This Is War

What author comments on this verse in his commentary on 1 Peter by writing, Christ does not send us into the world as vacationers on a self-guided tour of a playground, but as soldiers on a tour of duty on a battlefield.

We're not called to kick back, relax, just take in the scenery and wait for God to take us home. Rather, we are engaged in a fierce conflict on foreign soil. We need to arm ourselves with spiritual armor to withstand the temptations of this foreign land. We sometimes need reminders to always be on our guard, but sometimes we can get complacent.

When that happens, we can be wounded by subtle attacks that we don't even recognize. Could you use a little help in this battle? We have help for you today. This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen Davie is examining the conflict between Christians and Satan, and he offers practical advice on how we can win.

This message is called, This is War. The issue of the Apostle Peter is going to provide today, and of course we're calling Christianity 101, is arriving daily at a decision. And by the way, I just love the way the Lord puts together a service where these guys are picking music, not knowing what I'm preaching on and I'm going to preach on. I've decided to follow Jesus.

That's basically it, okay, in a nutshell. But how to deal with sin, how to deal with sinful desires as we decide, as we resolve, to follow Christ. If you turn back to 1 Peter, we've arrived at chapter 4, and all God's people said, Miracle of Miracles, we're here.

We're on the last lap. You're going to find his spiritually inspired counsel to basically answer the question, what kind of resolutions do I need to make so that I can advance in my walk with Christ? And I want to look at these three verses as chapter 4 opens and sort of fashion them into the form of three resolutions. They're not going to sound, you know, 18th century.

They're more of where we're living, okay? The first one, and then I'll look at the text with you, the first one is this. I am resolved to suit up and fight back. Look at verse 1. Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he was suffered in the flesh, that you and me, has ceased from sin. Peter writes, therefore, and you're old enough in the faith to know you've got to ask the question, what's it there for? Therefore, that is in light of what I've already written, in fact, going back to chapter 3, verse 17, 18, 19, right in there. Since Jesus Christ resolved to die for your sin in mind, to just for the unjust, since he set his face like a flint, one of his gospel biographers wrote, since he resolved to go to the cross, to pay the penalty for your crimes and mine, now then, in watching him suffer for our sin, to pay the penalty for our sin, now what Peter says is I want us to resolve, to suffer whatever we might suffer with that perspective that we might be done with the power of sin in our lives. One author translated, ceased from sin, several hundred years ago to read, he has quit with sin.

I like that. There's something to quit daily. Quit sin. Now, you can understand Peter's words, ceased from sin, the mean, not a state of perfection, but a state of resolution. This is the mindset. I'm done with that. I want to be done with that. When you fail, Lord, forgive me, I really want to be done with that.

That's the perspective. You see, while you're free from the penalty of sin as a believer, you are not free from the pull of sin. Yes, there's no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, Romans chapter 8, verse 1, He's paid for our crimes, we're eternally safe in Him, and we praise God for that. But while we might be free from the condemnation of sin, we are not free from the attraction to sin. So you got to suit up and be ready to fight back against sin. A Christian who is learning the lessons of Christianity 101 is a Christian who is demonstrating this attitude.

I'm done with sin, and we'll talk about that more later. The key, by the way, to this resolution is at the beginning of the text, go back. Notice, arming yourself with the same purpose, better rendered, I believe, the same mind, the word mind here. It refers to the act of thinking. In fact, you could think of it as arriving at the realization. You're thinking it through. You've arrived at the kind of thinking that Christ did as He walked this planet. The word indicates, one Greek scholar writes, a resolve, a perspective that expresses itself in determined action.

You want to do something about it. You're saying, look, just as Christ was resolved to pay the penalty of your sins, be just as resolved to fight against that pull of sin, that undertow that wants to sweep you back into your old life. Arm yourselves, he writes, arm yourselves. That verb appears only here in the entire New Testament in the form of a verb. It means to equip yourself with the appropriate tools, the appropriate weapons, carries the idea of readiness.

Throughout the New Testament, the noun form appears often, and it refers to a heavily armed Roman soldier. He carried a spear about six feet long. He had a sword. He had a shield, a breastplate.

