Christ-Bought Reverence

and turn to the book of 1 Peter. Find ourselves in chapter 1 of
Peter’s epistle still. The passage that we’ll be considering
is there in your bulletin with places for notes if you prefer. We will take a little bit fuller
consideration of this passage. We’re going to do it in a little
more rapid fashion than we’ve done in the past couple of weeks. We’ve been looking at first Peter
one literally months now, haven’t we? And we have acknowledged
from the last several weeks that it’s quite clear the whole first
chapter of Peter’s epistle is all about salvation. In fact,
it is so full, almost every facet of salvation is dealt with. If
you look back, and I just want you to go back to verse one one
more time by way of review, Peter, even in the opening words, the
opening sentence of this great epistle, you have the elements
of salvation. We saw there the unmistakable
features of the church. We saw God’s flock as seen from
the world’s perspective that we are aliens, a subject which
He visits again even today. We are aliens. We don’t belong
here. We don’t fit in. When we do,
there’s trouble. We shouldn’t fit in. We shouldn’t
even want to fit in. As seen from the gospel’s perspective,
we are scattered. We are, as it should be, so many
gospel seeds planted throughout the world. Wherever we’re placed,
there we grow. From the perspective of God,
we are chosen. And Peter enters into this grand
theme, not in the fifth chapter, as would be the case if I were
writing the epistle, but since the Holy Spirit inspired the
writings, Peter deals with it immediately. And he says that
from God’s perspective, we are hand-picked. We saw, as we got
into the body of the passage there in verse 3, we saw the
blessings of new birth in Christ. We reviewed that in times past,
but we’ll just skirt through that this time briefly. In granting
to us new life, first of all, God was motivated by mercy. That’s the only thing that motivated
Him in looking down through the ages and drawing you to salvation. It was His mercy. Not anything
good in you. Not because you were so handsome.
Not because you were so wise. Not because you were so witty.
And that you could bring something good to the Christian table.
Nothing, nothing but God’s mercy. What a grand element of salvation
that is in granting us new life, God only not only was motivated
by mercy, but in so doing, he restored to us hope. not just
a crossed-fingered, wringing-of-the-hands kind of a hope, a true, genuine,
abiding hope, a settled confidence in God that He would do what
He purposed to do. There was a third blessing of
new birth in Christ in granting to us new life. God was motivated
by mercy, restored to us hope, and He promised to us an inheritance. That is an element of salvation,
right? When we get to heaven, God has
something for us, something that He says is reserved in heaven
for you. We saw, beginning in verse 6
and following, the anatomy and the end of Christian faith. The
anatomy. What is it like? What is it about? What are the constituent elements
of this Christian faith? And we saw that in that passage
that so often is seen as a passage about fretting over trials is
about faith. That’s what the passage is about.
It’s not about trials. It’s about faith. Christian faith
in and of itself is a joyous faith that, first of all, carries
us through trials to glory. The trials are there in that
passage. It’s undeniable. But Peter’s focus isn’t on the
trials. It’s at the glory after the trials
and the faith that carries us through. Not only does this faith
carry us through trials to glory, but faith carries us through
obscurity to salvation. And now the very subject that
around which Peter has alluded and commented and given us various
facets and pictures and images of, now he delves into the very
subject of salvation. And he says that salvation is
absolutely first and foremost by faith. Having introduced this subject,
look at verse 10. Having introduced the subject,
Peter can’t quickly depart from it. It’s been building and now
that it’s out, he’s not quickly going to turn away from this
subject. And we looked at the glorious
elements of God’s revelation to us, beginning in verse 10,
carrying through verse 12. We saw that it was a salvation
of grace, this message that God has given to us. It’s not anything
that we’ve done. It is merely the magnanimous
heart of God that carries to us this salvation. Verse 10,
this message that God gave to us is not only a message of grace,
but it’s a message of suffering and glory, a suffering Savior
who would be and has been glorified. And finally, it’s a revelation
of gospel mysteries. These things, not only did the
prophets seek to understand better, but even the angels in heaven
long, they eagerly desire to look into these mysteries of
salvation. They cannot quite grasp why God
would be so kind to us. Then, having lodged that as the
great theme for this entire chapter, what Peter then does after telling
us all of what God has done for us in choosing us, in drawing
us to Himself, in giving to us Christ, in saving us from sin. Essentially, he says now, what’s
your part? And in v. 13-25, Peter enters into this
great section of Scripture that we’ve called the saint’s response
to salvation. How do we, once saved, respond? We’ve seen several elements so
far. We’ll consider a third this morning. The first response of
the Christian is a grace-filled confidence. Look back again at
