December 10th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is December the 10th, and our passage for today is 1 Peter chapter 2. Before we go into the content of chapter 2, I want to go back and pick up at the end of verse 9 at verse 10 of 1 Peter chapter 1, because this chapter is so full in laying the groundwork for all that we're going to be looking at in the coming chapters. Now remember when I closed with you, we were talking about the fire that tested every child of God, especially those who were being persecuted, and that God had his hand on the thermostat. We are never out of his control. He can always turn up the heat, he can always turn it down. He knows best, and that is part of our responsibility is to learn to trust him. Now when he was talking about the salvation of our souls, he says in verse ten, Now of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow. To them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. These things which angels desire to look into. As the apostle Peter was talking about salvation, he immediately went back to the prophet Isaiah and the prophets likened unto him. Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah fifty three of a suffering servant who would come, a substitute for sins, who would die for the sins of others. As a matter of fact, in chapter fifty three and verse six it says, All we like sheep, you, I, every Jew, every person who's ever lived, Jew or Gentile, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one unto his own way, our responsibility. And the Lord has laid on him this suffering servant, this Messiah, this anointed one, the iniquity, the sin of all of us. And so Isaiah would prophesy about that, then he would turn around and just in another breath almost, another chapter, what we call a chapter or two, he would talk about the glory of the Messiah and how he would reign during the Messianic era, and he would rule over all the earth. And Isaiah said in his heart and his mind, I don't get this, but it's not for me. I'm writing this for someone else. What an amazing truth that is revealed here by the Apostle Peter. And so this salvation is our hope. Remember, he said, We are born again, we are given birth to a living hope, not a dead hope. We're given a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And in verse thirteen he says, Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hopefully to the grace that is being brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to your former lust, as in your ignorance, as when you didn't know any better, but as he who has called you is holy, so you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, be holy, for I am holy. Now I want to go back to verse thirteen, because everything that is said from verse three, this great blessing of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all of that comes to a conclusion in verses thirteen and following. And I wanted to point out to you what really is the main verb of this and what are participles. It's very much like the gospel Great Commission in Matthew twenty-eight, when I have shared with you that the commission is not to go. The commission is to make disciples as you're going, whenever you're going, wherever you're going, and you're to do that by baptizing them, going, baptizing, and teaching them to observe, to be obedient. That's two participles and infinitive. Those three are modifiers of this concept of making disciples. Well, so it is, as Peter, using good grammar, good language here, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, here's what he said. Therefore, it looks like that we're to gird up the loins of our mind, and we'll deal with that in just a second. But that's really not the verb. The verb is hope. That's correct. Hope. Therefore, hope, hope, fully, completely for the grace that is being brought to you at the parousia, at the manifestation, at the revelation of who Jesus Christ is when he comes for us. And so hope here is Elpis, it is Elpida, it is in that Elpis family. That word means expectation. I believe that it could be translated in almost every aspect, one of two ways, either eager anticipation or excited expectation. You see, hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is assurance. It is confidence. It gives you excited anticipation that God is going to do what he said he would do. It is excited expectation. All of this is wrapped up in the word hope. It's the word of confidence and assurance. And so he says, be assured. Why would he say that? Because they're going through difficult times. You see, you can't live without hope. You can't go on without hope. As a matter of fact, a person can commit suicide and kill themselves knowing they're loved and loving others. They can kill themselves as followers of Jesus. That's right. They can become discouraged, they can get down, they can have true faith, saving faith, but they can do something at a rash moment in their lives, and this happens. But you cannot do that with hope, with expectation that there's going to be something better down the road. The reason that we do crazy things many times in our lives and watch people do crazy things is because they lose hope, expectation of anything any better. Hope is the bridge to life. That's why it is in the middle of that great trilogy of virtue and characteristics in 1 Corinthians 13, where he says, Now remains faith, hope, and love. Hope is strategically in the middle of those because it is the bridge between the two. It's actually the bridge to life. And so he says, hope. Now how do we do that? That's where these participles come in. How do we keep focused? Well, he says you need to gird up the loins of your mind. Now, to gird up your loins is an idiomatic phrase in the ancient first century world. Because what would happen