Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bibles, open them to 1 Peter chapter 4.
We have been studying in the end of 1 Thessalonians and also on Wednesday nights, the end of Revelation,
the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I want to continue that theme this morning as the Apostle Peter describes how it is that
we are to live in light of the second coming of Christ.
Right?
I'll tell you, I am so thankful that Christ came and died for my sins.
I am so thankful that Jesus rose from the dead.
And I long for the time when Jesus will return in all of his glory and we will see him face to face.
And so we are living on the edge of eternity.
We are preparing our hearts for the second coming of Christ.
We are longing to know God without sin, without death, and without pain for all of eternity.
The Apostle Peter tells us in the middle of this passage,
the end of all things is at hand.
Now that doesn't mean that the second coming
of Jesus Christ is immediate,
but what it does mean is that it's imminent,
that Christ could come at any time.
And so you and I need to get ready
for the coming of Christ.
You and I are living on the edge of eternity.
And the big idea of this passage that we're going to look at today is that you and I, our time is limited.
And so use it effectively and productively.
Now, I think all of us are guilty of wasting time.
We waste our time on our cell phones.
We waste our time on the television.
You know, the Gen Z, they talk about brain rot.
Well, they may have coined the term, but we've been wasting our time way before that came around.
All of us are guilty of wasting our life at times,
but the Bible says we are to redeem our time.
Now the word redeem means to buy back.
And so first it means that we confess
that we have wasted our time in the past,
that we're honest about how we are stewarding
the time within our life.
And by the way, we all have the same amount of time.
Nobody gets more, nobody gets less.
The question is, how do we use it to pursue Christ and to pursue his kingdom?
And so redeeming the time admits that I've wasted time,
but whatever time I have left, I want to use it for Christ.
I want to live for God.
Now, the second coming of Christ is not about speculation.
It's about motivation.
In fact, Jesus said, don't speculate.
No one knows the day or the hour.
I'm going to come as a thief in the night.
Don't speculate about when I'm going to come.
Instead of be motivated to live your life so that you're ready when I do.
Because when you live and where you live affects how you live.
You see, you and I have very little time left.
Even if Christ doesn't come in our lifetimes, we have a very brief amount of time here on earth.
And so Peter says, stop wasting time and start spending your time doing these four things.
I love how practical and relevant the Bible is.
Because Peter is going to tell us exactly what to do in light of the second coming of Christ.
So let's begin in verse number 1.
He says,
Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourself also with the same mind.
For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,
that he may no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men, but for the will of God."
For we have spent enough of our past lifetimes in doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.
In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you.
They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.
Now, we don't have time to get into every aspect of these verses, but what I want you to see
is that if you're going to live your life productively in light of the second coming,
first you have to deal with your sin. See, the first thing you've got to do
is to move out of the way and let God do whatever he wants in your life.
Before you can use your life, you've got to stop wasting your life on sin.
You've got to work on yourself.
You've got to put your life together.
Now, he lists a bunch of sins of sensualism.
This is kind of the idolatry of our culture, to live for sexual sin or for alcohol or for drugs.
And he says, don't use your time for sinful passions, but use your time doing the will of God.
In other words, your life is not about you.
Your life is not about what you feel or what you want to do.
Your life belongs to God, and you are to steward it in order to accomplish and to live out God's will within your life.
Now, the reason that you are not where you could be is there are certain things in your life that you just are not dealing with.
There's some sins, there's some attitudes, there's some unforgiveness, there's some bitterness,
there's some brokenness that you've been rationalizing and you've been minimizing and you've been
justifying within your life, but deep down you know that you need to deal with it.
Deep down the Holy Spirit is working in your heart and saying, there's some things that
I want to remove to free you up to live your life for Jesus Christ.
Now, that's the opposite of our culture, isn't it?
Our culture says, well, discover yourself.
The Bible says, deny yourself.
Our culture says, listen to your heart.
The Bible says, your heart is deceitful above all things.
