You Were Set Apart for a Reason | Conspiracy of the Cross Week 2

On October 8, 1978, a young East German agent walked through the customs at Chicago O'Hare. Under a forged name, the KGB had built for him. And within two days, that name was gone, and a new American name had taken place, Jack Barsky. For the next 10 years, Barsky lived as a Soviet sleeper agent in New York City. He earned a college degree, built a career as a programmer, got married, and had a daughter. The whole time he was reporting back to Moscow by shortwave radio in the dead of night, and nobody around him had the slightest idea. Then in 1988, Moscow sent word to come home. And one morning, a stranger stepped in close behind him on the subway platform and whispered five words, "Come home, or you're dead." And Barsky said anyways, because then the cover story had quietly actually become his life. He blended in so completely for so long that the man that was sent here to work against this country had all but vanished into it. The place he was planted ended up actually swallowing him whole. Now, I want you to hold on to this name, because we're going to come back to him before we're done today, because his story is not finished. I want to welcome you to Faith Promise. I want to welcome everybody in the room, those who are joining online. And come on, can we give a shout out to our Roan County campus? Come on, they're with us today. If you missed last week, we are in a series called Conspiracy at the Cross. And man, I have enjoyed Week One was great if you haven't watched that, go back and watch it. But today, what we're going to be doing and throughout this series, it's a book study on 1 Peter. And so it may feel a little bit different today, but we are going to dive in to God's Word. And I'm going to take it kind of verse by verse. I'm going to hit the highlights of these verses, but we're going to go fairly deep today. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and go to 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter 1. And I'm going to kind of set the stage for us here and tell you where we're going to go and then lead the way from there. But first Peter chapter 1, we're going to start with verse 13. And then we're going to work our way through all the way to verse 12 in chapter 2. So if you're taking notes, I want you to take notes. I want you to write this down. And I really believe that you will leave knowing more about God's Word than you walked in here before. But before we read a single word of this, we have to see who Peter is writing to. And especially if you missed last week, I want to kind of catch you up here. If you look in verse 1 and chapter 1, you're going to see these words. It says to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion. And so I want to point this out because this is important to know who Peter is talking to. Elect exiles. He's writing to believers that are scattered all across the

Roman provinces. They're living as a minority in a culture that didn't share their faith, their values, or their king. They were misunderstood. And some were beginning to suffer for the name of Jesus. And every one of them felt the same quiet pressure that often you and I feel. The pool to either blend in until you kind of disappear into the world or hunker down until you're no earthly good at all. And so into that pressure, Peter, he writes. But before he ever tells them how to live, he tells them who they are. Because often, I don't know about you, but for me, who I am or what I do often comes through who I am. So all throughout this passage, you're going to hear things like this. And I'm going to say them so that way when you hear them, it triggers something to say, hey, this is important. He says things like, you are ransomed. You are born again. You are living stones, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And here's why this matters so much. The difference God builds into people like that was never meant to stay hidden. And it's exactly. And so the big idea today, and there's only one, all right? So if you're taking notes, write this down. This is everything that this message is built on, and it's that God set you apart to put him on display. God set you apart to put him on display. So everything Peter is about to say about who you are is aiming at that. We're going to be talking about this call to be holy, this call to be set apart. And it's a life that God gives you because he intends you, he intends you to take that life into the world around you. And so we are going to be starting in verse, with verse 13 here, and we're going to watch how Peter begins because he did something that we probably wouldn't do, and he begins where you and I probably wouldn't. Okay, so first Peter chapter 1 verse 13, "If you're ready, say I am."

There's many ways to follow. You can follow in an actual Bible on the faith promise app. If you have your phone, please follow along in Scripture. Verse 13 says, "Therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." So the first word that we see, probably many of us would actually skip over, is the word therefore. Everybody say therefore. Here's a little rule while this will serve you for the rest of your life as you read the Bible. Every time that you hit the word, therefore in the Bible, you have to ask why is it there, okay? What is it there for? And this is one that is carrying some real weight. Peter says this, he reaches back and he grabs everything that he just talked about in the verses before verse 13. He says that, he talks about the living hope, the inheritance kept in heaven for you. A salvation guarded by the power of God and says, "In light of all of that, here's how you live." And the first thing that he says, he says, "To get your minds ready for action." And if you glance in your Bible, you're going to see after the word action, a footnote. And that footnote is, it's Greek. It literally says to gird up the loins of your mind. Here's why that's important. Everybody in that time period wore a long robe.

