When Holiness Becomes Obvious

He talks about putting away malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander, sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, abominable idolatries, and don't miss the fact as I rattle that list of his writings to Christians. Maybe you're thinking, why in the world would Peter ever have to warn Christians to abstain from any of that kind of old way of living?

Beloved, as it ever occurred to you, holy living is nothing less than a declaration of war. As a believer and follower of Jesus Christ, how do you perceive those who don't know Christ? Some Christians act as if unsaved people are to be avoided. They tend to steer clear of them, and that's not how God called us to live.

God called us to be salt and light in this world. There's an unbreakable bond between our private testimony before God and our public reputation before others. Holiness never stays hidden. God wants our holiness to become obvious, and the way that happens is when it's seen. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Steven Davey. Steven's calling this lesson, When Holiness Becomes Obvious. I was sent this by a few people over the years. A humorous story.

It's been out there for a while, and I thought it illustrated it well. One pastor tried to get this across to his congregation and this particular list of sins, and it backfired. He was personally convinced it was a sin to drink and eat anything made out of chocolate.

I had never gone to his church. I can tell you that right now just for that last one. But he decided to give a visual demonstration that would kind of add, you know, that punch, that emphasis to his Sunday sermon and teach his congregation a lesson they'd never forget. So as he began his sermon, he placed four worms into four separate jars. The first worm was put into a jar of alcohol. The second worm was put into a jar filled with cigarette smoke. The third worm was put into a jar of chocolate syrup, and the fourth worm was put into a jar filled with rich, clean soil. Then the preacher, you know, waxed eloquent, and he preached away at these vices.

And at the conclusion of his sermon with, you know, quite a dramatic flourish, he showed the congregation by placing those jars back up on the pulpit the dramatic results. The worm in the alcohol, dead. The worm in the cigarette smoke, dead. The worm in chocolate syrup, dead. As an aside, I'm sure it was smiling. The fourth worm in the good clean soil, alive. So the minister asked his congregation, what have you learned from this demonstration? A little old woman in the back raised her hand quickly and said, as long as you drink, smoke, and eat plenty of chocolate, you'll never have worms.

I think she got the point pretty well, don't you? But when you ransack the scriptures to find traces and evidences, clues, explicit statements about holiness, you discover it really isn't a list of boxes you check off. You can check off those three boxes and have a wicked heart. You discover that holy living is as much about saying yes as it is to saying no. So if you'll open your Bibles back to 1 Peter and chapter 2, I want to dive in today at the point of how he effectively defines holiness.

This has been his theme. It serves sort of as a bookend in this discussion. And what he's going to do is give us what I'll just sort of describe as three elements.

Let me give you the first one and then we'll dive in. The first element in holy living relates to who you are. In fact, you skip this and you will head down a joyless path of despair and performance. I want you to notice how he begins at verse 11 where we pick up our study. 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 11, beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lust.

Let's stop there for a moment. Peter's going to describe you and me three different ways. And I want you to notice the back circle perhaps these terms, but the first one is beloved. This is who they are to God, beloved. Now, if you were with us in our last study, Peter described the church with these wonderful terms taken from the nation of Israel applied to the church. You also are this holy nation. You're this chosen race. You're this royal priesthood. You are this people of God's peculiar treasures.

He wants to display you. And then he goes on to tell them you once weren't a people, but now you are. You weren't under mercy and now you are. And what better way then is sort of move on from there by choosing a word to describe the church and every individual believer but through the use of this word, beloved.

The term is wrapped around the word agape, by the way. You are this chosen decision, this faithful coming at it people. You're not a whim.

You're not a fancy. He isn't fickle. This isn't puppy love.

This is a commitment forever. Beloved is this honorable title for everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ. Now, listen, Peter rightly starts here because it happens to be the foundational principle and beyond that the incentive and the joy that causes us to want to respond with holy living. We are his beloved. We don't pursue holiness because God hates us. We don't pursue holiness so God will love us. We pursue a life of holiness from the perspective of wonder and amazement and joy that God would say of us, you are my beloved.