v. 13. A grace-filled confidence. Gird your minds for action. Keep
sober in spirit. Fix your hope. Put it there and
don’t let it be moved. Fix your hope completely on the
grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We are to live as those who have been saved, who have been redeemed,
not this wishful, wistful, worrisome crowd that we so often become. We are to have a grace-filled
confidence. Secondly, the second response
to salvation that should be part of the believer’s life is a God-like
holiness. It doesn’t mean that we’re going
to be God, but it does mean that we’re going to emulate Him in
the noblest of God’s character qualities, His holiness. Look
at verse 14. As obedient children. He doesn’t
say that we are to be obedient children. Peter looks out and
says that he notices that there is obedience among us. That is
something that is worked into us by God. As obedient children,
do not be conformed to the former lusts. There was a lifestyle
that we used to engage in. It characterized the way that
we lived. That’s who we were before we
knew Christ. As obedient children, do not
be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance,
but like the Holy One. God, we saw, is the standard.
God is always the standard. We run aground immediately, spiritually
speaking, when we begin to look at other people, men or women,
or no matter how high their calling, no matter how great their achievements
in Christ, we run aground as soon as we make man the standard.
God is the standard. Christ is the standard, not people. Like the Holy One who called
you, be holy yourselves in all your behavior. but there was
a third and even a fourth response to salvation. I’ll mention the
third briefly. Go to the fourth, and then we’re
going to come back in and treat the third in full. The third
element, the third response to salvation that should characterize
the believer’s life is a Christ-bought reverence. A Christ-bought reverence. And the fourth, a born-again
affection. There should be a kind of love
that we have for one another that so far supersedes the world
that it should be infectious and contagious. It should be
a witness to the lost. The way that we care for one
another, the way that we bear with one another should be noticeable. It should be different. But I
want to go to the third. The third response. that is supposed
to characterize the life of believers. And that is the response of a
Christ-bought reverence. If you would, look with me at
verse 17 as I read. Where Peter writes, and if you
address as father, the one who impartially judges according
to each man’s work, Conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your
stay upon earth, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable
things like silver or gold from your feudal way of life inherited
from your forefathers, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished
and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the
foundation of the world but has appeared in these last times
for the sake of you, who through Him are believers in God, who
raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your
faith and hope are in God.” The other night we had a baptism
service and I shared a few thoughts. And I already had this passage
in my mind One of the things that I acknowledged
the other night that I want to just reiterate here this morning
is Christians have this strange tendency of separating out all
of their life and putting it in neat compartmentalized little
piles. There is the area of their life
they call sacred. And we find that so convenient
to have the sacred part of our life when we can go to church
and we dress up, we comb our hair special, and we put on our
Christian face, and we go and we talk Christianly, and we act
Christianly, and an hour and a half later we go home. Oh,
but there’s other parts of our life that are sacred. There’s
Bible time. There’s perhaps Bible studies that we go to. Maybe
we’ll even plunk in a CD and that’s a sacred time. But really,
In reality, that’s the pile that remains over here. That’s the
sacred area of our life. And then the rest is what we
could call secular. The normal part of our life,
the mundane part, getting up, going to work, feeding the horse,
feeding the dog, feeding ourselves. That’s where most of life is
lived. And that’s the secular part. A.W. Tozer, years ago, challenged
this kind of thinking when he said that every act of a Christian’s
life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord’s
Supper. Now, really, realistically, think
through it. Can you honestly say that you
live your life moment by moment with that kind of thought in
mind? That what I’m engaged in now, this work that I do, this
chore that I’m doing if I’m a young person, This schoolwork that
I’m engaged in, this job that I’m doing, can we really say
that we are thereby worshipping God? That what we’re doing is
sacred in the eyes of God? I would dare say that very few
people can say that. Tozer goes on and says, to say
this is not to bring all acts down to one dead level. Rather,
to lift every act up into a living kingdom and to turn the whole
life into a sacrament. It is not what a man does that
determines whether his work is sacred or secular. It’s why he
does it. The motive is everything. Let
a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter
do no common act. Do you know what he says, people?
