Living in Holiness

Whether we realize it or not, we as human beings live by hope. We live by what we hope in. So hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning. So whether it's the prospect of our next paycheck or our next promotion or our retirement or the phone call that we finally do have that job, we live by hope. Whether it's the prospect that this might be the time when when finally Prince or Princess Charming walks into my life or that test in the morning has an extra line in it indicating a positive pregnancy. We live by hope, thinking that we're we're one step closer to that goal we're seeking to accomplish, one step closer to that next accomplishment that we have in our lives. We live by hope. Now, the problem with worldly hope. is that most of those things can be taken away in an instant. A phone call can turn our world upside down. But as Christians, our hope is not like that. It's not like that at all. As Christians, our hope is grounded in the completed work of Jesus Christ. It's based on what he did in the past. It's what he assures us he will do in the future. And it's evidenced by the resurrection. So we have a sure and living hope, as Peter says, we have absolute confidence that Jesus is who he said he was, that he accomplished what he said he accomplished and that we can trust him and have hope. So this morning, we'll be considering that as we continue our series in First Peter. Now, I call it a series. It's been January when I preached last, but I think I said at that time, First Peter is going to be my book. Whenever my turn to preach comes up, we're going to keep working our way through the book of First Peter. So we'll be there this morning versus 13 to 21. It's page 1014 of the few Bibles, if that's what you're looking at. Last time, when I preached, we talked about how we should rejoice in the salvation that God has won for us through Jesus Christ, that Peter calls us to rejoice. And this morning, what I want us to see is in light of that salvation, we are called to live lives of holy hope. We're called to live lives of holy hope because of God's salvation in Christ. So listen, as I read 1 Peter 1, 13 through 21. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. And if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deed, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but is made manifest 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. I want us to consider four things this morning. First, the work of hope, the work of hope in verse 13. So listen to that again. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We see right off the bat, Christian imperatives always begin with the word, therefore. The Bible is never going to launch into what we're supposed to be doing as Christians before it first tells us what it means for us to be Christians, what God has already done in us and enabled us to do in response to him. So we start with a therefore in light of the salvation in verses one through twelve. This is how we should live. We should live in hope. Peter calls us to set our hopes on the grace that is coming at the revelation of Jesus Christ. There is future grace in store. It's coming and it's coming when Jesus is revealed. And that's what we are hoping. Peter has already been talking about this, not in these terms, but if you read through chapter three, verses one through twelve, you'll hear him talk about this salvation as imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance as a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, as praise, glory and honor from Jesus Christ at his revelation and as the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls. The day of Jesus's return is coming. It is a real event in human history that will happen. And on that day, he will be revealed as the true king. Now he waits for all of his enemies to be put under his foot. But the time will come when that is revealed, when his kingdom is in view of all. Now, when we start talking about kings and kingdoms, I immediately start thinking of things like Lord of the Rings or whatever else, whatever popular culture imagery we have, and I think we can lose sight of that. Something really important when we think about kings and kingdoms in biblical times, this was a call to war. This was battle lines being drawn. If there's a new king coming, he is claiming himself a kingdom and you're either in the kingdom or you're out of the kingdom. You're either aligned with him and in cooperation with him and in submission to him or you're against him. You're rebelling against him. And so the day of Jesus's revelation for those who are outside of Christ is a terrifying day. It's a day of his judgment. It's a day of wrath being poured out against sinners. But for believers, it's a day of grace, it's a day when we receive the things God has promised to us. So Peter calls the suffering Christians he's writing to, he calls us today to look up. To look ahead, to set our hope on that day when Christ returns, when he calls us to himself, he brings us into his kingdom, he gives us the honor, the glory, the praise for the work that he's done in us, for our faith in him. This is a day of grace. It's a day when sinners who don't deserve anything from God receive condemnation, I mean, receive commendation, receive salvation, receive glory because of his work in us. That's our only hope, Christians. That's our only hope, is that that day is coming. And if we follow Christ, that's the truth that we've based our lives on, right? We've turned away from the world. We've given up all the praise, all the glory, all the honor now to follow him. We've decided to stand in opposition to the world, against it and its systems, and to be on Christ's side, to be in his kingdom. On that day when he's revealed, everything else will fade away and only his glory will