So start there. Peter is urging us also. He's encouraging those he additionally calls other terms. Notice aliens and strangers. That's also who we are.

Don't forget that too. It refers to people living in a place that isn't their home, true home of origin. We refer to them today as resident aliens. A lot of discussion going on about those people, right?

And there are many here today like that. Maybe you're here, you know, you got a work visa. You're over here to get your PhD from NC State or Duke. If you couldn't get into NC State but you're here to study and once you finish that degree, you got to stay with me.

You got to be quicker. You're going to leave. It's a long term stay but you really belong to another country. In the meantime, you're an alien. You're a resident alien. You're a long term visitor. Now the other word he uses here, you'll notice in your text, is the word stranger.

It's a similar word, just a little different nuance. It refers to someone who is staying briefly. They've come over from another country and they're just going to stay ever so briefly. Maybe you've done that. You've done a missions trip or you've traveled and you go to this country and you're not going to be there long.

In fact, you're not going to adapt to anything. Now that doesn't mean you don't care about the neighborhood. That doesn't mean you don't care about the culture.

It doesn't mean that you really aren't interested in doing anything with those around you. Now there's another aspect to this in other passages. Obviously one of them we've talked about in this study is that you're an ambassador.

You have been assigned to this post, this embassy post where you represent in your world the interests and the character and the nature and the message of the king of your country. Some people say why was he going to forget the world? I'm just going to be isolated and I don't care. Then others get too weighed down.

So Peter's describing a balance here in this holy pursuit. We don't avoid the world. We don't run from the world. We don't hide from the world. We engage the world.

We allow Jesus Christ and as his ambassadors to transform the world through the gospel we deliver to the people in our world. If I can be real practical here, who are you telling? Who are you inviting out to coffee? What about that classmate of yours that never seems to have any friends? So invite him out afterwards for coffee.

A couple of Krispy Kreme donuts. You see that's the initiative. You're actually on assignment. You've been appointed by God to peddle that one. This is who you are. I like the words of one author who said who is it that God has brought into the traffic pattern of your life.

There's a reason for that. So the incentive to pursue a holy life includes an awareness that we are temporary residents. We're briefly passing through. But we are on assignment and underneath, undergirding whatever we do is this incredible thought that we are his beloved. Not only is there the foundational element of holy living which is who we are, the second element has to do with what we avoid.

Verse 11 again, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts. The verb abstain means to hold oneself back. It has to do with, again, another balancing act between dependence on the Holy Spirit and doing due diligence. Withholding yourself from stuff that pulls you into the undertow that will sweep you back into the old way of living. It implies an idea of tension, of something difficult. In fact, the tense indicates that it's ongoing.

It's not going to let up. In practical terms, to live a holy life as believers includes both total dependence and then you have a text like this that says, by the way, what are you withholding in your life? From what are you abstaining?

Let me apply it even more directly. This isn't a comprehensive list but I got to prop my feet up and it's sort of okay. There are some books and magazines that you ought to be saying no to. There are some television programs and movies that you should be saying no to. There are some video games you shouldn't play. There are some places that you shouldn't go. There are some relationships you should be discouraging instead of encouraging. There are some sites that you shouldn't see. There are some things you're using with your time that might not be bad stuff.

It's just a waste of time. Now, on a broader scale, Peter has already described some of that formal way of living. Up at verse 1, we looked at in previous studies, he talks about putting away malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander. Over in chapter 4, he talks about these believers not going back into that which they once pursued. He describes them as sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, abominable idolatries, and don't miss the fact as I rattle that list, Huffy's writing to Christians. He's writing to Christians. Maybe you're thinking, why in the world would Peter ever have to warn Christians to abstain from any of that kind of old way of living? Beloved, has it ever occurred to you then that holy living is nothing less than a declaration of war?

Have you ever had anybody tell you that's the kind of language where you really got to lighten up? You're taking it way too seriously. War? Come on. Well, that's how Peter described it.