He takes us to 1 Peter 1. When God is the One that has
set us apart, we looked at it last week, that is to be our
second response to salvation. Holiness being set apart. And once we are set apart, as
Tozer says, we can therefore do no common act. All of life becomes worship.
Or does it? Or has it? That’s the troublesome thought.
That for most people, all of life is not an act of worship.
The sacred becomes compartmentalized the rest of their life. And we
find it easy to move seamlessly from one realm to the other,
don’t we? We can go and we can be so spiritual and then we can
walk out and become just like the world. And Peter wants to
guard against that. Peter knows the difficulties
that these first century Christians were living in. This unprecedented
persecution, this incredible pressure that they were under
to conform with the world, to be like the world, to live like
the world, to not go against the stream. Peter knows what
they’re facing. What we face is mild in comparison. Peter says that all of our life
is to be an act of worship. And he sets down here three motivations
to a worshipful life. Three motivations to a worshipful
life. But before we get into those,
let’s consider where am I getting this little word, worship? Where
am I getting this idea of worshiping God? Peter says, and it’s the
only imperative in the entire verse, conduct yourselves in
fear. Conduct yourselves in fear. And for so many people, that
brings with it this Old Testament imagery of cowering in dread,
of fear of this almost evil God that people portray in their
minds. This harsh and foreboding God. A God that is to be feared. A God that can’t be approached.
A God that can’t be loved. Certainly a God who can love. It is a God who demands. A God
who expects. A God who must be obeyed rigidly
and harshly. Peter knew that these first century
Christians needed the reminder of fearing God. But when Peter
urged them to a healthy fear of God, Peter didn’t lead them
astray. He didn’t lead them into that
imagery that we just suggested. It wasn’t this harsh and foreboding
God that they have come to know. In fact, it’s a repeated theme
throughout Scripture. Luke 12, verse 5, I will show
you whom you should fear. Fear Him who, after killing the
body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, fear Him.
That is true. That is part of the character
of God. That is part of the nature of God. And that is part of what
it is to fear or dread that God. But the word reverence here or
the word here has the implication of reverence. This reverence that we are to
engage in this reverential fear, if you will, has been so confined,
as I suggested, as to have almost an exclusive realm in the realm
of worship. And it certainly has its focus
in worship, but as the passage shows, it’s supposed to govern
the whole conduct of the life and thought of the Christian.
All of our life is supposed to be an act of worship, as we said.
This fear. This reverential fear is supposed
to be the kind of fear of a good father, not a slavish or superstitious
fear, a dread of someone who is unloving. And this fear is
the safeguard of holiness, the holiness that we just considered
last week. What guards against dipping in
too far into the sinful realm in which we’re placed? Fear. The fear of God. This reverence, as we said, should
govern the whole life, all of the conduct of the Christian. One pastor described it this
way. He said, although fear in and
by itself cannot produce good or spiritually right action,
yet it performs a vital function in keeping the soul awake. Fear,
as one said, rings the alarm bell that things aren’t right,
that things aren’t going well, that you’re not going in a good
direction. Fear resides in the conscience of the individual. He goes on and he says that fear
rings the alarm bell and rouses the conscience. It blows the
trumpet of warning. It creates a pause, an opportunity
for better and nobler things to make themselves heard. Don’t
do that. You don’t want to do that. That
is fearful living. That is reverential living. The fear that is commended here
is what one called a holy self-suspicion. Don’t we know of the one writing
this? Didn’t we see of Peter’s life
the very transgression about which he now appeals to us. He
knows what he’s saying. And as we said before, as we
looked at Peter’s life, he’s either the biggest hypocrite
that ever walked the face of the earth, or he is a humble
saint of God using his own inadequacies, his own sinful past, to call
us to a life of change. A life that was changed just
like Peter’s. Because Peter, as we know, had
an overconfidence. Oh, not me, Lord. I’ll never
deny you. And Peter did. What he recommends
here is a holy self-sufficient, a fear of offending God. See, the more that a Christian
believes in God and loves God and rejoices in what God has
done and who God is, the more unwilling he is to displease
Him. It’s a fear of displeasing God. And he’s afraid of that. On the
other side, the fear Is fear being the true principle
of wariness or watchfulness? A fleeing of sin as we’ve seen
before? And occasions of sin and temptations? That’s that reverential fear.