matter. That's the only hope. That's the only thing that will get us through this life. Every day we as Christians, we go into battle with our flesh, don't we? We go into battle with the flesh and the world and the devil telling us that it's not worth it, telling us that we can can get what we need without God. But the clear message of the Bible is that the only thing we can depend on, the only thing we should hope in, is grace through Christ. And because of that, Peter calls us to set our hope, to fix our hope there on future grace. We have hope. We have confidence now in future glory based on the past work, completed work of Jesus. And so listen to the language that he uses. Hope is something we set. It's a kind of flexing that's taking place. It's something we do intentionally. We set our minds on that. We fix them there. When they start to wander off, we grab them and we set them back on that. We focus on the hope that we have, the coming grace. Peter tells us there's two ways that we do this. We do it by preparing our minds for action and by being sober minded. So this is mental work that's taking place. It's exercise that we do. The word for preparing there literally is a Hebrew expression called girding the loins. The idea is that when we were time when everybody was wearing long flowing robes, when it was time to get some work done, they tied up their loose ends of their garments so that they weren't hindered in their motion. And so it's the kind of thing we might talk about with rolling up our sleeves or tying our boots, getting to work. That's the kind of language that he's using. We do it by being sober minded. Being sober minded is a call to keep ourselves from outside distractions and hindrances, things that keep us from looking to Christ. It's intentionally restraining ourselves and avoiding excess and things that would distract us from him. So for Peter's readers and for us today, this is a call to examine our lives. This is a call for self-examination. We are to take control of our hearts. We are to evaluate ourselves. Where does our hope lie? What are the things that we dream about? What are our goals and ambitions? What are the things that we are setting before us in terms of our desires? Are there things in our lives that are keeping us from hoping in Christ? Are there things inside of us? Are there things outside of us that keep us from progress and hoping for that day and moving toward that day? As Christians, God calls us to consider everything we do in light of Christ's coming. To be able to receive all things in our lives with thanks, to be able to glorify God through the things that we do. So I think Peter's calls us to examine our lives, to look at our habits. Do we have habits that we do that take us in the opposite direction, away from Christ? Now, that doesn't mean we leave the world. This isn't a call to abandon the world. But it's a call to live in a way that reflects that our hope is not in this kingdom, building our own name and glory here, but in the glory and name that's coming at the day of Jesus's revelation. So we can get so consumed with comfort and praise and pleasure and glory now that the promise that we hear in scripture just doesn't have that much pull, doesn't have that much weight to us. And so this is a call to set our hope there on the only on the only praise and glory that matters. This is a serious call. It's a call to sobriety. We have to understand what's at stake and not allow our lives and minds to be so polluted by the world that God's promises just don't have any pull in our lives. There's another way, though, that this this kind of cuts, and that's in listening to the accusations of the enemy. See, it's not just the temptations that that can weigh us down, but it can also be the accusations of Satan. So can you be so weighed down, so focused on yourself, so so introspective that you lose sight of the cross, that you feel like you're alone as a sinner, that that Christ's grace does not reach to you? Setting our hope on Christ means not listening to those accusations just as much as it means not listening to the temptations. If that's you this morning, if you're prone to that kind of discouragement, that kind of self-pity and those kind of things, then chin up, soldier. Set your eyes on the cross on the Hill of Calvary and lace up your boots and roll up your sleeves and get to work and march to that hill. Keep your focus there and keep it off of yourself. Go to the cross and see that record of your sins there nailed, condemned with Christ, forgiven and take hope. Our goal as Christians is to be fully able to think and act in accord with our true nature in Christ. So the temptations and the accusations of the devil will always seek to undermine that, always seek to paralyze us. And he doesn't care if it's temptation or accusation. We think too much of ourselves or too little of ourselves than where he wants us to be. But we think rightly of ourselves by seeing us and our sins at the foot of the cross and then taking hope in Christ. We set our hope on what we will be at his return and not what we are now. And honestly, that's one of the reasons that the church is so important, that we come together as in a covenant, as members, we commit to each other. We come to hold out hope together. We come out to hold hope out for each other. We remind each other of the truth of the gospel, of God's love for us in Christ, his victory over our sin and our death. We warn each other about the dangers of sin in our lives. We do it formally here in these gatherings, Wednesday nights and the corporate gatherings of the church, but we do it informally as we as we live life together, as we show hospitality, we speak the truth of God to each other. We go after those who are falling away. We admonish the unruly and encourage the faint hearted. That's the beauty of life together in the church. That's the work of hope. We set our hearts and our minds on grace. Second, I want us to look at the character of hope. So we looked at the work of hope, the character of hope in verses 14 to 16. