Keeping Ourselves Morally Pure
August 16, 2006
Pastor Matt Black
Midweek Service
1 Peter 1:13-16
Discipleship: What are the Ten Commandments of God’s moral law?
(Quote them.)
Introduction: Open your Bible tonight to Peter’s First Epistle. Our text is found in 1 Peter 1:13-16. Tonight we are going to be looking into the subject of our moral purity. The title of tonight’s message is “Keeping Ourselves Morally Pure”.
Let’s stand together for the reading of God’s Holy Word:
1 Peter 1:13-16, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
God tells us to be holy as He is holy. We are to be “perfect” as He is perfect (Matthew 5:48). John tells us that we should “purify” ourselves, even as the Lord Jesus Christ “is pure” (1 John 3:3). If you are a Christian, your goal today and every day is moral purity! God commands us in our text: “be ye holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Peter 3:15). The word “conversation” means “the manner in which you live”. Are you holy in every part of your life? Or are you, as this passage says “fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance”?
How can we live moral, chaste, pure lives that are characterized by the Spirit’s control? Our points tonight are as follows:
1. Live with a Pure mind
2. Live with a Passion for Christ
3. Live with a Hatred for sin
4. Live with God’s Holiness as your example.
How can we keep ourselves pure and “unspotted from the world”? Realize first, that purity begins in the mind!
I. We must first, Live with a Pure mind.
Every moment of every day, the world is vying to get control of your mind. We fall into moral impurity and our mind is defiled because we are not ready! We are not prepared for purity! Look at what Peter says in verse 13.
1 Peter 1:13, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
Peter says you’ve got to have a pure mind! How can we do this?
A. First, be Disentangled from the world.
Our minds are so often entangled by the passing cares of the world and by vain desires. Even when we would want to pray to God, or have our thoughts upon God, our minds are entangled because we have left our mind to wallow in the world. We allow our affections to be taken with worldly things. It could even be seemingly harmless things and also not so harmless things. We must be disciplined!
Application:
1. Is your mind entangled with things that would displease the Lord?
Stop. Think through your day; your month. What are you putting into your mind? Is Jesus Christ Lord of your thought life? Remember what Job said?
Job 31:1, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?”
Are you ready to make a covenant with not only your eyes, but your ears and your mouth and your heart?
2. Are you wasting valuable time looking at things that are worthless? Do you really need to spend so much time watching the news? Do you really need to be entertained so often?
What is the answer? It’s in our text: “Gird up the loins of your mind!” What does that mean? Albert Barnes says that in Bible times, people wore “loose, flowing robes, so that, when they wished to run, or to fight, or to apply themselves to any business, they are obliged to bind their garments close around them.”[1]
Let me ask you some hard questions.
· Is your heart cold?
· Is your spiritual walk with Christ not once what it used to be?
· Are you lukewarm when it comes to the things of God?
· Do you find yourself thinking on things that you know you shouldn’t?
· Men, perhaps it is lust. Perhaps it is unchaste thoughts about someone you are not married to. Ladies, perhaps you have found your thoughts drifting to “Mr. Right”. Perhaps you hope one day you will be rid of this guy you are married to. Can I tell you something? There is no such thing as “Mr. Right”! He does not exist! We are all laden with the sinful nature.
Stop thinking this way. Disentangle your thoughts from the world!
Disentangling takes diligence! Martin Luther said this:
“Don’t just sit there by yourself or off to one side and hang your head, and shake it and gnaw your knuckles and worry and look for a way out, nothing on your mind except how bad you feel, how YOU hurt, awhat a poor guy you are. Get up, you lazy scamp! Down on your knees! Up with your hands and eyes toward heaven!”
B. Second, Discipline your mind!
The word here that Peter uses is not only “gird your mind up”, but “be sober.” What we need in the Christian life is not self control only in eating and drinking. We can all say that we are sober from intoxicating elements and drugs. But what we need is not to be intoxicated by the world. We need a spiritual sobriety. We are so often inebriated with the allurements of this world! If the Word of God is boring and has lost its flavor, then your mind is given to slavery in the world.
Do you understand that the taste of the world will draw us away from God? We must starve ourselves from the world. We must feast so much on the things of God that we forget what the delights of the world taste like.
John Calvin said that we should stay away from worldly amusements. He said, “when one plunges himself into these, he must necessarily become sleepy and stupid, and he forgets God and the things of God.”[2]
So live with a PURE mind! One day I was sitting in chapel in Christian school in the tenth grade. I could not get my mind under control. I prayed to God that He would cleanse my mind, but nothing seemed to help. I found in time that as I denied myself the world and put in the things of God, that my mind became pure again.
Psalm 34:8, “O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”
Ephesians 4:22-24 “Put off concerning the former conversation [lifestyle] the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Radical Amputation!
