Speaker: David Mitchell

Passage: 1 Peter 1:13-21

CHOSEN FOR OBEDIENCE

Hey, good morning. Morning everyone. That’s right, King Charles got a standing ovation. I expect nothing but the same, all right? Contractually obligated when the King comes and speaks, I get to teach. So, there we go. Hey, great to be with you all. 

We’ve been in this letter, 1 Peter, written by a guy called Peter two thousand years ago, an artifact from a long, long time ago. And we might first say, what does this have to teach us today in 2026, trying to live and thrive and survive in America? 

This is a letter written by a man who followed Jesus, who denied Jesus, who repented towards Jesus, and who ultimately would give his life for the cause of Jesus. And so, this is not a man who hasn’t counted the cost of discipleship and is telling you and me how we should live our lives. This is a man who knows the full cost and intimacy of a life following Jesus. 

We’ve been in 1 Peter for a few months now. We will read in verse 2, that you as believers, as followers of Jesus, that you were chosen by the foreknowledge of the Father. That you were, in verse 2, that you were sanctified by the Holy Spirit in order to be obedient to the Son. That the Trinity, the Triune God– Father, Spirit, and Son– is invested in you today.

And you and I might say, Hey, I want to be chosen. Being chosen sounds great. Maybe I’m chosen for fame or riches or success. He says you’re being made holy. That sounds pretty good. I want to feel better than the person next to me. I want to be able to look down on them if I’m more holy than them. 

He says, No, no, you are chosen to be made holy, that you might be obedient to the Son, that the calling of Calvary is obedience. And that doesn’t sound very attractive and appealing, does it? But that is what discipleship of Jesus looks like. 

He will call us, 1 Peter will say, you are a chosen people, you are a holy nation. Say, Wait a second, isn’t this written to a group of Christians who were exiled in what we now call Turkey, back then Roman provinces in Asia Minor? Say, Wait a second, that area of the world, modern-day Turkey today, back then, that wasn’t a holy nation, that was filled with immorality of all kinds. It was filled with lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life. 

And Peter writes to that group of people there and says, You are a holy nation. What he is saying is that your holiness as a people is not dependent upon the nation in which you live. It is dependent upon the God that you serve, and that you and I, church, we are called. 

Yes, we pray. I pray, like you, that our nation, America, might become a holy nation. But I can’t wait for the nation out there to become holy until the nation in here is holy. And we have to commit to that choice of being a holy nation. 

We will see also in 1 Peter, the miraculous strategy of God that he would want the Gospel to be spread throughout all the world. And so, how does that happen? The Gospel gets spread throughout the world when the people of God are scattered throughout the world. Because where they go, the Kingdom of God goes. 

And so, we see that the outsiders looking at this, looking at the group of believers in Asia Minor back then, two thousand years ago, might have said, Hey, we are strangers here. We don’t belong here. And Peter is saying, No, no, you are on a holy pilgrimage. You are expanding the Kingdom of God by living lives of obedience and holiness. 

So, we’re going to read together a portion where Peter is not teaching them how to escape exile. He’s talking to them about how to endure exile. So, I don’t know what you are coming in with today, the suffering that you are facing, the persecution that you are facing, the challenges that you are facing, but this Scripture is for us to learn how to endure, how to be strong, how to be steadfast in our faith. 

1 PETER 1:13-16

1 Peter 1, verses 13 onwards. “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at His coming.” Remember a group of people in exile, persecuted, abandoned, feeling lost. He says, “Set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” He says, “As obedient children.” 

Now, some of you are saying, Wait, those two words don’t belong next to each other. He says, “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” Any of us look in the mirror and identify with the truth that there are desires within us at times that are not of God.? He says do not conform, do not be shaped by those desires. He says but just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. “For it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” 

CALLED TO BE OBEDIENT

We’ll come back to the rest of the passage a little later, if we have time. Okay, idea number one: called to be obedient. Again, back in verse 2 of this letter, Peter writes you were chosen by the Father, you are sanctified by the Spirit that you might be obedient to the Son. 

