Be Unaliving Sin

Amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. Well, good morning everyone. How are we? Wonderful.

Awesome. Awesome. Good to hear it. Good to hear. Welcome uh again to the district church where we treasure Jesus and help others follow him. And we've got big goals over the next 5 years.

Vision 31 more. We want to see 31 people sent out on mission for Jesus full-time, whether that's overseas or whether that's in church planting, full-time ministry, whatever it might look like. Um, but the only way we get there is if we in this room multiply. And so we have a goal of every year, multiplying everyone, every year, everywhere. And the way we do that, where that rubber meets the road is the only way that you ever get to helping someone else treasure Jesus is if you are treasuring Jesus. The way that we do that is by opening our Bibles to learn and by opening our lives to love.

All right, that's kind of the two bike pedals. That's how we treasure Jesus. That's how we also then help others to do that. And so the big idea that I want to show you for today, the title of the sermon, and I actually gave it this title because if I gave it the other version, which is killing sin, YouTube will actually remove it. Um, and so because you can't say kill or you can't say death or anything along those lines. So the title is be unaling sin since apparently that's the um that's the way people say it these days.

And so we're going to be looking at 1 Peter 2 11-12. And the big idea is a John Owen quote. And if you don't know who John Owen is, he is a Puritan uh from the 17th century. Uh and he was actually considered I mean almost like a church father of his time. Uh he wrote more than 8 million words. Um which is first of all whoever counted that before there was computer that's incredible.

All right. Now maybe they didn't count it and they waited until now and we counted it but whatever regardless. Uh but this is a man who was acquainted with every possible awful circumstance you could imagine and yet still focused his life on realizing that there's still awful things within himself. So he never shifted blame. He never pointed towards others and said, "You're the reason for the these calamities." Or he always said, "You've got to look inward."

And if we kill the sin that's within us, it will actually produce out in the world beautiful things. Beautiful things. And when I say a man who experienced some awful things and that probably today, if you met someone who experienced some of the things that he experienced, they might be some of the most jaded people you would ever know. For example, he had 11 children. That's not the bad part of it. He had 11 children, but 10 of his children died in infancy.

I mean, think about that. And yet this was a man who devoted his life, devoted his life to encouraging the church, to strengthening the church with the gospel, to writing just good words, good books, good resources for the church to treasure Jesus above all because he never lost focus. He never lost focus of the main thing. And one of the things that he saw was in passages like this where we're called to abstain from the passions of our flesh to to to abstain from sin which wage war against our soul. He took verses like this very seriously and created incredible works to be able to serve the church with it. And so that's where this verse or this verse that's where this quote comes from.

Be killing sin or it will ultimately be killing you. And so let's open up 1 Peter chapter 2. We're going to be looking at two verses today. I was almost just going to cover one verse, uh verse 11, and that might still be the case depending on how far we get into it. But verse 11 and 12, there's so much here. And in all honesty, I mean, there's there's so many things that you can learn in the Christian faith.

I mean, it's incredibly important to know what substitutionary atonement means. It's incredibly important to know what limited atonement means. It's incredibly important to know different theologies, to know the Trinity, to know all these things. But when it comes down to at the end of the day a practical application for what it looks like to follow Jesus on a daily basis, this might be one of the most applicable and practical sermons that you're going to hear for your everyday life. Which means if there was one that you're going to listen to over and over and over again, it's going to be this one because of the importance of what uh of what Peter is commanding of us and urging of us to do on a daily basis. And when I say daily basis, even probably even more than that, on a momentby-moment basis, because this is a present tense command, which means don't stop.

Don't ever stop doing this. And so let's look at it. Verse 11, he says, 'Beloved, I urge you as soner, as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. This is one of those verses um passages that oftenimes we read it and we just run through it. I mean, we move on from it so quick to get to other things.

But honestly, this is one that that you need to memorize. This is one that you need to sit and think about and focus on and then create strategies in your life for how you are going to go about abstaining from the passions of the flesh because they are waging war against your soul. They're waging war against your soul. So when when we think about the things in our lives, when we actually take the time and we look at, all right, I don't like this thought that I had. I don't like the way that I said this to this other person. I don't like the desire that I have for this thing.

I I don't feel good about this. I've got anxiety regarding this. I've got depression regarding this. I've got like I just don't feel good. There's no peace in my life in regards to this. When we look at all of those things and we pop the hood and we see the underlying sin that's attached to them, the reason why we don't feel good is because it's waging war on us.

It is trying to kill you. It's trying to destroy you. It's trying to rob you of any blessing, of any goodness that God actually has for you. Because what he wants for you is a life that is full of peace. He wants abundant life for you. He wants you to have joy everlasting.

