Good morning. Welcome to First Baptist Church. Take a minute, walk around, and shake somebody's hand. Welcome to First Baptist Church. We're glad you're here today.

Thank you, Father, so much for this beautiful day. I thank you for just continuing to fill us all with your breath of life. Help us just not to take any one of these little short days we have for granted. I pray you just bless the people in this church that are sick and suffering, Father. Just be with them. Just fill them with your grace and mercy, Father. We depend on that every day, I pray. Just give us a generous heart, Father. We know that no matter how much we give here, Father, we cannot outgive you. Pray you just be with Ty today. Give him your words, Father. Just give us ears to hear him, Father. Just let your Holy Spirit convict us where we need to be convicted. As we go through the rest of this day, keep us safe, Father. Bring us back here next Sunday. Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Thank you, Seth, for pulling that out. See there.

First of all, how many of you have ever asked somebody to come to church and they just keep refusing? Man, I was really hoping to see a whole lot more hands than that. We got a problem.

All right, anyway, next week, next Sunday evening at 5:15 out at the arena, we're going to serve barbecue. It's free. And then after that, Turn Row Ministries is going to present a gospel presentation.

So here's my deal: some people just won't come to church with you, but some people will go to a picnic or go to a barbecue or that kind of thing with you. Bring them out, eat some barbecue. ARM180's praise and worship band is going to be there. Turn Row Ministry is going to give a gospel presentation. So just would like to invite y’all out there again. Barbecue will be about 5:15. The service will start at 6. So thank you.

I didn't bring my Bible again. Thank you. Even though you called me Riff. No, I don't want to hear that.

We're done with announcements. We're done with announcements. Why don't y’all stand for the reading of scripture, as this is one of the most important parts of worship: hearing from God.

So listen to God's word:

“Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God. For to you I pray in the morning, O Lord; you will hear my voice in the morning. I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit. But as for me, by your abundant lovingkindness, I will enter your house. At your holy temple, I will bow in reverence for you. O Lord, lead me in your righteousness because of my foes. Make your way straight before me. There is nothing reliable in what they say. Their inward part is destruction itself. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God. By their own devices let them fail in the multitude of their transgressions. Thrust them out, for they are rebellious against you. But let all who take refuge in you be glad. Let them ever sing for joy, and may you shelter them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For it is you who blesses the righteous man, O Lord. You surround him with favor as with a shield.”

And so let us, all of us who take refuge in him, let’s be glad and let’s sing for joy. Nothing less. Let’s sing that again.

Than. But. When. But. The. Amen.

Gonna do a newer song this morning, and I pray that you really focus in. We've done it one other time, but just hope you grasp the abide part—to abide in Christ, Spirit, Rest.

May be seated. Amen. Thank you all.

If you have your Bibles, whether you have a paper copy or a digital copy, will you hold that up and say amen? If you want to hear from God and depend on the God of the Bible, meet me in First Peter, chapter one.

We are kind of shifting gears, getting out of first gear and moving into second a little bit. So somebody put their foot on the clutch and let's go, you know. But we're going to be in First Peter today, kind of.

This section of First Peter kind of takes a different vein than what we've been looking at. They're tied together, of course. And so literally, I just kind of entitled this section, this section of the passage of Scripture, these next few sermons here this month of October, “For the Pure Gospel and Accurate World.”

I just want to ask for a moment, y’all think our world—there's some corruption in our world, all right? This means yes. This means no. Do you think—do you think there's some corruption in our world?

Okay, now here's a very important question that I want to ask you: Is there corruption in the world, or is our world corrupt? One or two? What do you think?

According to the Bible, our world is corrupt. It's fallen. That our world is broken irreparably. And the only way to fix this world is for God to send his Son into the world to recreate the world.

But here's where it gets a little bit personal: Are we a part of the corrupt world? We are, right? It's not just that the world out there is corrupt, but we need to recognize, you and I, our sin nature, our sin, our selfish choices to follow the things and desire the things that we want instead of the things that God has said is right and good for us. We are revealing our own corruption, even down to our very own hearts.

And ultimately for us as Christians, we need to understand that is the start of the gospel—that we need God to rescue us. But we have a need because we ourselves are broken and corrupt.

And so, you know, there's even a little bit of—this week I found it interesting, just a story.

