Living On Purpose | 1 Peter 4:1-11 | Living with Eternity in View

In 1 Peter 4:1–11, Peter calls believers to live with purpose, rejecting the ways of the world and embracing a gospel-shaped life. In this sermon, Pastor Mark encourages us to live intentionally—keeping eternity in view and glorifying God through love, service, and holiness.

Reflect more deeply with our companion devotional series: https://edgertonfrc.org/blog/living-on-purpose-devotions

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

Several years back, I was a groomsman in my cousin Brady's wedding. Now the wedding took place near Marietta, Georgia, and the festivities took place there in January. As a South Dakotan, at the time, I was looking forward to a reprieve from the winter weather while I was down there for the wedding. Now, it wasn't gonna be quite as nice as say the weather in Florida or Arizona or something like that, but Marietta is a substantial upgrade over the weather in Lenox, South Dakota in January.

We got settled into the hotel, I realized that I had not packed a white dress shirt to go with my gray suit. Well, with the rehearsal and all that that entails, I didn't have time to go get a shirt that day. And so the next morning, I was awake early and I headed to a nearby Walmart at probably about 07:30 in the morning. Hoping to find a shirt there that would fulfill my needs to stand up in front of people and be a groomsmen without looking silly, right? I didn't know if I'd be able to find anything that would be good, but I set out hoping to do this.

As I mentioned, I was excited about the nicer weather, and I had packed my suitcase accordingly. So to make my trek to acquire this shirt, I wore shorts and a t shirt. Well, as I was walking into the store, a gentleman was leaving that store. And we were quite the contrast. I was in shorts and a t shirt. He was in a parka and snow pants. He had a nice hat and gloves to match. As we passed each other, he looked at me like I had three heads. But he wasn't the only one who looked at me strangely on that morning excursion. I received strange extended glasses from nearly every person I walked by. There was no doubt that I was from a much cooler climate, and I was more prepared for the weather that they had there that day than anyone else around me. It was clear that I was from somewhere else. And I didn't put those clothes on that morning to draw attention myself or to make a statement of some kind. It's just who I was as a Northerner. I was enjoying 50 plus degree weather. Right?

Well, in our passage this morning from one Peter four, we see that as believers, we are called to live a life that looks different. And when we do, the world is going to take notice. So as we unpack this passage today, we're gonna see that Peter is calling us to leave aimless living behind. That we're to live with eternity in view, and that we're called to love and to serve others to the glory of God.

So as we come to verses one and two this morning, we are reminded of the progression that we have seen in first Peter this summer. He has been encouraging these first century Christians to endure in the face of hardship and persecution. And he's continuing this idea today with a call to endure because Jesus suffered. And so what Peter is saying is that Jesus endured suffering for you to set you free from sin. Pretty easy concept for us to embrace. But it's followed here by a statement that that is sort of hard to understand. He says that we are to arm ourselves with the idea of suffering and enduring. And then he says that, whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. Oh, if only that was true, right? As much as we dislike pain, I think you could probably get a few people to sign up for some difficulty or persecution if it meant that on the other side of that struggle, it meant that you would no longer have to struggle with the sin that is so hard for you. But we know that that's not how this works, that this isn't the case. I've met quite a few people who have experienced some serious persecution in their lives, and they would not tell you that they no longer sin. This isn't a magic formula for putting aside sin.

There are lots of different ways that people have interpreted these verses. And the best approach that that I saw as I was digging through this idea this week is that when we suffer, that when we're persecuted for Christ, it causes us to understand what matters. That while you are enduring for the sake of Jesus, your fleshly desires are set aside, because you're focusing on endurance for Him, and you're not seeking after the aimless things of life. You're not seeking after sinful things. And so what Peter is saying to us here, what he's really getting at, is not that suffering is going to make you sinless, but that when you suffer for Christ, it causes you to focus in on what you are living for and who you are living for. It causes your perspective on life to come into focus. When you decide to endure suffering instead of giving up, You're seeing that you've made the decision that sin isn't worth it. You focused on God. You've determined to follow after Him and the things of Christ, instead of focusing on the desires of the flesh.

And we can see this idea that we get here fleshed out for us in these verses that come to follow, because He calls us to leave behind the empty way of life that chases after sin instead of chasing after Jesus. So he tells them to give up on the things that Gentiles do sensual living, passions, drunkenness, orgies, and lawless idolatry. These are the things that the pagans chase after. As those who have been saved by the grace of God, we should not participate in these things. Now we like to think that we live in particularly perverse times, don't we? That things have never been bad as what we are seeing in our time. But the warnings here in scripture and in other places remind us that what we see in the world is nothing new. These things have been a temptation for every child of God throughout history. There's always been a temptation to turn away from the commands of God and seek after the things of the flesh. It's been a temptation since the fall.