He wants you to rejoice in all things. And what sin, the passions of the flesh is constantly trying to do is is cause you to be distracted by what God is doing. get you to focus on this other thing that used to bring temporary pleasures for you and then try to convince you that somehow we can actually turn it from temporary to eternal that this will last forever. This high will make you feel so good. And yet we feel worse and worse and worse. And Peter gets this.

He understands this. And so he's trying to tell them these sojourers and exiles, they're not home. They're temporary. They're not where they belong. And he's trying to make them understand you've got to do work. This is not passive work.

This is active, proactive work that you've got to engage in on a momentby-moment basis. Because again, nobody lies to you more than you lie to yourself. Nobody does. Nobody else lies to you. This is where you cannot point blame anywhere else. We are constantly the ones, well, it's okay if I just do a little bit of here.

It's okay if I just watch a little bit here. It's okay if I just indulge a little bit here. It's not that big of a deal. And yet, it's waging war on your soul. But here's the thing. What I want you to first start out, the first point that we're going to look at is get your sin out.

I try to make these as simple as possible. Get your sin out. All right, that's what we're doing here. But before we start with the application of how we cut it out, we've got to remember of what Peter begins with. He begins with your identity before it moves into the activity. You cannot forget that he first calls you beloved.

Beloved, which means not tolerated by God. How many of us just feel like God's just tolerating us? How many of us maybe sometimes think, man, God's wondering if he can take it back, but deeply loved by God. Like when he when he says in in in John 3:16, for God so tolerated you. No, for God so loved you. Not just for God loved you.

For God so loved you. Volume there, depth there. We got to remember that we come from the position of beloved by God before we ever do anything for him. [snorts] Sojourers, temporary residents, citizens of heaven, not citizens of where they are. Exiles. You don't belong here.

You belong to a kingdom of God. And again, don't even forget last week either. For those of you who weren't here, I know you didn't get a chance to watch it, and that's totally fine, but sometimes, hey, messages are are that's why you show up. All right? Don't don't rely on us putting it on YouTube. Be here, and you'll never miss one.

All right? But last week, First Peter 2:9, he told us that you are not you will become. You are a chosen race. A chosen race. Which means that's not by accident. It's predetermined.

God set his affections on you. Chosen a royal priesthood. So you're no longer a slave to sin, but you're resurrected to royalty riches of God. And you're given full access to the Holy of Holies as a priest. That's why he calls you a priesthood. See, before he resurrected you and made you righteous, the only one who had access to the Holy of Holies in the temple, which is where God's presence dwelt, the only person was the high priest who only had access to go in there one time per year.

And when Jesus did the gospel work and he lived the perfect life that you could not live, he died the death that you deserved and he rose three days later. When he accomplished that work and it was finished and then gave us his righteousness and removed from us our sin, it creates the possibility for us to now gain access to God and be in his presence because we are righteous and no longer sinners. And therefore, we get to become a priesthood that gets to dwell with God and have God dwell with us. Which means he then also calls us a holy nation, which means we're set apart. We're purified. We're made perfect.

We're made new. We're a community governed by the law of the gospel and ruled by Christ as king. None of that's behavioral modification. None of that is. All of that is identity clarification. This is who you are before you do anything.

this is who you are. Because again, your identity is what drives your activity, not the other way around. And so today, when we're going to be talking very uh practically about how to cut sin out of your life, I need you to understand and I need you to remember that it's not once I get it all cut out, God then loves me and accepts me. That's what every other world religion is trying to accomplish right now is let me rid myself of everything that's wrong with me and then I will attain some type of holiness that allows me to be in the presence of whatever the version of their god is or even themselves become the god. And that's just not Christianity. Christianity is where he comes to us while we were enemies of him and displays his love and demonstrates his love to us and saves us while we are sinners.

That's what he does. And so it's it's identity clarification. Your identity drives your activity, not the other way around. And I want you to even see this in 1 Corinthians 5 6 through7. Here's what it says. Your boasting is not good.

Which I mean, just as a heads up, just never say I'm awesome. Do you not know that a little levan leavenvens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump. Now, if you were to stop there, if you were to stop there, you would say, "Well, see, Dwayne, everything you just said is not correct." Because what he's telling us to do is cleanse out the old leaven. Get the sin out of you so that you might become a new lump.

So that you might become a new creation. So that you might become a new Christian. So that you might become something good because you were bad. Get the bad out, you become good. Look at what he says next. As you really are unleavened.

So you're already unleavened. Therefore, cleanse out the leaven. That's what he's saying. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been the one who has sacrificed. So, we're not actually sacrificing ourselves by cutting it out. Christ already did that for us.

and then made us new. And now that he's made us new with a new identity and a new spirit that dwells within us, that spirit now trains us to cut out everything that is in our lives. That is not godly and that is not good. So because you are unleavened, because you are without sin, because you are a new lump, because you are a new creation, because you are a Christian, stop doing uncchristian things. Stop doing uncchristian things because of that. What you are, who you are, even more importantly, who's you are.

