alongside me. I urge you. Furthermore, he's speaking on behalf of the God of the universe. Come alongside me. I'm not going to command you. I love you. Come alongside me.

Though every basis is there for a simple order, the Lord chooses to urgently request these behaviors instead. And we see later what's on the line. I mean, we've talked about this. It's about our Christian maturity. It's about glorifying God, the most important thing in the world. And we'll talk later about the effects on non-believers, that our behavior even affects non-believers. It's not, I command you, because this is really important to me. This is really important to me. Come alongside me. Do this with me. The next thing that we're being urged to do, or the thing that we're being urged to do, is abstain. The word translated abstain is the nuance of holding something away from oneself in disgust. So the image I always get is this.

The idea is if you're walking down the forest, or just taking a nice walk, and you smell that kind of familiar smell, and you look down and thought it was a cat, but there's a skunk. kind of cozying up to you, rubbing your leg, trying to make friends. What do you do? You just want to get away, right? You don't want to be near it.

You hold it at arm's length and abstain. Another commentator, I believe it was Constable, said, the idea is a football player running down the field and holding that arm out. abstaining from being tackled. Now, how this stops a 300-pound rushing mammoth, I don't know, but it works because they've been doing it for like 50 years. So that's the idea, abstaining, abstaining from these sinful desires, holding them at arm's length.

As something of filth and disgust, I tell my Korean students at the other church that I spend some time at, no one has to tell you not to lick the toilet, right? There's, you don't need, your mom doesn't need to say, hey, you know, you're 16, I need you to stop licking the toilet now. It's awful, it's gross, it's disgusting. You don't even have a desire to do that. That's what sin is to us, or sin should be in our lives. Should be licking the toilet. That's just gross. Breaks us from fellowship with God. Puts us in a horrible position.

Makes us, I mean, I don't know, makes us feel bad. What's the reason? What's the reason? So anyway, that's the idea. It is not positionally appropriate for us as believers to be comfortable with sin. As Christ is in us, we will abhor sin in our lives more and more. As we submit, as we abide, we will see sin from His perspective. More and more. Moving on to the Holy War.

It's both odd and amazing to think that things happen here in our flesh can affect our spiritual state. It's just always funny to me, like, if someone cuts off your arm, or you lose a finger, or anything, an appendage, a leg, is there less of you? Are you spiritually diminished? No. You know, someone comes back with an arm missing or something to that effect, we don't say, wow, I hope that wasn't the nice part of him that got cut off. No, we're not spiritually diminished by losing parts of our physical body. In the early church, this kind of thinking, I don't know if it spread from this exactly, but there was a kind of thinking called the Gnosticism. John wrote about it extensively as we studied in 1st John.

But this idea that either the spiritual reality is the only thing that's real. So you should beat your body, starve yourself, whip yourself with whips, and absolutely don't eat anything except for watermelons. I mean, all sorts of awful, you know, do awful things to the body. Conversely, there are other groups that taught that since the spirituality is the only thing that's real, and it doesn't connect to this physical reality, then you can do whatever you want. Just indulge in every desire, every feeling, anything that the flesh would demand.

And Peter is obviously giving us a strong contrast to that idea. A very strong contrast. Peter presents the idea that the lust of the flesh are at war, in opposition to our spiritual growth. The present tense is the tense in the Greek that is brought across by our present continuous tense in English. It conveys the idea of abstain from the fleshly lusts which are warring against your soul. Excuse me. Are warring. Continually warring. Constantly warring. No days off.

We've got Christmas coming up, and it's on a Monday this year, not a Sunday like last year. Not that I don't get a day off if it's on Sunday. That's why I was bummed. But it's on a Monday this year. We get a day off from work. Your flesh is like, yay, Christmas! I'm taking a break. No. The world, I mean, you turn on the TV, they're going to say, oh, it's Christmas. We'll take off all the bad stuff. No. The world's not taking a day off. Our flesh isn't taking a day off. And, you know, the devil's not taking days off either. Continually warring against our soul. We need to be continually vigilant.

I mean, can you imagine if you've watched Troy or Gladiator or any of those big epic battles movies that, you know, they're fighting, they're fighting, they're fighting. Oh, the other side looks tired. Let's take five. No, they're going to go harder because they see that victory is in sight. So this idea that, I mean, he doesn't use, that are continually bothering you, that are continually tapping you on the shoulder and bugging you. No, he says warring against you, not war with you. It's really a strong word if you think about it. It's not just, you know, they're continually politely asking you to, you know, walk in the flesh. No. Tunu doing everything in its power to get back in control of your life, the flesh.