Now, in verses 1 and 2, he says, one of the first things that you have to do is you have
to admit that you still have sinful passions in your heart.
Now, there's some religious people that want to act like they no longer are tempted to sin.
They tell all the people out there to stop doing sins that they don't struggle with.
And that's why sometimes people don't like certain religious people.
They tell everyone else to repent, but they don't deal with the sin within their own heart.
And so what Peter is describing is, I still have sinful desires, right?
But I want to deny them, but I don't want to act like they're not there and to hide them from other people.
Well, how do we deal with those sinful desires?
He says in verse 1 that we are to arm ourselves with the truth of the gospel.
The same message that saves you is the message that changes you and transforms you from the inside out.
Now, this is different than just saying, believe the gospel.
In America, we have a very unbiblical and shallow view of belief.
We think of belief as intellectual assent.
And so I can say that I agree with something,
but it doesn't affect my heart or change my life.
But here he says, arm yourself with the truth of what Jesus has done for you.
It means absorb it within your life, integrate it into your heart and how you live.
You see, discipleship is getting the Bible into your heart where it affects you emotionally and volitionally.
That your faith goes from your head to your heart.
Timothy Keller was a pastor and a 15-year-old girl came to him for counseling and she says,
I know that God made me.
I know that Christ died for me.
I know that I have the Holy Spirit.
I know that the church is my family.
Now those are powerful, transformative theological truths.
They should affect everything within our life.
She says, I know all of those things.
But what does all of that matter if no 15-year-old boy is like me?
Now, we kind of chuckle.
But all of us have been where that 15-year-old girl was.
She believed it externally.
But she didn't embrace it and integrate it into her life.
You see, you do not understand theology properly until you apply it.
You don't really understand the Bible in your heart until it has changed and transformed your heart.
And so it's time.
It's time to start thinking about the truths of the gospel long enough and to wrestle with them hard enough that we integrate them into our life.
In verse number 7.
He says, but the end of all things is at hand.
Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers.
He says, first of all, you need to deal with your sin because you're wasting your time with sin.
Secondly, he says, you need to seek God in prayer.
Now, it's not easy to close the gap between what you say you believe and what you live.
And the truth is, only God, by His grace, can help us to close that gap.
And so it's important that we spend a lot of time with God in prayer.
It's important not just that we look forward to being with Him in the future,
but we spend time with Him right now.
And Peter says, when you pray, God changes your heart and he changes your perspective.
This word serious has to do with having the right mind or perspective.
Sometimes it's translated sober.
And this word watchful has to do with your heart.
You're watching and anticipating and longing for a relationship with God
that expresses itself through prayer and spending time with him.
I remember when my wife and I were engaged, we were in a long
distance relationship. I would go visit her when I could and she would come
visit me.
I remember when she was coming, I would anticipate about the time
of her arrival and I would look out the window every few minutes
and I would long and desire for her to return
because I loved her and I wanted to spend time with her. I wanted
to be with her.
And Peter says that is to be the disposition of our heart in prayer,
that we long for intimacy with Christ, that we long to be with him.
And that changes how we think.
You see, as we gain more intimacy in our relationship with God through prayer,
God gives us a heart and he gives us a mind to discern between what matters and what doesn't matter.
What really will last and what won't last at all.
And what we realize is that what lasts and what matters is God and people.
Look what he says in verse number 8.
He says,
And above all things have fervent love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.
He said, if you're going to use your time wisely and productively, you've got to deal with sin so you can do God's will.
You've got to also seek God in prayer because it's out of that intimacy with Christ and that love for Christ that everything else flows out of that.
And then he says you need to come into community.
In other words, don't spend your time being isolated and separated from other Christians.
Instead, come into community.
Did you know that you cannot have an effective ministry if you're not connected to other Christians?
I mean, I remember as a kid, Rambo came on TV.
I remember going, man, that was a one-man army.
But you know, that doesn't work in real life.
You can't defeat a whole country or army all by yourself.
And we're in war.