He wants you to abstain from the passions of the flesh. We got to do some work on what that actually means because this is not casual language. It's not, hey, manage your sin. It's not minimize your sin. Well, because I'm a righteous believer, because I'm a good Christian, I don't have to worry about sin anymore. There's a there's a relational identity to that.

That's correct. All right. Now that I'm a new creation, now that I'm in Jesus, now that I'm in Christ, I don't have to worry about sin from an identity perspective. He has made me a son and daughter of the king. And that's good and that's right. So therefore, I don't have to worry about it.

But I do have to proactively think about what it is that is still sinful and that is still a passion of my flesh and get rid of it, cut it out of my life so that I actually become what I already am. And so this idea of abstaining is creating distance. It's cutting it off. How serious should we take it? Well, here's what Jesus said when he talks about sin. Jesus dramatically says things like, "If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out."

Or, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. For it's better to wear an eye patch on your way to heaven than for your whole body to go into hell." Now, that's just me paraphrasing that passage, but that's what he's saying. He takes it like you have to take sin seriously, not minimizing it. And so when Peter says abstain, he's using a Greek word that is in the present tense which carries the force of an ongoing internal and intentional command. Continually keep yourself away from it.

Continually keep yourself away from it. And so this is not passive avoidance. It's not waking up one day and just saying, I hope I don't sin today. It's more than that. I hope I don't look twice at that attractive woman. I hope I don't show envy of that family's neatly organized and designed home.

It's active personal engagement in distancing yourself from something dangerous, from something that's literally killing you. In the ancient world, the the word was used for strategic withdrawal, creating space between yourself and a real threat. It was almost a military term that in order for them to not kill us, we don't give them access to us. And that fits this context because these passions of the flesh of the flesh, they're they're not harmless. They're waging war against your soul. And so, you got to recognize that these are passions.

These are feelings. These are feelings, which is why you should never trust your feelings over truth. Never. Never trust your feelings over truth. Now, do you have good, righteous, holy, godly feelings? Absolutely you do.

I hope that when we sing to the Lord, it produces a feeling in us that is worshipful of God, that is desiring more of Jesus. That's one of the reasons why we have in our mission statement that we treasure Jesus. treasure. Jesus shows that there's an emotion, there's a feeling, there's an understanding that whatever this thing is, the object of my affections is Jesus. So there are good feelings, but they have to be made good. They have to be made holy.

They have to be made righteous. And the reality is the the reason why so much of our sin is undelt with is because we just trust feelings rather than holding on to truth. And so we don't need to you don't need to what we're not trying to do is rid ourselves of our passions, rid ourselves of our feelings. We're just trying to make sure that our passions are rightly ordered and rightly directed at the correct things. And so, in other words, don't give your passions and your feelings the steering wheel. They should be strapped in the car seat in the back.

They're still a part of you, but they don't drive you. And so, we need to make sure that we're understanding what does get the the the the steering wheel is truth. Objective biblical truth. That's why uh verses like Romans 1, I mean Romans 12:1 and2 talks about not being conformed to the passions of this world, but being transformed by the renewing of your mind. That when you fill your mind with God's word, when you fill your mind with God's truth, it shows you where to go and what to do and who to be. And then rightly in renewing your mind, your emotions that are in the back seat screaming, throwing tantrums, you're able to tell them and correct them, hey, we're on our way to a beautiful, wonderful place.

So get your feelings right. Get your mind right. Know what is right and know what is wrong. Again, if you're like, I don't know if I believe you. Titus 2 11-12, look at this. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.

Now, we talk about that all the time. We are saved by grace alone. We're saved by grace alone. We're saved by grace alone. But it does not stop at just your salvation. It doesn't stop there.

The same grace that saves you is the same grace that sustains you and trained you in un uh in in getting rid of ungodliness in your life. Look at verse 12. Training us. So again the same grace that appeared bringing salvation. Verse 12 also tells us that that grace trains us to renounce which is having a conviction for to renounce ungodliness and what worldly passions unholy feelings and desires. So the grace of God, the gift that we receive to save us, God also gifts us to help us see when we are feeling the wrong things and thinking the wrong things and doing the wrong things.

And it gives us conviction to say those things are not good for me. I should cut them out. I should renounce them and therefore live as it says self-controlled. How many of us would love to have more self-control in our lives? Yeah, all of us. Guess what?

Because Christ dwells in you, you have all the self-control you need. You have all the self-control you need. It's not something that you have to like replenish. It's not something that you have to go to the store and get more of because it runs out. Christ dwells in you. And because he lived a perfect life and was tempted in every way as you were, what but was without sin, that same Christ lives inside you, dwells in you, and gives you the ability by his grace to train you to renounce ungodliness.

