Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.

Would you turn in your Bibles today to the book of First Peter, chapter 1? Our series is called Rock Solid based on the epistles, the "letters" is another word, of Peter; First Peter, chapter 1.

I found something that just tickled me when I read it and I thought I'd begin by sharing it with you. It's a story of a young couple. They were new to the faith. They are new to Christianity in general. They didn't have the rich history in their own experience or knowledge of previous song writing, etcetera. And the young man was traveling on business. He was apart from his wife. It was the weekend.

He couldn't attend his local church, a more modern church, and so he went to a visiting church out in the country where he was at. And he came home, and his wife said, "Well, how was it visiting that other church?" He said, "It was good. It was good, they don't sing regular songs, they sing hymns." And she looked at him with a puzzled look, and said, "Hymns? What are hymns?" And he said, "Well, they're like regular songs, only a bit different." She said, again, "Could you give me an example?"

And he said, "Well, if I were to say to you 'Martha, the cows are in the corn,' that would be a regular song. But if I were to say to you: 'Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry, inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth. Turn thy whole wondrous ear by and by, to the righteous, inimitable, glorious truth. For the way of the animals, who can explain, there is in their heads no shadow of sense. Harkenest they in God's sun or his rain, unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.'"

"'Yea, those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight have broke free from their shackles, their warm pens eschewed. Then goaded by minions of darkness and night, they all my mild Chilliwack sweet corn they have chewed. So look to that bright shining day by and by, where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn. Where no vicious animal makes my soul cry, and I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.' Well, that," he said, "would be a hymn." [laughter]

Now I laughed when I read that. I was tickled by it. And as much as I love hymns, as anyone else, for what they are, I just laughed because of the tendency we have to complicate things, and even over time to make things irrelevant rather than simple. I was paid a great compliment this week. I was in North Carolina at the Billy Graham Training Center where I teach a seminar every year. And a young man came up to me after one of the sessions that I taught, and he just said he's from the East.

He goes, "I listen to you every day on the radio, and I want to thank you for taking complex truths and making them simple." That's always been my aim in preaching, is to make things simple. So, I want to take a simple look at a few verses in First Peter. And I entitled this message "How to Walk in the Dark," or you could call it "How to Live Christianly in an un-Christian World."

You know, if you know your Bibles at all, that darkness and light are spiritual metaphors: darkness a metaphor for evil; light a righteousness for good; evil a metaphor for spiritual values that are of the devil, of this world. Light speaks of God. God is light. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness." Paul said, "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord."

Most kids are afraid of the dark. Shadows grow in the dark. They turn into creatures in the dark. I hated the dark as a kid. I loved the night-lights. I wanted my mom to always have the night-light on. And one of the reasons I love Christmas so much is the Christmas tree lights would filter through the house into my bedroom. It's that warm glow, set me at ease.

Now, where we are in Peter is this: Peter speaks about some truths in his introductory remarks. In verses 1 through 12 he tells them certain things that are true. When we get to verse 13, where we are this morning, there's a shift. He saying, "Now that you know all this stuff, this is how you ought to live this stuff in the dark world in which you find yourself." You'll notice the first word of verse 13---what is it?---"therefore." That's an adverb that denotes a result or a consequence. "Since all this is true, all that I have written so far, here's what to do with it. Here is the consequential result of it"---therefore.

So let me sum it up for you where we've been so far: Since you have been elected by God, hand chosen by him (verses 1 and 2), and he has given you a living hope (verse 3), and it's a hope that will go on and on into an inheritance that is incorruptible forever and ever in heaven (verse 4 and 5), even though you suffer for a while temporarily on this earth (verse 6 through 9), you have what the prophets predicted, what preachers proclaim, and what angels ponder, (verse 10, 11, and 12). Therefore---therefore here's what you do about it.

Let's look at it. Verse 13, "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.' And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear." We'll stop there.

