A Call to an Excellent Life

a new section, but don’t panic, don’t think that
we won’t relate those things to our previous study. But Paul, in a sense, turns a
corner here and he begins to make a more practical application
of some of the things that he has hinted at in more general
fashion in the past. It’s a fresh exhortation, yet
one that is linked to previous themes, as we’ll see. The apostle,
as you recall, had extolled the greatness, the virtues, the benefits
and blessings of salvation in chapter one. At the culmination
of chapter one, he gave us, remember, what is our proper response to
that great salvation? Last week, we pondered what is
our calling? What is the Christians standing
in this salvation? What do we really own? And we saw last week that we
have these grand titles, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for God’s own possession, and a people that
have a specific task, that we are to proclaim the excellencies
of Him who called us out of darkness into marvelous light. And he
calls us as well, not only to consider this new standing that
we own in Christ and this new calling that we have in Christ,
but to remember from where we came. And he says at the end
of verse 10, for you were once not a people, but now you are
the people of God. You had not received mercy, but
now you have received mercy. And with that, Peter goes right
into a new section that builds upon those very thoughts. And
here he begins to exhort us in exactly how we are supposed to
pursue this Christian life. Essentially, what he addresses
here are the two very things that a natural man takes little
thought of. The natural man carries very
little for his soul It always amuses me to see an unbeliever
so focused on health. They exercise all the time and
they eat only the best foods and they take all kinds of vitamins
and they do all these things to care for their body, all the
while indifferent to the condition of their soul. But I said there
were two things that really the natural man cares very little
for. Not only his soul, but God’s glory. The natural man, doesn’t
give a hoot about God’s glory, doesn’t give a hoot about pleasing
God, doesn’t care that God is pleased and glorified and magnified
in the world because he’s concerned about himself. And this passage,
Peter takes to challenge that thinking that even often is resonant
in us. I want to take you in that regard
to verse 11. We’re in turning this corner.
Peter says, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain
from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your
behavior excellent among the Gentiles so that in the thing
in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account
of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God. in the day
of visitation.” What Peter is calling us to is
a new and different kind of life. He’s calling us to an excellent
life. Some people know, when you really
begin to know me, you find out that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I think it took Maybe three months
to generate the Constitution and about two years to edit it. Going back through and making
sure that everything was and it still isn’t perfect. Wouldn’t
you know it? I shared with one brother a couple
of weeks ago that it is hard for me. It’s good, but it’s hard
for me to let go of things because people may not do them as good
as I think that I do them. It is the pitfall of pastoral
ministry. And in that regard, it’s a great
thing to be able to let go of things and just to let saints
do as they do. To let them fall and struggle
and stumble just like I did before I became perfect. See, there’s a little one that
knows me. But perfectionism, sometimes is overly criticized
because we are called to excellence. We are called, as we saw in chapter
one, we’re called to holiness, holiness of life. We are called
to live an excellent life. And if there’s one thing that
bothers me as a perfectionist is someone who takes something
upon themselves and doesn’t seek to do it to the glory of God.
Somebody who just by virtue of the way they go about things
lowers the standard of what it is to do a task. I remember my grandfather used
to say anything worth doing is worth doing right. Right. And
anything worth doing before God is worth doing to the glory of
God, isn’t it? Doesn’t Paul say, do all to the
glory of God? There are no asterisks there.
There are no exceptions. And so we ought to do everything
we can as best as we can do it. Doesn’t mean we won’t make mistakes.
It doesn’t mean we won’t be as good as someone else, but we
ought to do our personal best every time that we endeavor to
serve the Lord in any capacity. And that’s what Paul talks about
here first with regards to our soul. And then with regards to
the glory of God, he says we ought to live an excellent life. He gives us a call, if you will,
to an excellent life. That’s what I’ve entitled the
message. In times past, I called this protocol for saints abroad. How are we to live in a foreign
country? How should we conduct ourselves?
