Considering What’s Ahead, How Do We Live Now?
This is the text of a message I preached at Roswell Alliance Church in Roswell, GA on January 15, 2023. You may watch or listen to it by following the link to the online service. The sermon begins at about the 14th minute.
Video: 39 minutes
Online service — Roswell Alliance Church
Reading time: 8 minutes
Scripture: 2 Peter 3:10-13; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
We are in January, the month when we look back at the past year and think about things we’d like to change. It’s also the time when we look ahead and wonder about what’s in store for the new year.
No wonder the month gets its name from Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions. He was the god of doors and gateways. Appropriately, he was portrayed as having two faces. With one he looked behind, at the past, and with the other, he looked ahead, into the future.
In our first scripture, Peter looks ahead and sees
- the last days (3:3)
- the day of judgment (3:7)
- the day of the Lord (3:10).
He sees a time when the ungodly perish, the heavens pass away, the elements melt and the earth and everything in it burns.
The events ahead raise questions. The day of the Lord is dreadful; who can stand?
Peter asks: What kind of persons should we be? How should we live now?
Paul answers by looking back. He sees a time when One died. Now, we all die, but this One didn’t just die; He died for all. Not only that, but this One who died also rose from the dead.
Paul looks back at that One and answers Peter: We no longer live for ourselves. We live for Him, the One who died and rose again.
Paul lays out two ways to live:
- For ourselves
- For the one who died and rose again
Living for ourselves has many forms. We’ll look at four: Fear, Anger, Good Looks, Arrogance
Fear
“Those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” —Hebrews 2:15
I watch the news and events around me and there is a lot of fear.
- COVID
We have had two years of the pandemic. We have been afraid to touch or be near anyone. We locked ourselves in our homes, afraid to go in public. - Violence
There are shootings everywhere: schools, malls, gas stations, and on the street. We are afraid to send our children to school. We are afraid to do even everyday errands. We go out and don’t know if we’ll come back. - Inflation
Rising prices have us wondering whether we will have enough money to pay the bills. Groceries, fuel, everything costs more and our money runs out faster. We are working longer because we are afraid we won’t have enough for retirement. - The climate
Summers are hotter, storms are stronger and we are warned of the doom ahead if we don’t change how we live. A recent story said there are more than 200,000 thousand glaciers but at the current pace, two-thirds of them will have melted before the end of this century.
Jesus said the time would come when men’s hearts will fail for fear. I think we’re seeing that. Everywhere we turn, there is fear.
Anger
“The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” —James 1:20
There is a lot of anger and a lot to be angry about. We have seen the riots of the Black Lives Matter movement. We watch the parades of pride by the LGBTQ. The nightly news is filled with protests about the violence in our streets and demands for gun control.
What is behind all this anger? I think it is this: each, in their own way, is saying
My life matters. Don’t just look at me, see me. Respect me. Treat me with dignity.
In the flamboyance of negative attention is the demand, I will make you look at me.
In our anger, we demand more and more laws because we think we can legislate respect and self-control and good stewardship.
Not so, says James. Our anger will not bring about the right things we long for. Nor will our laws, says the great lawgiver, Moses. When he presented Israel with the law, Moses warned, “This will be our righteousness, if we keep all these laws” (Deuteronomy 6:25). Our record proves we are lawbreakers, not lawkeepers, and our righteousness is all wrong.
The truth is, the more laws we make, the more there are to break, and the more there is to be angry about.
Good Looks
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” —Judges 21:25
For years, I thought this verse expressed how God intended us to live. No king—no central government. We should have a theocracy, where everyone answers to God and there is individual freedom, within God’s laws.
But one day I came to this verse, “You shall not at all do as we are doing here today—every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes” (Deuteronomy 12:8).
God changed my mind, I had it all wrong. Living by what looks good has been our downfall from the beginning. Remember Eve in Eden: She “saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6).
A popular song years ago asked, “How can this be wrong when it feels so right?” It is popular today to say you have your truth and I have mine. This is the mantra of diversity and inclusion: Do what looks good to you.
Living for ourselves means pursuing what looks good to me. Everyone is off running to their own affairs and eventually we collide.
Arrogance
“But now you boast in your arrogance” —James 4:16
James brings up arrogance as he considers those who boast they are lord of their schedule. They say today I’ll do this and tomorrow go there, and I’m going to buy this or sell that. I have plans for my career and my life and my retirement. It’s all laid out. But, where does God fit in?
