Sunday 07 • 14 • 19

We're continuing our sermon series on First Peter and we come this morning to First Peter chapter four verses one through 11. As we've been going through this series, we've been reading the passages of scripture together, so we're going to continue that. I'm going to count to three and then we're all going to read this with gusto. Are you ready? One, two, three.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you. But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. The end of all things is at hand therefore be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all keep loving one another earnestly since love covers over a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling as each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything god may be glorified through Jesus Christ to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever amen. — 1 Peter 4:1-11

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, this is your word to us this morning. We pray that we would have hearts that would receive it as such. Lord, give us ears to hear and eyes to see what you would teach us from your word this morning. Lord, work through our worship service. Transform us more into your image. We pray through the preaching of your word. We pray this in your name. Amen.

D-Day and Heroism

About a month and a half ago, many of you will probably remember there were a lot of big celebrations for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Normandy Beach invasions, the D-Day invasions. That happened seventy-five years ago on June 5, 1944. Growing up, I was always kind of fascinated with World War II and the heroism of our soldiers during that time, at least partially because my grandfather served in the war. He served in the Pacific Theater, but as I was growing up, he would regale us with all kinds of stories of battles that he fought in, stories of heroism, of people that he served with.

And there is perhaps nothing that stands out in the story of World War II as more heroic than the efforts of those who on D-Day invaded the beaches of Normandy. Several years ago, probably like many of you, I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan. That's probably the closest that most of us will come to experiencing what those men experienced. I just can't imagine the heroism that it must have taken to get on those boats and the heroism that it must have taken to get off of those boats and to storm that beach for the sake of liberating Europe. Incredible.

A Historical Fiction

I want to move us though from a consideration of history to a consideration of historical fiction. I realize this is a little abnormal, but hang with me on this. I want you to imagine that on June 5, 1944, in the early morning hours—maybe it was June 4—there was a man who drank way too much. A guy got really drunk. In my mind, this guy's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and in his drunken stupor, he wanders onto one of the troop carriers that is destined for the Normandy Beach and he falls asleep. I know that's ridiculous. I know that there's no way that could have happened. Suspend disbelief with me just for the moment. Imagine that that did happen.

Because here's my contention: I think that historical fictional character describes many of us in the Church of Jesus Christ. And maybe more importantly, I think Peter would have agreed that that historical fictional character would have described him. Peter was the king of drunkenly and foolishly falling into things that he never intended to be involved in. If you read the story of the Gospels, Peter was always operating under wrong intentions and Jesus was constantly having to correct him and to redirect him.

My contention is that that is the picture of many of us, and that Peter in his later life changed. He shifted from being the drunken man that wandered onto the boat to being a true soldier for Christ. And ultimately, we know that was the case—that he ultimately offered himself as a sacrifice, being crucified upside down for the sake of the kingdom.

So Peter, this man who experienced this incredible transformation, recognizing that lots of people probably come into the church under false pretenses. And think about it, we probably all did to some degree, right? We probably all came to faith thinking about the promise of everlasting life, of a renewed relationship with God, of deeper relationships with one another, which are all true promises of the gospel that the gospel delivers on. But we often ignore things like Jesus saying:

If anyone would come after me, they must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me.

We often ignore the calls to sacrifice that are over and over again throughout scripture. We ignore the calls to be soldiers in a foreign land. There's a sense in which the Normandy invasions are a perfect picture of what the church is meant to be. We are meant to be aliens who are coming to liberate the world from the evil and oppression that exist within it. But often times, we're so consumed with ourselves that we lose sight of that. We think we're on a pleasure cruise and not on a troop transport.

In these verses, Peter challenges us to shift our thinking, to move from being the drunk guy in the Hawaiian shirt asleep to a soldier ready for battle. And so I want to walk through this passage and highlight some of the points that he makes.

Three Charges: Suit Up, Sober Up, Team Up

My points are simple. There are three. These are the charges that Peter gives to us this morning.

Number one, suit up. Number two, sober up. Number three, team up.

Suit up, sober up, and team up. These are the things that we're going to have to do if we're going to become soldiers and not be the drunk guy asleep on the troop transport.