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. So here, Peter begins to address the actions that are going to follow from setting our hope on grace. If we set our hope on grace, we will be holy as God's people. The basis for the call to holiness is his holiness. We are called to be holy because God himself is holy. And we read some of that from Leviticus earlier in the service, and we've been thinking about that idea through Keith series in Exodus, that God reveals his character, his holiness to his people. He calls them out of slavery. He calls them to be his people, and he reveals himself to them as the holy God. And in the Ten Commandments series, especially Keith really emphasized how we see into the law. When we see the law, we see the holy character of God revealed. So we see God as being the one who is worthy of worship, demanding worship only on his terms. We see that he's a God who values human flourishing and life. And so he ordained things like family and rest. We see that he's concerned for life and for community and for the integrity of those things. And so really all of the law of the Old Testament reflects that, reflects God's perfect character and his holiness. He is separate entirely from evil. He is opposed to evil in his very being. And he demands worship and glory because he is worthy of worship and glory. Now, as Peter quotes from the book of Leviticus here, he is showing really a continuity between how God deals with his people in both the old and the new covenants. So in the old covenant, God called out the people, gave them his name and called them to holy conduct. But the problem is they couldn't do it. The Israelites were not able to do it. In the New Covenant, Jesus comes and he fulfills all the obligations of Israel. He fulfills all the holiness requirements. He himself fulfills the law. And then by his grace, he gives us his spirit. He enables us as the New Covenant people when we place our faith and trust in him, when we repent of our sins, the Holy Spirit indwells us and then we're able to live holy lives that are acceptable to God. Just as he brought Israel out of out of slavery in Egypt, so in Christ he calls us out of our former lives of sin to be holy and distinct and set apart from the world. Peter calls this not being conformed to the former lusts of our ignorance. These are things that characterize the world, that characterized us at one time, but no longer can. We are called to be holy. And notice, it's not just just called to be holy in worship, but holy in all of our conduct. It's not just a modification. It's not as if the people were worshiping the wrong gods or the right God in the wrong way, and they were just tweaking their their performance, their sacrifices or something like that. This is this is far beyond that. This is all of our conduct. It's a radical change in our lives from our former ways to ways that are in accord with godliness. At one time, we were governed by an unrestrained impulse to sin. When sin crept up, we gave into it. And that can be the case no longer. And I think we need to see that that's that's the reality of the world around us, right, is even in ways that are acceptable to society is this unrestrained impulse to sin. The pressure in the culture around us is to define what is good. what is loving, what is tolerant and what is acceptable completely apart from God and his rule in his way, his value, his law. But but the problem is, we can't do that. We can't define what is good. We can't define what is loving apart from something that's beyond us, apart from something that's that's bigger than us, whether that's God or some some undefined greater force. It has to be that in order for us to define what is good and what's loving. And ultimately, as Christians, of course, we say that that must come from God, from our creator. So think about in our culture, in the world that we live in, what does holiness mean? What does it mean to live with values distinct from the world around us? We're called to model God's character, to stand up for his truth and his values in the world. We're called to acknowledge him and worship him as our creator and our redeemer. That's pretty clear. And we're called to take on his character, to value the things that he values, things like marriage and family and community and life. Now, we could spend a long time thinking about all the holy implications of those things, but I want us to to think of specifically about one this morning. We read earlier from Leviticus 19. this warning to Israel not to not to sacrifice their children to the God of Molech and not to watch their not to ignore their neighbor sacrificing their child to Molech. And as I was preparing the service, I almost took that passage out because it struck me as really irrelevant at first. But if you consider this morning, brothers and sisters, right now in Philadelphia, not very far away from here, there is a man on trial for the murders of eight human beings. seven infants and one mother from an abortion clinic. Botched abortions is what we call them. I don't think it's a terrible term, but an attempted abortion that didn't succeed. A baby was born alive. And in that abortion clinic, they decided to go ahead and murder brutally those seven babies, at least anyway. All around the country right now, this is a topic that gets a lot of attention. Defining life, the status of unborn People, human beings, is what we would call them. Fetuses is what the terms that we hear. I don't know what to call that other than sacrificing to Molech. We may not call him Molech. We may call him comfort or