The heart of this lifestyle is what’s in the heart.
The fool says in his heart: There is no God.
The arrogant concedes: There is a God, but He is disabled. He is blind, deaf, and disinterested. He has short arms and can’t reach me. Read Psalm 10.
Arrogance manifests itself in two ways:
- Abuse and terror.
- Giant-print lives.
Natural law says that nature abhors a vacuum. If God is truly powerless and helpless, something will fill the void. Evolution teaches survival of the fittest, so we puff ourselves up. We defy God and everyone around us, like Goliath when he taunted the Israelite army. Like Pharaoh, who scorned the thought of God telling him to do something and asked, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?
We make ourselves into giants—tyrants who bully everyone around us.
Or, we live giant-print lives. Jesus observed this in the Sermon on the Mount. He described the charity of the Pharisees who made a great show of their generosity. And he watched them pray loud, long prayers (Matthew 6).
Why did they exaggerate so? Their god was deaf and blind; he was distant. They resorted to showmanship to get his attention and to impress their neighbors.
Don’t think of God that way, said Jesus. His hearing and eyesight are fine. God sees what is said and done—even in the secret place.
Resolutions Won’t Change Us
Such is what living for ourselves looks like. These are all around us.
I hear again the question of Peter, How should we live?
And I hear the answer of Paul, “We live for Him who died and rose again.”
How do we do this? Do we just make a New Year’s resolution?
Living for Jesus goes beyond resolution. Jesus calls: “If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.”
We cannot resolve enough. We cannot live for Christ until we die to ourselves.
Paul puts it this way, “I am crucified with Christ”—I died with Him—”nevertheless, I live, yet, not I, but Christ lives in me.”
I live for Christ when He lives in me.
When I die to myself;
When I rise with Christ to new life;
When I am born again, and become a new creation in Christ;
then the way I live addresses all the concerns we have looked at.
Courage, Not Fear
Let’s be honest. The idea of taking up a cross and denying ourselves is frightening. Jesus is so pure, so good, so righteous—so unlike me—that I am afraid of what following Him will demand.
Peter had this fear. In one of his first encounters with Jesus, the contrast between the fisherman and the One who made the fish was so great that Peter fell to the ground and cried out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8).
Hear how Jesus answered: “Do not be afraid.”
Time and again throughout the Bible, God says, “Fear not. Be of good courage.”
When I face on the one hand frightening things that would tear me down, on the other hand is the One who died and rose again. He conquered our greatest fear, the fear of death. He rose from the dead and says, “Fear not.”
From that day on, Peter lived for Jesus. When other disciples called it quits and Jesus asked if he would too, Peter answered, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
I will live for Him.
Patience, Not Anger
Galatians 5:5 “We through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.”
Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry, and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.”
It’s not wrong to be angry about the way things are. Jesus was angry when He saw the money changers in the Temple. But our anger becomes sin when we think God isn’t doing anything and we take these matters into our own hands.
Jesus said My Father has been working, and I have been working. God has already established the righteousness we hope and long for—His righteousness in Christ. The disciples who witnessed the injustice and brutality of Jesus’s trial observed,
“When he was insulted, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he did not threaten. It was his habit to commit the matter to the one who judges fairly” —1 Peter 2:23 (emphasis mine)
Faith vs. Good Looks
2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
2 Corinthians 5:9 “We make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.”
When we live by faith, we live by our ears, not our eyes, because faith comes by hearing. Living for Jesus means learning what looks good to Him, what pleases Him, and pursuing it, no matter how it looks to me or how it makes me look to others.
Humble, Not Arrogant
Colossians 3:23-24 “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”
We know the Lord sees even in the secret place and rewards openly. He hears even in the secret place. We are not Goliath, convinced that we have taken God’s place. And we give up our giant-print lives. We don’t exaggerate our service to God.
Let us join Paul in answering Peter’s question. We live for the One who died and rose again:
Courageously, without fear;
Patiently, aware there is so much wrong all around, but God is working;
Listening. God speaks, and faith comes by hearing His word;
Humbly. We are not foolish, and say there is no God. Nor are we arrogant, deceiving ourselves that God is distant and powerless. We walk humbly before our God.
The One who died for us and rose again is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. One day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Let us live for Him every day this year and every day of our lives.