Let's look at suiting up. Peter exhorts us to do that in verses one through six:

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. For the time that has passed suffices for doing what Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you, but they give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached, even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. — 1 Peter 4:1-6

All of that is an exhortation from Peter for you to suit up, to start putting on armor. The first thing, if you imagine our friend on the troop carrier, the other troops would have woken him up and said, "Hey, you need to put on some armor. You need to put on a helmet. You need to put on a flak jacket. You need to grab a gun because we are not on a pleasure cruise. We are going into some of the most intense warfare that the world has ever seen. You need to get ready. You need to start putting this stuff on."

And there are essentially five things in these verses that Peter wants us to think about that create a mental armament for the believer as he heads into battle. As she prepares for warfare, they put on these five things.

So I'm going to go through them rather quickly, but follow with me. Verse 1a: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking." Peter begins with the most appropriate thing that he can with regard to us being armed for warfare. He says, look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. If you want to arm yourself and prepare yourself for battle, the first thing that you need to do is look at Jesus.

The "therefore" there points us back to chapter three verse 18 where it says:

For Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. — 1 Peter 3:18

The promise of the gospel is the foundation for our armament, but it is also our example for how we are to view our life. We are to live as Christ lived. We are to, as Christ said, pick up our cross and follow him. We are to arm ourselves with the same way of thinking that we are going to suffer. Jesus came and he suffered once. The righteous for the unrighteous. We are going to move into suffering. This is not going to be easy. This is going to be a battle. This is going to cost us something, but it will be one time. It will just be for this life. Jesus suffered once for the sins of the unrighteous, the righteous for the unrighteous, but he suffers no more. He sits at the right hand of God, and we are called to follow in the same path.

We will suffer once. We are engaged in battle, but there will not be an eternal battle. That battle will end, and we will one day be with Jesus in eternity.

He is our example. We follow His path, and we expect suffering. And as we are one with Him in His suffering, we will be one with Him in His glory, and we look for that with longing and we know that we have hope because of the gospel that he preached to us because of the gospel that he lived while he was here among us.

So, if you're going to arm yourself for this battle, number one, start with Jesus. Look at Christ. Begin to arm yourself by reminding yourself of what he did, of all that he did, and why did he do it? It's once for all and for the glory that he's coming to. But it says something else in verse 3:18, that he might bring us to God. There is a purpose to Christ's suffering. He didn't just do it for kicks and giggles. He wasn't sitting up in heaven and he said, "Hey, Father, Holy Spirit, watch this. I'm going to go down and I'm going to endure enormous suffering for fun. Won't this be great?" He did it for that reason. He did it for you. He said, "Father, Spirit, watch this. I'm going to show our love for these people by suffering and dying for them."

Look to Jesus because the suffering that you experience has the same purpose. God is going to use your righteous suffering for the expansion of his kingdom. Do you not think that your suffering matters? Do you not think that it's important? Do you not think that the suffering of Jesus was important? Look to him. He's our example and we follow in his path and if we do, then our suffering becomes a part of the redemptive story of mankind.

So, arm yourself, prepare yourself. We are on the cusp of a tremendous battle that has cosmic importance for the universe. Look to Jesus. He is our example and our suffering model is modeled after his suffering. But it doesn't stop there.

Understanding Suffering and Righteousness

Look at verses the second part of verse one and verse two.

For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. — 1 Peter 4:1-2

Now, this section's a little difficult. It can seem like what he's saying here is that essentially, if you suffer, then you cease from sin. Some people have read this verse and they have wrongly gone this path, right? They've read this and they've gone home and they've gotten a whip and they've started flogging themselves and they've said, "The more I suffer, the less I sin. So, I'm just going to beat myself up in order to stop sinning." That is not what this verse is saying. That is not what this passage is getting at.

What Peter is trying to do is to arm us for suffering that we experience from the world, not self-inflicted suffering onto ourselves. And moreover, he is not saying that we will cease sinning in this life. He's not saying that as we experience suffering, we stop sinning. He's not saying that.