I've always loved the story about Robert Louis Stevenson growing up as a boy in Scotland. Being a writer, he describes it so well. He never would forget when the lamplighters would light the streetlamps. Now, in those days streetlamps didn't just come on like they do now; they had to have people with ladders lighting them by hand. And so one evening when he saw them on their ladders lifting up the lid of glass, lighting the torch, closing it down; one, and then another, and then another; young Robert Louis Stevenson said to his mom and dad, "Look, they're punching holes in the darkness."

What a great visual. How do you punch holes in darkness? How do you live for Christ in a dark world? Well, it begins in your mind. It always begins in the thinking, the thought processes; and then it moves from the mind into the actions, the conduct; and then it should end with a firm resolve. That's what we want to look at in these verses. That's how I've outlined it. If you are going to walk in the dark, you must first prepare your mind; you must, second, shape your conduct; and you must, third, focus your will.

Let's look at the first: prepare your mind. Verse 13, "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind." Now stop right there. What on earth did I just read? What does that mean? You ought to ask yourself that question when you come to verses like this in the Bible. We just sort of read through it---"Gird up the loins of your mind." What? That sounds so foreign, even creepy to our ears. "I don't want to gird up any loins of my mind. What is he talking about?"

Well, it's an old phrase that could be translated "cinch up" or "belt up." And it comes from two thousand years ago the way men dressed is they wore long, flowing robes. Sort of looked like a dress, but it was a robe. It was the fashion of the day, and it looked good. And it was very practical, but it was a problem if you wanted to run or you wanted to work.

If you wanted to run or you wanted to work, and you didn't do anything about the robes you have, you would try to run or try to work, and you'd stop on the edge of robe, and you'd do a face-plant. That was a problem. It's always---it's humorous to me, every time I do a wedding or there's a graduation ceremony that I'm at, no matter how much they practice in advance for the wedding, there's one thing they typically don't take into consideration---the gown.

Because when they do the rehearsal, they're not wearing the gown, but on the day of the wedding they are wearing the gown. And the wedding coordinator says, "Now just walk up the steps." You ever try to walk up a step in a gown? A graduation gown or a wedding gown, you will step on it, and I have seen brides take a tumble. The solution is you gird them up. I wouldn't suggest a bride do that, but a man two thousand years ago who wanted to work would lift the robe and tuck it into his belt around his waist.

The modern equivalent of this verse would be, "Roll up the sleeves of your mind." Simply put, get ready, get mentally prepared. Pull in all the loose ends of your thinking, and get rid of anything that would hinder your forward movement. That's clear. "Gird up the loins of your mind," think clearly.

Notice the next little phrase. "Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober." You're thinking, "Well, I am sober this morning." Well, that's wonderful. But the idea isn't just don't be drunk, but, rather, think clearly and be morally decisive. Think clearly and be morally decisive. Behavioral scientists tell us that our subconscious minds govern our actions. There have been many, many studies in this.

And I'm glad there's been a lot of studies, but can I just say, they could have just read the Bible. Proverbs 23 tells us, "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." In other words, what you believe determines how you behave; what you think determines what you do. There's a saying, "Garbage in, garbage out." I think it began in the computer sciences. If you walk in the darkness in your mind, you walk in the darkness in real life. It begins in the mind.

I never forget as a child, as a little boy watching on television in 1969---some of you think, "Was television even invented in 1969?" Yes, way before then. But the point is, I was watching the first walk on the moon. Some of you recall when we first walked on the moon, when that space capsule landed and that first step was taken. And do you remember what was said? "One small step for man, one giant step for mankind." And the headlines the next morning is: "We Have Conquered Outer Space."

We were so proud of ourselves, we've conquered outer space. Peter would say, "The problem is we haven't conquered inner space." We've gone out to conquer outer space, the problem remains inside of us. We need to think clearly. Also, we need to think hopefully. Notice the next sentence of verse 13. "And rest your hope fully on the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

There's something coming down the line. You need to think about that. In fact, put all of your hopes in that basket. Everybody sets their hope on something: a student sets his hope on graduation, a bride sets her hope on the wedding, a politician sets his or her hope on election day. A Christian should set his or her hope on the coming of Jesus Christ. Look back at verse 8. Peter says you don't see him now. You don't see Christ now. You're living in the dark, so to speak. Peter would say, "I saw him. You haven't seen him yet, but set your hope on the day that you will see him."