So when sin creeps up in your lives, he has the ability to help you say no. Like you need to know that. Like that's true. That's that's a biblical truth for you. that when sin comes up, I don't just, well, my flesh made me do it. I can't help it.

I'm still a sinner. We're not glorified yet. I can't help it. There's just still, you know, I'm still human. No, we have the ability to live self-controlled lives because of Christ who dwells in us. We have the ability to live upright and godly lives in this present age because that's what he's telling us.

That's what he tells us. That's what he tells Titus. Trust the grace of God that's appeared. If you're trusting it to save you, which actually is more of the miracle than just helping you stop looking at something you shouldn't be looking at or doing something that you shouldn't be doing. He's looking down at that. He's saying, "Well, that's the easy work.

That's the easy work." So Peter's calling, he's not calling just for sin management. He's calling for decisive separation. Augustine of Hippo helps us see why this fight is necessary because he says this. Sin is not just behavior, but it's disordered love. Our desires curved inward on themselves rather than rightly being ordered toward or outward to God.

So what we're doing with with separating ourselves from sin, abstaining from it, is we're actually training our flesh in the moment until we get glorified. We're training our flesh to say, stop pointing the feelings inward towards what makes me feel good and start pointing the feelings and outward towards God and saying, "How can I honor him with my life? How can I honor him with my thoughts? How can I honor him with my actions? So, it actually makes it all less about you and more about God, which is not what the Christian life is all about. That's why we live.

That's why 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, "Whatever you do in uh whether you're drinking or eating or whatever it is that you're doing it for the glory of yourself, no, that's sin. But for the glory of God, that's righteousness. That's Christianity. That's why we live." And so he's telling us here, abstain, not merely to resist internally, but to restructure your life externally, self-control, to cut off access, to remove proximity, and refuse to let sin anywhere near you. Now, I'm going to give you a couple of like applications.

One will be a story that we can see in scripture of what of what kind of drastic measures we're talking about here. Not saying like gouging your eye out or cutting your hand off, but but another story in scripture in Genesis 39, a man named Joseph. And Joseph was a good guy, but terrible circumstances. All right, his brothers didn't like him. They were jealous. They threw him in a pit, left him for for dead.

He ended up getting brought out of the pit. He ends up getting sold into slavery. Just nothing's going this guy's way. All right. So when you're talking about sojourers and exiles, this guy's like, I understand that. He knows what it means to be a sojourer in exile, not to be where he's supposed to be.

And honestly, if there was any guy who in his circumstances could compromise a little bit, who's going to find out? I'm not with my people. I'm somewhere else. What happens in Vegas or what happens in Egypt stays in Egypt? Right? Joseph could have thought that and could have said that, but he didn't.

He ends up finding himself enslaved in a house called Pu uh Potterer's house. And Piper's wife looks at Joseph and the Bible basically says Joseph's a stud. All right, that's Genesis 39:6. Literally, he's handsome in form and appearance. And then the temptation comes. Piper was the master of the house.

He's the boss of Joseph. His wife sees Joseph and when Piper's gone, she begins pursuing Joseph. Persistent, even aggressive. Day after day, she invites him to sleep with her. Joseph resists, not just because of consequences. He doesn't want to just get in trouble with the boss, but because he says this in uh Genesis 39:9, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?

Like that's the question he asks when she presents this opportunity for him. And if I'm honest, how much more godly would our lives look if we asked that one question every single time we were tempted to sin? If we memorize that one verse and anytime we are tempted to sin, we bring that verse to memory and we say, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" Now, in their day, the sin, they wouldn't have said that. They would have said, "It's a sin against Piper." But he's realizing that sin is not just towards people.

It's towards ultimately God. And so he doesn't just stop at conviction, he creates distance. This is where many of us need to fix our habitual sin problems. Conviction is not enough. I know I shouldn't do it, but I still dabble with proximity. We got to create distance.

The text says he would not even be around her. He's not trying to prove his strength. So, he's not trying to say, "You know what? I'm going to stick around because I'm just so strong at resisting this temptation." He removes himself from the situation. An alcoholic doesn't do a Bible study at a bar, right?

That's what's going on here. Maybe one day, but not when you still have passions, desires for the flesh. And so one day, no one else is in the house. She grabs Joseph's garment. And so some interpret that as it's his outer garment. And so he's kind of left with his inner garment.

Some says, "Well, he was working as a slave, so maybe he didn't have an outer garment, so the garment he took was her garment or or his inner garment, so he's leaving this house buck naked." Whatever it was, what we know is that when he's leaving, he's not leaving with what he's supposed to be wearing. And therefore, everyone else is going to see what's going on. What's going on in this situation? Joseph doesn't hesitate. He runs.