It is knowing who you are and knowing your sinful tendency.
It’s knowing the holiness of God. Knowing that all that He’s
done on your behalf. And a fear to offend. a reluctance
to offend. One great Puritan said it this
way, as the evil is great, and you know that it is, as the evil
is great, so the Christian has great reason to fear in regard
of his danger in it. Considering the multitude and
the strength and the craft of his enemies. I mean, imagine
the fact that you’re up against the devil and his henchmen. They
want to thwart every effort, every step that you make towards
holiness. Consider the multitude, strength
and craft of his enemies and his own weaknesses and unskillfulness
to resist them. And may I add even here, unwillingness. Isn’t there a resident within
us, an unwillingness to get too holy, too quick? that we say,
much like Augustine did, oh God, give me holiness. Just not yet. He goes on and says, and his
sad experience in often being foiled teaches him that it is
so. Can’t you look back on your own
life and see that your strength is not so strong? That your life
is not so unassailable? You know that you can. He finishes with this statement.
He says, a godly man is oftentimes driven to wonder at his own frailty
and inconsistency. Aren’t you? I mean, isn’t that
our frustration, just like Romans 7? Wretched man that I am? And yet, how easily we have these
strong moments, and yet how easily He says, at other times, base,
vile temptations vex and bemire him. They put him down in the
muck. All this keeps him in a continual
fear, and that fear in a continual vigilance and circumspectness. In other words, having looked
out on his life history, he knows that he’s prone to fail. You
know it. You know the devil’s out there.
You know the temptations are coming. Be watchful. Exercise some reverential fear
and a self-distrust. This worship, this reverential
fear is supposed to touch everything that we do. As one pastor said,
it’s all that we are. Worship is all that we are rightly
reacting to all that God is. Do we? Do we really genuinely worship
in all that we do? Everywhere that we go, everything
that we engage in, can we honestly say that it is an act of worship,
an act of reverential fear, reverence for God, If it isn’t, Peter gives us three
motives to that end. Three motives to a worshipful
life. First of all, our first motive
to a worshipful life is that our confidence, pardon me, is
our confidence in the Father, in Judge. Peter takes us to our
own testimony. Look down at verse 17. He says,
if you address as father the one who impartially judges according
to each man’s work, even in saying if, he doesn’t doubt your testimony. He doesn’t doubt what you claim
to believe. In fact, you can even say since,
or in view of the fact that you call on God as father, in view
of the fact that you know that God is the judge, Peter isn’t doubting these first
century Christians. And God’s Word, if you have professed
Christ, isn’t doubting you. It isn’t calling you to doubt
of any kind. He’s saying, since you address
as Father. And you know what? This is the safeguard for us. It’s the knowledge of God. An
awareness of God and who He is. One pastor said years ago, nearly
a hundred years ago, he said, the history of mankind will show
that no people has ever risen above its religion. Man’s spiritual
history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been
greater than its idea of God. Stay with me. Worship is pure
or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
In other words, he says that your image of God is going to
directly influence, totally control your worship. Your worship is
only going to be good and noble if your idea of God is good and
noble and right and accurate. He concludes with this, and he
says, for this reason, the gravest question before the church is
always God Himself. And the most portentous fact