Look at you in the middle part. Abstain from fleshly lusts which wage what? War against your soul, that immaterial spiritual part of you that reflects your mind, your character, your will, your passions, your emotions, the real you behind that face you wore in here today, the real you. Your flesh is at war with your soul.

Now, imagine, get this, what that means is you are at war with you. Imagine, as far as Peter is concerned here then, your greatest enemy to holy living just so happens to be you. Your flesh is constantly battling against your soul. You face a temptation and you decide, I'm going to resist that and your flesh says, are you crazy? You don't want to resist that temptation, that temptation might go away. The battle is taking place inside you. I had the privilege of growing up under a biblically oriented father who would say it this way to us four boys. He probably said it a thousand times and we got it and it comes back to mind when I read a text like this where he would say, boys, the last person you need to trust is yourself. You're the problem. I love the way D.L. Moody put it, this evangelist pastor from the 1800s, he said it this way in one of his meetings, I have more trouble with D.L.

Moody than with any other man I know. In other words, your flesh represents a master military campaign. It is determined to fight you and to check you and to counter you every step of the way lest you gain ground in holy living. It also means then that your Christian experience with any one particular issue is not one battle and we've taken care of that one.

It is an ongoing master campaign that you engage in every single day. It's constant warfare and it's not going to end, by the way, until you see Jesus when you can safely hang up the armor he's told you to wear. I like what another period wrote in the 17th century, to keep a holy government that is controlled over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart is constant work. The keeping of the heart is a work that is never done until life is ended.

Listen to this. There is no time in the life of a Christian which will allow an intermission in this work. John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, who wrote a lesser known book called The Holy War, he was attempting to illustrate what Peter is encouraging and urging us onward to understand, not to lighten up but to wake up to this truth. In his book, he personifies the soul. In fact, he calls it Mansoul, with a capital M, Mansoul. And he typifies the city of Mansoul as having five gates. And those five gates are the five senses, ear gate, eye gate, nose gate, field gate, and mouth gate. And Bunyan wrote that the enemy of Mansoul, whose name is Sin, he personifies Sin, will come on a daily basis to attack Mansoul at one of those five gates, sometimes all five. Some days, he writes, Sin will whisper through the ear gate some alluring message. Other days, Sin will paint some alluring portrait to the eye gate. It's interesting to note in his book, Mansoul, that Mansoul could never be damaged or defeated by outside attacks. The only way Sin could gain a victory is if one of the five senses opened their gate.

Paul wrote to the issue when he wrote to the Roman believers in Romans 6 and 13, stop presenting the members of your body to Sin. See, Peter doesn't make it really all that complicated. It happens to be a war.

And for the Christian, it is never a matter of lightening up. It is waking up. It is guarding the gate and Peter is saying, I am urging you. I am urging you. I'm calling out to you.

As the beloved of God who don't belong to this earth, watch out. It is more than just temptation. It is war against your soul.

And there's no intermission. So the pursuit of holiness begins with who you are. It includes what you avoid.

But then he turns it around positively. The pursuit of holiness, thirdly, involves how you act. In other words, holy living isn't just about saying no.

It is about saying yes. Notice verse 12. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles so that in the thing in which they slander you as evil doers, they may, because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. This visitation is the movement of God towards them in grace. But what did God use?

This is where I want to go. What did God use to gain their attention in the first place? What was it? Well, two things.

First, notice at the beginning of verse 12. Keep your behavior excellent. So that's the first. Excellent behavior. That's just the first thing you can't get away from. And the word for behavior, by the way, just has to do with your daily conduct.

It isn't something special, you know, you put on for an hour or two. It is who you are daily. It isn't so much how you show up on Sunday.

In fact, the world doesn't even care you're here. It has to do with how you show up on Monday. That's when they get interested. And the word for excellent, Peter uses as a rich, it's a varied word. In fact, I came across at least six different ways to translate this word to understand what it means. Words like beautiful, winsome, gracious, polite, fine, noble.

