I want us to talk about memory. Specifically, I want all of us to think about the major things we remember in life and what happens if we forget them. Back in 2011, there was a massive snowstorm that happened. School was cancelled for multiple days. I was ecstatic – we still had power and internet so this meant long days playing Call of Duty with my friends. Or so I thought. Now, my parents live on a farm and their driveway goes up and down a hill. Every time, it snows – there’s a massive snowdrift. In this particular snowstorm, it must have been around 2 feet. My parents couldn’t leave for work. So, my dad walks into the room as I’m gearing up for a day of video games. And he tells me that we’re heading outside to plow and shovel our way out. Keep in mind: my parent’s driveway is at least half a mile and the lane they live on is another half a mile. So, we’re talking at least one mile – shoveling and using a tractor to plow. I can remember feeling so irritated that I had to help. I hated every minute of it and the worst of it was we didn’t even finish it all in one day.

Why was I feeling so upset about helping my family? I had forgotten that I belonged to them as a kid and that I had a responsibility to help them when they asked for help. I didn’t stop being a son in my family, I just stopped living like one. And it reminds me of the quote “you remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember.” And that’s a problem because we forget significant moments from our lives and end up acting in a way that produces more harm than good.

In the spiritual world, every day, we face a decision of: obedience to God or disobedience to God. When we disobey, we forget that we belong to God and he’s paid a price to bring us back into his care.

If you’ve read the Old Testament, this idea may sound familiar. Over and over again, God reveals himself as: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Why does God do this? He knows memory can be a powerful thing.

God is wanting the Israelites to remember that they are not their own people, they belong to God. And God went through a price to set his people free. Oftentimes, God lays out who he is and what he’s done first. Grace comes before the command. Then, he begins to lay out his commands for his people. Why?

He knows Israel will forget. And if they forget what God’s done for them, why will they bother with obedience? In the same way, that’s what Peter wants us to see in this passage. In verse 18, he says: “For you know that” and then he shares how God has redeemed them. This whole passage speaks of the intentional way that we are called to remember and to know that we are God’s and we were bought with a price. But, do we remember that?

When temptation comes our way, do you give in or remember who God is and what he’s done for you? Do you pursue holiness because God is holy? In case you need a reminder, holiness isn’t about a checklist that you mark off. Holiness isn’t about doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things. Holiness is about remembering what God has set apart. He sets things apart for sacred purposes. That’s why in Leviticus, God makes tables holy. And that’s why he invites us into holiness because he’s set us apart for sacred purposes – to love him and to love our neighbor.

Here’s our issue: we struggle with holiness because we forget that we belong to God and he has paid a high price for our redemption.

And here’s the thing: knowing that issue doesn’t solve it right away. Instead, we typically create two issues with holiness.

1. We can’t generate holiness on pure willpower alone.  You may hear a convicting sermon or feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit about some sort of sin. So, you tell yourself: it’s time to get serious and stop playing around. You convince yourself that you’re strong enough to do this on your own and are you? You’re not. I’m a huge ice cream fan and if we go to Half Pint, I convince myself that I’m strong enough to get just one scoop of ice cream. But then we get there, I see all the flavors, and I’m like I can’t just do one – I need two!

2. We can’t discount holiness because of grace. When we start talking about holiness, some of us may throw up guard rails and say – holiness is close to legalism, I’m about grace! Me too. But, holiness is what it means to be a follower of Christ. That’s what Peter tells us in verse 15 and 16 – it’s also what God commands Israel to be as well. When we emphasize grace and leave out holiness, we tend to downplay sin and the seriousness of it. We are to fight against sin – tooth and nail. If you can remember a few weeks ago, 1 Peter 1 opens up with the grand declaration that – “In God’s great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” In Peter’s mind, mercy and grace go right along with living holy lives – they’re friends, not enemies.

In 1 Peter 1:13, Peter gives us an insight on how to avoid these two areas: he tells us “set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” He’s telling us that holiness does take intentional thought and discipline BUT it’s all motivated by grace (God’s blessings that he gives to us even though we don’t deserve it). Sit with that thought for a bit and we’ll see later why that does change everything for us.

