Living with Integrity as Sojourners in Faith

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles, or we would say non-Christians, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak out against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God. In the day of visitation. [00:02:29]

See, the context, as I said, is in verses 5 through 10. We are told to be the very temple of God and to be a priesthood that ministers for God in this world. And the culminating delight of being a minister of God is in verse 9, that we get to proclaim the excellencies of an excellent God. The one who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. [00:03:01]

And what would happen is a lot of people who sold silver for obvious reasons, they would sell silver that had more alloy in it than it had silver, and then thus it would look dull and it wouldn't look quite as nice. And so guys were getting cheated. What came to be among European craftsmen, that they knew that there was one particular, German businessman, that if you could buy silver from him, you knew that it didn't have above 92.5%, it didn't have more than 8% alloy. [00:04:42]

And as time went along, this guy Easterling that would sell this silver, they started to shorten it and they started to call it Sterling silver. And I don't know about you guys, but I always thought that Sterling was just kind of a synonym for bright, or for shine. for brilliant. And it has certainly become known to be a synonym for that. But initially, it wasn't so. [00:06:00]

What you say and what you do have to line up. Well, in verse 11 here, he's going to say that if you want to convince others about the greatness of God, that is great. But it's possible that if you compromise to the sins of your culture in your day, that it can silence your voice where the gospel is concerned. [00:07:11]

Would you just make a note of these things here? Number one, that you and I, according to Peter, have passions of the flesh. See, our souls have been converted through faith in Jesus Christ. The problem is, is that our souls have been converted through faith in Jesus Christ. The problem is, our souls are, are, are They are inside of this. They are housed in this body of flesh of ours. [00:07:50]

And even though we have converted souls, we still have to struggle with our bodies or what Francis of Assisi called brother donkey. Although he didn't use the word donkey, he used a different word for donkey that I can't say up here in the pulpit. But you get the idea. And that's what he would call his body because his body sometimes was like a donkey. [00:08:27]

And that is a very significant word because it tells you, number one, that there is no Christian that will not struggle. I don't care how many verses that you memorize. I don't care how much Scripture you read. That you're still going to be a person that has to hold back. You're still a person that's going to have to abstain. You are still going to struggle. [00:10:51]

A man asked Billy Graham one time, he said, you've kept your behavior excellent over 40 years of ministry. How have you done it, Billy? And he said, I run scared, young man. I run scared. He struggles. I struggle. I would like to tell you that you could memorize the Scriptures and it would subdue your fleshly desires, but you would only simply know more about the very things that you struggle with. [00:11:18]

And young people today, it's almost like you need to be convinced that just because you feel right about something, doesn't make it right. And we have to, like Paul said, we have to buffet our bodies and make them our slaves. That we make our bodies do what we want. it to do we make our bodies our slaves and we don't become a slave to our flesh to our bodies lest we have preached to others and we be disqualified abstain hold back [00:14:06]

And the day of visitation is probably this period right now prior to judgment, where God has visited the earth with His blessing of salvation. And Peter's idea is in this brief period. of mercy, that as people watch you, as people watch how you live your life, that you can possibly be the reason that they will end up following Christ as well. [00:26:35]

And those are the words of Henry Stanley. He glorified God in the day of visitation because he watched the deeds of a great and good man. Who is it that God has placed in your life, that he has placed in your sphere of influence for you to be a sermon of Christ for him to watch, for her to watch? Who is God placed in your life for this purpose? [00:30:00]