about any man is not what he at any given time may do or say,
but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. You
know what he says? He says before you should even
live, before you should even try to correct your life or exercise
any act of worship, you need to know God. You need to know
what God is like. You need to know your theology
proper. What is God like? And you know
what? Peter says the same thing. He says, you know what? Get your theology right and everything
else falls into line. So what is theology like? What
is God like? Verse 17. He’s a Father. He’s like a Father. And that
brings forth beautiful images, hopefully to most, He is one
who is like a fatherly figure, one who loves us and cares for
us and provides for us and loves us and ministers to us in the
most deep and intimate ways. He’s fatherly. And he says you
call on him as such. But there’s another side of God
that we often want to ignore, don’t we? We often want to forget
about this other side of God. We want to go with just the Father
part. The church in this day and age, I would tell you, is
almost exclusively geared towards the Father part of God, to the
exclusion completely of the judge part of God. But you can’t take
one without the other. They come as part of the package
of who God is. And He is not only Father, Peter
says, He is also a judge. Look at the passage. If you address
his father, the one who impartially judges. It’s a beautiful word,
and you know what here for the Christian parent is where the
imagery falls apart because we don’t, you know, father and judge,
we can understand those much better from God because father
and judge as a parent, we don’t do very well. We’re not as objective
as we can be. We don’t see the sins of our
children that clearly, do we? We don’t judge impartially. We’re
much harder on other children than we ever are on our own.
But not God. God’s not impartial. The Word
is an interesting one. It means literally to receive
face. God doesn’t receive anybody’s
face. He’s impartial. Outward appearance
doesn’t matter to God. How much money you have doesn’t
matter to God. What culture you’re from, what
your class level is doesn’t matter to God. Family background, your
great family history, your bloodline doesn’t matter to God. Your education
doesn’t matter. Beauty, intellect, all those
things don’t matter to God. All those things that affect
the opinions of people don’t matter to God. When it comes
to looking at someone’s character, when it comes to judging someone’s
heart, those things don’t matter to God. God is spoken of in Scripture,
not only as a judge, He is the righteous judge. We’ve forgotten
what righteousness even is, don’t we? We think of it as kind of
being similar to holiness, but it’s right. It’s perfectly fair
according to God’s perfect standard. God never winks an eye at sin. God judges fairly. He is always and completely,
perfectly impartial. God looks at the facts and He
decides the case. Romans 2.5 mentions the righteous
judgment of God. In the Old Testament, there was
this overarching theme, wasn’t there, of the impending judgment
of God. But God was always seen as a
judge who was perfectly fair. Israel was going to get exactly
what they deserved and they knew it. And that’s what caused them
fear. Nearly every New Testament book
speaks of God as the judge and speaks of the day of judgment. There is going to be a day of
judgment. Some people would say, well,
but a loving God, you know, a father wouldn’t judge. Oh, really? Then you haven’t read your Bible.
Because a loving God does judge just like a loving father does.
He judges the behavior of his son and he chastens those whom
he loves. Hebrews 12. If you look at the history of
Scripture. A.W. Packer lays it out for us when
he said, pardon me, J.I. Packer laid it out for us when
he said that God judged Adam and Eve. He judged the corrupt
world of Noah’s day. He judged Sodom and Gomorrah.