Because so often you hear of these diplomats that are arrested
and they have this so-called diplomatic immunity, right? And
in a sense, they can go to a foreign country and live however they
want with impunity. It’s not so for us. We are in
a foreign land. We have a standard. And if we
break the rules, the consequences are dire, severe. And so a call to an excellent
life is one that every Christian is called to respond to. We must live. Excellently. But I want you to notice we begin
this passage. Peter. Calls out to these believers. Whom he is already endeared himself
repeatedly to remember, we said this is a changed man. This is
not a man who’s in it for himself anymore. This is not a man who’s
looking for the first place among. His brethren, this is a man who
puts himself in with them and loves them, and so he calls them
beloved. Loved ones. And it isn’t so much,
as Peter says that, that he is implying they are loved by Peter. He points out and reminds them
they are beloved to God. They are loved by God. But there is an interesting tie-in
here, because remember, Love had already been emphasized in
this epistle. This was supposed to be our fourth
response, remember, to the great salvation that we own, that our
love for one another should be so great and so magnanimous that
it ends up being a testimony to the lost world. And in that
sense, Peter calls them beloved. But watch. Watch what Peter begins to address
in the lives of the beloved, the lives of Christians, the
lives of the chosen, the priesthood, those whom God had set His love
upon. Wait till you see what he exhorts
them in. In a sense, it’s shocking. And
yet, as we look into the recesses of our own heart, it’s not so
shocking, is it? I urge you, beloved, as aliens
and strangers, to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war
against the soul. It is a call to an excellent
life. Excellence, first of all, in their private life. We are
called to excellence in our private life. When he says here that
we are to abstain, that is simply what the word means. To keep
from. To abstain from lusts is to hate
them with everything in us and to fly or to flee from even the
very first thoughts of them, to not entertain those things,
to not dabble in them. Remember, I’ve said of young
people so often they see not how far they can keep from sin,
but how close they can get without getting burned. That’s not the
thought here. To abstain is not to get close and to warm your
hands at the fire of sin. To abstain is to flee the first
sign of them, to get as far away from them as you can. As one
said, to flee from the very first thoughts and first motions of
them, and if surprised by these, to kill them there. The Puritans
spoke of dealing with sin in pretty plain terms. They called
it the mortification of sin. Sanctified murder is what it
was. Going about looking in your lives for those areas that were
creeping up and putting them to death, that’s the language
they used. We don’t often look at sin in
those terms, do we? We kind of wink at it, call it a weakness.
We struggle. We stumble. Those kinds of things. That’s not how Scripture looks
at it. It’s not how it looks at it here. Abstain. Completely
avoid. The command indicates here that
Christians have the ability. That often is an exercise. The
ability by this new life in Christ, because of the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit, because of the great cloud of witnesses around
us, because of the Word that is given us, we have the ability
to restrain the flesh, to avoid sin. We have the ability. In other words, remember the
old adage, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. That is not the
adage for a Christian. It’s not a saying that we engage
in. Because we’re here, we’re going to enjoy the passing pleasures
of sin. It’s not for us. From what are
we to abstain? We are to abstain from this word
so often in Scripture called lusts. The word is epithemia,
and it just points to strong desires. And I have to tell you,
they’re not even always bad desires. It’s not like you could just
blanket this word throughout its use in Scripture and say
that any time desire is used, it’s bad. It’s not. It’s used
in a good sense a number of times. You know, most notably, it’s
used of the eldership, that he who desires, he who lusts after
the eldership, he desires a good thing. It’s noble to desire that
office. And so this word must be considered
each time in its context. Oftentimes, it does have a bad
context. Romans 6.12 speaks of those evil
desires which are ready to express themselves in bodily or physical
activity. Romans 13.14 speaks of the lust
of the flesh, a phrase that here describes the emotions of the
soul and the natural tendency that we have towards evil things. Galatians 5.16, things that are
inconsistent with the will of God, we’ll see in a moment. First
Timothy 6.9 speaks of foolish and hurtful lusts. There are
desires that we have that are inherently, in and of themselves,
foolish and hurtful. And so if you want to begin to
categorize what Peter is talking about here, the first things
are immoral things. Unlawful things, unbiblical things,
illicit things are in and of themselves foolish and therefore
hurtful. Second Timothy 2.22 speaks of
youthful lusts, and I can remember from the earliest days reading
that you just naturally think of, you know, young men and what
young men typically struggle with. But he’s not talking about
that there. He’s talking about the not. He is not talking just
about that. What he’s talking about is this
tendency to want power and to want things your way. Self-willed
young men is what he’s talking about. Youthful lusts. Second Timothy three, six speaks
of various lusts. Titus two, twelve speaks of worldly