He leaves his coat behind and he sprints out of that house, willing to look guilty, willing to lose his position, willing to suffer, willing to be spoken of as an evildoer rather than stay close to the evil. That's what Peter means when he says abstained. Abstain. It's not sit around and entertain and figure out different kind of strategies on you know what? I'll just I'll just barely look. I'm not really diving deep into it.

No, he's running. He's abstaining. He's cutting it off. And he's cutting off access and proximity. Now, what does that look like for us? I want to give you a a kind of another real life real issue that I'd bet everyone in this room struggle with to a certain degree because for most of us the battle is not against certain types of typical sins that we typically think about when we think of sinners.

We're thinking adulterers. We're thinking of homosexuals. We're thinking of murderers. We're thinking of theft. We're thinking of like whatever you want to name it. It's the sin happening in our hands every single day.

And so I actually have screenshots of everyone's screen time that I want to put up here. I'm just kidding. Some of y'all's hearts dropped there for a second. How does he have access? But on average, studies show that we pick up our phones anywhere from 100 to 200 times per day. 100 to 200 times per day.

Picking you up a phone is not a sin, right? Just like having a drink of alcohol is not a sin unless you're under 21 in the US. Opening a social media app on your phone is not a sin. Just like eating a bag of chips is not a sin. But too many drinks and too many chips, you now deal with drunkenness and gluttony, right? Which are sins.

Well, with our phones, too much becomes a problem. Becomes a problem. Now, we don't really have a term for it, but others call it doomcrolling. It's a form of being under the influence. Under the influence. And if you're kind of thinking, well, why are we talking about that?

Because Ephesians 5:15-18 says this, "Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit." So, in the same breath as Paul is speaking to the Ephesian church and he's telling them to, hey, just look at your life and how you're spending it, make sure that however you're spending your life, you're not under the influence of something that is earthly, but you're under the influence of the spirit of God. That's important for us. And so, we've got to look at our lives. What in our lives are we under the influence of?

And we're robbing ourselves of in that moment being under the influence or being filled with the influence of the Holy Spirit. Again, just going back to the phone idea. You pick up your phone for a minute just to check something, but nothing wrong with that, but before you know it, 20, 30, 45 minutes, you're like, "What did I even pick my phone up for? I'm lost in whatever the bad news, outrage, fear, negativity, pointless, fruitless entertainment." Again, it might be permissible, but is it beneficial? Is it beneficial?

Again, even modern research right now is siding with scripture on the effects of being under the influence of something that is not beneficial. Studies published in journals like applied research and quality of life and computers and human behavior reports. They found that doom scrolling is directly linked to increased anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion, which sounds to me like things or the kinds of results to expect when something is waging war on your soul, right? Like we got to be honest with ourselves here. When I'm done with whatever it is that I'm giving myself over to, do I feel, and again, this is again rightly ordering feelings. Do I feel good?

Do I feel joyful? Man, do I feel like that was sp like time spent well? And guys, I'm preaching to the choir on this one. Like this week while I'm prepping and writing this sermon, I find myself in moments, oh, what am I doing? I'm literally writing about this managing my own screen time as I'm trying to figure this out myself. So, the more you scroll, the worse you feel.

And then the worse you feel, the more you scroll. It's just a loop. One study even found it produces something called existential anxiety, which is this deep sense that the world is out of control and something is wrong at the core of everything. Now, think about that in light of the gospel. You're taking in message after message that says the world is at war. People are screaming at one another, hating one another, killing one another.

Literally this last year, you witnessed a public assassination on an app that is supposed to filter violence, but instead plastered it on the front page. Like we're seeing things that we were not meant to see. The world doesn't seem to be getting under control, but spiraling out of control. And then after we log off, we wonder, why do I feel anxious? Why do I feel anxious? Why does prayer feel ineffective?

Why is peace feel impossible? Why does God feel distant? It's because we did not abstain from the passions of our flesh. We fed them. We pursued the passions of our flesh instead of the spirit of Christ that dwells in us. That's a hard truth to hear, but you need to hear it because why?

Not because you need to become beloved, but because you are beloved. You are beloved. Like there's nothing in the social media apps that are promising gain for you like God does. It's crazy. I mean CS Lewis writes it this way. He says we we we find satisfaction and it's and it's in it's not even a real satisfaction, but we find satisfaction in making mud pies when right around the corner is a paradise at the sea.

That's what we're doing. We know what God's promised us, but yet the passions of our flesh that are still disordered, we're giving into them thinking that that's going to provide ultimately what God has provided. And so Peter says, "These things have waged war against your soul because you don't just scroll the content. That content is actually scrolling you. It's shaping you. It's discipling you and it's killing you.