Here's why it's important: the Christian life is not a sprint, it's not a 100-yard dash; it's a marathon, it's long distance. And you and I get up every day and we put our running shoes on, so to speak. And what keeps us going, keeps us motivated, according to Peter, ought to be that we are waiting till we see Jesus Christ at the finish line. That's what we set our hopes upon. There is Jesus standing at the finish line saying to you and I, hopefully, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord."

You know that a distraction can be disastrous? That was shown in 2004 at the Olympic Games in Athens when an American by the name of Matt Emmons was so close to the gold medal he could taste it. He was in first place. His competition was the Men's 3-Position 50-Meter Rifle Competition. All he needed for his final shot was something near the bull's-eye. It didn't even have to be spot-on, just somewhere near it. So in that final round Matt Emmons in first place takes his rifle, aims it, pulls the trigger, but the shot did not register on his target.

Matt Emmons was standing in line number three, lane number three. The target that he just shot was in lane number two. He aimed at the wrong target. Something distracted him. And it was the kind of mistake that was unheard of at that level of competition. The judges gave him a zero, and suddenly Matt Emmons went from first place to eighth place---all because of a distraction. You're going to live in a dark world. You're going to punch holes in the darkness. Prepare your mind. Live in the light of the coming of Christ. Let that be a real hope.

Second, shape your conduct. Now, we go from the mind to the actions. And Peter writes, verse 14, "As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance," when you didn't know any better, "but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct." There are a couple things that Peter writes about. He moves from what we think to what we do. And he says when you're in the realm of action, conduct, there's a negative part and there's a positive part.

There's a part that you don't do and there's a part that you do. The negative is simply put, "Not conforming yourselves to the former lusts." Do you ever stop to remember who you used to be before you came to Christ and you were all holy, like you are now? [laughter] Do you ever just stop to think about your past life, your BC days, before Christ days? I was a moron. I think of the things I said, the people I hung with, the things I did, how cool I thought I was.

And sometimes, sometimes, I'll hear Christians almost represent reminiscing about their past life like it were the---"Remember the good ol' days?" Oh, what are you talking about? Yeah, remember the good ol' days when you went to all those parties and you felt so alone when you went there? Remember all the fake friends that used to surround you because they wanted something from you? Remember feeling more alienated and more isolated? Good ol' days! Let me tell you about the good ol' days according to Paul the apostle.

Here's an honest look back. This is Ephesians, chapter 2. "Once you were dead, you were doomed forever because of your many sins. You used to live just like the rest of the world, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passions and desires of our evil nature. We were born with an evil nature and we were under God's anger just like everyone else."

Now that is an honest look back---dead, doomed, a prisoner to our own lust, and in the bull's-eye of God's anger. That's where you came from. So Peter is saying, picking up on this, "If you're going to walk in the dark, if you're going to punch holes in the darkness, you gotta cut off the past. You have to say no to the old life. Those were the days you live in ignorance." Peter would say, "You didn't know what you were doing. You didn't know any better. Now you do."

Simply put, there are things you used to do, you are not to do. There are people you used to hang out with that are just not good for you to hang with anymore. There are Internet sites you used to visit that you have no business looking at. There are books you used to read that you ought to leave alone.

Did you know the word no, N-O, is a spiritual word? Try it sometime. Just say no. It feels so good---"No." I don't mean live a negative life, but when that temptation---"Well, I don't know, should I compromise? Should I negotiate?" "No." Just say no and walk away. Cut it off. So say no to your past.

But that's not enough. Peter would say if you're going to shape your conduct, you have to say yes to your Father. Verse 14, look at it. Look at it, "As obedient children"---you see what he's doing? He's connecting you with your heavenly Father. You are to be children that are obedient. And verse 15, "But as he who called you is holy, you also be Holy Spirit in all your conduct," holy, be holy.