Say NO to anything that wants to get into your mind. Walking down the street, you may have to look at your shoes. You may have to get rid of the Internet or your television! Do what it takes! Radical amputation! Matthew 18:9, “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”
Live with a PURE mind! Then Peter goes on in verse 13… He says we need to live with a hope, a passion to see Jesus Christ in all of His glory. That’s got to be what we are longing for!
II. Live with a Passion for Christ. Look at what Peter says in the last part of verse 13, He says not only should we be prepared and serious minded, we should “hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;”
The Great Day
1 John 4:17 says that “we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.” Are you living every day for Judgment Day?
Randy Alcorn says this:
“A startling thing has happened among Western Christians. Many of us habitually think and act as if there is no eternity—or as if what we do in this present life has no bearing on eternity…Being oblivious to eternity leaves us experts in the trivial, and novices in the significant. We can name that tune, name that starting line-up, name that actor’s movie debut, name that country’s leading export, and detail the differences between computer models or types of four-wheel drives. None of this is wrong, of course, but it is certainly revealing when we consider that most Christians, let alone the general public, do not even have an accurate picture of what the Bible says will happen to us after we die. We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.”[3]
So often we find ourselves living for the here and now. Are you hoping for things to go right now or for as verse 13 says, “the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”? Turn over to 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
What is your Passion? Look over at Philippians 3:13-14, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
The Gap Trap
We are all dealing with the Gap Theory in our lives. Do you know what that is? We are caught in the Gap Trap. Here’s how it works: As Christians, we all have a certain amount of knowledge regarding what God expects from us. We know that we are going to stand before Christ. But we don’t live like we should live. There exists then a gap between the knowledge of how to live the Christian life and our actual living of it. If the distance between what we know and what we’re living becomes too great, we can rightly be called hypocrites.[4]
Look back at our text in 1 Peter 1:13. Peter says ““hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;”
III. Live with a Hatred for sin and self.
Look at our text—verses 14-16, “14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
We need to have a distain for sin in our lives! We need to hate it like God hates it!
There’s only one way to actively hate sin: Mortification!
John 12:25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
AW Tozer said, “There is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it ‘life’ and ‘self’ or as we would say, the self-life. To allow this enemy to live is, in the end, to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ’s sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto eternal life.
Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
IV. Live with God’s Holiness as your example. Let me say that if you want to be holy, God must be your standard. Therefore, you must first…
As verses 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
Self Righteousness is not righteousness. Your own holiness is an abomination to God. Self Righteous legalism is the highest form of fleshly living.
By God’s grace boys and girls you must decide to reserve yourself, your mind, your body for your wife. Husbands and wives, you must reserve yourself for each other! Singles you must reserve yourself for God or a future mate!
Look over at Exodus 20:14. The seventh commandment really hits home on this issue. Its five words go completely contrary to our culture.
Exodus 20:14
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
This commandment is in such disregarded in our culture that living in flagrant defiance of this commandment has become a way of life for millions. The habits of this generation are so perverse, that we hear from the college campuses around the country, that all those who would keep themselves pure are under attack, as if they were something strange. To hold to God’s standard of moral purity in 21st century America makes one almost Puritanical. This is true not just in the world, but also in the professing Christian church. When I was younger and in the Christian school, there was great pressure from every realm to be immoral. Even in Gospel preaching churches, it is my fear that there is as much promiscuity and perversion in the church as there is in the world.
Despite today’s promiscuous attitudes and lust for pleasure, the seventh commandment is still the Law of God. Any breaking of it is sin. This is no small commandment to break. The first seven commandments carried the death penalty under the Mosaic Law. Adultery under God’s Law was to be visited by death. That is how serious God takes purity in the lives of His people. 1 Timothy 5:22, “keep thyself pure.” This is the meaning and the message of the seventh commandment.
1 Corinthians 6:18, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body”
1 Corinthians 7:2, “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”
2 Timothy 2:22, “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Matthew 5:28, “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
1 Peter 3:2, “While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.”
Ladies, if would dress right, you would prevent a lot of immorality!
Isaiah 3:16-17
16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: 17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
God says to the daughters of his church that you can present yourself in such a way that is immoral. Am I my brother’s keeper? You better understand that you are!
Matthew 5:27-32
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Conclusion: Are you living pure in your thought, words, actions, and attitudes?
After our closing hymn, we will allow ourselves a minute or two to get ready for our members’ meeting. We would ask that only members remain with us.
Closing Hymn: 92 I’ll Live For Him
[1] Albert Barnes. Barnes Notes on 1 Peter 1:13.
[2] John Calvin. Commentary on the Bible (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI), comments on 1 Peter 1:13.
[3] Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity (Grand Rapides, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), 123-124.
[4] Robin Boisvert. How Can I Change? (Sovereign Grace Ministries: Gaithersburg, MD, 1993), 2.