Obedience is a theme that runs throughout all of Scripture. And I don’t, by the way, today need to challenge you to think about being obedient. All we need to do is consider the cost of disobedience in our own lives. 

You know that, as well as I do, that when we act in disobedience towards God, it costs us greatly. We see it in Scripture. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel comes to the then anointed King, Saul, and he says, Saul, it is better to God to desire obedience over sacrifice. Yes, it’s important what we bring in our worship to God. It is important what we sacrifice. But he says, Look, He desires obedience even more than that. 

And Samuel will go on and say to Saul, Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king. What we see is that disobedience moves the blessing and anointing away from the King. 

And what we see in Scripture is that when we act in disobedience towards God– and obedience, by the way, is not earning God’s love, it’s a response to God’s love. Obedience is about being sanctified and made holy, and we’ll see the result of that later. But when we are disobedient, blessing and anointing can be taken from our lives. 

What we see in Scripture is that if we will commit to a life of holiness, to a life of obedience, then blessing and anointing comes. We see it through Scripture. We see it in Jesus’ own words when He says to His disciples, “If you love Me, you will keep My commands.” Again, obedience to God is an expression of the love of God. 

I want to ask you to consider right now for a moment, where is God calling you to be obedient? Blame Him, not me, okay? Blame Him, not me. His call to obedience is in every part of our lives. 

We see in 2 Timothy 2, Paul is writing to this younger man, Timothy, and he says this: “Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 

Flee the evil desires of youth. That’s what obedience means. Each season of life has its own desires to it, right? The desires of your youth may be shaped in a certain way, look different to the desires of midlife, to the desires of senior life, right? 

And we have to pay attention to say, What stage of the battle are we in? Because the Scriptures are clear that we are in a war zone. We are exiled, scattered throughout the earth, in a hostile place, hostile to the Gospel. And we have to flee those desires. You and I have found ourselves at times where you might be at a stage in your life where you’re still trapped by the sinful desires of a former season of life, and we are to flee those things. 

James will say, “Resist the devil, and he will flee with you.” This is what obedience looks like. It goes back to the very beginning in Genesis, when God comes to Cain and He says sin is what? Crouching at your door. 

Sin always looks smaller than it is. It crouches. Temptation doesn’t show up in our life showing us how big and dangerous it is. It crouches. It crouches at the door, looking smaller than it is, and we, as disciples of Jesus, are to resist it and to turn from it, to be obedient towards God and to run from the disobedience that we are tempted by. 

Peter himself, as he writes this letter, he knows the reality of this. In Acts 5, he’s bringing the Gospel to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, and the high priest and the Sadducees, the ruling authorities of that day, they don’t like that message, and so they basically outlaw it and say, You can’t do this. 

And then they come to him in Acts 5:28, and they say, Wait a second, Peter, you might be remembering this differently than me, but we told you to stop doing that. And not only have you not stopped, but this thing scales throughout the whole region. 

And Peter looks back at the rulers, the authorities of that day– look, the Scriptures are clear, we are to be in a respectful, honoring posture towards the authorities of this earth, but never when it conflicts with the authority of God. And he says, Look, we ought to obey God rather than men. Where in your life are you obeying man over obeying God? Where in life are you obeying your own desires versus the desires of God for you? 

1 Peter, chapter 1, the more literal translation– which I’ll give you one guess which member of the teaching team helped me understand this– but the more literal translation of be obedient children is that you and I would be children of obedience. 

The great trap in the Church today is believing that you can have a thriving relationship with Jesus without living in obedience to Him. You and I are chosen, yes, but we do not stop there, to be sanctified, made holy by the Spirit of God, that we would be obedient to the community around you, the world around you, the things that drive you crazy, the way change will happen is through men and women who choose to be obedient to the call of God in their lives. 