Friday night we get to the football game down in Crossett, which is down in my neck of the woods. I grew up just across the Saline River from there. And they sectioned off the Stuttgart people from the Crossett people. And there was some—my sister even thought about coming to the game. She taught at Crossett for a while. And I'm like, how am I going to visit Crossett people? I know if we can't even get there?

Apparently they were expecting some fireworks and things like that. There were no fireworks from Crossett’s side on the football field. That was only Stuttgart side. You can clap that.

But then in the second half, it got real interesting because there were some fireworks in the Crossett section on the other side. There was a whole fist fight going on. I was texting Andrew. I was like, is the live stream getting this fight going on? And he's like, no. I was like, I'd like to hear Lynn Keller call this slobber knocker going on, you know, that sort of thing. But it would have been a doozy.

But, you know, here's the thing. Well, the funniest part was when they played “Bad Boys” over the public address. That was awesome.

But, you know, they enacted those rules and maybe it was true—you needed it to separate teams because sometimes our emotions do run a little high because we ourselves have a hard time controlling that.

But a lot of times we put up fences, and we don't realize what's actually on our side of the fence.

And so listen, we can complain all day as Christians about the corruption that's out there, but until we are willing to ask God to deal with the corruption that is right here, we're not going to see God move.

Okay? Because in large part, there's a lot of corruption out there that you and I cannot do anything about until we take the gospel out there. And we're going to have a hard time taking the gospel out there until we are abiding in what God has already done in life, our own heart.

Okay, that's just—that's the introduction.

So, anyhow, we'll get to First Peter. I got one more thing to share a little bit.

Y’all need to be very appreciative of the rest of your staff. Because I was in the middle of studying this this week, and I told them, I was like, listen, I got three sermons worth of materials this week. And they're like, hey, listen, this is pastor appreciation. They will not appreciate you if you preach all three sermons.

And so y’all can—y’all can be appreciative of the rest of the staff, because I wanted to fire away, and my rabbits are gone, and now there's nothing but little Jesus is up here. And I'm not—I’m not gonna shoot little Jesus. I'm gonna chase every rabbit I see.

Okay, Scott's bringing the rabbit back then. Yeah.

First Peter, chapter one, beginning in verse 13.

Okay. Get down here.

There.

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all of your behavior. Because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’ If you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth.”

Let's pray.

Lord, we come to you because you're God, you're the Creator, and you're the only holy thing that we've ever actually seen or experienced. And God, I pray that as we gaze into your holiness and recognize who you are, you will also, in so doing, reveal the unholiness and corruptness that's in our own hearts and minds.

And God, for those of us who have turned to you as Jesus to save us from our sin, to save us from the corruption of our own hearts, yet we still struggle in this old sin-cursed world, God, will you teach us today how you want us to think and how you want us to act and how you want us just to rest in your gospel in the midst of the corruptness of this world.

So God, may your Spirit actually teach us. May we depend on you to speak today the words that we need to hear. We pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen.

All right, I'm gonna just try to dive in and not chase too many rabbits since Scott gave me a rabbit. But I got four things to share with you.

The first thing is just that very first word in First Peter 1:13, “Therefore.” And if you haven't been taught this before, you're going to hear this every time I run across it: whenever you see “therefore” in Scripture, you got to find out what the “therefore” is there for. It's always pointing back to the previous context. This is important.

And so the previous verses, verses 1 through 12, that we talked about the last few weeks, is how God made us and he remade us and he caused us to be born again to a secure faith in Christ that he keeps. He keeps us by the power of God. And this faith that he gives us has been tested and proven in our lives. But yet it also makes us deceits stick out like aliens in a corrupt world.

And yet God sends us out not just as perfect creatures, but he sends us out as people who have found the gospel, who’ve been born again to go and share the gospel so that God does a new work in our lives and we go out in obedience, in a confident obedience in the promises of God found in the Bible.

So therefore, he gives us in this passage three imperatives. And this is where two—I’m fixing to go grammar on you a little bit, and I'm almost as scared about that as you are. But there are three imperatives.

Anytime you find some imperative in Scripture, that's basically God saying, “Listen, this is what you are supposed to do.” He's giving us a command.

Now, some of these in this passage as we read it, sometimes we think there's different ones that are more of a command than others. But I'm just going to share with you.

The three imperatives are found in verse 13, where he says, “Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you.” Then down in verse 15, it says, “Be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.” And then down to verse 17, which is an interesting word we're going to talk to, in the New American Standard it says, “Conduct yourselves in fear during your time of stay on earth.”