We're at war with the enemy, and we need one another.
We need the body of Christ.
We need the gifts of the Spirit manifested in other people's lives.
We need to be connected.
Now, that goes against the idol of individualism in our culture, doesn't it?
Individualism says, I want to be by myself, and I want to do whatever I want to do,
and I don't want to answer to anyone.
I want to be autonomous and I want to be self-sufficient.
Did you know that that's what led to the first sin of Adam and Eve?
That's kind of the definition of sin.
I want to be autonomous from God and from everyone else.
I want to do whatever I want whenever I want to do it.
That's the opposite of love because love desires the good of the other.
So when it comes to others, God doesn't want us to be dependent.
He doesn't want us to be independent.
He wants us to be interdependent on one another.
And notice he says, above all, have fervent love for one another.
This word fervent is an athletic word.
It means to strive or to strain as you're running towards the finish line.
He says, if you're going to love one another, it's going to cost something.
Now, most people think love is you make me feel good.
We've kind of made love all about us, right?
I love you because of the way you make me feel.
I love because you do this for me.
Really, the reason I love you is because I'm just so in love with myself, you know?
And that's kind of the mentality.
We've made love selfish.
The definition of love in the Bible is not to make someone feel good.
It's to be committed to their highest good for the longest period of time.
Did you know that's not always easy?
If I'm going to love my kids, sometimes I've got to upset them in the present to help them out in the future.
Sometimes you've got to upset present Matthew to help out future Matthew.
You've got to not have a cheap love.
You've got to have a real love that's willing to pay the price for the highest good over the longest period of time in someone's life.
And then he says, not only does love cost, he says love covers.
He says, for love covers a multitude of sins.
Now, love doesn't condone sin, but it does cover sin.
Did you ever notice that hatred takes great joy in exposing other people's sins?
There are some people who will never confess their own sins, but they'll confess your sins in a heartbeat.
They want to expose through gossip and slander, and they want to show how everybody else is all messed up,
and they think that somehow that makes them look better.
Now, it never works out that way, does it?
It ends up tearing us apart and making us look bad, but that's what hatred looks like.
But love takes joy in forgiving others.
Did you know that God delights in forgiving your sin?
The Bible says God rejoices over one sinner who repents.
It says Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross.
God delights in forgiving your sin when you come to Christ.
Now, that doesn't mean we act like sin's not there.
We are to talk about sin.
We are to talk and be tough on sin, but we are to be tender on sinners.
We are to talk about sin, but then we know where to take it afterward.
And that's not to run from God, but to run to God.
That is to run towards God's grace.
In verse 9, the Apostle Peter says,
Be hospitable to one another without grumbling.
Now, hospitality is that you love and you welcome and you receive strangers.
That you extend your life and your hand and your time to minister to other people.
Now, why do we have a hospitality ministry here at the church?
Why do we have this new parking ministry?
Why do we have an information tent and a pastor's reception?
Well, it's organizational hospitality.
We are communicating to everyone, God is ready for you.
God loves you and he wants you.
We are ready for you.
We love you and we want you.
And we want you to know that you are welcome here.
Now, hospitality is essential to discipleship because discipleship is mature believers being hospitable and involved in the lives of new Christians.
It's life-on-life love, teaching, and discipleship.
Now, notice what he says.
He says, be hospitable, but then he says without grumbling.
Oh, man, why do you have to say that, you know?
We sometimes want to do the right thing, but then complain about it.
I don't know if you've ever noticed that.
Well, why does he say that?
Well, because hospitality is tough.
Often it involves your weekend or your evening.
It involves your time.
You have to put it in your budget.
You have to give a lot of effort.
Hospitality invites people into the most intimate places in your life.
Now, hospitality is inviting the stranger into your life in the hopes that they become a brother.
It's out of love.
It's a desire to see God work in someone's life.
Jesus is the greatest example of hospitality that we have.
There are three phrases in the Gospels that say the Son of Man came.
The first is the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
And aren't you glad that Jesus came to die for sinners?