He had everything necessary to enter into battle. One author comments on this verse in his commentary on 1 Peter by writing, Christ has not sent us into the world as vacationers on a self-guided tour of a playground, but as soldiers on a tour of duty on a battlefield. We're not called to kick back, relax, just take in the scenery and wait for God to take us home. Rather, we are engaged in a fierce conflict on foreign soil, and we need to arm ourselves with spiritual armor to withstand the temptations of this foreign land. It's well put.

It's time to dress up with a wartime mentality. It's time to live with a sense of this kind of resolution, and you make it daily. You daily get ready to fight back. Paul told the Roman believers, put away the deeds of darkness, and you think, wait a second, I've already did that. Well, you did.

Keep doing it. He tells the Ephesian Christians in a more familiar passage, put on the full armor of God that you might be able to withstand, refuse the schemes of the devil against the world forces of darkness, darkness. But let me at least drop in a little bit here.

You might be newer in the faith, and it'll be worthwhile. Paul in that text, and I don't even have you turn there, but he refers to different elements of that armor. He refers to the soldiers' shoes. And we know from history they were leather sandals with extra strapping to go up the leg to keep them from slipping off. The soldiers would take those sandals and they'd turn over the leather sole and they'd embed into it sharp stones or pebbles so that they effectively acted like cleats.

They ran up the hills. As they advanced against opposing forces, they could grip the ground. Paul says, you've got to have the right shoes, and he's saying he expects us to struggle to advance, and gain ground. He refers to the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, an offensive weapon whereby we handle, we fight back against temptation. Our Lord, when He was tempted early in His ministry, He responded to every one of those three temptations by quoting Scripture. It was the sword of the Spirit. So also, as a Christian soldier, we have both defensive and offensive weaponry whereby we fight.

Our own corruptions, the propensity we have to sin, and the world around us that says, absolutely, come on. We've got to be dressed correctly. I can still remember where I was standing in the terminal. This happened many years ago. The boys were about five, and that was when you could actually go up there and stand right by the gate when people would come out, and their grandmother was on her way.

My mother-in-law to spend some time with us. All I remember was I was standing there, and the two boys were in front of me, and we watched as the plane began to empty, and no sight of nanny anywhere, but soldiers began to get off that plane. Evidently, they were allowed to get off first, and they came through, and it was rather awe-inspiring.

They're dressed out. They got the fatigues and the boots and the hats, and many of them had strapped to their sides, pistols, and we just kind of... Everybody stopped and watched. And as they're filing past us, one of my sons looked up at me and said, Daddy, look at all those army men. And one of the men heard them, stopped, and looked down and said, Son, we're not army. We're Marines. Whose son is this? Somebody's lost a child. Come get them.

Not mine. Well, a good soldier, including Marines, goes into battle prepared. Look at the way they're dressed. Make a resolution. Resolve to suit up and fight back. Secondly, I am resolved to watch the clock and clean house. Notice verse 2. So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh... I love this, by the way. Stop for a moment.

This is sort of a seemingly off-handed comment, but it's rich. So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh. It's as if Peter wants us to focus on the fact that we don't know how much time we have left, but we want to dedicate whatever time we have left to the will of God, not for the loss of men.

You don't know how much time you've got. Just make sure you're not giving it to that, but to this, as he draws this contrast, really between the will of men and the will of God. This is Jonathan Edwards' passion in resolution number 5. He writes, resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

So convicting, right? I doubt he would watch any football with me this afternoon. Every moment I'm going to improve. Then he turns the coin over and addresses the same issue a little differently in his seventh resolution, resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

That's Peter's phraseology here, the rest of the time in the flesh. He is meaning to inspire the reader in their efforts to redeem the time. Don't waste your life. Don't waste your time.

It's precious. You don't know how much is left is his thought. In fact, the word for time is chronon, which gives us our word chronology. In other words, as the chronology of your life's events play out, you don't know if you've got a long series yet or a short series. No matter what it is, as the chronology of events in your life roll out, dedicate them to the will of God. What's that chronology looking for you right now? It might be very difficult, painful, sorrowful, as the events are unfolding. Maybe for you it's victorious and triumphant and you're rejoicing in some things that are unfolding.

Peter doesn't address either one. He simply says as life plays out, the chronology of events roll on, dedicate them to the will of God. Take note of the time.