What he is saying gets to our union with Christ, our mystical union with him. He's essentially saying that you're one with Christ and so if you're one in his sufferings, you're also one in his righteousness. You have ceased from sin. If you have chosen, you made a decision to accept Christ, your sin was displaced onto him and you've been given his righteousness. So from a justification standpoint, you are justified. And that has importance as you go through life and you experience suffering because oftentimes—and I know that you've been there—when you experience suffering in this life, you want to ask God, "What did I do to deserve this? Why am I experiencing this suffering? What did I do? What wrong did I do to incur your wrath, God?"

And the answer is, my wrath no longer applies to you. There is no suffering that comes from me for your sins. That suffering has been paid in full by Christ Jesus. This suffering that you are experiencing is similar to Christ's suffering. His suffering that—even though he was perfect, he did nothing to deserve it—he took it onto himself for the sake of others. And so therefore, our suffering isn't for us chasing after our sinful passions anymore. It is righteous suffering. That is the suffering that Christians are called to.

Now, I want to just say, pastorally, there are passages that point to the fact that God does discipline those he loves. There are times when we experience consequences for our sin that we might say, "Hey, this is suffering." That does happen. That does still happen and Peter is not saying that it doesn't. But what he is offering you is encouragement. Reminders that any kind of suffering that you have in this life, it's either going to be that discipline kind of suffering—it's not wrath, it's God correcting you—or it is righteous suffering which he is using to expand his kingdom. Remember that, because there are going to be times when you experience suffering and you're going to question, "What is this? Why am I getting this? Is God angry with me?" The answer is no.

Because Christ is not only our example, He is also our foundation for Christian living. We have union with Him and we have His righteousness. So arm yourself. Remember that.

Thirdly, verse three:

For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

I love this. For the time that has passed suffices for doing what the Gentiles do. I want you to think about the backdrop of this. Think of Peter denying Christ. Think of Peter denying Christ three times. He's thinking about, hey, that was the moment in which I had the opportunity to be light to the world, to reflect Christ, to proclaim truth to the lost, to enter into the same suffering of my Lord and Savior and three times I missed the opportunity.

Peter has struggled probably with all kinds of sin, and his point is this: hey, all of the sinfulness that we do, all of our desire to sinfully escape suffering, to pursue our own pleasures in various different ways—the time that is past is enough. That is enough. The time that is before us is pure opportunity for us to live for the expanding kingdom of God, to take hold of this. And Peter was excited to do this. He was not going to deny Christ a fourth time, and that led to his death.

Do you view suffering as an opportunity? Do you view running away from sin and towards righteousness as an opportunity to proclaim the gospel to the world? If not, you need to arm yourself with that way of thinking. That was Christ's way of thinking. He saw suffering as an opportunity to expand the kingdom, to reach you. And every opportunity that you have to own Christ and because of your righteousness in him, to experience suffering is an opportunity to be a part of God's expanding kingdom.

The time that has passed was enough. Turn your mind now to the time at hand. If you're a drunken soldier on the troop transport, hey, you've done enough drinking in the past. The time now is to suit up, to get ready. No more Hawaiian shirts. Put on the flak jacket. Here we go.

Fourth thing, verses four through five:

With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you, but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

Okay, another piece of armament. If you are to live this way, if you are to live as a faithful witness to Christ, you will experience suffering. As you turn from the sinful pleasures of this world, the world will malign you. They will mock you. They will say, "You are crazy. The things you are doing are foolish. Why would you want to sacrifice yourself? Why would you want to do all of these crazy things, you fool?" And as they start to become convicted of this, they may even persecute you the way that they persecuted Jesus, and you will probably experience some form of injustice as a result of you following Christ.

Peter certainly did. The early church certainly did. The reformed church certainly did. Throughout time, the church that has been faithful in its witness has experienced suffering and persecution. You can expect that. And how do you deal with that?

We don't like injustice, do we? As Christians, we stand up to injustice and we should. This is not saying that we just roll over and take injustice all the time. We should, when we can, pursue justice. Jesus did, right? He went into the temple and turned over the money tables. He was a pursuer of justice, especially for other people. But Jesus took upon himself all kinds of injustice. He took it upon himself, and we will take upon ourselves all kinds of injustice if we follow him.