And before you could run, before you could fight, before you could work, what would happen is that you would have to reach down on that robe and you would have to tuck it in your belt so that you wouldn't trip. And so it's actually, it goes back to the very thing that God told Israel to do on the night of the Passover in Exodus chapter 12. So if you were to rewind all the way back to the Old Testament, you could read a little bit about that. But just a very high summary, he says, "Belt's fastened, sandals on because rescue is coming and you're leaving in the morning." And so Peter, he is saying this to the people he's talking to and he's saying this to us, he's saying, "Get your mind up off the ground." Stop letting it drag through everything the culture drags through and set your hope fully on grace. Your mind is important for the assignment that Peter is about to give you and me and the people that he's talking to. Look at verse 15 and 16. He says, "But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct." Since it is written, many of you've probably heard this if you've been around church. "You shall be holy for I am holy." So one of the things that happens here is that Peter talks about this identity statement and this is the oldest identity statement God has ever gave his,

God ever gave his people and he quotes it right out of Leviticus. Another footnote in your Bible, if you look down below, it's Leviticus 1144. And so he says, "Be holy for I am holy." But before we just kind of roll past this, I need you to hear what the word actually means. Because holy has been beaten up in our world until people assume it means one of two things. You see, most of the time people assume that it means to be either better than everybody else or it means to be removed from everybody else. That's what we've kind of defined as holy. And I'm here to tell you this morning that it actually doesn't mean either one of those. To be holy simply means to be set apart for God. That's the whole definition. You see, I like to kind of describe it this way. It's the difference between your everyday dishes in your cabinet and the ones that your grandma, nana, mama, whatever you call her only brings out at Christmas. You see, it's the same clay, but one is common and the other is set apart for something sacred. And here's what God is saying. God is saying that you're mine, you're set apart for my purposes. At Peter in this moment, he is calling those people to live like it. He's not saying, "Hey, be better than your neighbor." He's not saying, "Be removed from your neighbor." But here's what he's saying.

He's saying, "Be noticeably different people in the world." See, sometimes I think we think that holy is like this feeling. Like we catch holy. If you've been to a conference or you've been to a great worship service or even on a Sunday morning and you've had this response moment, you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, yes, but the Holy Spirit leads us to do practical holy things. So I wanna break it down for you if you just think holy is a feeling 'cause it shows up on an ordinary Tuesday in parts of your life that nobody applauds. For the business person, it's telling the truth in the sale when the shortcut would have made you more money. For the husband and wife sitting in this room today, it's the tone that you take when you are both worn out and your kids are melting down and nobody's feeling it. That's holiness. It's for the student in the group chat when it's real easy to just pile on on the inappropriate things and the things that you know you shouldn't be talking about. It's choosing not to engage. It's what you click on when the house is dark and nobody's awake. It's whether you actually give when it finally costs you something.

That's holiness. It's also what you do with the offense that you've been nursing for six months and you're trying to decide whether you should forgive the way that you have been forgiving. You see, holiness, a lot of the time is just the plain, unglamorous faithfulness of keeping the promise and doing the right thing when the only one watching is God. So hear me. Wherever you're sitting this morning, holy never meant that you have it all figured out. It means that in a thousand of those small hidden moments, your life keeps quietly bending toward God instead of blending in with everyone around you. And here's what happens. People, the world, they start to notice a life like that long before they ever ask you a single thing about Jesus. But here's the question. Here's the question that hangs over a command like be holy. And it's this, on what basis? Like what would ever make me think or you think or us think that we could pull that off on our own? I'm glad you asked. The Peter answers it right away. And he answers it not by pointing to your own effort,

but to the price that was already paid for you. Let's look at verse 18 and 19. Says this, knowing that you were ransom. Everybody say ransom. [BLANK_AUDIO] "not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, "but with the precious blood of Christ, "like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." We can't rush past this word ransom. Everybody say ransom. Here's what it means. It means to be bought back the way a slave was purchased out of the market or a hostage bought out of captivity. And Peter tells you exactly what the ransom was not and what it was. It was not silver or gold, the most precious currency in the ancient world. It was the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot. And I wanna take this a step further because this is Passover language. Everybody say Passover. Remember what Passover is? And if you don't know what Passover is, I'm gonna teach you what it is because this is key. It was Israel's celebration back in the Old Testament of the night God rescued them out of slavery in Egypt. And on that night, every family killed a spotless lamb and they painted its blood across the doorpost of the house.