Keep your eye on the sundial or in our day your smartphone or your watch. You see, there's a sense of expectancy in Peter's call here to resolution. And I think it's important before we get past that seemingly offhanded comment that there's truth that expectancy has a way of shaping our thinking about life. Here, you're expecting a response from the doctor's office.

That just has a way of coloring life. You're expecting a package to arrive. You're expecting a baby that has a way to color all of life. As Pastor Scotty said, we have about 30 women expecting in our fellowship now.

Their lives, their thinking processes are focused on that expectancy because life's going to change, especially if it's the first one. Everything's going to change. I mean, some of you guys, you've got about 30 guys somewhere around here, you're going to go down aisles in that grocery store you've never gone down before.

It smells like baby lotion. You're going to learn how to put into your budget a line item just for Cheerios and goldfish because that's critical stuff to survive. You're going to paint something. Maybe you're already doing it. Either a room, that used to be a spare room, goodbye spare room, it's pink.

It's blue or whatever. The closer you get to that due date, the more expectant you become in your thinking. Maybe today, I wonder if it's today.

I hope it's not for 30 more minutes, by the way, but your thinking is colored by that expectancy. Expectancy produces urgency. There are things that got to get done before this arrives. There are things I've got to do in light of that. Peter's effectively saying to the believer we should live with a sense of shortness of time. There are things we've got to do because of that. We don't know how many more events are going to unfold, and that's it.

The colors are thinking. So notice, live the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for the loss of men, but for the will of God. What's the will of God? He's already spelled it out for us. Some of it in his letter in chapter 2, he writes, this is the will of God that you do good.

We don't need any commentary on that. We know what good is. The will of God is to do good. Later in chapter 3, he discusses that the will of God might include suffering. It is the will of God that you suffer.

It is the planning and providence and design and growing up periods in your faith to suffer. Now in chapter 4, he writes that the will of God is doing the opposite of sinful humanity. Don't follow the will of mankind. Follow the will of God.

Do what's right even if you suffer. I love the way one author defined the will of God. He said you're doing the will of God when his desire is your command, his son is your example, his spirit is your guide, and his word is your authority.

That sums it up well. So it doesn't matter what you're doing, you might be washing diapers or preaching a sermon. It doesn't matter whenever his desires are your command, whenever his spirit is your guide, whenever his son is your example, whenever his word is your authority. Whatever you're doing is the will of God.

You're not wasting time. So if you're watching the clock and cleaning house, it means that your life is being governed and guided by the Spirit, by the Son, by our Father, by His Word. So be immersed in His Word.

He has spoken. Be saturated in it. Study it. You'll never know the will of God on a personal subject unless you include the word of God in your personal study.

R.C. Sproul once wrote about one of his students who had substituted subjective feelings for study in the Word to determine God's direction. The Spirit of God applies Scripture in a number of different ways, as you know, as an older believer.

While that verse might not say do this or that, His Spirit guides us through it. And she wanted to be married, an honorable desire, but she was impatient. And she had a practice that she had developed, unfortunately, and Sproul said, she answered my question, how are you doing in the Word as it relates to wanting to be married? And she said, well, I've developed a practice that I call lucky dipping. He said, explain that to me.

What does lucky dipping mean? He wrote, she explained that she would close her eyes, open her Bible, let it fall open, place her finger on a verse somewhere in the Bible, and consider that God's direction. And she explained to me that only recently she had done that and she had opened to Zechariah chapter 9 where it says, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, behold your king is coming to you riding on a donkey. She assumed that was God's answer that her husband was somebody she was going to meet and he was just around the corner.

I don't know if he'd be on a donkey. That would be a sign, I would think, you know, from actually to stay away. But at any rate, she said, or Sproul wrote, sure enough, a few days later she met a guy without any prayer or any thought assumed he was it, her prince charming, and she married him.

Sproul didn't write what happened later on, but he did go on to write that we had better search the Scriptures and give his spirit time to work in our hearts if we ever hoped to have the mind of Christ. Watching the clock of your own life tick by. Wanting to clean the house. I don't want the will of man, all of those lusts. I want the will of God make that resolution.

Number three, one more, I am resolved to stay the course having said farewell to my old life. He combines the idea of something in the past and a decision in the present. Look at verse three. For the time already passed is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, that is the unbelievers. Having pursued a course, stop for just a moment, Peter's dipping into their personal testimony. You could paraphrase this to read, look, you've spent enough time in the past doing what unbelievers want to do.