Aren't you glad that Jesus came to save sinners, of which we are?
The second is it says the Son of Man came to serve and not to be served.
Jesus didn't come so that we could all serve him.
He came so that he could serve us.
And the third is the Son of Man came eating and drinking.
In fact, when you read the Gospel of Luke,
Jesus is kind of eating his way all the way through the Gospel of Luke.
I mean, he's always going to a mill.
He's always at a mill or he's coming from a mill.
And so because I want to be like Jesus, I'm always coming from a meal, going to a meal, or at a meal.
I mean, I love food.
I love hospitality.
I love food and friendship and fellowship.
But before Jesus died for sinners, he dined with sinners.
It said that he ate with sinners. He was a friend of sinners.
You see, Jesus was hospitable in order to invite us into his home, to bring us into his family.
In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus says, I was a stranger and you welcomed me in.
It's this idea of hospitality.
Jesus is saying there's an intimacy with me that you will only experience in practicing hospitality within your life.
Notice what he says in verse number 10.
He says, as each one has received a gift, minister to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.
If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies,
that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ,
to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
He said, if you are going to use your life effectively and productively,
if you're going to get ready for the second coming,
first, you've got to deal with your sin so that you can live for God.
Second, you've got to seek God in prayer,
because out of that flows all the ministry and everything else within your life.
He said, third, you've got to be in community with other people
so that they can strengthen you and you can strengthen them.
But fourth, the fourth thing he says we're to do is you are to deploy your spiritual gifts.
See, we have to move from consumers to contributors.
You can't have more customers than co-laborers.
You can't have more takers than givers.
You can't have more selfish people than servants.
You need people to step up and make a difference for eternity
if we're going to live for the Lord.
Now, the Bible teaches that every Christian has at least one spiritual gift,
that God has empowered you in a special way to minister.
A spiritual gift is a divine enablement.
for you to uniquely serve others in ministry and mission.
And one of the greatest joys in life is to discover how God made you
and using that unique design and that gifting in ministry and mission towards other people.
Now, our desire is that every Christian in our church would discover their spiritual gifts,
that you would develop your spiritual gifts,
and that you would deploy your spiritual gifts.
We want you to find out how God made you to help move the message and the ministry of Jesus forward.
We want you to find why Jesus has you here on earth and what his plan and his purpose is.
You see, you go, well, what is God's will for my life?
I don't know all of that, but one thing I do know is it is God's will for you to use your spiritual gifts.
Don't waste them.
Now, there are two categories of spiritual gifts that the Apostle Peter gives us.
There's the speaking gifts, and then there's the serving gifts.
It's as if you speak, speak as the oracles of God.
In other words, the Word of God is the basis of the speaking gifts.
And so, if you're a teacher, teach God's Word.
If you have the gift of faith, then strengthen people's faith by pointing them to the promise and the truth of God's Word.
If you have the gift of encouragement, point them to the wonderful truths that God has revealed within the gospel.
People are so hungry.
Hungry.
to receive a word from God. They're so hungry to hear from God. So if that is the gift that
God's given you, employ it, deploy it, and use it to bring other people closer to the Lord.
The second category of gifts, he says, are the serving gifts. Now the serving gifts
are where you're able to serve in a strength and a capacity that can only be from God.
That God gives you supernatural ability to serve.
Not only do you have the ability in the gifts,
but you also have the supernatural blessing of God
that he uses that gift to bring about his manifold grace
within the lives of other people.
And that gift is a matter of his grace within your life
that God not only has saved you,
but he also has graced you with the ability to be a part of what he's doing.
Now, notice he says, whatever gifts you have, use them with the ability that God supplies.
In other words, you can't do it in your own strength.
You have to rely on the Holy Spirit who empowers you.
The last couple of weeks, I had a couple of people come to me and want to pray for me.
And they said, well, what's your greatest problem or greatest challenge that you're facing?
And I didn't have a lot of time to think about it.