He judged Israel’s Egyptian taskmasters, those who worship the golden
calf, Nadab and Abihu, Korin, Dathan and Abiram. Achan, Israel,
Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, the Jews for rejecting Christ, Ananias
and Sapphira for lying to God, Herod for his pride. God is a
judge. God judges. Well, who does God
judge? Who does this fatherly figure
judge? Everyone. He’s going to judge you and he’s
going to judge me. And he’s not going to judge us
all on the same standards. He’s going to judge us according
to his standard. He’s not going to expect of you
what he expects of me or you of someone else. Proverbs 24, 12, if you say,
see, we did not know this. Remember the old saying, ignorance
of the law is no excuse. There it is. If you say, see,
we did not know this. Does he not consider it who weighs
the hearts? And does he not know it who keeps
your soul? And will he not render to every man according to his
work? Matthew 16, verse 27, Psalm 62,
12. The Son of Man will recompense
every man according to his deeds. Now, how He does that without
judging According to some people’s thought is beyond me. Matthew goes on chapter 25, God’s
going to judge all the nation, the sheep and the goats, the
righteous and the accursed ones. I mean, it shouldn’t come as
any surprise that God is a judge to the Christian. We can expect
it. We can expect to be called before
God and called into an account, called to give an account of
our stewardship. One Puritan said it this way,
he said, God has resolved to be every man’s judge, rewarding
every man according to his works. Retribution is the inescapable
moral law of creation. And God will see that each man
sooner or later receives what he deserves, if not here, then
hereafter. Now, that doesn’t mean that a
Christian can lose his or her salvation. But there are those
deeds or better misdeeds that are going to be judged by God.
They’re in a sense being judged now. And unless we repent, we
will lose blessings because of it. There were four qualities, if
you look at the Old Testament judge, there were four qualities
of a judge. Number one, there was authority.
As our maker, God has authority. He owns us. And as our owner,
he has a right to dispose of us as he will. Even as we heard
read in Romans, that powerful passage in Romans nine, God is
the maker. We are the clay. He can do with
us what he wants. He has authority over us. Secondly,
God is identified with good and right. A judge is good and right. He’s not an unjust judge, one
who doesn’t desire wrong or right to triumph over wrong. God is
just and perfect. And he has the wisdom, a judge
does, to discern the truth. We saw the biblical picture of
Solomon. But God is far wiser than Solomon
to discern between right and wrong and motives and all of
those things. And finally, he has a power to
execute a sentence. He’s God. He’s God Almighty. But the overarching theme of
God as judge is a righteous judge. He’s a God who does right. Sin
doesn’t escape him. God has a hatred of unrighteousness
and consequently will in time punish it. God is a just judge. Because of that, His judgment
is never capricious or arbitrary. And when He looks at us, He sees
if you are in Christ, He sees that your sin has already been
laid at the foot of the cross and judged and dealt with. This motive for Christian worship
is no less that God is an impartial judge It is a motive for us to
reverential fear, to worship in all that we do, much more
than He is known as the Father. God’s fatherhood has for Christians
a special character. But the fact that He is a judge,
the fact that He does judge us, drives us to an even deeper level
of obedience and worship, doesn’t it? There’s a second. motive that
I want us to consider this morning, and we won’t make it to the third.
We’re called to a Christ-bought reverence. And this second motivation
to a worshipful life is not only our confidence in God as the
Father and Judge, but our fleeting tenure in the world. Our fleeting
tenure in the world. Look at this passage again. Conduct
yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth. Peter’s dealt with this before
and he’ll deal with it again. He’s going to keep on bringing
up this theme because he doesn’t want us to park here. In verse
one, he said, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to God’s elect,
strangers in the world, you don’t belong here. You’re just passing
through. Don’t get too comfortable here,
because this is not your home, is what Peter says, and he says
it again here. Conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your
stay.” We’ll come back to that word in a moment. In 1 Peter
2.11, he goes back into this thought when he says, Dear friends,
I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world, you’re foreigners.
You don’t belong here. You don’t fit in. You shouldn’t.
But this little word stay, go back to the passage. This little
word stay replaces, depending on what older versions you may
be using, the old word sojourning. We don’t use that much anymore.
It kind of speaks of travel, a vacation, if you will. You’re
just passing through. It’s a trip. And we don’t get
that entirely from the word stay, because sometimes we just stay.
Sometimes when you go and stay, it’s just a couple of days stay.
But sometimes when you go, you stay. And you keep on staying,
and so we’ve lost an element of that word. The original word, the Greek
word, had more of a transient feel to it, if you will. Literally,
it means to have a home alongside of someone, but it refers to
a person who lives in a foreign land alongside people that aren’t
his people. He doesn’t belong there. And
here it refers to the children of God living far apart from
their home, their heavenly home, in a foreign country. What Peter does here is call
us to worship. He calls us to an act of worship
because we don’t belong here. He calls us to a worshipful lifestyle,
reverential fear, because there are other people watching. And
we don’t live here and we can’t live like them. We shouldn’t. It’s temporary. It would be as
dressing up in the costume of the world as we saw last week.