And it's important that we remind ourselves about the nature of these things that Peter is saying that we should not participate in. When God gave us His law, He did not do so to simply set up some rules that would ruin our fun. The commands of God the laws of God are not arbitrary. The laws of God reflect who He is. They tell us His nature. You you've heard me express this before several times. We struggle to understand how much God's commands help us to rightly understand the world. His laws do more than just tell us what to do and what not to do. They show us the nature of reality. Because in the pagan worldview, everything is one. Everything came from the one. All of everything is going to go back to the one. There is no distinction between, say, humans and the tree. There's no distinctions between an animal and man. There's no distinction between man and woman even. Therefore, everything is pretty much on the table morally in the pagan worldview. It just comes down to opinion. If everything comes from one, if everything is one, and everything is just going to go back to the one, who is there to say what's right and what's wrong?

But the God of the Bible is a God of distinctions. He is different from us, and He makes distinctions between things in His creation as well. So when we abandon the commands of God, particularly in the area of sexuality, we are doing more than breaking a rule. We are rejecting the idea of who God is, and we're rejecting the authority that He has over His creation. And so this is why Peter calls us to reject these things because we've been saved from not only these immoral actions, but we've also been saved from a false understanding of reality. These things that He is calling us away from are aimless because they draw us away from the One who gives us purpose, the One who has an end in sight for us. We are not going to be assumed in the one when we breathe our last. We are to bring glory to the God who made all things. That's another distinction of who we are as the children of God. These things lead us not only away from God, but they draw us into nothingness, to aimlessness.

The God of history has spoken. He is not silent. He has revealed Himself to us. He is the God who is not silent like the idols of the pagans. He has revealed Himself to us. And so understanding this is important because it means that when we reject the sensuality of the flesh, we are doing more than just saying no to sin. It means that we are embracing the reality of who God is, and we are trusting in what he has to say about the world and where he says history is going. When we trust in God and obey his commands, the world might think our way of life is strange. And they may even mock us. But Peter reminds us that the truth is that a day is coming when every life will be held to account. And scripture makes this truth absolutely clear, and so we need to live like this is true. And we do this by living with eternity in view.

And we see that idea as Peter continues. In the pagan understanding of the world, there is no judgment. If all came from one, and if all returns to one, there is no giving an account for your life. You just return into the nothingness from which you came. Peter makes it clear that God will judge, that we don't go to nothingness. God will judge the living and the dead. Judgment is a fact, and that's not good news. Our flesh wants to pursue aimless desires and not have to worry about being held to account. It it's scary that we would face judgment. But we know that this is true. God is other. We realize that we aren't just summed back into the oneness. Instead, the One who made us, we read is ready to judge both the living and the dead. Like I said, that's not a good state of affairs for those who will be judged.

And that's why we need a gospel. The word gospel literally means good news. And the gospel is good news because it tells us that God has done something for His people to shield us from His wrath. We deserve punishment for our rebellion against God. But because Jesus took on our flesh, lived a sinless life, and took our punishment that was required because of our sin, we now have the promise of eternal life. We can stand in this judgment that Peter speaks of, because we've been united to Christ, and now God sees us as righteous. We have been covered in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the truth. But there's some more confusing language here. When Peter says that the gospel is preached even to those who are dead. Now we read this, and we might assume that they were dead when they were preached to. But that's not what it says here. It just says that, they that it was preached even to those who are dead. So the most obvious interpretation of this is not that they got a gospel message posthumously after they had stopped breathing, but they heard it while they were alive. And since and and they have died in the time since Peter is writing us. The idea is that they they heard the message of salvation. This message went out. They were brought to spiritual life by faith in the message of salvation in Christ. The message has gone out to all people.

So the focus of these verses is on the idea of judgment. And the call to you and to me, who are alive, is to live with eternity in view, to acknowledge that we're to reject this aimless life, that we will be judged. Because it's so easy for us to get caught up in the moment, whether that be while we're tempted to sin, or whether it is the focus that we have in our lives. We so easily get caught up in the moment. We tend to be short sighted creatures, don't we? But the truths that Peter has expressed in our passage for today, and really in his whole book, it calls us to not only a longer view, but he's calling us to a greater purpose. We are short sighted. We chase after things that are temporary. But the book of first Peter is saying, we need to have the longer view. We need to be seeking that which lasts.