I said, well, you know, probably the biggest challenge I face is my inadequacy.
God keeps calling me and to do things that I'm not capable of doing
and I'm not competent to do, and he's stretching me and so forth.
But I said, you know, that's my biggest challenge.
But my greatest joy is God's sufficiency in my weakness.
And so sometimes our greatest weakness
is our greatest opportunity to be used by God and to see God work in other people's lives.
So he says, do it with the ability God supplies.
He says, as a steward of the manifold grace of God.
In other words, your life and your time and your talents don't belong to you.
They belong to God.
And you're going to waste God's time if you don't understand that it belongs to him.
So I want to challenge you every morning to say, God, how do you want to use this day?
What do you want to do today?
What do you want to do with my week? How do you want me to spend my month? How do you want to
employ my time and my talents for your glory and for doing your will? You see, we have so little
time left, and Peter says, make sure you don't waste your time and your talents on nothing.
Now he says all of this is that God would be glorified.
In fact, Peter just breaks into a doxology right here in the middle of his letter.
And he's saying, man, God is so good.
But what he's saying is use your gifts to make God look great, not to make you look great.
Use your gifts because you want everyone to know how great and how glorious and how graceful God has been in your life.
Now he says that God would be glorified through the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, all of this comes from Jesus.
All of it's through Jesus and all of it points to Jesus.
We deny ourselves because he denied himself to save us and to sanctify us.
We love one another because he first loved us.
We are hospitable to one another because he died for our sins to welcome us into his home.
We use our gifts because he used everything he had to save us and to serve us.
So it's all because of Jesus.
And it all is about Jesus.
And it all ultimately points to Jesus.
I tell you, I long for.
for the second coming of Christ.
Sometimes I get tired of being a sinner.
Does that ever happen to you?
My wife probably gets tired of me being a sinner too,
but I long to be with the Lord
and to experience His glory and His grace
in a way that's without sin,
in a way that's eternal.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite games was hide and seek.
And somebody would count down 50 to 100, whatever it was,
and everybody would go and they'd find their hiding place
and then they'd come to find them and to chase them.
But they would count down and when they finished,
they would say, ready or not, here I come.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus is coming back.
And the countdown has begun.
I don't know where we're at in that count.
Maybe we're at 95.
Maybe we're at 98.
Maybe we're at 99.9.
And he's about to come back right now.
But someday Jesus is going to say, ready or not, here I come.
And the clouds will part, and the trumpet will sound, and the Lord will return in all of his glory.
Let me ask you, are you ready for Jesus to return?
See, when he comes back, he's going to be our judge, but right now he could be your Savior.
Jesus took on the judgment of our sin upon the cross so that you and I wouldn't have to face judgment for our sin.
And so my question is, are you ready?
Are you trusting Jesus as your Savior and as your Lord?
And if you are, are you using your life and the precious time that you have to employ it for his kingdom and his glory?
Jesus is coming soon.
And so let's throw out the old playbook
and let's reimagine how to live every moment of our life
on the edge of eternity.
Moses says, Lord, teach us to number our days
that we may have a heart of wisdom.
If we could just see how brief our life is.
And how short this stewardship that God has entrusted to us is.
And we could see the vastness of eternity and the glory of heaven.
I think that we would all forever be transformed.
And we would say, let me use every single second, every minute of my life,
knowing Christ and living for Christ.
You say, well, I'm too busy.
Well, Peter says, well, then you're too busy.
You need to stop wasting your life with sin and neglect.
Neglect.
doing things that won't matter and won't last in eternity.
Stop accumulating things for the great fire of God's judgment
and start using what little time you have left
and whatever gifts that God has given you
and employ them and employ that time in what will last forever
and what will matter for always.
Because the Lord is coming back.
Are you ready?
Are you trusting in Jesus?
And are you living your life for Him?
Let's bow together as we prepare to pray.
Here in a moment, we're going to have a time of invitation.
There's going to be pastors and prayer partners here at the front.
You can come and say, I want to give my life to Christ.