lusts. 1 John 2 speaks of the lusts of
the eyes and the lusts of the world. Those allures of the world
that seem to draw us away from God and away from spiritual things. And it’s these things that Peter
says we must abstain. We have to stand off from those
things. We have to withdraw ourselves from those conversations and
thoughts. As one said, to abstain from
these lusts is to hate and to fly from the very thoughts and
first motions of them. And that we’re not good at. To suspect ourselves, even in
those things that are not sinful, and to keep far off from all
inducements to polluted ways of sin. You see, that’s where
Christians so often dabble. We dabble in good things that
then become bad. We dabble in some earthly delight
that then becomes a sinful passion. And so we begin to pursue those
things that are legitimate, they’re not unlawful, they’re not illegal,
but we begin to pursue them in an evil manner. We begin to gluttonize
those things or pursue them illegally or illicitly. We’re not only to keep ourselves
from the things that are forbidden, forbidden of the flesh as so
often Scripture lays out, but even from the unjust gain of
those things, as one pointed out, from the immoderate desire
and delighting of any earthly thing. Perhaps the biggest error here
would be to think of this only in sensual terms. Because I would
submit to you that almost every one of us struggles with some
area of illicit or immoral desire. And it’s not just in the physical
realm. Romans 13, which verse I mentioned
a moment ago, Paul there, speaking to Christians, just like Peter
is here, said, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision
for the flesh in regards to its desires. Don’t cater to it. Don’t constantly feed the flesh. Even though we’ve been saved,
Remember, Peter here is talking to people that he had outlined
the glories of this salvation. And he said, even though we’ve
been saved and even though we’ve been regenerated, we still possess
an old nature. We’re incarcerated. It’s incarcerated
within our new disposition. And it’s this old unredeemed
flesh that basically foments an ongoing battle in our lives. We’ll come back to that thought
in a moment, but I want to wrap up what Paul has in mind here
with regards to these lusts. It isn’t just, as I said, impure
bodily appetites, but to all wrong, selfish desires and impulses. Galatians 5.19 If you would turn
there for just a moment, this gives us a picture of these. And even this as a catalog isn’t
a complete catalog of what Peter is talking about here. But Paul
enumerates a number of these areas that we tend to forget
about when we think about impure lusts. Galatians 5.19 Now, the deeds
of the flesh, And that is the resident struggle here, just
as Peter identified. These are fleshly lusts that
we have going on in our midst. The deeds of the flesh are evident,
which are and when you begin to succumb to them or give over
to them, they are immorality, impurity. sensuality, idolatry,
sorcery, which I would include their drug use and all the things
that attend to that enmities. When was the last time that you
had a battle with somebody, an ongoing argument? Did you consider
that that was one of these fleshly lusts, the desire to be right,
the desire to be in charge, strife, Jealousy, outbursts of anger,
disputes, dissensions, factions. When was the last time you saw
those identified by you in your own life as being the result
of a fleshly lust? And he goes on, envying, drunkenness,
carousing, and the things like these. That just begins to outline
some of the areas where a Christian can stumble and fall. The sinful lusts of unbelief,
said John Rogers, impatience, hardness of heart, hypocrisy,
rebelling against that which is good, weariness in well-doing. I mean, how many of us have struggled
with that one? Just, alright, enough. I just
had it. It’s only me that does the serving
here. Right? Pride, anger, envy, self-love,
covetousness, uncleanness, uncharitableness. John Rogers is that same Puritan
saint who said there as he watched a prisoner being marched to the
gallows, he said there, but by the grace of God, go I. John Rogers knew his own heart. If you could go back to first
Peter two, as I said in the New Testament, the word flesh implies
far more than just the body in this and the physical nature
of man. It stands for human nature that
stands apart from God. That is the flesh. It means the
unredeemed and unregenerate human nature. It means this Christless
human nature. It means life lived without the
standards, without the help, without the grace and without
the influence of Christ, said one. Fleshly lusts and sins of
the flesh therefore include not only the grosser sins, but all
the sins of pride and envy, malice, hatred, false and evil thinking,
which are characteristic of false and human nature. You see, what
Peter says here is that just by virtue of being saved doesn’t
immediately extract you out of that struggle. The struggle,
the battle goes on, as we’ll see. We’re called to an excellent
life. We’re called to excellence in
our private life. Look at this. First of all, because
of your new identity. Now, what he does here is point
In a sense, he’s using different terms, but he points to the same
thing that he’d already identified in previous verses. Here he calls
us aliens and strangers, and we are aliens and strangers because
we are a chosen race, because we’re a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for God’s own possession. He uses different
terminology, but he points to the same precious truth. We’re
different. We must necessarily be different. He describes us as aliens, foreigners,
strangers in a country. We don’t speak the same language.