This is something that will happen as long as we are in flesh and the choice continually reigns before us where we will put our trust. Will we walk in the flesh or will we walk in the spirit? Will we walk in our position and hold sin from us as something that is disgusting because we see how much it costs God to deal with it? Or will we surrender to those fleshly lusts? This is the picture that Peter has painted for us. Will we choose to sit in the victory that Christ has won for us we choose to surrender ourselves as slaves to our old and harsh master.

Moving on to 1 Peter 2.12. 1 Peter 2.12 reads, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, They may, because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

Okay. Titled, Do You Need Another Reason? Before, in the last verse, he told us, like we talked about the inward reason. They're warring against your soul. They're keeping you from spiritual maturity. They're keeping you from walking in your wonderful and joyful, blessed position in Christ.

Need another reason? But he's going to give you one anyway. So hey, two for one. Bogo. Here, Peter is giving us more reason why our conduct is important. It's important to remember that Peter is Jewish, and therefore suffering, or, suffering, subject to a different thinking pattern than the Greek mind. We've definitely inherited the Greek mind. It compartmentalizes, it fixes everything.

Paul wrote to the Greek mind, as we've talked about before. Here's your position, here's all the spiritual truth, and oh, by the way, you can't let it stop there. Don't steal, don't lie. Come on, walk in the spirit, walk in the spirit, walk in the spirit. So, Paul, because he knows the Greek mind, writes to the Greek mind. Peter doesn't take the time to do all that. And we call this, it's also present in James and John's writing, we call it the Semitic Totality Principle. In the Greek mind, it would be uncommon to separate out, Just take that sentence, cross it off.

I don't like it anymore. The Greek mind would not connect the idea of religion with behavior, though it would connect the idea of religion with success. It's almost the perfect opposite to the faith taught by the apostles. I mean, you think about it, they're absolutely, I don't know, I can't think of a single thing they share in common.

The Greek gods, you go, you plead, you beg, you burn incense, you do all this, and hopefully, if you are successful and they remember you, you get the good stuff. You get the blessing that you wanted. God, you go to, doesn't demand any sacrifice right up front, anything to that effect. But he blesses us with every spiritual blessing. You get all the blessings. And then, oh, by the way, as we consider ourselves or act as spiritual sacrifices, or present our bodies as sacrifices, What do we get to help us along the way? All the world of blessings, right?

No. Trials, struggles. Just earlier he said, those trials which are conforming you, which are making you like gold, purified, more perfect in God's sight. So the two, the Christian model and the Greek model, couldn't be more ragingly opposite. couldn't be in sterner opposition, and yet there they are. I mean, it just must have sounded like lunacy to the first century hearers. So I don't have to sacrifice to get blessings, but I already have blessings, but I'm going to get trials, and I'm supposed to rejoice in the trials, because it makes me more like, it just must have been impossible. I mean, it's incredibly difficult for us to assimilate that knowledge, for me anyway. When the trial comes, I still go, no, I don't like it, but I should be saying, oh, thank you so much, Lord. As Hal showed to us, it lived the gospel out amongst us. Praise you, Lord, for this. Praise you, Lord, for that trial.

So anyway, the Semitic Totality Principle wouldn't take time to sort out the argument of position and condition. They just say, okay, so you understand the gospel? Yes, I understand the gospel. Do you believe the gospel? Yes, okay, live it. Now, not to say that every Jewish person lived out everything they believed, or every kind of Semitic-minded person lives out everything that they believe, but that's the ideal that they strive for.

The Greek mind, our mind, we can believe one thing and then go and act as if it's entirely untrue. We can learn something in class or learn something somewhere and then go somewhere else and do the exact opposite. Great example. There's not a single person in this nation that I believe doesn't know that smoking is bad for you and yet still tons and tons and tons of people smoking. Yeah, I know it might kill me. Yeah, I know. I like your cancer.

Well, we've got this Greek mind. We've got this mind that says, okay, I know that's true. I'm still going to go stand over here and do this. So we've inherited that and that in the Semitic mind, in the Semitic thinking pattern would have been just silly and quite frankly it is, but even still. So anyway, where was I? Yeah.

So a Semitic totality principle wouldn't take the time to sort out the argument between position and condition, but would rather just assume that if you believe something, then you would live it out in every aspect of your life as much as you possibly could. The Greek mind could believe something to be true and act as if it weren't, whereas this would be completely unacceptable in the Hebrew mindset.