convenience or choice or career or whatever it might be. But brothers and sisters, millions of human lives are being destroyed. As God's holy people motivated by the gospel, what are we called to do about it? He tells Israel that the whole clan will be condemned by God if they turn a blind eye. Let's not be associated with those. Our call to holiness is set in the context of family. He calls us to live as obedient children. Obedience is the defining aspect of the father-child relationship. That's how primarily they relate to each other, because God is holy, because he is our father. Through the work of adoption in Christ, we are called to take that family character upon ourselves. Now, that's not a concept that's really familiar with us. We live in a much more individualistic society. We think of our identity apart from our family. But for the West, for the ancient Near East and for most of the world, really, the identity is much more corporate than it is individual. And so the idea of God giving us his name just flows naturally. We are expected to take his character upon ourselves. We are supposed to act in ways that are consistent with who he is. And because holiness is at the very heart, it means we, as his children, must be holy. Now, let's face it, that's a high calling. It is a high calling to embody and to exhibit the character and holiness of God Almighty. It's part of what it means to be created in the image of God. So way back in the beginning, that's one of the things Adam and Eve were called to do, is to be physical representations of God's holiness in the world. But because of sin, we profaned the name of God. But through the redemption that's in Christ, through the forgiveness, through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we're able to live in ways that are holy, to value not what the world values, but what God values, and to live in ways consistent with that. And one of the things that that means for us is that we hate sin, not sinners, but we hate sin. We hate it in our own lives. We hate it in the lives of others. We see it for what it is and we despise it because that's what God does. Now, if we're honest, the temptation exists for all of us to be conformed to the patterns of our former ignorance. And we have to fight that tendency, we have to fight it with the word of God. We behold God in His holiness, we grow to love Him as our Heavenly Father, and we start to value what He values, just like in any relationship. You start to love somebody, you start to care about the things that they care about. That's what we have to do with God. We have to grow in love for Him so that we desire and we love holiness. We need to be aware of the passions of our former ignorance. I think we're all tempted to kind of go back to revert there. It's just natural for us in our flesh to revert back to the former ignorance, the former passions. But we need to see those. We need to expose those for the lies that they are. Let the truth of Christ inform us, give us hope, give us meaning, give us substance and stop believing the lies of ignorance. God calls us to be what we are. God and his effectual power, he is producing something in us by his grace. He has made us his people. He has given us his name. We are chosen. We are sanctified by the spirit. We are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. That's who we are. And we are the blood bought people of God, just like Israel was the blood bought people of God. And for that reason, we're called to live in holiness. That leads us to number three, the cost of hope. The cost of hope in 17 through 19. And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you are ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. So Peter continues with it with an implied question, if we address God as father, do you address God as father? If you do, there are implications. Even though we are God's children, even though we address him as father, Peter reminds us that that's not something that we have by right. We are not biological offspring, not that there are biological offspring, but we don't relate to God as biological offspring. We are not natural offspring. We are adopted into his family through the work of Jesus Christ. And he warns us against the casual approach to holiness. He reminds us that we're exiles. That the world is not our home if we belong to God and that we shouldn't live like we're here forever. We are here temporarily and we need to live with our citizenship, our king and his kingdom in mind. Peter calls us to fear because we have been redeemed. Now, the word redemption summons a few ideas for us. It takes us all the way back to the Exodus, where God purchases people out of slavery in Egypt. That language has been picked up in the exile when God is promising to bring his people out of the dispersion back to their home. In time of Peter's writing, it would have conjured up imagery of slaves being purchased out of slavery, purchasing their own freedom or someone else purchasing their freedom and citizenship into the kingdom. But the New Testament picks up that language and describes our redemption, our being purchased out of slavery and bondage to sin. And Peter gives us a sobering reminder of the price of that redemption. It was the blood of Christ. And he talks about it like that blood of a lamb, reminding us of the sacrificial system where Israel would come together and where they would sacrifice a lamb where a perfect, spotless, blameless lamb would be killed, his blood spilled, and God would then look over the sins of his people and count the death that they deserve in the lamb. All of that pointing toward Jesus Christ, who would come and be, as John the Baptist says, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who would offer himself as the once for all sacrifice for sin. Jesus would come to