The standards are not ours. The desires are not ours. We don’t desire the same things
that they want. What it points to here is the
heathen, these godless people among whom the Christians live
for a time. You know, think of it in these
terms. If this is the beginning of your life, the point in time
in which you were born and this is the point in time in which
you die and you’re a Christian, say 70, 80 years, give it 100,
whatever you wish. This is the point in time in
your life. And if you’re a Christian, you
take that away and you live forever and you say, well, what is this
brief time? What is this brief? period of time in which I live
among unbelievers. And why on earth would I live
like them? Why would I want to? And because you dwell with them
for a time, you have a duty toward them, as we will see in a moment. Whatever other people do, serving
the flesh, loving the world, It is incongruous with our calling. It’s unseemly. It’s improper
and totally out of sync with our calling in Christ. Essentially,
what he says here is think about who you are, consider who you
are. If you were citizens of the world,
you could have the same priorities and the same loves and the same
aspirations as they do, but you’re not. You’re chosen. You’re called out of the world
and here and now you are merely travelers passing through in
a very brief fashion this world. This call to an excellent life,
he gives us a second reason here. In our call to excellence in
private life, not only because of our new identity, the fact
that we are strangers and aliens, we don’t fit in as priests here
in this world. But also because of the nature
of sin. What is the nature of sin? Peter
says it right here, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain
from fleshly lust, which wage war against the soul. Oh, you mean it’s that serious? It’s worse. Because we don’t
even know what war is like anymore. We don’t even I can remember
when I was a kid, I had this toy called Anzio Beach. It was
all these little men on this beach with all these boats and
tractors and things. I didn’t even realize until I
was probably in my 30s that Anzio Beach is a real place where real
men landed and died. War for us is even with the TV
and all the reports that we have, we’re totally unaware of what
it’s like. When Peter says war here, he means war. It’s to the
death. Sin wants to take it to the death. It’s a death match. And even if it can’t kill our
soul and annihilate our soul and ruin it, it can make it unserviceable
to God. And you know what? Paul was in
this struggle. Paul knew The struggle with sin,
Paul knew the battle with sin, Paul knew what sin was. For that
turned to Romans, chapter seven. And I’m going to read this, I’m
not going to read the whole chapter, but I am going to read a lengthy
verse, so settle in, get your Bibles, Romans seven, and we
want to look beginning in verse 14. Paul here is dealing with
this whole struggle of the flesh and the old nature and the new
nature and what he desired to do and what he really did and
how that whole thing was playing itself out in his life. Verse
14, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am a flesh
sold into bondage and sin. For what I am doing, I do not
understand. For I am practicing what I would like to do. For
I am not practicing what I would like to do, but the very thing
that I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do,
I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good, so now
no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
Paul said that there was an ongoing battle in his life and he yearned
to please God and all the while his flesh was assailing him. For I know, verse 18, that nothing
good dwells in me that is in my flesh, for the willing is
present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good
that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that
I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing
I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which
dwells in me. I find, then, the principle that
evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully
concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different
law in the members of my body. His heart, his mind, his tongue,
the way that he was behaving. I see a different law in the
members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and
making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members. You see, this sin, Paul points
out, it isn’t just this antagonism. It’s not just that sin wells
up within you and every once in a while needles you. as a
bothersome neighbor. But it is a relentless, it’s
a malicious aggression. And you know what image pops
into my mind? It’s the insurgents in Iraq.