Those are the three imperatives.

All right, now, we're fixing to go deep in some a little bit of Greek grammar, which—that's—I mean, again, it scares me more than it scares you, but each one of these imperatives have an aorist tense.

All right? We didn't learn that necessarily. I didn't learn that in English. Maybe it was just because I was in Hermitage. And I mean, not necessarily here, but aorist—A-O-R-I-S-T—tense.

All these are aorist tense.

What that means is that something happened in the past that was complete and whole. This is speaking of a verb that something happened in the past, and it was complete and whole. And anything beyond that that we do is just working that out.

I'll give y’all an example with aorist tense.

Basically, around the end of July and August, Ty moved from Mount Ida to Stuttgart. Okay, I'm not completely and totally settled. I still need to do some stuff like that. But there's none of Ty's stuff still in Mount Ida. It's all here. I ain't got it all still sorted out, but a completed action in the past. And I'm still—we're still trying to figure out where to put stuff, you know what I'm saying? We're still needing to know.

But we've moved—that completed action in the past. But yet I don't do what I did in Mount Ida because I'm not in Mount Ida anymore. I'm in Stuttgart. And so I need to live differently because of what has happened in my life.

Does that make sense to everybody? Okay.

All right. Now that's the aorist tense.

All one of these imperatives—fix your hope, be holy, and conduct yourselves with fear—each one of these is an aorist tense, speaking of something that completely happened in the past, but it has impact on how we live our lives now.

Okay?

And then the other part, and they're different in this part, is they have different voices.

Now, I never got this part when I was taking Greek in seminary, and I'm just a simple country boy from Hermitage. We didn't understand this, but it had the idea of active and passive.

And the only active verb here is the word “fix your hope.”

And when we're talking about active, this is something that we do, okay? Like, like Scott plays the guitar. Okay? It's not the guitar plays Scott. Scott plays the guitar. That's active. Does that make sense to everybody?

Everybody passive, you receive. You're the recipient of the action. The guitar is played by Scott. Does that make sense to everybody? That's passive. We receive the concept now.

Now if you have gotten that, that wonderful Greek grammar lesson, we're going to see how this plays out. Because it hit me like a ton of bricks when I was going through this verse 13.

We get to this passage and it says here in verse 13, “Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit.” Those are non-imperatives, okay? They're basically modifying this idea of “fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

This “fix your hope” here is the active thing that you and I are supposed to do that God is calling us because we've been born again, because we have a secure faith, because God has tested our faith, because he's given us the Bible.

We need to now therefore fix our hope on what God has given us. We need to settle this issue of future faith, okay?

That ultimately with this idea of “fix,” hope really is just future faith.

You understand that when we hope in Christ, we are believing that Christ is going to do in the future what he has promised in the past and he's doing for us right now.

Okay?

If we're trusting Jesus right now, hope is basically, when we have hope in our life, we are believing that Jesus is going to do for us in the future what he's already doing for us now.

Okay?

That's future faith.

That's not just a simple idea of what hope is.

But we need to settle this issue because this world is corrupt. And sometimes we may have trusted Jesus yesterday, but man, tomorrow looks difficult.

But the same God who was over yesterday and the same God who's worthy of being praised today, we can trust him for tomorrow before tomorrow ever comes, right?

We don't have to worry about what tomorrow holds because we know who holds tomorrow.

That's the hope that we have as Christians.

Christians is that God is in control and we need to fix that down and nail that down because the world is going to try to rip it up with a crowbar, right?

And so we need to fix that. We need to settle that.

That idea of “fix” is attach it and weld it with the best gorilla glue the world has, okay?

This is something that—but we have to make that choice of a moment of settle this right now.

My hope for tomorrow, my hope for my future, my hope for what's going on in our world, my hope for what's going on in this country, my hope for the career that I'm going to have and the family I'm going to have—it's settled.

Because it belongs to Jesus. It's attached to him and his relationship with him.

Right?

Don't be wishy-washy in this world.

The waves of this world will throw you in every different direction unless you're nailed down to the cross.

And so for I'm just wanting to share with you, we—this is a command from God.

God, First Baptist Stuttgart, I want—maybe we're chasing a rabbit right now. Even you brought it up.

We will not impact this community in this world the way that God desires for us, he designed us to be, if we have—if we're scared about what going to happen tomorrow, we have—God is our God. We have a Savior who's over it all.