be the perfect holy sacrifice, not perfect in his external flawlessness, but in his character, in his holiness, in his sinlessness. He would die as God's sacrifice for sin, and he would take away all the sins of his people. So God exchanges his holiness, gives it to his people, and takes their sin and puts it on God, on Jesus. Through that transaction, Jesus purchased sinners with his blood. He redeemed them from slavery to sin and brought them into God's family, all those who would repent of their sins and believe in Jesus. That's the message of the gospel. That's the message of the gospel, that our sins are counted in Christ and his righteousness is given to us when we place our faith in him and believe in him and repent of our sins. So if that's if that's a message that's new to you, we would love to talk to you more about that. You can see me after the service. I would love to talk about that. But Peter says we weren't redeemed with with trivial things like silver and gold, which, of course, are the most valuable things in the world system. But we were redeemed with blood. We need to see, Christians, that Jesus's blood is the most precious, valuable thing in the universe. When we start to talk about value, when we start to talk about things that are important, things that are precious, we talk about things that are rare, that are powerful and that are sentimental. So just think about Jesus's blood for a second. Only Jesus's blood, the only thing in the universe that can exhaust the wrath of God that can justify sinners is Jesus's blood. So it's valuable and it's powerful. It's the only thing that has that power is his blood. And not only that, but this is this is the blood that came from the human being who was the divine son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the most intimate human relationship, the most intimate relationship, person to person relationship that's ever existed, that will ever exist, his blood that's being spilled. What's more sentimental than that? Don't you see how precious, how significant that blood is? Now, if you see that, think about how sin trivializes the blood of Christ. When we sin, we look at the hope, the promises, the things offered in the world, we choose them over the hope that's offered in Christ. When we do that, we look at the sacrifice of Christ and we call it cheap. We call it common. We say that our relationship with God just isn't that important, doesn't matter that much to us. We act as if we could have accomplished the same thing ourselves or if we didn't need it really in the first place. Don't you see how offensive that is to God? You've probably read or heard at least the story of The Gift of the Magi. It's a cute Christmas story about a young couple who are poor. They're struggling. And so they're trying to buy Christmas gifts for each other. The wife has long, beautiful hair. The husband has a really fancy pocket watch. And they both end up selling their prized possession to buy an accessory for the other person. So the husband sells his watch to buy a set of combs for his wife's long, beautiful hair. The wife sells her hair to buy a lanyard or chain for the And so, at the end, the irony that they've sold their prized possession out of their love for the other person, and it confirms their love for each other. And it's a lot cuter, quainter of a story than me telling it just like that. Consider us and our relationship with God. God sacrificed the most valuable thing in the universe for us, to make us his own, to get us. And when we sin, we're like a spouse who just completely forgot about the anniversary or the holiday, completely forgot about the partner, or worse, even betrayed the partner. That's how we act to him when we sin. We show him no regard, even though he's paid the ultimate price for us. Peter tells us that we were redeemed from futility, out of our futile way of life that was inherited from our forefathers. So this refers to everything, the religious traditions, the idolatry, everything that these people would have been practicing before the gospel came to them. And it's the things, it's not necessarily the bad things, it's the things that the culture values and prizes, the things that they call good and worthy causes. But Peter tells us something that is important that we've got to understand, and that's that life apart from Christ is futility. Freedom from our freedom, the freedom that we experience, the redemption that we experience is freedom from emptiness, from this life of emptiness. Jesus purchased us out of the family of futility and brought us into the family of God. And I think we if we're honest, we see this in the world, we see that the world's message of hope is empty. The culture is constantly calling Christianity meaningless, outdated, futile, whatever, but it seeks to establish a meaning of its own apart from God. As Christians, we're called to escape that, to get out of that delusion and find real meaning and real existence founded in God, who is our creator. In reality, only Christians truly know themselves and the world around them. because only Christians find their identity in God, our creator and God, our judge in the end. So we know both our origin and our destiny. This is this is a solemn warning, this is something we should take seriously. Peter tells us to live in fear, to not take our sonship for granted, to not treat holiness lightly, to not to not disregard the price of our redemption. You see, the kind of fear he's talking about doesn't doesn't mean the absence of confidence. Just like a fearful and confident driver, a confident driver out of fear of death will put away his phone and not text while he's driving because he doesn't want to die. That doesn't make him not confident, it just makes him wise. Just like that, we're called to survey this sacred ground upon which