It’s not just that they want to bother the U.S. military.
They want to kill them and eventually us. They hate us. And so do our sins. Our sins
hate our soul and they want to do the utmost damage to our soul. Back to first Peter, if you would. One pastor said that these fleshly
lusts embrace the soul so that they may strangle it. That’s
their goal. If sin could do mortal damage
to our soul, it would. But that’s the war. These sins
wage war against our mental faculties, as Paul points out, against reason,
against memory, against imagination, against conscience, against our
affections, against our hope. The whole thing is under attack. One pastor said it this way.
The service of the flesh and these inordinate lusts, is a
point of far baser, far lower, to use a newer word, slavery
and indignity of the soul. They not only divert the soul
from spiritual things for the time, but they habitually indispose
it to every spiritual work. Did you hear what he says? They
can’t take your soul from you, but they can damage it to the
point where you’re just useless to God. They habitually indispose it
to every spiritual work and then make it earthly and sensual and
so unfit for heavenly things. Where these lusts or any one
of them have dominion, the soul cannot at all perform any good,
neither pray, nor hear, nor read the word rightly. And insofar
as any of them prevail upon the soul of a child of God, they
do disjoint and disable it for holy things.” Isn’t that Isn’t
that the very purpose for which we were called as we saw last
week? To holy things? To glorify God in all that we
do? It is. Of course, the blatant sins, we see those
and those are the first things that we, by God’s grace, attack,
isn’t it? But it’s the subtle ones. It’s
the subtle ones that come up and creep up. One Puritan said it this way,
of course, we should admit that all excessive indulgence and
any appetite injures the body. All you have to do is look around
and you see that. And especially the organs through
which the sins against the whole fabric has been committed. That
much is plain. But we may not at all realize
how destructive these fleshly lusts are to inner life. They
attack it. They conquer it. They lead it
into captivity, impairing its energies, sullying its purity,
lowering its tone and cutting off the locks of its moral strength.
How many are there around us eminently fitted by their gifts
to lead the hosts of God who, like Samson, grind in the prison
house, making pastime for their foes because they have been mastered
by appetites which they should have controlled. What a sad thought. What a sad thought. He says that there’s these puny
little desires that get the best of so many of us, so many of
us that could be gloriously used by God. And because we’ve given
over to this puny appetite, we make ourselves useless. We’re called to an excellent
life. We’re called to an excellent private life and we’re called
to an excellent public life. Secondly, called to an excellent
public life. Look at verse 12 here where Peter
says, keep your behavior excellent. Certainly that’s where I got
the part of the title for the message, isn’t it? Keep your
behavior excellent. If you’re reading one of the
some of the older translations, I think the King James has it
conversation. And because of our modern year,
we might hear that and just think we’re supposed to have good speech,
but it goes far beyond speech. The word in the original in the
King James conversation meant the way that you carry out your
everyday life in all that you do. The whole conduct, not simply
words and talk, That’s what conversation meant in the 17th century. It
meant your whole life. And our whole life is supposed
to be excellent, gracious, dignified, commanding admiration. Can you
really honestly say that? As we take stock of our lives,
can we honestly say that it commands admiration in the eyes of the
lost? It should. It’s supposed to,
says Peter. Remember, Peter told us that
we were called for a set and specific purpose. He said that
we’re a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people for God’s own possession. That you may proclaim. The whole
reason we’re here is to proclaim Christ. Shouldn’t that be reflected
in the way that we live? It should. Peter says, keep your
behavior excellent among the Gentiles. That’s the motive.
They’re watching. That’s the motive that’s given
here for honorable, consistent conduct. The way of life is the
effect that it might have on those who are watching. The Gentiles. We’ll come back to that particular
thought. We’re supposed to Manifest by
God’s grace, always excellence in our public life because of,
first of all, because of the character of the watching world.
Look at what Peter says, keep your behavior excellent among
the Gentiles, those who do not know God, so that and that’s
why I’ve told you this before. I don’t let people call. I don’t
even let my best Jewish friends call me a Gentile. I’m not a
Gentile. A Gentile was one that did not know and did not love
God. That’s not me. We’re non-Jews. I was a Gentile,
but I’m not a Gentile anymore, and I take exception to being
called that. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles.