Putting on a mask. Playing Halloween. But an evil,
evil version of it. We don’t belong here. We shouldn’t
look like them. We can’t look like them. The
time that we’re staying here is short, incredibly, incredibly
short. And they’re watching us. Samuel Davies, that great first
early American pastor, probably the greatest pastor that our
country has ever produced, said this. He said, we are watched
by those of opposite tendencies. We are under daily examination. Your Christian life is under
perpetual scrutiny. Now, if it was true for Peter’s
readers, those first century Christians who are facing the
most fierce fight of all, of persecution, if it was true for
them, it’s true for us as well. The world doesn’t like you living
a Christian life. It’s convicting to them. It’s
bothersome to them. It’s irritating to them. And
they’re watching you. They’re watching to see whether
you reach over and put on that mask. Whether you’re going to
dress up in the world’s attire. Whether you’re going to do things
like the world does them. They’re watching. One Puritan characterized it
in these terms. He said, there’s a particular
malice in the world. Not only are they watching, they’re
hateful. They’re venomous. They cannot
wait for you to mess up. Don’t you know that? Haven’t
you experienced that? You will. There’s a particular malice in
the world against those that are born of God. Reproaches. These evil speakings of the world
against pious men are partly gross falsehoods invented without
the least ground or appearance of truth. How much more will
the wicked insult upon the least real blemishes that they can
spy out among professors of godliness? In other words, they’re looking
for something. And if they can’t find something,
they’ll make something up. They don’t like your Christianity.
They strictly pry into and maliciously object against Christians, the
smallest imperfections and frailties of their lives. Men are apt to
impute the scandalous falls of some particular Christians to
the whole number. In other words, when you fall,
we all fall, don’t we? They disparage religion because
of those who profess it. I mean, how sad is that? Remember
when David was found out Do you remember what Nathan’s charge
to him was that must have just burned in David’s heart? You
have given the enemy’s cause to blaspheme. Blaspheme who? Israel? Blaspheme who? David? God. The way that we live does have
the ability to give cause to others to blaspheme the God that
we profess to love. And all that for a temporary
stay? All that for a visit? There is an image in Pilgrim’s
Progress that even in its putridness, I love because it is so descriptive. It’s about a town called Vanity,
and in Vanity was a fair. I mean, isn’t it astounding that
not only is it kind of amusing to the world that there’s even
a magazine called that? Listen to Vanity Fair, the description
of it. It describes the ungodliness
of the world and its activities and the emptiness of the things
in that life. In the town of Vanity, they contrive
to set up a fair, a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity
and that it should last all the year long. At this fair are such
merchandise sold as houses and lands and trades and places,
honors and preferments and titles, countries and kingdoms, lusts
and pleasures, and delights of all sorts. Moreover, at this
fair, there is at all times to be seen jugglers and cheats and
games, plays, fools, mimics, knaves and rogues, and that of
every kind.” This is how Pilgrim’s Progress opens. And what it is
an image of is an image of the world that we are supposedly
just passing through. Christian, you know, found himself
divinely extracted by God’s providence out of that fair, out of that
world. The question is, are we? Is all of our life characterized
by reverential fear because we know that this is a temporary
visit and we go on to a holy God to examine ourselves. Oh God, you are merciful because
you deal with us. We know that we offend you every
day, but Lord, we would be changed. We desire to be changed. We desire
to be different. Lord, we do desire to live and
walk in newness of life. We do desire to live holy lives. Lord, we pray that You would
use this great means, these great motivations of an awareness of
God in His wholeness as Father and Judge. And Father, our awareness that
this world is just a temporary visit for us and an unpleasant
one at that. And Father, unite our hearts
around that third motivation, that of a Savior who paid the
ultimate price for us. We thank You and praise You.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.