Holiness---we hear that word a lot. Can I just say, frankly, that's a very churchy word, and it's a word we use and we sing and we pray for and we toss around. And frankly, I just wonder if we really understand what it means, quite frankly. Holiness. Ask ten people, say---ask ten people---I don't know if you ever actually want to try this when you're in Starbucks. Say, "Hey, you ten people, I'm gonna try a word association. What first comes to your mind when I say this word? Ready?---Holy."

You might stump a few. Somebody might say, "Uh, I don't know. Uh, candlelit cathedral?" "Um, ahhhhhh." Maybe they'll sing for you. Or thin monks with long beards like the guys on Duck Dynasty who live out in the deserts in some monastery somewhere. Our mind does funny things with the word holy. The Bible tells us God is holy. It's an essential part of his character.

When the angels were worshiping God and Isaiah saw a vision of it, they said, "Holy, holy, holy," three times for emphasis. Interesting they didn't say, "Loving, loving, loving"; "Merciful, merciful, merciful"; "Just, just, just." Even though God is all those things, the primary attribute noted was his holiness. What does it mean? It means unique, it means different, it means other, other. God's "otherness" is God's holiness.

Listen to this verse in a translation called The Message by Eugene Peterson: "As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness." I love that, "A life shaped by God's life." You know, if you're a Christian, if I'm a Christian, there ought to be a family resemblance.

I remember as a boy I'd go places and you know what I heard people say? "That's Lou Heitzig's son." I heard that a lot. I'm not just Skip; I'm Lou Heitzig's son. Wherever I went I carried my dad's reputation around with me, and it put pressure on me. It was a good pressure to have; that I had to not tarnish his good name. I had to conform to some kind of a standard. Yes, I individuated, I was my own person, but I was also Lou Heitzig's son. I bear another name as do you---the name of Christ.

We are children of our heavenly Father. To live a holy life simply means that people look at your life and they go, "You must somehow be connected to God, somehow related to him." And live in such a way that God would, so to speak, look down from heaven and say, "That's my boy! That's my girl!"

In the days of Alexander the Great, one of his soldiers was caught deserting in a battle. That soldier was brought before Alexander the emperor. He heard the charges. And he said to the young soldier, "Young man, what is your name?" He looked up and said, "My name is Alexander, sir." And the emperor was taken aback, and then he became angry. And he said, "Soldier, you either change your behavior or change your name." "If you're going to bear my name, Alexander, I want you to be brave," in other words.

Holiness a reflection, a family resemblance; as he is holy who called you, you be holy, you be other. Let me throw something else out at you. Why don't you start looking at holiness defined by the word wholeness, W-H-O-L-E-ness. When you are holy, you become whole, you become complete, you become well rounded. The closer you follow God and pursue God and become more like God, it's the whole, complete package of life. And when you pursue him and you start emulating his traits and become more and more like him, there's a power in that unlike anything else.

I heard of a native who went to a large city for the first time, and had never seen electric lights, and he was so dazzled by them. And he was given some extra spending money, so he bought a sack full of lightbulbs and light switches and sockets. He took them back home to his village and started stringing them up on the outside of his house and in the trees by his house. All his neighbors were looking at him, "What are you doing?" And he said to "just wait, just wait, just watch, just wait."

And nightfall came and the neighborhood, the whole city, the village was gathered out. He said, "Now, now, just wait. Watch this!" And he flipped the switch and nothing happened---because nobody told him about electricity. It's not enough to just turn from the darkness, to live in the light you gotta plug into God. You say no to the old paths, you say yes to your Father, and that shapes your conduct.

So how do you walk in the dark? It begins in the mind. You prepare your mind. You think clearly, hopefully. You shape your actions negatively. Don't be like you used to be. You didn't know any better than; you know better now. Say yes to your Father. Pursue him closely.