But if we pursue holiness out of pure willpower alone or neglect holiness because of grace, we don’t grow closer to God – we grow further away and fall a sin that 1 Peter 1:14 warns us about.

In verse 14, Peter warns his audience by saying: “do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” What are those evil desires? Peter tells us later in his letter – chapter 4:3 tells us: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.

That’s quite the list and you may think you’re off the hook. But, my friends, you’re not – we’re all condemned because of that last, all-encompassing phrase: “detestable idolatry.” So, Peter is warning us to not be conformed back to those levels of ignorance. That means there are pressures that are constantly trying to shape us to follow a god, not the God of the bible. There are these cultural pressures that want us to shift our focus from God, to our old ways of life.  

How can this play out for us today? The truth is we don’t just worship on Sundays, we worship every day of the week. People say church can feel too ritualistic but my friends, we follow rituals every single day of the week.

Think with me for a moment what a typical day looks like for most people:

1.      You wake up in the morning and the first thing you look at is your phone. Depending on your preference, you’ll either open up the news app, realize the world is in chaos, and you should hate your political enemies. If you dislike the news, you open Facebook or Instagram – hoping to see that you got a lot of likes only to be disappointed that someone else got more than you.

2.    After stewing on your phone for a bit, you get ready for the day and drive to work – passing by multiple advertisements trying to sell you discontentment and their product as a solution.

3.    You’re at work – you found out that a lazy co-worker of yours just got promoted. Instead of being happy, you’re angry and you join everyone else in ridiculing them.

4.   You get home from work – make dinner and eat it while watching TV. You’ve had a tough day so you do a combo of watching TV and scrolling – all while being shaped and formed by advertisers who only have shareholder profits in mind, not your flourishing in mind. You see a friend posting on social media who seems to have a better life than you and you go to bed disgruntled and annoyed.

Do you see what sort of person you’ll become if this is your day? Sure, you’re not sacrificing a golden calf but you’re worshipping something else throughout the day. And that’s what Peter is warning us about.

Throughout the day, you have no practices to remind you that you belong to God and he bought you with a price. Instead, the cultural pressures of our day are reminding you to partake in detestable idolatry – whether it’s finally making enough money, the perfect marriage, or easy circumstances, our natural default is to be conformed to the evil desires we have.

Left to our own devices, there is no hope for holiness. We need someone else to rescue us and to do what we can’t do.

That someone else is Jesus Christ. Our passage today shows us that it’s not those perishable things like silver, gold, great jobs, or fancy cars that redeemed us – it was the precious blood of Christ that set you free from the slavery of sin. Jesus was the perfect lamb without blemish or defect. As I explained a day in the life for a typical person, did you feel how it felt empty and meaningless? That’s what Jesus redeemed us from in verse 18 – the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors. But, with Jesus, we don’t have to have an empty way of life – he came to give us new life.

And here’s the thing – nothing else but Jesus has the power to do this for you. Nothing else will give you the hope that Christ does. This is why 1 Peter has hit on the idea that there are perishable things that we’ll be tempted to put our hope in. You may put your hope in pursuing holiness out of willpower but eventually you’ll cave and give into that temptation. You may put your hope in getting that promotion finally, only to get let go a year later when the company gets bought out.

All those things will perish or turn away from you. But, Christ will not. (SLIDE) Christ cannot perish. Faced with every temptation we face, he didn’t run away – he did what we couldn’t do. It’s with his precious blood that you’ve been set free. He can’t perish because he’s been raised back to life. He can’t turn away from you because he’s been glorified and is continuously interceding for you at the right hand of the Father according to Romans 8:34. And when you understand this, it solves the issues we talked about earlier with pursuing holiness out of pure willpower or discounting holiness because of grace.

1 Peter 1:13-21 wants you to see that you pursuing holiness out of pure willpower gets you nothing. Christ has already purchased you, has already redeemed you, and made you belong in God’s family. He’s bought you, he’s not going to return you like an amazon package.  