And here's the thing: as you do that, it's going to be hard, and the only way that you can do it is if you remember that there is a God who is going to one day come and make all injustice right. You see, the world offers us the hope that we have various different ways of pursuing justice, that we can figure this out on our own. The Gospel doesn't offer us that. What the gospel offers us is a Lord Jesus who is coming again to judge the living and the dead, and he will wipe the tear off of every eye that has experienced injustice. He will judge the wicked and he will sort it out. And he will instill perfect justice on that day.

Do you believe that, brothers and sisters? If you do, then you are armed.

We used to sing a song in this church pretty frequently. I love this song. Nobody else likes this song. The song is "Oh Quickly Come, Dread Judge of All." Everybody always thinks of Sylvester Stallone with this song, but it's not about Sylvester Stallone—it's about Jesus. Listen to the first line:

Oh quickly come, dread judge of all, / for awful though thine advent be, / all shadows from the truth will fall, / and falsehood die inside of thee. / Oh, quickly come for doubt and fear / like clouds dissolve when thou art near.

Jesus is coming and all the ins and outs of the injustice of this world, all the injustice that we experience, he will sort out. He will make right. Arm yourselves. Know that. That will allow you to experience injustice with hope and joy even as the Bible calls us to.

Fifthly, Listen to Verse Six

Fifthly, listen to verse six.

For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead and though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. — 1 Peter 4:6

This is another tricky verse, right? Because it seems like it's saying Jesus went into the dead and preached to the dead. Jeff talked about this last week for those of you who are here. Essentially, I think the right interpretation of this verse is not that Jesus went into the land of the dead to preach to the dead. I think it's talking about those who heard the gospel while they were alive and then died, right?

The NIV translates this passage differently and I think it makes it a little bit clearer what Peter means. It says:

For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead. — 1 Peter 4:6 (NIV)

Right? The armament is this. The encouragement is this. Essentially, that the gospel that has been preached to you that you have believed, that those who have gone before you have believed, is powerful even over death. It means that when the gospel is preached to someone and they physically die, that's not the end of the story. The gospel is more powerful and gives them spiritual life beyond their fleshly life.

That's the armament to experience suffering to be a soldier for Christ because you know that even if you experience the ultimate suffering of death, you know that the gospel which you have is powerful even over death.

I did some research this week over Christian martyrdom. I was just kind of curious as to how much of that is going on because I think in the American church, we feel distant from the reality that people actually die for their faith. So I did some research and I found out there were 4,126 people that somebody did some digging on this and they actually know the names and the circumstances and they can say with confidence that these people died not for any other reason but because they are Christians, because they have faith in Christ.

You know how many names of that 4,126 people that I know? None. I don't know any of them. Can you name one? Can you name one at all? We're so distant from that and yet that is the reality for much of the world.

And here's the encouragement that I would offer to you and that Peter offers to you as armament as we move into suffering. Jesus Christ knows every one of those names. He knew them from before the dawn of time. He called them to himself through the gospel, and that gospel was not preached to them in vain because they have died. In fact, their death is significant of the fact that that gospel was not in vain.

We need to arm ourselves with the firm conviction that even death does not hold any threat to us who are in Christ Jesus. That will enable us. That will equip us. That will arm us to move into suffering as Christian soldiers and not as Christian tourists.

Brothers and sisters, here's what I want to challenge you to do today. I know there's been a lot in these six verses and I've gone quickly, not nearly slowly enough for you to digest some of this. I want you to spend some time this week arming yourself with some of these truths. I want you to spend some time today picking which one you think is the most encouraging or the most challenging and I want you to spend some time thinking about that and then I want you to have a conversation with someone who's a brother or sister in Christ. Maybe over dinner. Maybe over lunch. Maybe over coffee. But think about the reality of this armament. It is powerful armor. Think about it and digest it because here's the deal.

Church of Jesus Christ, American church, you need to suit up. We need you in the battle. We need you to put some armor on. We do not need Christian tourists. We need Christian soldiers. And you are not going to be a soldier until you start putting on some armor.

So spend some time this week meditating on these first six verses.