Y’all not read the Bible? The end of Revelation. Jesus wins those who are his. He wins.

Maybe it's going to be tough and rocky going in, but it's all going to work out for those of us who trust Jesus.

And so let's trust him. Let's settle this today.

If you're a father of Christ, settle this issue today. Nail this down and then live it out.

May we not be up and down by how the Razorbacks play. Praise Jesus. Everybody's happy they didn't play this week, right?

May we not be happy by how the stock market goes.

May we not have our emotions by how the prices are on grain.

Right?

And I'm not versed in that just quite like I used to be. But I'm going to get there.

But brothers and sisters, God is worthy of us fixing our future faith on Him. Amen.

And so we need to fix our faith on Him.

Now there's a couple things I want to add real quick before we move on to the next imperative.

And it's just literally here.

The object of our faith and hope is in Jesus, his gospel, his work of giving Himself. He is the pillar that we bolt ourselves to.

But there's two big arenas here we find in this passage that we need to fix our faith about.

One is we see here in verse 13, it says, “Therefore prepare your minds,” or straighten up or get your minds ready for action.

Ultimately, this is talking about we need to settle the issue of how we're going to trust Jesus in the future on how we think.

Think.

And I'm going to give you a couple of things just to hold on to.

Number one: what you think—your thoughts are not facts.

Right?

Our thought life—there's a lot of things that get thrown into our life.

Sometimes there are voices that come from well-meaning people.

Sometimes it's just things where our brain goes.

I know a lot of people like to think of the devil and an angel on their shoulders and things like that.

I would say if the devil's on your shoulder, knock him off.

Okay?

Right?

We need to take control of what we think.

We need to take control of where we allow our mind to be occupying.

We need to tell our brain when something comes in that makes us afraid of the future, we need to tell them, “Jesus has my future. I'm not going to think that anymore.”

Right?

We need to have that idea.

We need whatever is occupying our attention—we need to change that.

We need to tell our mind, “I'm trusting Jesus.”

And if you do that enough times, it's going to change your mind's algorithm.

Okay?

But don't let your mind's algorithm be controlled by some other algorithm.

Algorithm.

There's a whole nother rabbit.

We're going to leave that one. That might need to be said over there a couple times more.

But then there's also another arena to fix our faith—not just in our mind and our thought life, but down deep in our spirit and our soul.

Verse 13 says, “Prepare your minds for action. Keep sober or stay self-controlled in your spirit.”

Okay.

Okay, this one I'm just going to say a little bit and we're going to move on.

There's a lot of amazing things that can happen in this world and then there's a lot of really difficult things that we go through.

But if we have our hope fixed in Jesus, we don't have to get too low. We don't ever have to get too high. We can stay solid because Jesus is firm through it all.

All right.

And you know, there's been a lot of cool things.

Yesterday I kind of—several of us were a part of the one-day mission trip to Jonesboro and we had a good day, but we didn't get some of the joys of some other people.

But over 400—444 as of last night—there were over 400 professions of faith in Jonesboro.

It is awesome.

Awesome.

Right?

Does that mean that God is more glorified and glorious in Jonesboro than He is in Stuttgart?

No.

He is just—He's worthy just as much.

Right?

And just even—even all the awesome stuff that happened Wednesday night on the fields of faith, that was awesome.

But God is just as worthy of glory next Wednesday when we don't have fields of faith.

Right?

He—We—We need—even if it's a bad day, I'm just saying we need to understand down deep in our soul that God is good and we follow him and we make choices based on him and we don't get up or down based on the temporary circumstances of this world because God is God and our hope is fixed to Him.

All right?

And that is a choice that you have to make, and I hope you are making.

You have already made that choice, and now you actively are living that out.

From now on, every day you have to get up and say, “This day is a part of the future that God's already there and he's at work, and I want to trust Him. Wherever he leads me, whatever happens, I'm good, because I belong to Him.”

Now down in the next imperative, I want to focus in on—and let's just look at verses 14 through 16 again very quickly.

It says, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

Specifically, the imperative command here is to be holy.

And a lot of times in church, we see this idea of “be holy.”

And now we have this idea that I've got to work up, I've got to try harder, I've got to spiritually muscle up holiness.

But you and I are corrupt, weak, and completely unable to do anything.