Third, finally, focus your will. Focus your will. Verse 16, "Because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.' "Now before I jump into that, there's something in the previous verse, in verse 15, that just sort of jumped out at me this week. I want you to notice it. It's this little phrase that just made my breath go, [gasps] "It actually said that?"

Notice what it says at the end of verse 15, "He who called you is holy, be holy in some of your conduct." Do you see that---"in some of your conduct?" Did I misread it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I did misread it. "You also be holy in most of your conduct." Yeah, I misread it again. It says what? All. "All your conduct." It says that I'm to be holy in all my conduct?

"What does it say in the Greek? I want to know what it says in the Greek. It might mean something different if I know what it says in the Greek." [laughter] It means all. In fact, the Phillips translation renders it, "in every department of your life." When you bring Jesus into your life, he comes in to live as a resident, not a tourist. He wants the key to every room.

I was in North Carolina this week. I visited not only the Billy Graham Training Center where I spoke, but I had an afternoon free, I went to the Biltmore Estate. I took my son. I'd been there before; I wanted to see it again. I wanted to show him. Biltmore Estate is the largest home in America: 250 rooms, 250 rooms in a single home, many stories, it's a castle, central heating in the late 1800s, and 65 supplemental fireplaces---huge!

Took a tour room to room, but there were sections of the Biltmore Estate that are off-limits. They're roped off. "You can't go in that hallway, can't see in that room." And I come up to that rope and it's my tendency---[laughter] I want to see what's in that room, because it says I can't see what's in that room. So why can't I see what's in that room? "Oh, well," she said, "You don't want to see it, it's sort of like this room. And if you take the special tour, we could show you into some of these other rooms."

So there were certain rooms off-limits for me. Okay, I'm a tourist, I'm not a resident, I get that. But when you receive Christ into your heart, and you give him the key to your life, he lives there. He's not a tourist, and he wants access to every single room in the house---all your conduct, all your conduct.

I'll spell it out: God when I wake up, God in shower, God at the breakfast table, God in car, God at the office, God at the factory, God in the classroom, God in the boardroom, God in the bedroom---all your conduct, all your conduct. Holiness is letting God conquer inner space and when he conquers inner space, you're outer space will be fine.

C. S. Lewis wrote, "How little people know who think holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible. Even if 10 percent of the world's population had it, would not the whole world be converted before the year's end?" You know, he's right. The world doesn't understand holiness, which is why we have to show them. Those ten people at Starbucks, when you mention holiness, they don't get it. They have to see it. We have to show them. "You want to know what God's like. Let me show you."

Years ago there was a lighthouse in Florida. One of the glass panes broke out. They ordered a new one, but temporarily they had to close it up, so they put a piece of tin over where the glass was on one side. Problem is, is when a ship was trying to get into the harbor and looked at the lighthouse, it didn't see a light, it saw a dark spot.

It couldn't navigate. One of the things we discover as we grow in Christ is that we have a few dark spots. Humph, a few?---a lot. And part of our Christian growth is to identify and remove those dark spots and put in its place holiness. That's what God wants in that room, in that area, with this relationship---all your conduct.

Now I did promise a third, and I started and I stopped, and I go back to it: focus your will. Verse 16, "Because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.' And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear."

Now, please, just read the first word of verse 18. We're going to get to that next time, but look at the first word of that, because it's all part of the same sentence. "Knowing, knowing." He talks about this is what God said, there's going to be a judgment, and we know something. Now that's important. Knowing goes beyond just thinking. In fact, knowing goes beyond just doing certain things.

When you were in the realm of knowing something, you're in the realm of deeply held, firmly held convictions. Conviction are beliefs firmly held. They are ideas and beliefs you're firmly convinced of, you're firmly committed to. Any wishy-washy person can have a belief; a stable believer is somebody who has convictions. And your inner space will get conquered when you move from belief system to convictions.

I'm convinced one of the reasons people fall away from the faith, as they say, or as Jesus put it, "get choked up by the cares of this world," is they have never formulated deep held convictions. "I know this to be true." So we go from thinking to action, but really we end up with the firm basis of deeply held convictions. Focus your will, choose. That's based upon a couple of things.