Second Point: Sober Up

Let's move on. Second point, sober up. Verse seven:

The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. — 1 Peter 4:7

I love this verse. The end of all things is at hand. Be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Second thing that our drunk tourist needs to do is he needs to sober up. It's not going to do him any good if he has armor, if he doesn't know how to use it. He's walking around in a drunken stupor.

And here's Peter's point essentially. This world will make you drunk. This world will make you lose self control. It will intoxicate you. You will start to hallucinate and start to value things that you shouldn't value the more you engage in worldly things, right?

And we experience this, don't we? We get into all kinds of worldly things and we start to lose sight of heaven. We start to think about how do we solve our problems in the here and now. We stop thinking about the ultimate solution that we have in Christ, and slowly over time, we start focusing our energy on our solutions and the things that we're doing rather than on prayer. We start thinking that what we do matters more than what God is doing.

And so for the sake of our prayers, sober up. Wake up. You can't do this. This isn't up to you. This isn't about worldly desires and the things that satisfy you in the here and now. This is about the victory that is coming. Get on your knees and pray for that. Long for that. Look for that.

This week, my wife and my daughter and I went to Myrtle Beach. We had a great time. One morning during our time there, Katie and I woke up pretty early, and we were talking about a conversation that we frequently have as parents: How do we limit our kids' screen time?

We had been out to dinner, and there was this family sitting next to us. There were five of them and the whole time they were on their phones. The dad was celebrating his birthday, and at one point they put the phones down for five seconds, they said, "Happy birthday, Dad," and they went right back into it. We were just like, "Wow, man. We can't let that happen to our family. We have gotta limit screen time."

There are so many things in this world that suck us in like that. It doesn't have to be alcohol. It doesn't have to be real drunkenness. There's lots of different things that suck us in. And sometimes it's not necessarily unhealthy things. Sometimes it's healthy things.

Later that day, we were on the beach, and I was playing with Josie and Katie was sitting and she was reading a magazine. I'm going to get in trouble for this by the way. She was reading a magazine and I sat down and I said, "What are you reading about?" And she's like, "I am reading about sunscreen and all of these bad sunscreens. There are these things that are wrong with sunscreen and we've got to go to this kind of sunscreen because our kids are going to die if we don't use the right kind." She's reading like pages and pages on this.

And I jokingly said to her, "You know, our kids have a screen addiction and you do too. Y'all can pray for me."

There are healthy things that we can concern ourselves with and they're good. I'm so glad that Katie is looking out for our family. We have very fair skin. But there are things that we can concern ourselves with that help us to lose sight of the ultimate thing.

For the sake of our prayers, we need to sober up. We need to spend time on our knees.

Challenge: Reclaim Your Prayer Time

Here's the challenge. I don't know what this is going to look like for you, but I want to challenge you. Here's what I'm going to do. My phone has a screen time app. It tracks how much time you spend on various things. I know exactly how much time I spend on social media. I'm not going to share that with you. But I'm going to try to spend at least as much time in prayer as I do on social media. I have a backup plan in case I don't meet that goal. I'm gonna try for half or a quarter.

I don't know what your thing is—whether it's social media or what it is—but spend some time thinking about how much time you engage on that and start trying to shift your heart and your mind and your focus towards prayer. Because American church, we need you to sober up. We need you to sober up and focus yourself on the accomplishments that God can do, not on what we can do.

Team Up

Move to the last point: team up. That's in verses eight through ten.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. — 1 Peter 4:8-10

You can imagine our drunken friend who stumbled onto the troop carrier. Initially, his thought when he wakes up and there's all these troops might be, "Who are all these people and where is my private cabin? I need alone time. This is supposed to be relaxing." As he realizes that he's actually headed towards an engagement, he's like, "Why aren't there more people on this carrier? We need as many as possible if we're going to succeed in our mission."

And that is the heart attitude of the Christian church. We expect that God is working through all of us together. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like love. It looks like love. He binds us together in love.

The big marching order of Peter's exhortations to us is above all else, love each other earnestly. And what does that love look like?

First of all, it's a forgiving love because love covers over a multitude of sins. We need to forgive each other. We need to remember the forgiveness that we have in Christ, the love that he's shown us, and we need to show that love to each other.