Even if we are able to muscle up any sense of holiness, the Bible tells us in Isaiah that the most holy thing—all our righteous acts, our holy acts, the best of those things are like filthy, corrupted rags before a holy God.

Okay?

And so what I'm saying is—and then Jesus, when he came along and he found the most holy people on the face of the earth, a bunch of Pharisees and Sadducees among the Jewish people.

And they were—we would call them—they were good, moral people. They were upstanding people.

But they trusted in their own holiness more than the holiness of the God they claim they believe.

And Jesus called them a bunch of whitewashed tombs and a lot of other things.

All right?

And he flipped tables and other things because they trusted in their religion.

And their religion was corrupt because it was from man.

What I'm saying here, this imperative here is of the passive tense.

You and I can only be holy if we receive Jesus's holiness.

Does that make sense?

It's grammar.

I'm a Hermitage kid.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'll just be honest with you.

But when you get saved, the Holy Spirit of God comes into your life and he basically becomes your center.

And at that point, God, when God looks at somebody who's given their life to Jesus Christ, he doesn't see us anymore, even though we're still there.

He sees Jesus.

He sees the blood of Jesus.

He sees the Holy Spirit and Jesus's obedience.

And it's Jesus' holiness that God sees in us.

And it's out of us knowing that what God did to us when we got saved, that we are now to live our life out and be like Jesus.

We are to allow the Holy Spirit to come into us, change our way of life, change our thinking, change what we focus on, and even here, change our desires.

Okay?

Our only source of holiness is the one who is holy.

All other attempts of being holy are corrupt and unholy.

Okay, maybe I'll—we'll go it this way.

When Apostle Paul was writing to the people in Rome, there was a lot of Jews there.

He wrote in Romans 1 basically this long list of things where people were depraved and corrupt.

They exchanged the truth of God for the lie.

They worshiped and served creation rather than the Creator.

And God gave them over to degrading passions, depravity, and God gave them over to a depraved mind to do things which were not proper.

This is what Scripture says.

The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write:

“They were filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, foolishness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They were gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil. They were disobedient to parents without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. And although they know the ordinance of God, those who practice such things are worthy of death. They not only do the same, but they give hearty approval to those who practice them.”

There's a whole lot there.

And we like to say, “Well, that's them out there, the world. They're without excuse. They're depraved and all this other stuff.”

Stuff.

But then Paul wrote Romans 2.

In Romans 2, he says, “Those of you who teach the law, y’all, you're not even keeping the law. You Jews who know who God is, you have the religion, you're just as messed up.”

Yes, you may be moral, but you're not holy.

And I need to say this one more time because there's too many of us who sit in Baptist churches, who grew up in Baptist churches, who miss this:

Just because you go to church does not make you holy.

Just because you have religion and you're a good person and you don't do a lot of the don'ts, and you do most of the do's most of the time, does not make you holy.

Holy is absolute perfection.

And the Bible says in Romans 3, where Paul wrote these words and he was really quoting Old Testament, says, “There’s none righteous, no, not one. There’s none who seeks after God. Not the Gentiles, not the Jews, not the irreligious people, not even the religious people. We’re all corrupt.”

Okay?

And a little bit, he's basically saying, you and I, we're all in the same boat together.

We need something else.

We are corrupt, but the only source of that is Jesus.

And so there's two things here in this passage that speak to us of how do we receive this holiness once we receive Jesus? How do we live this out? How do we obey this command? Because it is a passive command.

Well, first is passively thinking like, we are obedient children.

And I find it always interesting.

God calls his people in Old Testament, New Testament children.

He's Father, we're his children.

Right?

And even though—I mean, three of my children are here—they don't always do what their father wants them to do.

But they're always my children.

Right?

Thank you, Ethan, thank you for recognizing that fact.

And because they're my children, they know whether or not they do or not, they know they're supposed to obey their father.

Right?

Their father is supposed to give them direction, and they're supposed to kind of follow that direction.

Right?

As obedient children.

As my dad would say, you know, when I tell you to do something, if I tell you to jump, you better be in the air when you're saying, “How high?”

You know, that's the role for us as children.

He's our Father.

He does not call us to debate him on what he wants us to do or not.

Right?

Our role is to find out, God, what do you want me to do? And then as best we can, do it right.

And I think I've shared a few weeks with you before, a lot of times people get so hung up on parts of the Bible they don't understand.

Listen, it's the parts of the Bible I do understand that I know that I'm supposed to follow.