That's why Peter can move so fluidly into what Paul would probably separate out between positional truth and conditional walk or conditional situation. So here Peter gives us another reason to pay attention to our behavior. The Greek is much more literally brought across by the King James Version which reads, having your conversation honest amongst the reptiles. Moving on to excellent behavior. It's of first importance to notice that the verb keeping, or translated keeping, is more literally having, it's not a bad translation, but just a subtle nuance, and it's a present active participle. We've talked about participles before with Peter, talked about how Paul would give an imperative, you do this.

And Peter, kind of more along the lines of the Semitic thinking, would say, hey, I know you're a believer, I know you're walking, so you must be having this, right? It must be playing itself out like this, right? Because this is how it plays itself out. So Peter gives us this kind of continuing sense. I know you're having your conversation, having your conduct, your behavior as excellent. Whereas Peter is using a participle that simply assumes that we're doing the thing that we're supposed to be doing. So in the expanded translation, you can almost say, if you're living the Christian life, and walking on the basis of your position, then you're keeping your behavior excellent. The authorized version uses the word conversation here. If you're looking at your sheet with me, it says, this is not a word that is significantly changed. Okay, that was wrong. Cross out the not. This is a word that has significantly changed in its meaning from the time when it was first penned.

We've encountered the word peripeteo before, to walk, your walk, walk in the spirit, walk in the flesh. We hit it in Ephesians a lot, I know. And it's a metaphor for everything that you do, down to where the rubber meets the road, where your feet meet the dust, where everything is played out in your life. It's a metaphor for your day-to-day life.

So that's why other translations will bring it across as excellent behavior rather than excellent conversation. So that's why they'll bring it across. So really when you see it as behavior, that's just a little bit of interpretation to make it more accessible to the modern reader. The word in Greek is a word that denotes the daily behavior and comings and goings of daily life.

Peter is prescribing that our day-to-day conduct should match our position in Christ. This is not talking about the large planned-out actions that we feel are the most important moments in our lives, but rather the truly important things that we do day in and day out without thinking about it. The word translated excellent here means beautiful, honorable, and attractive. Excellence in behavior down to the finest points in life, this is a fantastic ideal for us to strive for as we walk in the Spirit, as we rest in the Lord, as we are conformed to Him. And I just thought it was so amazing that He would say, keep your actions, keep your conduct beautiful, keep it lovely. The Lord doesn't look at it and say, yep, good, yeah, it's acceptable, fits the box. He's not up there like an accountant going, okay, $32.50? Yeah, $32.50. He's saying, oh wow, Doug walked in me today. Doug walked in my spirit. Doug conformed, let himself be conformed to me.

That's beautiful. The experience that we get when we look at art or a beautiful landscape or listen to beautiful music, that's what it is to God. It's not just, you know, mathematician God is happy with, yes, I count good. No, not at all. He's pleased that God smiles. Okay, I just made up the God smiles thing. I don't know if I've ever seen God smiles in scripture, but you get the idea. God's so happy when we allow ourselves to walk in our position, that it means so much to him.

I talk too much. Okay. Skip all the way down here. All right, the phrase among the Gentiles. This is that word ethnos that we've seen and dealt with before. It's brought across Gentiles here, and I think because they were thinking in terms of this word was used to delineate Hebrews and non-Hebrews. possibly in Peter's mindset, but I think in this sense, he's more just saying the nations, all of them, the non-believers.

That's amongst whom he's talking about. I don't think he's specifically talking about the non-Jewish people, because there are dozens of Jews who needed the Lord too, who hadn't received him yet. And I'm sure that Peter was more passionate about that than we're sometimes led on to believe. Anyway, so I would say that given this context of the letter, it would seem that Peter is not drawing a distinction between Israel and the rest of the nations, but rather is referencing the mass of people who do not believe and are affected by the behavior and conduct of believers.

But what will everyone say? We're not to expect that just because we're walking in the spirit that our conduct is above reproach, we're not going to have struggles in the world. And I'll buzz right through this. The reality of the matter is, as Nancy and Vern pointed out earlier, if we're doing everything that Christ would have us do, if we're truly conformed and walking in our position, who would ever say, you know, you're just being too darn nice. You know, when you gave me grace, I really would have preferred that you would have started a fight with me and we could have, you know, punched each other. We'd be above reproach.