Why? So that in the thing in which
they slander you as evildoers, they may, on account of your
good deeds as they observe them, glorify God. Let’s unpack that
for just a moment. Keep your behavior excellent
among the Gentiles simply so that they may glorify God. What? How on earth is an unbeliever
going to look at my life and bring glory to God? Well, let’s
see. That’s the desire anyway. And the motive here for doing
so, remember when Peter says, keep your behavior excellent,
he looks at them and he doesn’t give them the kudos. He doesn’t
say that this is what’s in it for you. The impression here,
the motive here is not self-regarding, it doesn’t regard them, they
don’t get the benefit necessarily from living excellently. The
aim is the conversion of the people before whom they live. Peter urges them to dismantle
and disprove these false and evil reports by their pure and
noble lives. To conduct themselves in the
way that their so-called accusers might be won to the faith. That’s
what the whole passage here is about. This fits in perfectly
with the previous verse of our calling to proclaim Christ. This
is proclaiming Christ with our lives so that they might thank
God and praise God and glorify God. One person said that the best
argument for Christianity is a real Christian, not a great
thought. Rather than handing them a book,
rather than, you know, pointing them to some course or some,
you know, detailed explanation. The best argument for Christianity
is a real Christian. They want to see how Christ lived
and how Christ loved. Love them and live for them.
Live your life to proclaim Christ. Whether we like it or not, every
Christian is an advertisement for Christianity. Isn’t that
a frightening thought sometimes? We were talking on the way over
here about bumper stickers, right? I mean, how many of us would
be just petrified to put a bumper sticker about Christianity or
Christ or Providence Bible Church on the back of our cars for fear
of the way that people see that we drive? In fact, you know, it’s interesting
in Acts, Acts one, eight. Jesus said he didn’t tell them
what kind of godly people they were going to be. He just pointed
to them and said, you shall be my witnesses. The world is going
to be watching you. And he doesn’t even say whether
you’re going to be good witnesses or bad witnesses. He just says
they’re going to be watching. You are Christianity. I mean,
how frightening is that? How overwhelming is that to us?
That we are Christianity to the world. You are Christianity to
your neighbor. You are Christianity to your
boss. You are Christianity to your unbelieving family. You shall be my witnesses so
that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, I mean,
don’t we all know this? As soon as you begin to proclaim
Christ or name the name of Christ or begin to share Christ with
somebody, don’t they immediately begin to slander you and poke
fun at you? And the phrase here essentially
means we might even call it in our modern language to run down. They run you down. It just speaks
of untrue gossip. They just begin to, you know,
shoot the mouth off about you and all kinds of untrue and unproven
things. They slander you as an evildoer. One person characterized this
tendency as he pointed to these accusations of a very formidable
kind. I mean, sometimes people will
say some tremendously hurtful things about us, won’t they? There were accusations of a very
formidable kind that would arise immediately in that pagan society
that Peter is speaking about. which with all its cultivation
was exceedingly savage. Everybody thought that they were
you know, they had arrived and this was society as it was supposed
to be. And yet they were just brutal
people. Brutal. I mentioned before, as we opened
this epistle, that they were undergoing here persecution of
a kind that the world has never seen since. Never seen it before.
And they’d never seen it since. Brutal, savage. Charges of boycotting
interest of trade that was already seen in the book of Acts, right?
Act 16, setting slaves against masters as a charge that’s raised
in scripture, children against parents, wives against husbands.