Right?

And when we ignore those parts, we're missing that we're not going to be holy.

Being holy and receiving holy is recognizing God.

“You are my Father, Father. You are setting the direction for my life.”

That—and that's a receiving moment.

We've kind of passed that.

And then there's the part here where it says in verse 14, get back to First Peter, where it says, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance.”

We as human beings, we're like sponges.

We're like, I don't know, epoxy that hasn't set yet.

And we're just kind of flowing.

And we either are going to be set by the mold of this world or we're going to be set by the mold that God gives us.

Okay?

And the mold that God gives us is through his Bible of telling us, “I want you to be like Jesus. I want you to be holy. I want you to follow those things.”

And the more that we obey the things or try to obey in the power of the Spirit the things that God tells us, the more we're going to be holy, we're going to obey this part.

There's—and as we obey God's word, not try God's word, not sample God's word, as we obey God's word, we're settling this, his revealed world.

We let him do the rest, and he will change our—

Want to listen to that verse again?

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts, the former desires that were yours in your ignorance.”

Okay, man, I'm shooting that rabbit. I don't want to. I need to chase it a little bit.

The excuse that some people use in our culture that “I feel this way” or “I have these desires,” therefore they must be right because God made it that way—that's ignorant.

Did y’all hear that or I didn't?

Say it another way.

Say it again.

Just because we feel a certain way doesn't make it right.

Not saying feelings aren't important, but your feelings will lie to you.

The Bible says the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

We can't know it.

I shared this on Facebook. I need to add it.

David defeated Goliath, but he was defeated with Bathsheba.

Our real giants are the feelings and desires that we have not yet killed.

Y’all hear that?

We read verse 14 again.

This is how we be holy.

That we live out to obey that command.

Be holy yourselves in your behavior.

We take the perspective already beforehand settled because we've been saved.

We are obedient children.

If I know what God wants me to do, that's the direction I need to go.

Now I'm going to add a little bit to that sometimes a sermon.

There was a young man in Lake Ouachita that grew up in my church.

I'm basically the only pastor he knew named Ben Woodfield.

Last year, he led the state of Arkansas in scoring and touchdowns and field goals because he was a kicker and all this other stuff.

Ben was the youngest of four brothers.

Okay, all of them played football, and Ben was probably the fastest, but he was also the littlest.

And he always played with his brothers.

The great thing I loved about being last year, watching him play football, is he always got—when he got tackled, he was always one forward.

He was always going forward.

It was hard for him to—for somebody to tackle him.

They could hit him hard.

And he was little.

He wasn't the fastest in the world, and he was number one in rushing and 2A Mr. 2A football.

But he would always—if you got tackled, he was going to fall forward.

Us as Christians, let's make the mind up.

We are headed towards the end zone, which is obeying Jesus Christ.

And the world may trip us up, but when we fall, we're going to fall forward in obedience towards following Jesus Christ.

Does that make sense to y’all?

That is who we are as Christians.

We fix ourselves and we settle.

That's the direction I'm going to go.

How are we going to receive holiness completely?

We obey God's revealed word, and we let the word—and we let him do the rest.

Now, the last imperative I want you to see is in verse 17, and this one's a little bit with some more fun study, because there's a word there that we don't really have, an English word that ties up to.

A lot of our translations say “conduct yourselves” or “behavior” or some different things.

There may be some that say “sojourn,” but the same word in Matthew chapter 17, verse 22, Jesus was talking about how they went to different cities and they were on this journey to different cities.

But they kind of stayed there for a little while.

They kept their ministry in that moment.

And they used the word “abide.”

And some of y’all know this.

“Abide” has become a big word in my heart.

Now, this isn't the true “abide” word from John 7, John 15, but it does have this idea of we're going to remain here for our time on this earth, which it does say here in verse 17.

So this really speaks to us.

This is a command that we need to follow.

But until we get to heaven, don't you want to know what we need to do between now until Jesus comes back?

This is a command that's speaking of that.

What do we need to do?

And so this idea of—is this our conduct? That we—where we turn to the right, whether we turn to the left, whatever directions we may take on our journey here on this earth, we need to do it in complete—and again, this is another word that we kind of struggle with.

Verse 17 says, “If you address Father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourself, or turn, or sojourn, or abide in fear, reverence, honor, or awe during our limited time on this earth.”

Here's where this is coming.