DO NOT CONFORM

So, idea number one: be obedient. Idea number two: do not conform. Peter will say, “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” That word, the command, do not conform, it’s this old word where we get the word schema or schematic, a blueprint. What Peter is saying is throw away the blueprint that the earth has given you, the world has given you. 

And so, when we think about that, blueprints are things that we follow step by step, right? If you’re building a huge structure, you will be given a set of blueprints. If you follow those blueprints step by step, ultimately, it creates a certain kind of structure. You and I have to be aware that the blueprint that we are following is guiding, step by step, how we live our lives. Is it the blueprint of Scripture, or it is the blueprint of this world? 

He says throw away the blueprint of this world, do not conform. Romans 12 verse 2, and elsewhere, Paul will say, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world.” Peter is highlighting this gives us an entirely new blueprint to live by. 

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be loving, right? As followers of Jesus, there are things that we are called to not love. Do you know what John will say in 1 John 2? “Do not love the things of this world.” He’ll go on to explain later in that chapter, this is about the lust of the flesh, or the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. 

When you, as an obedient follower of Jesus, stand against sin, you will be called unloving when you stand against sexual immorality, you will be called unloving when you stand against the murder of a baby in the womb, you will be called unloving when you stand against the mutilation of a child who is confused. When you stand against sin, you will be called unloving. 

The Scriptures say there are things that, as an obedient follower of Christ, you are called to not love. The mature disciples of Jesus know what to love and know what to not love. 

And you will be caught in these moments when you are sitting face-to-face with somebody you love, a friend of yours, who is choosing a life that is counter to the life that God has for them. And there will be parts of you that think the loving thing to do here is to accept them in their sin, affirm them in their confusion, and do all of those things. That is not love. 

Love is to say, I love you, but I cannot love the things of this world. I cannot love the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life, because I will not conform, because if I follow that blueprint, and if I encourage you to follow that blueprint, you are going to build a structure that will collapse. 

Jesus spoke about those who would build their lives on sand. Church, we cannot stand by while people build houses on sand. We must be those who are so committed to the blueprint that we show it in our own lives, and we share it with others. So, do not conform. 

BE HOLY

Idea number three: be holy. Peter will go on to say in 1 Peter 1:15-16, “Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’’’ Now, the bulk of this audience, the vast majority of them, came from a pagan background or a Gentile background. They didn’t have Jewish heritage, right? 

And so, what Peter is doing in this letter is he’s referencing something that came thousands of years earlier, when the people of Israel, the Jewish people, were rescued out of slavery in Egypt, brought into the wilderness, and journeying towards the Promised Land, camp at Mount Sinai, and God gives them the command: “Be holy, because I am holy.” 

So, thousands of years later, Peter is writing to a non-Jewish audience, and he’s weaving them into the story. He’s saying that the command that was given at Mount Sinai is the same command given to us today. 

Isn’t it remarkable that he says, “Be holy, because I am holy?” Couldn’t you just build a religion around the second part of that text God is holy? There’s enough there to warrant our worship, to warrant our praise, to know about His character. 

God says to be an obedient disciple of Jesus is not simply to know the character of God, but is to say, Who He is, I want to be. I’m not simply content with knowing His character. I need Him to transform my character. 

That’s what obedience means. Worship is acknowledging that God is holy. Obedience is choosing to be holy. Worship is saying, I love who God is. Obedience says, I want to be like Him. Worship acknowledges that He is holy. Obedience says, Make me holy. Anybody else not like the idea of becoming holy? Feels a little much, right? It’s like, Ah, I’d like to be kind and patient. I’d like to be known as a good guy, but holiness? 

Later on, in chapter 2 of 1 Peter, we’re going to get there in a few weeks or years from now, we’re not quite sure, but in chapter 2 of 1 Peter, Peter will say, listen to this, “As foreigners and exiles, abstain from sinful desires…live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” 

Your Holiness is a testimony to the world around us. If you want America to become a holy nation out there, we must become a holy nation in here, we must so that holiness would be a testimony to the world around us. 