But what Peter's saying is, okay, you're absolutely above reproach, you're doing everything right, you're acting in love and grace and you're showing mercy to everyone, and yet they're still going to hate you. They're still going to reject you. They're still going to be offended by the light that's within you. And they're still going to want to slander you on every little point because they will not accept.

They don't want to accept at that point that they're not right with God. They don't want to accept possibly at that point that they need God in order to thrive, to live, to have true life. They don't want to admit that they're dead in their transgressions and sins.

Who knows? But I think what Peter's just warning us to is, is that we're still going to be slandered. We're still going to have problems. The word translated slander here is a compound word, and it's to speak against. And just to move straight to the practical application for lack of time, if you've ever had a conversation with a non-believer and they say, oh yeah, but the church is so screwed up, Salem witch trials, Spanish Inquisition, da-da-da, da-da-da, and they'll go through every awful thing that's ever been done in the name of Christ and say, that's why Jesus can't be true.

I mean, it's hard for us to reconcile as believers because we know Jesus. We know what it's all about, but they don't. They just see the outplay. They just see the results throughout history. And we can say, well, you know, those people, they weren't even followers of the Lord or truthfully not really knowing where their hearts were at when they did what they did. So anyway, and then also you've got the modern Christian media wants to present all fundamentalist Christians, all Bible-believing Christians as harsh, angry, hateful, all these horrible things. Okay, I'll go for like 60 more seconds and we go get coffee. Okay, so Peter gives us the solution right here.

The solution is, in so many words, our actions. Our living out our position is the solution. A person's conduct in someone's life is the most powerful witness that we have. It's the most powerful candle that we burn. Because if you're in someone's life and you're living out the life of Christ and they're feeling Christ's love and knowing the warmth of who He is through you and through your interaction with Him, When they see the Christian hate groups on TV, when they hear people say awful things about Christians, they'll say, yeah, but I noticed one guy, I noticed one lady, and she's not like that at all. See, that's the biblically prescribed answer for us today, for these dilemmas.

We're not supposed to go get a big jumbotron and put it up in the middle of town saying, Christians are really nice people. You've got us all wrong. We were really the good guys after all. That's not our job. That's not our response. We shouldn't be trying to get airtime on TV, telling everybody, hey, the Christians are actually the nice guys after all. That's not our response. That's not the biblical response. Someone's view of Christians is you. Living out the life of Christ.

Ultimately, what's going to change it is Christ. So, moving on to the Day of Visitation, Peter's heart is evangelical. Peter's heart is for everybody. So, as a harsh, judgmental, mean believer, I so much want to have all those unbelievers who kick mud in my eye or made fun of me. I so much want to see them at the final judgment saying, Oh God, Brad was right after all. That's not what Peter's saying at all.

This day of visitation, I've got verses, this day of visitation thing is a personal thing. It's always connected with salvation in the Bible. When God brings salvation to that person, they'll praise God for what you did, or for what He did through you, if you like. This to me says, you know that person, that uncle, aunt, son, daughter, child, friend, co-worker, who you say, oh, they'll never get it.

Man, they'll never get it. Peter says, no way! Don't you know that God is God? Don't you know what God can do to the human heart? This is Peter who sunk into the water, Peter who abandoned his master, Peter who denied Jesus, even knowing Him. And God says, you know what?

I'm going to show you so much grace, I'm going to use you to build my church, be the foundation of my church. He knows grace. He's transformed by grace. He's not about to let anybody say, yeah, I'll just write him off. Because Peter, so many times, was not written off by the Lord when there was ever a reason to.

I'm terribly sorry. I'll write less next time. Vernon, did you want to? Just real quick. Yeah, last week, Gene was teaching, did a great job. But in the material, just looking things over, and Marilyn's question kind of brought it to the fore here. There is a quote from Newell in here. And basically, Marilyn's question brought to the front that gets a little puzzling. The quote from Newell looks upon the audience that Peter is writing to as just Jews, Christians who are Jews. But in fact, if you look at some passages, here's some instance. There's the quote, but let me skip on to the next part.

Here, for example, in chapter 1, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance. This was a typical explanation of the Gentiles. Further on down, verse 18, your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. So this is conveying the Gentile behavior. Skip down to chapter 4, which we haven't gotten to yet. For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, browsing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatry.

In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excess of dissipation. The Gentiles who became believers, that would be true of. It would not be something typically true of the Jews. So anyway, I think Newell's conclusion that this Peter is writing just to Jewish Christians is not quite correct. And it was something I overlooked in the review. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that out. Alright? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for laying out these truths to be lived by. Because we can trust in who you are and who you've made us to be. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.