Run For Your Life • 1 Peter 2:11

37:59 Teaching begins

Notes

It’s a fabulous privilege to be in Christ. Jesus is precious beyond our knowledge.

With that fabulous privilege comes conflict. Peace, joy, righteousness, and war. You have to fight.

The reason is because you are different. You are an alien and a stranger on your own home planet. This is a fleshly planet and hostile to those who are spiritual. You have to fight.

But you don’t fight in a fleshly way, you fight in a spiritual way.

Because you fight spiritually, you will win this fight. We’re reading in 1 Peter 2:11

1. You are God’s beloved, that’s why He’s saving you.

A. Everything about God is love. He wants the very best for you.

B. We can easily misunderstand God.

1. I’ve been meditating in Psalm 106. In verse 7 it says, Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders; they did not remember Your abundant kindnesses, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.

2. Exodus 14:11-12 Then they said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”

3. God had already shown Israel abundant lovingkindnesses in plaguing Egypt and forcing Pharaoh to let Israel go. He killed all the firstborn in Egypt! And yet they don’t remember that God loves them. They say, I told you so! You’re crazy, God! You’re trying to kill us! It’s better to be live slaves than to die here!

4. Psalm 106:10 He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. God is not the enemy, God is not the one who hated them. God is the one who loves us like He loved Israel and saved them.

C. So it’s out of God’s love that Peter urges us to abstain from fleshly lusts.

2. What are fleshly lusts?

A. We think of sexual lust, which leads to fornication, adultery, and preoccupation with sexual things. 

B. Lust is bigger than sex.

1. The Greek word is epithumia, and it means strong desire. It can be either good desire or bad desire.

2. It’s when that strong desire cancels obedience to God that it’s bad. Strong desire not yielded to God leads to the opposite direction, away from God, towards death and destruction.

3. Fleshly lusts do not have a conscience, doesn’t care if a thing is wrong, just wants that thing.

C. Coveting is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, wanting something that is not lawful for you to have, anything that belongs to your neighbour.

D. 1 Timothy 6:9-10 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. In order to get money a person can be forced to do things that otherwise he would never do.

E. Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

3. Fleshly lusts are not what you are about now, because you have become aliens and strangers on your own planet!

A. An alien is someone differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility. A stranger is someone not like everyone else, different. I don’t know you, stranger.

B. You used to be like everyone else. That is, naturally caught up in fleshly lusts and thought nothing of it.

1. Titus 3:3 For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

2. A fish doesn’t say, “Wow, I’m really wet today! I’m tired of being wet!” Water is its natural environment. Our natural environment is fleshly lusts.

C. But God did something to us: He placed us in Christ.

1. Titus 3:4-7 But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

2. Colossians 1:13-14 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

D. We are now in Christ, and because we are in Christ, we are different to the point of incompatibility.

1. We think in a way that is not compatible in this world: We say, “Jesus is Lord.”

2. Because of that we experience conflict with the world that says, no He isn’t.

E. God saved Israel from the one who hated them. Hate is a strong word.

1. The thinking behind this is, you are different from me, therefore I hate you. That’s the thought behind racism that is such a big problem today. You are different from me so I hate you.

2. Behind this intolerance is arrogance. I’m the standard. I’m normal. If you were like me, you’d be okay. Because you’re not like me, you’re not okay. You are the enemy.

F. This is just the point of conflict with Israel living in Egypt. Israel was always different, they were always foreigners.

1. Egyptians could not eat with them.

2. Egyptians abominated shepherds. Joseph told his brothers that when you go in and talk to Pharaoh tell him you’re shepherds, your fathers were shepherds, we’re all shepherds, so he puts you all off in the land of Goshen. They can’t stand shepherds.

3. Their society was based on slave labor, and yet they tried to eliminate their slaves. It doesn’t make sense, but Egypt hated Israel because they were different.

G. In fact there was a similar situation in modern history, what Adolf Hitler did in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The Jews were blamed for things they didn’t do and had no control over. They were eliminated from society, when Germany could have benefitted from their abilities and strengths.

H. There’s something greater than just human hatred going on here. There is a conflict between the devil and God. God saves us because He loves us. The devil hates us and wants to kill us. Those fleshly lusts make war against us to bring us down into slavery and death.

4. God saved us, now we are in a conflict that God expects us to win because He is saving us. What’s our strategy? We hold ourselves back from them.

A. You don’t fight directly against fleshly lusts that war against your soul. You can’t fight against your old nature because you are fighting against you. You can’t win against you. You will always lose, because you love yourself. If you could win against yourself, then Jesus died for nothing. All God would have to say to us is, “Try harder! You’re not even trying!”

B. Peter says to abstain. Hold yourself back from these fleshly lusts. Don’t go near them.

C. 2 Timothy 2:22 Paul says to Timothy, “Flee youthful lusts!” RUN! Then he says, “but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Youthful lusts are the old life, the old nature. Righteousness faith love, etcetera, are the new life, the new nature.

D. The great thing Paul says here is RUN! Run away from the fleshly lusts, run to Jesus. When you run you exert yourself with focus and force. That is a great metaphor for living a spiritual life in Christ, with focus and force.

E. It’s amazing how often living life for God is called running. I thought of all these Scriptures:

1. Isaiah 40:30-31 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

2. Psalm 119:32 I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart.

3. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

4. Galatians 2:2 And I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain.

5. Galatians 5:7 You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

6. Philippians 2:16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.

7. Philippians 3:12-14 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

8. 2 Timothy 4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

9. Hebrews 12:1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

E. “Run” is the norm for a relationship with God in this world that is fallen and there are fleshly lusts waging war against our souls.

F. Here’s the reason why we run: this is how Jesus lived when He lived here as a man. He ran His race with focus and force. And He is the author and the finisher of this course.

5. So what?

A. It is a great privilege to be in Christ.

B. It is also a conflict that we deal with by living with focus and force, pursuing our relationship with Christ. We seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. We had a great study on this very thing Friday night. There’s a long list of all that we receive when we run and pursue our relationship with Jesus. Leave that old life of the flesh, pursue the new life in the Spirit. Run!

C. You might think, that’s not me. I’m not a focus guy. I’m not a force guy.

D. Jesus is a focus and a force guy. So your strategy is to flee for refuge in Him. Pursue Him. Seek Him.

E. Can you imagine a guy running with a phone in his hand? What would you say of that person? Running is a distant second. He’s going to hurt himself. He’s not going to get where he wants to go. Force comes with focus. If your focus is divided you have no force. You cannot serve God and your phone.

F. In Jesus the fullness of God dwells in bodily form and in Him you are complete. All the satisfaction you seek and need is in Him. Jesus in you is the hope of glory. As you seek Him He will take care of the idolatry, the fleshly lusts, the disobedience.

Let’s pray.