Jesus died for sinners.
That means he died for you and for me.
And he offers us grace and forgiveness.
He rejoices in saving sinners.
In fact, that's why Jesus came, to seek and to save the lost.
I want you to know that God loves you.
Jesus came to die on the cross to pay for your sins.
He rose from the dead and he's coming back
because he wants to welcome you into his eternal home.
But you have to trust him.
You have to surrender to his grace
and his lordship within your life.
I want to encourage you to do that this morning.
Don't waste another second of your life
not knowing the Lord.
But come to him.
And experience a relationship with Him today.
Maybe you're here this morning and you've given your life to Christ,
but you never publicly professed your faith in Christ through Believer's Baptism.
We want to invite you to do that.
Next week is Easter Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
What a wonderful day to come and declare your faith in Christ through baptism.
Now, baptism doesn't save us.
Only Jesus can save us
as we put our faith and trust in him.
But baptism is a way to go public with your faith.
Maybe you want to come and say,
I'm ready to be baptized, to go public
with my faith in Christ, my relationship with Him.
Maybe the Lord's leading you to come into community,
to be a part of this faith family
and say, I want to deploy my gifts and use them.
I want to discover them. I want to develop them.
I want to be a part of what God is doing here.
I need other Christians to encourage me and strengthen me
and help me as I follow the Lord.
We invite you to come and be a part of our family,
to make it official, become a member of our church.
But it may be that you're here this morning and you've given your life to Christ,
but you have wrecked your life with sin.
And you need to come back to a life of surrender to the Lord Jesus.
Maybe you've wasted your time in the world, but maybe this morning you've wasted your time and your talents with neglect.
You're just coasting.
You're not really using your time.
You're not redeeming your time.
You're just wasting your time.
You're not even asking the Lord what he wants in your life or how he wants you to use your time or to use your talents.
You're just like, hey, it's just all about me.
Maybe the Holy Spirit is moving in your heart right now
to show you how he wants to use you
with the few months or years or decades
you have left within your life.
He wants to use you for eternal weight of glory
that cannot be compared to the passing,
fading glory of this age.
And you just pray right where you are, Lord, would you?
Would you use me? Would you take my time? Would you take my talents and use them for your glory,
for your kingdom? Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time where we can hear from you.
I pray, God, that you would
Help us to recognize our struggle with sin
and to deal with those things within our life
that are keeping us from being all in for you, Lord.
Whatever sin it is, I pray, Holy Spirit,
that you would convict us and show us
what it is that we need to deal with
and what it is you want us to do.
Father, I pray that we would seek you in prayer
And out of that intimacy, all of our life would flow out of that.
And everything would be built around our relationship with you, Lord.
That we would be men and women and boys and girls of prayer.
That we would seek your face above all else.
Father, I pray that we would come into community and we would live out the design that you have for your family.
that we would be a part of your work and your will here through the church.
And Lord, I pray that we would discover and we would develop and that we would deploy and use our spiritual gifts for you.
But God, I pray if there's anyone here that doesn't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior,
I pray that today...
that you would open their eyes, God,
that you would open their heart,
that they would see their sin
and their need for grace and forgiveness,
that they would see what Jesus did on the cross
for their paying their sin
and that he rose from the dead and he's returning.
And I pray, Lord, they would see the beauty of the gospel
and they would be compelled, Lord,
to come and put their faith in Jesus Christ.
God, that you would change lives, that you would change hearts, that you would draw us to you.
So Lord, thank you for this time. Bless it and use it for your glory, for our good, and for the
furtherance of your kingdom and your cause here on earth. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Thanks for listening today.
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If you feel the Lord calling you
to take the next step in faith
through salvation, service, or giving, don't wait.
reach out to us by texting podcast to 88988.
That's podcast to 88988 or connect with us
on one of our social media platforms.
You can also visit our website, valleybaptist.org
to find even more great resources.
No matter where you are in your journey,
know that we love you, we're praying for you
and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.