Listen, the world doesn't have an answer to somebody whose attitude and behavior can only be described when they show up in the classroom or the boardroom or the lunchroom as noble, gracious, polite, fine, beautiful. Did you notice? As they observe, the unbeliever is watching you.

In fact, the term Peter uses for observing refers to a personal scrutiny, that of an eyewitness. They're in your traffic pattern. You might not know it. You might not even think about it and they may not consciously think I'm going to watch, you know, Cindy, Susie, Johnny, whatever, you know, when you show up.

But they just are. In fact, one great scholar noted that the present tense of the participle means that this is a reference to an intense and prolonged scrutiny. Even though what happens, by the way, if you'll notice, doesn't seem to help, they're slandering you as unbelievers. In fact, their response isn't coming up to you after work saying, man, you're amazing. No, they're slandering.

It doesn't sound like we're making much headway here. Behind it all, Peter's saying that they don't have an answer to this as they're watching you, they're scrutinizing you, that your excellent behavior marks you. Secondly, notice good works. They're also scrutinized.

That's part of the scrutiny. That they may, because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. That is the day he visits them with his grace, opening their eyes to believe.

So follow this closely. Peter isn't just interested then here in Christians making progress in holiness. He's interested in impact. He wants to see the church reaching people with the gospel. See, he doesn't want us to pursue holiness. Just to pursue holiness, he wants us to make holiness obvious. Paul wrote the same way to the Ephesians, for we are his workmanship.

We have been crafted, composed in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them, Ephesians 2.10. So take it outdoors. Take it out there.

Don't hide it. That's what marks you to your world. Listen to how many times you went to church the previous week.

Listen to how many times you checked off whatever boxes you think you ought to check off. What are you doing when you show up? What kind of behavior and work ethic are you marked by good deeds? You see, holiness then isn't just about you and me. It isn't just about the church. When holiness becomes obvious, it provides that bridge built into that area where we are temporary residents, our embassy post, so that we can follow those deeds and that behavior with, let me tell you who I follow.

No wonder the enemy wages war every day to try to keep you and me from building that kind of bridge. I was reading recently, and with this we're going to pack it up, but this article where a Christian columnist was at the Midway Airport during a blizzard, he writes, an engineer from India was sitting next to me. As we talked, I found out he was going to now have to take a bus to another airport because our flight was canceled. He was going to get his wife, who was expecting to drive with her two small children, to pick him up in these blizzard conditions. So I told him, look, I'm going to go pick up a car here and I want to give you a ride to your home. He then, very grateful, agreed. As we drove, I prayed for an opportunity to deliver the gospel.

I would only have this one opportunity more than likely. In the drive, he eventually asked me, why would you be willing to go out of your way for me? I asked him, has anybody ever done something so kind for you that it makes you want to pass a kindness along to somebody else?

He nodded. I said, well, Jesus Christ has done something incredibly kind for me. As we talked, I explained the grace of God through Christ and the fact that God's grace had visited me in kindness.

When I dropped him off, he thanked me and his last words to me were, I'm going to have to do some thinking about all of this. You see, as we walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh, people who are actually inspecting your life and mind. Did you notice how Peter is confident that some of them will come to think much of our behavior and then as a result, we can make much of our Savior to them? With that, we conclude not only this lesson, but our current series. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen's been in a series entitled In Pursuit of Holiness.

He's calling today's lesson When Holiness Becomes Obvious. If you missed any of the lessons in this series, you can go online and listen again. You'll find these and all of Stephen's teaching posted at wisdomonline.org.

You can go there anytime to access these resources free of charge. I also want you to be aware that we've taken all 10 of the messages in this series and bundled them as a set of CDs. If you'd like this resource in your personal Bible resource library, call us and we can give you details. Our phone number is 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. We'd love to hear from you. The next time we gather to study God's Word together, Stephen will be going to the Old Testament and teaching through the Book of Esther. I hope you'll be with us for that here on Wisdom for the Heart. You