We are going to see through this Letter of 1 Peter, how the Kingdom of God advances in exile when the people of God choose to be holy because He is holy. Where in your life is God calling you to be holy? Where in your life is God calling you to be obedient? A holy nation will transform an unholy nation through obedience to God. 

BRINGERS OF THE KINGDOM

Go with me on a tangent for a moment. You don’t really have a choice, but go with me on a tangent for a moment, unless they cut the mic. But here we go. When the disciples come to Jesus, and they say, Lord, teach us how to pray, and He says, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.” And He goes on, and He says, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” What an amazing thing to pray. 

And what does that reveal about the reality of what exists without that prayer? He says the reason that you and I are disciples is to be bringers of the Kingdom. The reason that you and I, as disciples– obedient, holy disciples– are to pray is that we would see life on earth as it is in Heaven, because without that, we have life on earth as it is in hell. 

That your neighbor, the friend, the colleague, those living outside of the will of God, not only are they living life on earth outside of Heaven, they are living life on earth as it is in hell. And you and I are to be bringers of the Kingdom. 

We are to be those who, knowing the holiness of His name, we say, God, we know the unholiness of the nations in which we live, but we know the holiness of the Kingdom that You are bringing, and we want to be stewards and citizens of that Kingdom, to bring it to the earth here. 

THE INHERITANCE OF CHRIST

Lastly, if we can bring the Scripture back up in 1 Peter, he will go on in verse 18 to say, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors.” 

All throughout Peter, he’s going to be talking about inheritance. He’s going to be using monetary language. He’s going to be talking about perishable silver and gold. He didn’t talk about Bitcoin, maybe that’s okay, but perishable silver and gold contrasted with the imperishable blood of Christ. 

And he’s talking about the contrast of inheritance. He says the inheritance you received was an empty way of life, but the inheritance you have been given by Jesus is imperishable, worth more than silver or gold. You and I have to be aware not only of the inheritance we’ve received, but of the inheritance that we are giving the future. 

This nation celebrates its 250th birthday. The future of this nation, the inheritance it receives, depends upon how you and I steward what we have been given, in every aspect, but especially with the obedience and holiness of being a disciple of Jesus. He says that you were passed down an empty way of life. 

John Maxwell will say that legacy inheritance is not only what you leave for someone, it’s what you leave in someone. And what you leave in someone is far more important than what you leave for someone. 

And so, you and I as obedient pursuers of holiness, sanctified by the work of the Spirit because we have been chosen by the Father, the Trinity of God is invested in our life, is invested in our nation, and is saying that you and I must choose obedience, choose holiness, that we might pass to the future generations not an empty way of life, but something that cannot be purchased with silver and gold, something imperishable. 

The work of the blood of Christ takes us from a life that is empty to a life that is abundant, a life of hell on earth to Heaven on earth. Peter’s words are calling us to a life of obedience and holiness. 

Whatever you and I are facing today, whether you’re facing mistakes you’ve made, mistakes done to you, all kinds of challenges, whatever you’re facing, I guarantee you the way forward is not disobedience to God. 

The way forward is choosing obedience to Him, choosing holiness, and saying, God, because You are holy, I want to be holy, and choosing that together, that we might see the nation out there become holy, because the nation in here is holy. 

Let’s stand together and pray. Lord Jesus, the Word says of You that You learned obedience by the things that You suffered, and where there are members of this church today who are suffering, we pray that they would be comforted and know that while the world says that suffering is something to be avoided or eradicated or ignored or dismissed, Your Word teaches us that suffering can teach us to be obedient. 

Father God, together as a people, we acknowledge that we have been chosen by You, that Holy Spirit, we are being sanctified by You. And Lord Jesus, our commitment is to be obedient to You. Make us holy because You are holy. We love You, and we thank You. In Jesus’ name, amen.