Secondly, it's an inconvenient love. Notice, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. Verse has been eating my lunch all week. I was talking to Aaron Granger about it this morning as I was grumbling about something. Hospitality is inconvenient and it is easy to grumble about inconvenience but the heart of Christ and the heart of the Christian is to move into inconvenience, to accept suffering, to embrace it on behalf of Jesus Christ, and to trust that He's using it to expand His kingdom. We need to exercise an inconvenient love.

Finally, verse 10, it's a giving love.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace. — 1 Peter 4:10

All of us have gifts. All of us have gifts that are not necessarily tied to our personality traits, although they might be. All of us have gifts that are given to us by God above, and the purpose of those gifts is regifting. We're meant to give them to other people. They're not for you. God did not give you those gifts just for you. And I love this: we are all recipients of God's varied grace. What that means is that God has sprinkled all kinds of different gifts throughout this congregation. What that means is that likely the gift that you need is sitting next to you or across the room, and you're going to have to invest and get to know that person in order to experience that gift. You're going to have to labor alongside of them.

You can enter into, as an illustration of this, just about any sports movie that you could imagine. Good sports teams function because people have different roles, not because they have one person that is fantastic. And God wanted us to function as a team. He wanted us to enjoy the beauty of being connected in love. So he gave us things that we need in other people so that we could not only enjoy those gifts but so that we could be one with those people and enjoy unity, the unity that we have in Christ.

So here's the application of this: Stop doing your Christianity alone. Some of you have jumped in with community in this church, and you're experiencing the beauty and the wealth of this. Others of you have been resistant to it. Don't do that. Team up. You need the other people in this room. They need you.

You want to experience that? Show up for one of our Saturday serving things. You're going to show up and you're going to be like, I don't know if I have anything to offer this particular partnership, but show up and allow the gifts of others to work along with your gifts and see what God does. He will do amazing things. Jump in with our men's group, our women's ministry. Jump in with our community groups. Come together. Get to know other people. Invite them over to lunch. Show hospitality. Try not to grumble. I'll try not to grumble. You will see God work through the team in ways that are amazing and beautiful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to look at verse 11.

Whoever speaks, speak as one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. — 1 Peter 4:11

I realize that it may be for some of you a hard thing to think about being a soldier for Christ. It's a hard thing for me to think about. I identify way more with the drunk guy in the Hawaiian shirt than I do with a soldier who's willing to get off a boat on the beach at Normandy.

But here is the encouragement that Peter offers. He was the drunk guy in the Hawaiian shirt. We all are the drunk guy in the Hawaiian shirt. And what's amazing is that God takes our minimalistic efforts and he uses them for his glory.

You don't know what to say? Speak the oracles of God. He's given you his word. Speak his word. Watch it work. You don't have the energy to serve? Serve in the strength of God. Use his strength. Show up for things that you don't think you can do, and watch him work and give him glory. That's how he works.

One of my favorite movies is the movie Dunkirk. It's not about the Normandy invasion, it's about before that. It's about basically the troops retreating from France back into England. If you watch the movie, it's very depressing for the majority of the movie. It just seems like everybody is failing. And all to the glorious end of they successfully retreated. But if you watch the movie closely, there are little, small, heroic acts that happen, sprinkled through, that each of the people that are doing them would say they weren't enough, they weren't important enough, they weren't heroic at all. And at the end of the movie, there's an old blind man who I think is the explainer for the whole movie.

He's handing out blankets to the troops and he says, "Well done, lads. Well done, lads. Well done, lads." And the guys in the movie after that, they're in tears and they feel like failures and they're like, "He couldn't even look at us." They don't realize that he was blind. The truth is they are blind.

God takes all of our small efforts, our failures, our weaknesses, every little thing, and he uses it for his glory so that at the end, when we get done with the battle, we look back on it and we say, we failed and yet we're ushered into an eternity of glory, rejoicing in what God has done through us as our eyes are opened to how he was working through us all along.

The things he calls us to in this verse are suffering, praying, and loving. These are small things but these are the marching orders of the soldiers of Christ. We need you to be soldiers, CTK, not tourists. We pray that God would give you his strength to be that and that you would give him all the glory for it and that you would rejoice with him for eternity for it.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.