All of those things would come rolling out in a very short amount
of time. And because of that, you don’t
doubt that even worse accusations were coming and they did. Christians
were accused of cannibalism, of prostitution, because they
befriended those and were willing to open their arms to those who
struggled in even the worst kinds of sins. Cannibalism, incest, subversive
activities, treason, all of those things. In fact, when Nero burst
on the scene, remember, Nero hated the Christians so much
that through his own carelessness, he set the city on fire. Some
say accidentally, and as the city burned, he began to persecute
the Christians and blamed them. He blamed them. This very thought is taken from
Christ’s words and in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 16. Let
your light. Shine before men in such a way
that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Live in such a way that you’re
going to essentially shut their mouth to their criticisms of
you. Shut their mouth to all the evil
things that they say about you. And how forgetful we are of the
importance, the crucial nature of excellence in a public life. We tend to think that suddenly
because we get our private life in order, you know, you can’t
just live there. You’ve got to go outside. You’ve
got to live among them. You’ve got to interact. John Rogers again said it this
way. He said this rebukes those professing
religion. In other words, they make a public
profession of faith. They profess Christ with their
mouth. But remember not with whom they live, but they live
as if they were only going among the good that would hide their
frailties or interpret them to be the best. That’s how we treat
one another, isn’t it? And we should generally think
the best of one another. When somebody stumbles, you know,
don’t give up on them, don’t write them off. They remember not before whom
they live as if they were only among the good, not as if they
were among the wicked that seek out occasion against God’s servants
that desire no better loot than the fall of a professor. They would like nothing better
than to see you stumble and fall on your face and smear the testimony
of Christ that you have. They’d like nothing better. We’re watched by those of opposite
affections, aren’t we? We’re watched by those of opposite
loves and desires. We’re watched by those and we’re
under daily examination by those people, aren’t we? Our Christian life is under a
constant scrutiny, isn’t it? It is so at work. It is so in
our neighborhoods. It is so in our families. They
constantly watch us and they make careful note of it when
we stumble, don’t they? One explained it this way. He said, we’re watched by those
who are of opposite tendencies. There is a particular malice
in the world against those that are born of God which ultimately
vents in accusations and reproaches. If the tongues of the ungodly
are sharp swords, even to one another, they will sharpen them
more than ordinary when they are to use them against the righteous
to wound their name. Being naturally haters of God
and yet unable to reach him, what wonder is it if their malice
vents itself against his children? And so he says we should expect
it in the way that they treat one another in the way that we
know that they hate God, just as we did before we knew Christ. They cannot raise to the estate
of the godly, and so they endeavor to draw them down by detraction,
they will tear you apart if they see sin in your life. He continues in closing by saying
those evil speakings of the world against pious men are partly
gross falsehoods invented without the least appearance of truth. But how much more with a wicked
insult upon the least real blemishes that they can spy out among the
professors of godliness, if they see real sin in your life, they
will chew you to pieces, don’t they? And those are the very
people before whom you’re called to live. Look down at the passage again,
so that even in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers,
you’re going to live in such a way that you counter that with
your life so that they may, on account of your good deeds, as
they observe them, they can’t help but looking and seeing that
you are who you say you are, that you are a follower of Christ,
that you hate sin and love righteousness. They may, on account of your
good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. And there have been more inks
filled on exactly what, when that day is. And people, some
people have even given literal dates to it. Is it the day of
judgment? You know what? I don’t think
it is. So that they may glorify God on the day of visitation,
I believe that that’s the day that Christ arrives in a sense
on their doorstep, as it were. and calls them into an account
of what they’ve seen in their life. What have you seen of a
Christian? What have you seen of Christ
in this world? What have you seen of God in
this world that he’s created? And he basically it’s the day
of salvation for some. And in the day of salvation,
there is cause for some to look up to God and thank God that
there were other believers in the world that lived as they
were supposed to. That’s as simply as it is. Now, it’s certainly
possible That this is the day of judgment. And on that day
of judgment, they fall before God, fall on their knees, giving
glory to Christ for who He is, not as believers. Remember, every
knee shall bow and they fall on their knees as believers and
they admit, you know what? Those Christians were real. They
glorify God for what He did in your life. I take it to be the
first. Because that’s the very purpose
we’re here, isn’t it? To proclaim Christ. To live before a watching
world. That they may glorify God as
they come to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. What a great calling. What a great calling to live
an excellent life. Let’s examine our hearts. Oh Lord, not one of us lives
a good and perfect life, a truly excellent life in every respect.
But that is our heart’s desire. It clearly was Peter’s exhortation
to us that both publicly and privately, we are called to purify
and to examine our lives and to live excellently for your
glory and for the salvation of souls. Lord God, be glorified in the
changes You make in our lives this day. We thank You and we
praise You in Jesus’ name.