And the blood was the marker. It set God's people apart from the Egyptians who had enslaved them. And then death passed over every home that it carried, that carried it. And Peter is telling you, the lamb was Jesus and the door was your life. And this and his blood is the thing that now sets you apart. So when you're wondering, whether you've got what it takes to live a set-apart life, Peter might say that you might have this whole equation backwards. You don't become gods in order to earn your holiness. You already belong to God, bought at the cost of the blood of his own son. And don't miss this. Holiness is simply learning to live like what you already are. Because nobody pays a price like that for something that he plans to abandon. I'm here to remind you today that you were bought at the highest possible cost, on purpose, to keep. God's word says, I will never abandon you nor forsake you. So Peter is telling us with this verse that we just read, you are called to be holy. Why? Not to earn a single thing. But because you were chosen

and you were bought with a price, you already belong to him. So live like it. Live set-apart. Live as holy people. Let's continue to read. And we're gonna see how Peter turns from what was done for you to what has been done in you. Because he says that you haven't merely been forgiven. You've actually been born all over again. So look at verse 23. Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. Through the living and abiding word of God. Two things I want you to see here. Not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. Through the living word of God. And then he leans actually, he goes back to Isaiah, the book of Isaiah. And he says this, all flesh is like grass and all it's glory like a flower of grass. The grass withers and the flowers flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Church, every other identity you could build your life on comes with an expiration date. And it's stamped on it. And you know how we handle expiration dates. If you just look in your fridge, come on somebody. You have things in that fridge from two presidents ago.

And you still crack the lid and you smell it. Like it's still, it might be good. Like that date's just a suggestion. Well, I'm here to tell you, it's not, okay? And the reality of our lives is that we have an expiration date. Things in this world have an expiration date. Your body is gonna fade. Your career, guess what? It's gonna end. And the applause, it will die. every one of those things is long gone. And notice what this new birth produces though. It doesn't produce performance first. Look back at verse 22 with me chapter 1. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart. The first thing that this fruit produces is love. The very first fruit of being born again is that you start loving the people God has set around you because and this matters you were never born again into a solo faith. And that's exactly where Peter goes next because he stops talking about you as an individual all together and then he starts talking about a building. Look at verses 4 and 5 in chapter 2. He says as you come to him a living stone rejected by men but inside of God chosen and precious you yourselves like living stones are being built up as spiritual houses. To be a holy priest to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. You can hear and you can see the shift. You by yourself are not the whole point. You are a single stone and a single stone lying by itself out in the field builds absolutely nothing. But late alongside other stones fitted together you become a house where God himself comes to live which is which is why there really is no such thing as a private solo Christianity. If the enemy has been telling you that that's the case I'm telling you now he's a liar. God saves persons and then he builds

persons into people a spiritual house a holy priesthood and then having built the building Peter steps back and I love this. He hands the people the highest name that he can find. Look at verses 9 through 10 in chapter 2. But you are a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Ooh verse 10 come on once you were not a people but now you are God's people once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. Peter takes four titles and they're all borrowed a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people for his own possessions. God first spoke every one of those words over Israel at Mount Sinai. If you were to rewind and go back to the book of Exodus in chapter 19 you would see that and here Peter takes all four of them and he lays them squarely on the scattered and struggling mostly Gentile church that used to be on the outside of all of it. And look at verse 10 once you were not a people but now you are God's people once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. Come on fake promise has anybody received the mercy of God over their life? Can you give him a shout of praise? Check this out. Verse 10 it's the gospel in one sentence. I don't know about you but I didn't climb my way into the family of God. I was carried in by mercy and I'm thankful for it. So just for a moment would you hear this again. Let me read God's own words back over you. Let me remind you today that you are chosen. God chose you by sending his son to this planet to die for your sins and resurrect from the grave. You are royal. You are sons and daughters of the king. You are you are holy. We are people that have received mercy and I want you to catch something real quick. Where holy sits in that list, it sits right in the middle of it because you are not holy on the account of anything that you have ever pulled off. You are holy because you have been chosen and you have been set apart for God's purposes. And this is 1 Peter chapter 1 and chapter 2 and this is where this whole passage is going. So stop letting the world hand you a name that it has no right to give. Start living from the one that your father already wrote for you.