is they would wear these long robes and many times they would become frazzled on the end, like many of us who wore blue jeans, bell bottom blue jeans in the 70s longer than what they should, and they would get frayed on the end and string in sometimes, you know, like they buy them with holes in them now. We used to if we could find them with already ends frayed, then that just made them better. Don't ask me why. Just like don't ask me why kids today and people today, even grown men and women, buy pants with holes in them when my grandmother used to patch them. Well, that's for another day. But at any rate, the whole idea is that these things could trip you up. And so in the ancient world, what they would do if they wanted to really make progress and walk, and especially if they wanted to run and get somewhere, then they would pull up all the loose ends. They would gather them all up, and they would bring them through their legs from the back, and they would stuff them in their belt that went around their loins, went around their waist. And so this is the idiomatic phrase. This is the word picture. He said, gather up all the loose ends of your mind. Why? Because you can't go anywhere if you're constantly being pulled here and there. And this was what was happening to those strangers that were scattered about. And so the apostle Peter said, Concentrate, get all of the loose ends of your life together. And I dare say I'm speaking to some people today that are just afraid. You feel frazzled, you feel like you're going in fifteen different directions or maybe thirty, and you just can't get it together. You cannot get it all together. Well, just stop. Just stop. Because those things will probably be done with or without you. And some of you are killing yourself working for a company or a factory or a business. The reality is the moment you're gone, they're going to start looking to replace you, and they may be already planning to do that now. But I assure you, if you were to go on and be with the Lord before the flowers wilted on your grave, they would already have someone to replace you. Because life goes on. Don't sell your soul to a career, don't sell your soul to education, don't sell your soul to making money, but rather concentrate on making a life. So many people are so busy making a living that they forget all about making a life until it's too late. And so I want to encourage you, do you want to have hope? Do you want to have expectancy? Then gather up all the loose ends of your mind and look toward the heavens and conform yourselves to the will of God, not to the way you once walked, not to the way you once live. You're not like that anymore. And so he says, be holy, be set apart. The word hagias is the word for being set apart. It's sometimes translated holy. Another form of it is sanctification, another form is to sanctify. But it's the idea of setting apart from something and dedicating and consecrating it to something else. In regards to God Himself, we are set apart from the world, from sin, from ungodly thinking. That's what God desires for us, and He has committed us, and we are to commit ourselves and dedicate ourselves and consecrate ourselves unto living unto Jesus. This is what brings hope into our lives. And then he goes on to talk about the word of God that endures forever, and he pulls this right out of the book of Isaiah. He says, Listen, you need to hope in God. Your faith and your hope are in God. That's verse twenty-one. Verse twenty two he says, You are to hope in God because you've purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren. Love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again. Listen to this, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible. And what is that incorruptible seed that will never ever fade away? It is the word of God which lives and abides forever. And then he pulls this passage out of the book of Isaiah again like he did earlier in the chapter. All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower the grass. The grass withers, and its flower fails away, and its flower falls away. It fades. But the word of the Lord, the word of the God of creation, the God of all eternity, God almighty endures forever. And then before he gets into what we call chapter two, this phrase, now this is the word by which the gospel was preached unto you, actually goes with chapter two. And so he says, Therefore, laying aside all malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Now let me say just a word and I'll close because I know time is getting away from us today. And so what the Apostle Peter here says is this word of God that is implanted in your life has brought forth life. That's why you are illuminated, that's why you're no longer ignorant. Now you have come to be enlightened through the Word of God. And he said you need to desire it as a newborn babe coming right out of the womb, desiring the milk of the word, and as a newborn babe wanting its mother and wanting to nourishment and to feed. And in that closum, before the milk even comes in, there is everything that that baby needs to survive. All the vitamins, the minerals, everything is in that colostrum. And then the milk comes. And he said, You need to desire that. But he says, in order to desire it, you've got to lay aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking. You see, sometimes we lose our appetite for the Word of God because of what's in our lives, what we've allowed to crowd in and crowd out the good and take over that which is bad. And so he says, lay it aside, just like you put off old clothes that stink and are dirty and need to be cleansed. Take those off and let God cleanse you, and that desire for his word will come back into your heart. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.