It's killing you. James, the brother of Jesus, says this is what's happening. James 1:14 through 15. Each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire, your passions of the flesh. Then that desire when it has conceived. And so in other words, you give yourself over to the thing you think is going to make you feel good.

It then gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. And so sin is waging war. And when sin is waging war with you, all peace deals are off the table. It's not looking to actually make you feel better or have peace. It's looking to kill you, to bring death.

And so, you've got to cut it off and distance yourself. Joseph didn't stand in the room and say, "I think I can handle this." He ran from it. And I think it's because it shows a sign of his maturity of what he knew he was capable of falling into. Falling into. If I stick around too long, I don't know that I'll practice self-control.

And for some of us, the most godly thing we could do this week is not try harder to cut down the time, but delete the social media that is dominating you the most and replace that time with opening your Bible. Maybe it's just creating some no phone time, creating some distance, running from the patterns that are waging war against your soul. This last weekend, I watched the Masters um and one of the rules that they have at the masters is no phones are allowed. No phones are allowed. And so when you're watching the golfers, um, you look at the crowd around you and you don't see a phone in sight. Everyone's just eyes up, locked in.

It's amazing. But I was actually curious. I was like, I wonder if there's any studies or uh reports that they've done on the back side of it of how people felt while they were there. What they experience when they abstain from something that they pick up 100 to 200 times per day. And there was not like any like you know published journals on the matter but there were quite a few chats as far as going into this. Here's what some of them said.

The first couple of hours they experience panic and anxiety because they're reaching for something that's not there. They're they're feeling those phantom vibrations. What if someone needs to contact me? But then they said by the end of the day things shifted. They started feeling amazing. It was a nice break from distraction.

They can't remember the last time they felt that fully alive and present. What if the thing we think we need the most is actually the thing given sin the most opportunity to wage war on our soul? Like this is a tool. It's a resource. But it is not our Jesus. It's not our Jesus.

And we have self-control over this. It's whether or not we're actually engaging in it. And I'm with you guys. I looked this last week. I mean, I'm putting my cards on the table. I'll put my screen time up.

Here's what it was. It was down 25% this week, which awesome. It's because I was writing the sermon on it. But even it being down 25%, you want to know what my screen time average was on a daily basis? Five hours and 30 minutes. 5 hours and 30 minutes.

I've got some self-control that I need to practice that I need to run from in order to that that the things that dishonor God. And so again, John Owen famously said, "Be killing sin or it'll be killing you." You've got to cut it out and you've got to get rid of it. Kelsey few years ago when she was diagnosed with cancer, it wasn't something that we're like, "Hey, let's just manage it. Let's just figure it out kind of as we go." No, it was like immediate.

Hey, next week we're diving in and we're cutting this out because this thing is killing you. It's killing you. We've got to take that same type of approach. surgically approach to our lives and figure out what is killing us and robbing us of the paradise at the sea that God's promised for us. And so the second thing I want you to see here is the first one is get your sin out. The second one is get your stuff together.

All right, these are like bluecollar points. All right, get your stuff together. Peter turns it outward now. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. And the word for honorable there is beautiful, beautiful. Give them something to admire.

Give them something that they'll look at like they look at the Mona Lisa. Give them something that when they see it, it's really hard for them to continue calling you an evildoer. Because that's what he talks about here. He says, "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, especially when they speak against you as evildoers." John Piper says, "You're starting from behind already." Like, you're trying to help them see conduct that is honorable and beautiful.

They think you are the evil ones. They think you're the evil ones. So, you're starting from behind right out of the gate there. These aren't friendly neighbors next door. These are neighbors who think you are the problem. They think you are a threat to their lifestyle.

They think you are the outcasts, the narrow-minded bigots, and those who are hateful. I mean, this was the church and their context. They were misunderstood as atheists. They were falsely accused as traitors, disloyal to the emperor. They were socially rejected because they would not indulge in their sexual ethics of their day. And he's telling them, "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, beautiful, so that ultimately they may see your good deeds and glorify God."

Now, something really important that I want you to see here. I don't believe this is simply the killing of sin or refraining from what the Bible considers to be sin. Simply doing the first point is not enough in what he's actually talking about here and the keeping your conduct honorable among the Gentiles. The reason why I say that is if you go over a couple of chapters in first Peter 4 3-4, listen to what he says here. For the time that is passed suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do. Basically, he's saying, stop living like the Gentiles.