Y’all listen carefully, because I'm about to go fast.

If we fix our hope on the future, that we trust Jesus no matter what happens.

And right now, we have given our life to Jesus and we are obeying him in the right now for him to change our heart, to change our desires.

We're not going to be conformed by the ways of the world anymore.

But we want God to be fully, completely whole, holy in us.

Then God's going to do some things.

You need to write this down if you have something.

God always works when his children obey Him.

We may not see it, we may not feel it, we may not know it until later, but God always works when his children obey Him.

But if the holy God of Heaven, who created the world in six days, who raises the dead, who gives life where there is no life, who has all power and all authority, if he works through us, then it's going to be some cool things that we get to see that we will be in awe of.

Right?

I'm just saying, don't you want to live a life where you're always seeing God at work?

It'll make worshiping easy.

Right?

When we sing songs about God, whether it's “How Great Is Our God,” or “To God Be the Glory,” there's all kinds of just being in wonder of what he's done and who he is in our life.

And I'm just saying God wants you to live a life where your life is settled.

You've already given your life to Christ.

You've already made a decision.

I'm going to obey.

Obey him.

And God's doing such amazing things in your life.

You're just like, I can't believe that I get to serve him in the middle of all this darkness.

I see light going off left and right and all of the different things in this world that's so rotten and corrupt and death.

We get to see life.

We get to see people coming to life.

We get to live that out.

We get to see God answer prayer and do amazing things.

Wise man.

Because we're looking for Him.

That's really the command.

Are you looking for God to be at work in your life?

Is that your greatest joy is to see God doing miracles in your life or God answer prayer in your life?

Or is your greatest joy in a bunch of kids playing football on the weekends?

Is your greatest joy in whether or not you can kill the biggest buck?

Or your greatest joy in scoring some really awesome cute outfit on sale in a store?

You know, I don't even know where you find your joy.

God wants us to find our joy in his work in our life and us live that way until he takes us home in heaven, and then we're going to get blown away.

But he can blow us away now if we just look for Him.

And I take it, or at least it's how I understood it in studying it this week.

God commands us to live that way, to be looking for Him.

That's a command I want to obey.

Do you?

Let me wrap this up.

These are three commands:

Fix your hope.

Be holy.

Remain or conduct yourselves in fear or reverence or honor.

But there's this whole idea of worship before him.

And these are commands.

These are imperatives.

And if you haven't settled them before today, let's settle them right now.

Right?

Let's settle them right now.

First, we all have to deal with the corrupting nature of sin that has us dead spiritually, deserving of the punishment for the devil.

And we are in need of the complete redemption only available through our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy causes us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

That's verse 4.

And this is living it out.

These are commands on how we live this out.

And so we need to fix our hope in our thinking and how we get up, how we get down.

We need to fix our hope on Jesus.

It's taken care of.

We belong to Him.

We need to receive the holiness of God in every way, but especially in what we want in our life.

And so we need to set our sails towards receiving the Holy Spirit of God by obeying him and then just live out a state of wonder of this amazing God that we get to know.

And I am just amazed at the fact that he has anything to do with us sinners.

There's an old song.

I'm not going to sing it.

I'll be shy.

An old song sung by a Southern gospel group called “God Saves Old Sinners.”

And if you know the chorus, it basically says, “I'm so glad that God saves old sinners, and I'm amazed at how he sets men free.

But the biggest surprise in saving old sinners is that God would save an old sinner like me.”

And I'm just telling you right now, God saved me in the spring of 1990 at Hermitage Baptist Church.

And I haven't gotten over it yet.

I'm just telling you right now, that's how I live my life now is that the God of heaven wants to make me live for him and with him and for his glory.

And I want to communicate to you that the God of Heaven wants you to live with him and for him for the rest of your days on this earth.

He wants to save.

If he hasn't saved you, he wants to save you, and he doesn't want you to get over it.

And if you're here and you say that you are saved and you haven't gotten over it, the God that saved me didn't save you.

I'm just saying that.

Or something's happened and you need to—you need to deal with it.

And I believe that God is able to deal with whatever it is that's keeping you from living out what he wants.

Because I know there is a spiritual battle in this world and the devil wants to throw a wet blanket on us.

Don't let him.

Don't let him.

But even worse is sometimes we take the bushel basket and we put it over our light.

Brothers and sisters, will you take the bushel basket off?