we tread and take it seriously. We avoid sin because we know that it's deadly. Jesus's death brings us into God's family and we should not take that lightly. Our holiness, the holiness that we perform is motivated by love for God, love for our heavenly father, understanding the profound cost of our redemption and the deep conviction of what's at stake, life and death. As Paul says in first Corinthians 620, you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God with your bodies. God, who we call our father, is the judge. He's the judge to whom each of us will give an account and his judgment and his fatherly love are not incompatible. His love does not negate our need for holiness. Peter says he's he's the impartial judge, he doesn't show favoritism on that last day, he evaluates based on the work done based on holiness. Jesus spilled his blood to bring us into God's family. And he calls us to prove that we are his by our holy lives. But he doesn't leave us there. Look at number four, the basis of hope versus twenty and twenty one, the basis of our hope. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the 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. Now, here we look into the divine mystery of God's love that I talked about earlier in the service, I just let's listen again, those verses. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the 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. This is the purchase price of our redemption. This is Jesus. He's the second person of the Trinity. He's the eternal beloved son of God. He's foreknown before the foundation of the world. So this is the most intimate relationship that's ever existed. But right at the heart of it is this plan of redemption. He appeared in these last times, he became a human being, he took on flesh and he died. But the mystery here isn't just that the God man died, although that is a profound mystery, the mystery is why he died. He died for us. He died for our faith and for our hope. Jesus came and died to secure our faith and hope in God. The object of our faith is not a set of ideas. It's not a place. It's the person of Jesus Christ. He died the death we deserve. He was raised in order to raise us. He was glorified so that he can glorify us. Listen, listen to what Peter is saying, this is amazing. We're called to holiness. We're called to holiness as part of God's family. We're called to holiness as we see God's love displayed. in the crucified lamb, but we are not ultimately called to place our confidence in our holiness. We are called to place our confidence in Jesus. We don't look to our own performance record of righteousness for our confidence. That's always going to leave us either discouraged or deluded. We don't look to our performance record. We look to his performance record in his perfect blood. Our efforts in holiness are not the basis for our confidence. There are loving response to what he's done for us. We love Christ because he first loved us. We give him our lives because he gave us his. That's the basis for our hope. It's not it's not a set of ideas. It's the person of Jesus Christ who ransomed us. Brothers and sisters, it is so easy to miss that. It is so easy to get introspective, focus on the quality of our own faith and its frailty. And we wonder if our own faith is genuine. We have to see that the object of our faith is the foundation of our confidence. Our confidence is based on him. Verse five tells us God's power is at work through our faith. And don't you see, brothers and sisters, that is a work of grace. That is a work of grace. What began as a work of grace in Christ to bring us to him, to give us faith, to see him and embrace him, continues and ends ultimately as a work of grace when Jesus is revealed. That's what he talks about in verse 13. Our hope is ultimately in God. It's in God who has shown grace to us and will and must continue to do so. We set our hope on God by looking at what he has done for us in Jesus Christ. Our works flow from grace. They flow from God's grace in us. If God has called us, he will empower us to live the kind of life that will not result in condemnation. A life of holiness is one in which God is prized above all things and which believers trust and hope in his goodness. Our confidence, brothers and sisters, rests at Calvary, it rests in the empty tomb and it rests at the right hand of God. Our belief in Jesus is based on the facts of his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. Because these things are true, we have a sure and living hope. God will complete his work in the world and in us on the day when Jesus is revealed. Brothers and sisters, grace, tis grace that's brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home. That's our hope. Set your hope there. Let's pray. Our father in heaven. We come as we do every day, every hour asking and needing your grace where we confess that we are completely dependent upon you and your work in us. We pray that you would strengthen us to set our hope on grace. Where we pray that you would give us confidence based on the work of Jesus Christ, based on the gospel, that we have believed, that we continue to believe that you complete what you start. Lord, that's our hope. The foundation of our hope is not our works, but it's your grace in Christ. We pray that you would help us to see that, Father, help us to set our sights upon you, Lord. And as we behold you, then make us holy, make us love you, make us value what you value. Make us exhibit your character to the world around us, Lord, and be pleased to use us to draw others to yourself. We pray for those who are here for that. This might be foreign. We pray that your spirit would give life to see Christ, to begin the work of grace in those and to complete it in him. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.