He's going to describe them, we'll get there in a minute. But you've had enough time and it's sufficient. Whatever amount of time that was, it was enough. It was enough for you to know, it's a dead end, it's a dry well, it's meaningless, aimless living.

It's sufficient. You did enough of that. He pulls out their own testimony and he says, you've run down that path, now you're running a different path, right? You're running the race for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. You get your eye on a different goal. Now the world used to say, man, this is what I'm chasing after. This has got to be good and you've done enough of that. Peter writes to know it doesn't work.

You're racing after the prize of your high calling in God in Christ Jesus. Now what's surprising is that Peter does pull off the interstate and remind these believers of the kinds of things they used to run after. You might think, well, they shouldn't remember that.

Well, there are times, obviously, when Satan can use it to discourage you and there are times when God wants you to remember just as we were to remember the Israelites' failure in order to warn us to serve as an example of what not to do, to not go back there. So what Peter does is he pulls out six evils to address. The first word is sensuality. This is a word that refers to someone who lacks any sense of shame.

Peter will use the same word in his second letter to describe the lifestyle of the people in Sodom. The dominating idea behind the word is this shameless conduct that even the public knows is indecent. The next word he uses is lusts.

It's plural. It indicates all kinds, all the varieties, whatever they may be. It denotes a strong desire, not necessarily a sexual lust or desire. It could be a passionate craving for anything in excess. The idea carries the idea, the word carries the idea of excess. It could be money.

It might lead you into gambling. It might be power. It might be control, attention, food. It could be any number of addictions. Where the first word sensuality deals with open public evil, this word deals more with private cravings and evil that maybe only you know about.

And, of course, your Lord. The next word is drunkenness. We don't need a commentary on that one, but it is a compound word. He uses wine with the verb to bubble over. Again, an issue of excess, obviously, a reference to someone perpetually drunk. The fourth word is carousing. Sounds like a word, you know, from the 60s, or those young people are carousing, you know, out there. It's a word that is sexually loaded. You could translate it orgy. This word in our culture today describes, and I'll just say a few phrases and you'll know, yeah, got it, spring break, Mardi Gras, Las Vegas, where you're promised that whatever you do there stays there only to discover one day, according to Revelation 20, it has been recorded by God. The fifth is drinking parties. But, frankly, if we pull it into our generation, this is how the average American lives for the weekend.

We just described their best weekend. This is what they're living for. These are their gods. In fact, Peter then goes into number six, abominable idolatries. That is, choosing a god other than the god. And it's all of this.

It involves all of the above. In fact, their pagan rituals would involve drunkenness and perversion and lust and outbreaks of evil. These are idolatries.

They have replaced the authority of creator God with gods we've made with our own hands and hearts. The poll, Peter implies, for any of this, might never quite go away. Make sure you don't get swept away. Stay the course. Stay the course.

This was the course you used to run. Don't run there. Say farewell. Put that in your rearview mirror and make sure it stays there.

Say farewell to the old life. Jonathan Edwards wrote it this way in his resolution. This is near the end. This is number 68. You'd think, now, wait a second.

I mean, he's grown so much in Christ that the battle has become easier. No, don't think that. He writes this. Resolved.

To confess honestly to myself all that which I find in myself of sin and to confess the whole case to God and beg him for his help. Wow. Why? Because you belong to him. You hate to grieve him.

You want everything to belong to him and to be in pursuit of everything that would please him. So what do you do about it? Let's make some resolutions afresh today. I am resolved to suit up and fight back.

I am resolved to watch the time in clean house. I am resolved to stay the course and keep saying farewell to my old life. I hope that this message has better equipped you to defeat the influence of Satan and the desires of your own flesh. Stephen called this message.

This is war. Just one more message left in this series called Christianity 101 and we'll bring you that on our next broadcast. Between now and then we'd enjoy hearing from you. Our mailing address is Wisdom International P.O. Box 37297 Raleigh, North Carolina 27627 Let me give you that again. You can write to us at Wisdom International P.O. Box 37297 Raleigh, North Carolina 27627 We'll conclude this series on our next broadcast. So join us then here on Wisdom for the Heart.