You've had your time. It's done. living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. Again, the when we're thinking about the things that we are to cut out, those are the things we're thinking about often times. He says, "With respect to this, the Gentiles are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery." So there, so you've already cut it out and the Gentiles are surprised that you've cut it out, but look what they've done.

they then malign you for it. So just simply cutting out the sin in your life is not going to be what shows someone conduct that is honorable and good deeds that will help them glorify God. So it's got to be something more than that. In other words, when we look at this, there's the multiple people get attributed to this quote and so I don't even remember the origin of who it is, but essentially it says um preach the gospel and if necessary use words, which the point of the quote is live a life like Christ and other people will see that and they'll say what must I do to be saved? And what Peter is showing us here in chapter 4 is that's not enough. It's not enough to just live a Christlike life when it comes to you managing and cutting out sin and then um doing things like reading your Bible and praying on your own.

That's part of it, but it's not just that. So there has to be something beyond that. Living a holy life is not going to be what helps unbelievers come to glorify God on the day of visitation. It's not simply that. It's more than that. We must outlive and we must outdo the accusations that are coming at us.

Not by refraining from sin alone, but also also by serving those who are lost with good deeds. So there's there's cutting it out so that we are more like Christ, but then there's also showing them Christ by things that we do for them where this is proactive engagement of them with good deeds. Augustine said this in city of God, a holy life is a powerful sermon. Now that is true, but I would also add to that that holy service is also a powerful sermon. A holy life is a powerful sermon. Holy service towards others is also a powerful sermon especially when we are ultimately showing that this is transformative work that the gospel has produced in us.

The gospel of Jesus is making us holy so that we no longer sin and we live righteous lives. The gospel also produces in us that we stop living for ourselves and we start considering the interest of others. We start serving them and managing and stewarding our resources for their gain. And then as we move towards them, they start seeing instead of just saying that they're surprised and malign you because you don't sin, they start understanding why. Because those things don't make me actually feel good. What makes me feel good is when I'm abiding and treasuring Jesus.

That's what actually like lifts my soul. That's what actually makes me feel like I'm living a life that is abundant. not being robbed of. And so if good deeds are not just restraining from sin, then what else does good deeds include? What helps humanity prosper? Do you know that Christians are the ones to be thanked for hospitals, education, and primarily mostly charities throughout the world?

Like the modern hospital system that we have is because Christians created it back in the day. Back in the day they created these care systems that they attached to monasteries and then put these organizational structures and administration attached to them so that more access was able to be for people to come and find sources of healing and help in whatever it looks like. So without Christians, it's not saying that we wouldn't have hospitals today, but the origin of them is there. That's where it came from. Same thing with education as far as like formal education. Now what I would say is modern day education, don't say that's because of the Christians, but the institution of providing formal education to anybody and everybody to have access to education.

Oxford started out as a Christian organization. Princeton Christian organization. Yale Christian organization univer the idea of university came from Christians wanting to promote education for the masses not the few and the elite and again when it comes to just charities throughout the world there are non-Christian charities sure but the majority are Christian charities because we see the practical deed of helpfulness to the world around us. Jesus washed people's feet. It wasn't just because it was a sign of serving somebody. It was because they didn't walk around on streets like what we have.

They walked around on on dirt caked roads. And so whenever they would get somewhere, if you could clean the foot, then the person, it's like, you know, when you come in from playing outside, hey, wash your hands. As if it's kind of like a sign of you being ready to be able to eat. Now, same thing was with their feet. And Jesus got down and did something that was a very practical deed of helpfulness in serving them. So it's not enough.

It's not enough to be of the world or to not be of the world. We must still go into the world with good deeds that point people to the person of Jesus and glorify God's character in doing so. So for those who treasure Jesus, helping others follow him is the fruit that comes from treasuring Jesus. I want you to just dream with me for a moment. What if instead of spending two hours a day, because that's probably about the average, two hours a day on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Thread, Snapchat, I don't know, whatever the ones are, and you spent 30 minutes. And then you took that other one one and a half hours and 45 of the minutes you spend scrolling the Bible, God's word.

Just I want to see it. I just want to I just want to read through it. And then the other 45 minutes you spent sending an encouraging text to someone, writing a letter to somebody, baking cookies for a neighbor next door, walking across the street and asking a neighbor, "Hey, I see that you have this gutter that's fallen. Like is there any way I can help you like repair that? Doing a practical deed of helpfulness. How might you rest better that evening?

How might your life change? Again, Matthew 7:16 says, "You'll recognize them by their fruits." When people look at your life, what do they recognize is your greatest treasure? He says by doing things like this they will be able to glorify God on the day of visitation. You're like what is that? Is that are we talking second coming now?

It could be it could be. It also could be the fact that God is actually visiting them for the first time and saving them. It could be one of those two things. It's either conversion or it's judgment. Regardless, we want them to be in a place where they are glorifying God when they see him. When they see him.

As we land the plane here, I want to remind everyone that this is not moralism. This is not moralism. Peter begins with beloved. You don't fight for God's love. You fight from God's love. You fight from God's love.