But at what cost? The cost of his precious blood which is why you can’t discount holiness. You finally see the great lengths that God underwent to redeem you, you understand what it cost him. And because of that, you’re devoted to God – you want to serve him, obey him, and love him.

Imagine with me that you have $50,000.00 in credit card debt. It grew faster than you ever thought and its finally caught up with you because the creditors are threatening to take your home, your car, and your future wages to pay off the debt. You’re feeling totally helpless and have no clue how you’re ever going to pay it. A few days later, you get a notice in the mail saying an anonymous donor has paid off your credit card debt. They paid it off at a real cost to themselves - $50,000.00. Now, are you going to live your life in the same way and rack up even more debt? Or, has your life dramatically changed because someone came to your rescue?

That’s what Christ does to our lives. He’s rescued us with great cost.

Since he’s rescued us and made us belong to him, how should we live holy lives?

First things first, we must recognize that holiness does indeed take intentional effort that’s enabled by grace. In verse 13, Peter uses language that is similar to “gird up your loins” which is a bit odd to us. But for Peter’s audience, they would know exactly what he meant. In that time, men would wear an outer cloak like this but as you can tell, it is not easy to move around in. You can’t run, you can’t stretch yourself, or really get down to work. So Peter instructs his readers to tuck this outer shirt into their belts so they can get to work. We would say something like: time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

That means, you have to be deliberate in setting your hope on the grace that Christ is bringing when he returns. It takes conscious effort to stop placing your hope in those perishable things that will disappoint you. That’s why we’re to roll up our sleeves. You literally need to retrain your mind. Ask yourself: does my day look like the typical day I described earlier? What ways am I forming myself to look more like Christ or am I allowing myself to be conformed back into the ways of life that Jesus rescued me from? Like John Mark Comer says, “We’re all being formed by something or someone. The question is: who or what is it?”

And when you begin to roll up your sleeves, something, by the Spirit’s help will begin to change. You begin to live your life in a way that’s actually oriented towards Christ returning instead of someone who lives in a way that forgets that Jesus is coming back.

Second, verse 17 likely made some of you uncomfortable because it talks about God as a Father and also as a judge. (SLIDE) Both things are true – God is a loving Father who calls us his beloved children. God is pleased with us on account of what Christ has done. At the same, our Father is judge of the entire world and he doesn’t pick favorites. That means believers and non-believers will be judged by the King of the Universe. As believers, our sin has been judged by God already and dealt with by Jesus Christ on the Cross. So hear me clearly: your sin is dealt with, full stop — and God still cares deeply about how you're living. However, Peter wants us to realize that just because our sin has been judged in Jesus, that doesn’t mean any of us are off the hook. I imagine him remembering his rabbi’s words from Matthew 12:36 “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.”  

That’s why Peter tells us to live our lives in reverent fear – not because we’re afraid of losing our salvation or falling into eternal separation from God. But rather, we know we have a loving Father who also knows all things. He knows our heart motives. He knows our thoughts. He knows the things you’re afraid of other people finding out. He knows all things – so live your life in reverent fear. So, are you putting up a façade for others to see? If so, God sees through your façade. God is approachable but he is also fiercely holy.  

As we prepare to participate in communion together, this is a time for you to examine yourself like Paul tells us to in 1 Corinthians 11:28. This is a time to reflect honestly — not because you need to become acceptable to God, that's already settled by Christ's blood, but because a Father who knows all things is asking whether you're living like someone who knows what that cost him. Ask yourself: am I living my life as a redeemed member of God’s family or am I living my life however I want? Remember, God has set you apart (made you holy) for his purposes. When my dad asked me to help plow out our driveway, I was living my life in a way that showed I didn’t care about belonging to my family. I wanted my own way. I didn’t care about my dad’s purposes, I only cared about my own.

If that’s you today, my friend – take the conscious effort right now to set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus is revealed at his coming. Meet Christ once again here at the table and remind yourself of what it cost to redeem you. And we don’t come to this table just as individuals, we come to the table as a new family – as exiles with Christ as our King.