Will you ask Jesus to remove the wet blanket of the devil?

And will you obey him by fixing your hope completely on Jesus?

Be holy.

Receive his holiness in the way you think and what you desire.

And then just be amazed at what he will do.

Let's pray together.

Father, you're so good.

You love us so well.

If you are so amazing and our world is so messed up and in its corruption it is corrupted.

Even the things that you made for good, like church and Christianity, what we call Christianity in our world, it doesn't—it doesn't match anything we find in Scripture.

Lord, I pray right now in our hearts that you just help us strip away all of that and help us get back to the real root of what you want to do in our lives.

There are people here today in a crowd this size, there's somebody here today.

They're still dead in their sins.

They're still dealing with their own corrupt heart.

And right now you just want to let them know and show them who they are.

And so, God, I pray by your Spirit you will show each one of us who we are in you, whether we have you or whether we not.

Maybe we need to pray that prayer together.

Show me me, Lord.

That's a dangerous prayer.

Will you pray it?

And if your heart is still corrupt and full of sin and hatred and things that are conformed to this world, know that Jesus wants to save you from that.

And he can.

If you have been saved, God's got some work to do in you.

If you're worried about the future, fix your hope on Jesus.

If you're worried about the past, if you're worried about some other things, know that he is God.

He can forgive anything.

But he desires for you right now to be holy, receive Jesus into your heart, set your path today.

Settle this.

I'm going to obey Jesus as he tells me.

And when he works, I'm going to give him the credit, the glory, and the honor that he deserves.

Maybe God's speaking to you in an entirely different way.

Will you say yes to him?

Let's pray together.

Father, you are good.

You're glorious.

You're forgiving.

You're holy.

God, do your work in us today.

Settle what needs to be settled.

Nail it down.

As you need to do a work in our hearts and you always work when we obey.

So if you tell us what to do today, we're going to do it.

We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Amen.

Will you stand as the team leads us in a hymn of invitation?

Andrew and I will be down here at the front.

Maybe God's telling you you need to pray.

You got some stuff you need to come to the altar just and lay it down before him.

But you respond as God leads you.

Near.

I got saved.

Amen.

It's YouTube.

But anyhow, as some of y’all know, our church has entered a partnership with the church down in Chile.

And part of that is, is we want to go and be a part of that.

And so Andrew is going this weekend, basically Thursday, right?

Thursday through next Tuesday, he's going down to Talagante.

I can't pronounce it yet.

And so he's going down to basically go and be there and help them with some events that they have going on this week.

Probably going to preach, which is the fun of going through an interpreter.

And we can see that online.

Right?

They have a YouTube page.

But ultimately to set up some opportunities for the rest of us to go on mission trips to Chile in the future, particularly maybe sometime early next year.

And so ultimately I'm asking for us as a church to—number one, I'm going to pray for Andrew in a moment, but I'm asking you for this next coming weekend, Thursday through Tuesday, to be in prayer for Andrew as he's on this trip for safe journey and for also God to lead him to good soil for the right opportunities for us to partner with them in the future and maybe even allow him to share the gospel to truly introduce somebody to Jesus.

And so if y’all will join us in that and then also commit to do that this next weekend, that would be awesome.

And then I also pray over Andrew, and then we've got something going over there.

I don't know what it is.

Somebody want to make an announcement about that?

Okay?

Definitely.

Father, we thank you so much for how you work.

God, we thank you that you allow us to be in your vision for redeeming your work world.

And God, we are just so thankful that your vision is a lot bigger than our vision.

And so, God, we just pray that you continue to expand the vision of First Baptist Stuttgart to see that you have a heart for the whole world of people coming to faith in you, of loving you, of knowing you, of serving you.

And God, we thank—you pray for Chile.

We pray for the whole nation.

We pray for Talagante.

We pray for Second Baptist.

God, you're already at work.

We know you're already at work.

We just want to join you in that.

And so, God, I want to pray for Andrew and I thank you for his obedience to you.

And we're trusting that you always work through when we follow your commands and your leading.

And so, God, I pray for you just to work the travel out, the details of the travel.

International travel is always an adventure, and we just ask for you to make it go smoothly.

But God, we pray for open doors and we pray for good soil for just however you lead Andrew to help us as a church make an eternal difference in a completely different part of the world.

For your glory and your honor.

And God, I thank you for this and we pray all these things in Jesus’ name.

Amen.