And again, the ultimate example of this life is Jesus, right? He resisted sin perfectly. So if you're like, "How do I do this?" Well, look to Jesus how he did it. How did he do it when he went into the wilderness for 40 days and was tempted to sin with the same things that we're tempted with? You can have whatever you want in this world.

Jesus was tempted. Jesus was even like, "I don't want even I don't want even people to think that I was just able to do it because I was strong." He's like, "I'm going to do it while I'm fasting. I'm going to do it when I'm weakest." That one, resisting sin is possible. And if you're like, "Well, yeah, it's because he's God."

He is. And who dwells within you? Who now lives in you? He does. His grace is what trains you to renounce ungodliness. So if he can do it in the the uh in the wilderness when he's tempted and and what does he reply with?

He doesn't reply with sharing a real with Satan saying here's how I'm going to resist you. He shares scripture with Satan and instead lives a perfect life and now calls us to resist the same sins that he was tempted with. Yet we actually get to practice self-control because Christ, the grace of God in us gives us the ability to say no to it. So he resisted sin. He lived honorably among sinners even though they accused him of evil things. He was falsely accused and through his life and death, God was ultimately glorified.

Everything that Peter is calling of us to do, Jesus has already done. He's already done. And now that he lives within us, he's training us to do the same thing he's already done. So, a little call to action for you. Number one, identify your sin. It might be different for everyone in this room.

You might not even have you might have already deleted apps, whatever it looks like. you know, and if and if you've got control over that, maybe then move a little bit forward to just like looking at the screen time. I was kind of dabbling with that a little bit yesterday of just looking like, oh, I mean, like I'm I treat this thing like a dumb phone. I mean, like I I don't know its capability. I didn't even know that you could go in and set parameters with screen time to where it locks out apps and all that stuff. I was fascinated by that.

So you can need you need to identify the things that are sucking the life out of you. Whatever it is, you need to identify it. Where am I tolerating sin instead of killing it? You need to think about that this week and you need to write it down. What passion of the flesh am I feeding instead of killing? You need to do that work this week.

That's number one. You can put it up there. I think it's at the end. There's a slide for that. Um identify your sin. Number two, you need to take radical action.

You need to cut it out. Cut it out. Whatever it is, cut it out. Confess it to God. And then maybe even invite accountability. Like have some others come in and say, "Hey, I want to share with you my screen time at the end of every week just to see where I'm at.

Did am I plus 30% this week? Am I down 25% this week? Can you look at the apps that I'm in?" Like look, like invite accountability in it. Not for behavioral modification, but because I want you to help me treasure what I actually treasure, what I actually care about, what I actually want for my life. Number three, live like Jesus.

So, identify your sin. Take radical action. Live like Jesus. What does my life say about Jesus? If someone were to pluck the fruit of my life, would they taste and see that Jesus is good? Would they taste and see that Jesus is good?

All of this, as 1 Peter 2:9 said last week, is so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him. What we what we indulge in is what we share. It's what we evangelize, right? I pray that what helps us the most, what actually gives us the most life is that the more we treasure Jesus, the more we indulge, the more we partake of Christ, he becomes what we most evangelize in our lives. Not this new recipe, not this new M.

Those things aren't bad. Those things aren't bad. It's just they're not the main thing. They're not the main thing of our lives. That we may proclaim the excellencies of not things from this world, but him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for your goodness to us and your grace. We thank you for for hard messages like this that provide us or really command us to take surgical action in our lives to cut out things that are robbing us of the joy that you have for us. Robbing us of the life and and abundant life that you have for us. Robbing us of being able to treasure Jesus and see him because we are distracted by lesser things. Father, we we need you. We need your help.

We need the work of Christ. The fact that he was able to resist sin, resist temptation, the fact that he triumphed over that. We need that spirit. We need that Christ in us, helping us, training us to renounce the ungodliness in our lives so that we can live in this present age as godly. As godly. Help us estain.

Help us abstain [music] from the passions of our flesh. Recognizing that just because we feel something doesn't mean it's a right thing, that it's a good thing. We need to know the difference between good passions and bad passions, righteous feelings and unrighteous ones. And the only way we know the difference is by renewing our minds in the word of God. Knowing truth, knowing objective truth, knowing what God has shown us and told us, hey, this is [music] the way, the truth, and the life. This is what's good for you.

And so, we need to open our Bibles instead of opening our apps. We need to open God's word. We need to open our lives to it so that we can see beauty. And therefore [music] when we keep our conduct honorable, we become beautiful and people around us begin reading us, learning from us, seeing this beauty and just might they see these good deeds, these good lives that are lived for Christ and they might glorify God on the day of visitation. They might come to know Jesus and begin living in [music] the same war that we live in every day where we say no to sin and we say yes [music] to Jesus. Help us, Lord.

Help us. [music] We need it. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Juggle and stand.