And this is shown to us as our passage closes up today. Here he says that the end of all things is at hand. Now, what's most likely in view here as Peter is writing this is the destruction of Jerusalem in the year '70. That's likely what he was talking about because Jesus had prophesied that the temple was going to be destroyed within a generation, and that was on the horizon, and that was the end of everything for the Jewish people. That was their system of religion. That was everything that they knew. That was the center of their religious activity. But now by the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, that sacrificial and ritualistic system was going to be done away with. That coming event was on the horizon and it was going to be a terrible thing. And many people were going to die in that judgment upon Jerusalem and it could likely bring substantial persecution to the Christians that they were gonna have to endure. And so Peter is telling them to be ready because they don't know what is gonna happen. That's likely what Peter was pointing to here.

But that doesn't mean there isn't significance for this statement of the twenty first century. It doesn't mean that there wasn't significance for everybody leading up to us. Now whether Peter is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem here or the final judgment at the end of history when Christ delivers his kingdom to his father, every last person ever should be living with eternity in view. Because at any moment, we could be called to account. It is good to live a self controlled or sober minded life because we know that eternity could start for any one of us at any moment. There isn't anybody here who's promised another breath. And so this message comes home to us. We should daily be living prayerfully in light of the grace that God has given us to continue serving him each and every day.

And Peter tells us what this looks like by telling us that we should love each other earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. And Peter isn't saying here that by loving we get extra sins forgiven or something like this. That's not the idea that he's expressing. What he's saying, what he's expressing to us is the power of love to bind people together. It's the natural response to living in a way that acknowledges the love that God has first shown to us in Christ. And here, Peter emphasizes hospitality Because we've seen in this letter that the persecution the Christians are facing is causing people to experience a lot of difficulty. And part of that would have been people being displaced from their homes. Some of the people are experiencing worse persecution than others, and they're homeless because of it. And his big point is that they need each other. This before as we've been studying this letter of first Peter. There are no lone ranger Christians. We need each other. Sisters and brothers. We care for one another. And we do so because God has first cared for us and so we know his love and we love each other with that same love that he has shown to us.

And this is expressed to us by Peter telling us to be good stewards of God's varied grace. You see, we all have different gifts in the Kingdom of God. Not everyone is gonna get up and speak and teach. Some people are way better at service in other ways. Regardless, God gives His people gifts that can be used to bring glory to him. He blesses his people in this way. And this was true of the first century folks that Peter is writing to, and it's true as he writes to us as we receive his letter in our time. God is glorified in the lives of His faithful people when we live out the love that He has given us, and we show it to the world.

When we do that, when we do what Peter is calling us to here, not just avoiding these particular sins he's listed, but also in showing hospitality and loving one another, the world is going to notice. When believers did not participate in the sensualities of their pagan neighbors, it was out of place in the first century. And you know it's out of place in the twenty first. People noticed, and people will notice. As believers loved one another and showed hospitality to their fellow believers in the first century, people noticed. And people will notice our love for one another in our time as well. It's going to stand out. It's one of the ways that we bring glory to the One who has rescued us, and the one who will have dominion for all of eternity.

And so as we close-up, I wanna go back to the idea I opened with. As I said, when I walked into Walmart that morning wearing shorts and a t shirt in January, I wasn't trying to make a statement of some kind. I was simply living in the reality of the fact that I was from a colder climate than the one I was in. This was apparent to anyone who saw how I was dressed that day. It was obvious. And this is similar to the call that we have on our lives as believers. Peter doesn't tell us to be weird for being the sake of being weird. That's not what's happening in this passage. He isn't implying that we need to draw attention to ourselves. He's saying that it's gonna happen naturally because we are different from the world. He is saying we're to live like people who belong to a different world, a different way of understanding the world, people who are from a different spiritual climate, as it were. We are people who have been shown the light and life of light and life of Christ in a dark and dying world. And when we live like that, the world is gonna take notice because it's impossible to miss.

And so the challenge for us is to reject an aimless life, to stop wasting our time chasing what the world chases after, and to live with eternity in view, to love one another deeply, to serve God faithfully, to speak truthfully. When we do this, the world will notice. Not because you're covering yourself and flashing neon lights and screaming through a megaphone. No. They're gonna notice because your loi your life points to the Kingdom of God. Your life exhibits the realities of who God is, and it will bring glory to the one to whom all glory and dominion belong forever and ever. Amen.

Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you that you have called your people out of darkness into light, and we pray that our lives would reflect that light of Christ into the world. We pray that we would reject the aimless things that we so easily seek after, and instead we would live with eternity in view that we might be witnesses to your mercy and grace that has come to us in the lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website edgertonfrc.org.