It's based first of all upon Scripture, written Scripture. Verse 16, "Because it is written, 'Be holy for I am . . .' "---he's quoting Leviticus, "Because it is written." So Peter is anticipating his audience saying, "Well, why should I be holy, Peter?" "Good question," Peter would say, "because God said so in his book." "It is written," a phrase found eighty times in the Bible, usually in the New Testament pointing back to the Old Testament. A person who has conviction is somebody who has wrestled with the Scripture and comes out the other end of the wrestling, saying, "I believe this to be the Word of God."

If you've ever listened to vintage, classic Billy Graham Crusades, there's one phrase he always says over and over again. It's the phrase, "The Bible says." "The Bible says, 'For God so loved the world.' The Bible says, 'All have sinned.' The Bible . . ." It's like a string of Scripture. You know why he says that? Because many years ago as a youth, when he was at Forest Home in California, a youth camp, he was struggling with Scripture. "I can't put my mind around it intellectually. I don't understand it all."

And he went out and he prayed. He got on his knees. He said, "God, there's a lot of this book I do not get, but I believe it to be your Word. And I will proclaim it as your Word. I've come to an end of my intellect, and all I know is; is that when I wield this sword, it's like a fire that melts the ice off the hearts of unbelievers." And from that moment on it was, "The Bible says . . . ," "The Bible says . . . ," because he saw the power and the strength of a written Scripture. Peter couldn't have said what he said, "It is written," unless he believed that to be so.

Second, you focus your will based upon future judgment. Don't miss it in verse 17. "If you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves through the time of your stay here in fear." A person who lives with convictions like this has those convictions because he believes there will one day be a final reckoning, a final accounting. The Scripture is your flashlight in a dark world.

God's judgment is the light at the end of the tunnel. There will never be a brighter day in your whole life than the day of judgment. According to Paul, First Corinthians 4, "Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in the darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each one will receive his praise from God." That day is coming. There's a day of judgment coming.

I heard about a family that was going on vacation. There was a thief across the street in a car waiting to watch the family go. They left. He waited for nightfall. He picked the lock. He opened the door to the kitchen. It was completely dark and he heard a voice, "Jesus sees you and so do I." He was scared. He turned on his flashlight and looked around and saw nothing. He continued his work. Again the voice said, "Jesus sees you and so do I." Okay, he freaked out.

He looks around, looks around, can't see anybody. Third time, "Jesus sees you and so do I." At this moment he turns on the overhead lights and he looks across the kitchen, and there on the counter was in a cage a parrot. And he said, "Awww, it's just a bird in a cage." Then he saw the Doberman pinscher with glistening teeth on the other side of the kitchen in a crouching position. And just then the parrot said, "Attack, Jesus, attack!" [laughter]

It was the day of judgment for that thief. First of all, it's just weird that some owner called his dog Jesus, I don't know. It works in the story. If you want to walk firmly and confidently in a dark world, if you want to see in the dark, if you want to punch holes in the darkness, think clearly, live holy, and chose decisively. And you will be, you will be, contrary to what the world says, the most enlightened person in the bunch.

Heavenly Father, your Word is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. By understanding what is written, what was spoken, we have light to navigate. By understanding there is a coming day of reckoning, that Jesus will come and reward his followers, that's the light at the end of the tunnel, when every man's praise will be from God who has evaluated a life lived in the light of truth, in the light of the gospel, in the light of his coming.

So help us, Lord, just how we always end up praying that---help us---in our thought life to think clearly and hopefully. And that from the thought life into real life, real time, to say no and to say yes, to know when to say no and when to say yes. To say no to those old passions and to say yes to our Father, and be other, be different, be unique, because you said so, and because one day you will evaluate to see if it is so. And so with that, Lord, we walk back out into the darkness of a world that doesn't know you. Help us to punch holes in the darkness, in Jesus' name, amen.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.