Set apart holy because God set you apart to put him on display. And that leaves us with one question the whole passage has been building toward. If all of this is true, then what is it for? We believe that God's word is true, it's active, it's alive. So why would God set apart a people like this, then leave them right here in the middle of a world that doesn't know him? Peter answers that in these last two verses and he pulls this all together. Look at verse 11 and 12, "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Eat your conduct among the Gentiles honorable," everybody say honorable. So that when they speak against you as evil doers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. The very language that Peter opened with, he mentions again, sojourners and exiles. These are people who live here but don't belong here. Every one of you who follow Christ, you live here, but earth is not your home. Sin is your home. And Peter gives people like that two instructions and I want to give them to you today. First on the inside, here's what he says, "obstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul." Because sin was never just about breaking a rule. It's an assault on the very identity God paid so much to give you. And secondly, on the outside, and this is the goal of this whole passage, live such holy lives that when people who don't yet believe when they get close to you, they simply run out of explanations. This is what all of those small, set apart choices add up to a life the world cannot account for. And Peter says that one day, and I love this so much, that one day they will glorify God for the very life that they once questioned. Your holiness, faith promise, was never meant to be hidden. It's the most compelling sermon your neighbor will ever hear.

I told you we would come back to Jack Barsky. And here's how the story ends, years later, after he left the KGB, the old spy hearted an assistant who followed Jesus, and there was something about her life that he could just not explain, and it unsettled him. And one of the things that we see is he started to really interrogate her and look into her life and come to find out she was a follower of Jesus, a lifelong atheist trained by an empire to trust no one, he couldn't stop watching her. The man who spent years disappearing into this disguise finally, he stood up in a church just like this, and he told the truth about who he was. You see, the reality of Jack Barsky's life was that nobody argued him into the kingdom of God. that made all the difference. And it was the most powerful sermon he ever heard, which this is the exact same thing Peter promised us back in verse 12. So hear me. Somebody in your week is watching a life that they cannot explain. And they're aching for the life that I pray and I hope that you are living. Faith promise. God did not set you apart to tuck you away. He set you apart to be planted in your world on purpose. And that is the point of everything that we've read this morning. God set you apart to put him on display. So we're going to have a moment of response. And I want to speak first to the person in here this morning who's never truly given your life to Jesus. Maybe you walked in here carrying the name

that you built for yourself and here's the reality. You already know it's heavier than you can hold. But here's the good news. What we've talked about this morning and where this whole passage in this scripture is driving towards is that none of us could ever earn our way to God. Every one of us, all of us have sinned and gone our own way and we've tried to be our own savior and it leaves us empty a long way from home. But God did not leave us there. If you remember, Peter said you were ransomed. You were bought back, not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, the spotless lamb. (gentle music) That's Jesus. He lived a life that you can never live. And he went to the cross and he poured out his own blood to pay for your sins. And on the third day, he walked out of the grave. And this morning he's holding out to you the one thing you can never manufacture on your own. And that's mercy. You have a place in the family of God. You just simply have to receive it. You don't earn it. You don't work for it. You receive the gift of salvation that he has given you. So that's the cry of your heart this morning. And I wanna read, lead you in a simple prayer.

If you would go ahead and close your eyes and bow your heads, there's nothing magic about these words. God is listening to your heart. But if you mean them, this is the moment that changes everything for you. With every head bowed and every eye closed, just repeat this prayer after me. Say Jesus, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank you for resurrecting from the grave. So that I have hope, purpose, and eternal life. I receive your mercy and I commit to following you for the rest of my life. If you wanna begin a relationship with Jesus today and live a set apart life, would you just lift your hand up? Lift it up high. Lift it up high. There we go. Just gonna put a book in your hand. Amen, you can look up this way. Come on, can we celebrate the salvation today? Amen. (audience applauding) Come on, would you stand to your feet? Over these next few moments, we're gonna have a time of response and maybe you're in the room today and you're following Jesus, but you realize this morning,

through God's word, that your life looks a little bit more like the world than his word. And that it's not so much set apart as he's calling you to live. This is a moment where we get to come and we have prayer teams up here available for you to respond. You wanna take a moment and pray, confess, repent, whatever you need to do to be obedient to what the Holy Spirit is telling you to step forward in your next step. Please do that. We are supposed to live set apart lives so that people know who our Savior is. I'm gonna pray for us and we're gonna worship. Father, we love you. We're so thankful that you loved us first. Lord Jesus, we offer this time to you and we respond how you're calling us to. Help us to live set apart lives. In Jesus' mighty name, we pray.