In his sermon 'Don't Feel at Home in this World,' Trent Moody discusses 1 Peter 2:11-12, emphasizing the call for Christians to live godly lives as 'sojourners and pilgrims' in an ungodly world. He urges believers to abstain from 'fleshly lusts' which war against the soul and to conduct themselves honorably among non-believers. Moody highlights the identity of Christians as a 'chosen generation' and 'royal priesthood,' reminding them that their behavior reflects their relationship with God. He explains that the believers' conduct should lead others to glorify God, especially on the 'day of visitation,' which can be interpreted as either a day of judgment or blessing. Moody concludes that living a godly life now brings glory to God both in the judgment and redemption of the wicked. The sermon underscores the importance of understanding that Christians are not of this world and that their actions have eternal significance.

All right, turning your Bibles to 1st Peter and chapter 2, and as Josh mentioned, we'll be looking at verses 11 and 12 for a brief time here. I just want to encourage you towards this theme. This is really what we see in this passage is an exhortation to live a godly life before an ungodly world. Living a godly life before an ungodly world. First Peter chapter 1 and verse 11 and 12 and I'll read that now.

Beloved I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation." Let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for the living Word of God. The Word that is sharper than a two-edged sword, a Word that is powerful and quick, how it divides even the soul and spirit and discerns our thoughts and intents. Lord, we just pray that you would please, Lord, use your word to convict us and to correct us and to encourage us, Lord, to live a godly life. Lord, that is what we need to do.

That is what we need to do that is what we need to hear from your word this day and I pray father that you would do that by the power of your spirit and for the glory of your son we pray in Christ's name amen. So in 1st Peter chapter 1 we just we saw how God through the inspiration of Peter spoke to the people of the persecution, those who were considered pilgrims and strangers or sojourners, and how Peter's heart as a pastor was to encourage them and to exhort them in the faith, helping them to understand the glorious salvation which he had brought to them for the purpose of helping them and equipping them to live for God in an ungodly world. They were in a society that was different and separated from what they were used to and he wanted them to understand that they were pilgrims and strangers in this world. And really that's my desire for you this afternoon as well is to remind you because Peter as I've often said I call Peter the apostle of the reminder. He's always reminding the reader and the hearer of truths that they know to be true but things that they know that he knows they need to remember.

And we need to remember to live our lives as pilgrims and strangers or sojourners in this world. And so he does that with a pastor's heart and specifically in this passage of scripture, I believe that we will see that very clearly in what he's wanting to do for them. So we're to live as sojourners and pilgrims in this world. We see this in verse 11. He says, beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul.

Now I really want to focus on that first part first, and then we will move on from there to what he is exhorting them to. But if you remember last time in 1 Peter we ended with this most encouraging description of the believer and who they were in Christ and if you just look back up in verses 9 and 10 I want to read that to you as well he says but you are a chosen generation a royal priesthood a holy nation his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light who once were not a people but are now the people of God who had not obtained the mercy but now have obtained mercy and then he says beloved or beloved I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims. See, based on this glorious truth of verses 9 and 10 of who they were in Christ, that they were really, the King James uses this peculiar people but we need to understand that we are a generation of people that God has called out of the world to be a people for him that's who you are and Peter describes these people the recipients of this letter and it is a description of us as well.

And he says this in a most pastoral tone, that they are the beloved. That is something that we need to always remember as God's people, that we are beloved of the Lord. You may not be beloved of anybody or maybe in your whole life you've not experienced being loved as you have desired to be loved maybe from a parent or maybe even from a spouse but in Christ you are greatly loved. And that is what you need to hold onto and need to remember. And Paul says much the same thing about them being a peculiar people or a different people, a chosen generation.

In 2 Corinthians 16, 7, he encourages his hearers to this, come out from among them and be separate says the Lord. Peter exhorts us to live godly and holy lives before a watching world. And again much like Paul told the Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians 7.1 just after that passage I just read, he says this to them and I believe these two things that Paul says really mirror and reflect what Peter is saying here. But Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1, therefore having these promises beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." And then the mirror here of what Peter is saying, Peter says, beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles." And so I want to highlight just a few points of interest that I believe we often overlook when we're just generally reading the scriptures because we read through these things and and we don't take the time to really think deeply about what is being told to us and what we are to learn from this but in this passage of scripture Peter is wanting them to understand that you are not of this world you are strangers here Anybody feel like a stranger in the last two years?

I know I have felt like a stranger in this world. I don't feel like I'm at home. I do not feel at home here in this world. The old song says I don't feel at home here in this world anymore. And that is what Peter is telling them and wanting to remind them that though they live here they are not from here and that's what I want you to understand you're not from here you are a chosen generation.

You are a royal priesthood. You're a holy nation. You are God's people. You are different. And as an apostle here, Peter's language is really one more of endearment.

It is more of the language of a father with a son instead of as an apostle who here had the authority to command them, but he did not command in this instance. He spoke to them in exhortation of endearment. These believers he called beloved because they were loved and they are loved of God. Loved by God and they were loved by Peter and they were the beloved and as the beloved Peter says and begs them. That's what the the New King James says.

The King James says, I beseech you and then the ESV uses the word I urge you. You can see this endearment here. The other day I was spending some time with one of my sons and I wanted to exhort him and encourage him in something of his conduct and his behavior. And I did not feel like it was the time that it would be something of a commandment or even a point of discipline or chastening but more one like what Peter is doing here. It was a moment for an exhortation of encouragement.

It's not that I saw something wrong necessarily but I wanted him to know that it was time to be encouraged and to be exhorted to live for God and so I called this son to me and I put my arm around him and I leaned into him and I spoke to him these loving words much like what Peter is doing here. He says, beloved I beg you, I beseech you, I urge you. Because Peter was a pastor. The heart of a pastor is one that is always for the good of his people. He desires their good.

He's concerned about areas that may be slipping. He's wanting them to know because of who they were that there was something required of them. You are the children of God. You're the chosen of God. You're a royal priesthood.

You're a holy nation. You're a special people of God. And as that special people, you need to understand some things. So Peter is calling them to his side. He's teaching them as a parent would their child, he's pulling them in close by in heart even though they weren't close in proximity, he's instructing them because of what is true about them, they were the people of God.

And if you remember the last time that I taught in verses 9 and 10, because of verses 9 and 10 there should be therefore something that we abstain from. Not only the things that we are to do, but there are the things that we are not to do. And I'm gonna read that again just for a moment, just in a moment, of the things that we are to abstain, but I want to remind you of this first, but you are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood, you're a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Who once were not a people, but now are the people of God.

Who once had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. That's who you are in Christ. And part of the purpose of that is is that you need to consider yourselves. He begs you, he exhorts you that you consider yourselves to be sojourners and pilgrims in this world and that he is exhorting you that you abstain from fleshly lust. He reminds them again of who they were and we should always have this sense of being out of place.

As I've mentioned, myself specifically, and I know just through talking with each of you, that you felt somewhat out of place in this last two years and perhaps even before. But I believe that is why God's people see things so much differently than the people who are of this world. We see these whole circumstances vastly different. I so appreciate Scott and Mike both in navigating us through these past two years and helping us to see the differentness of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are under the rulership and the sovereignty and the crown rights of King Jesus.

We are his people first and foremost. And the government cannot command us contrary to what Christ has commanded us. We are his people. And living as strangers and pilgrims means that there are things that we cannot and should not do as the people of God. He tells us that, excuse me, he tells us abstain from fleshly lust which war against your soul.

Now this fleshly lust here at first sight may seem to only speak about sexual sins and it does include that but that is not the limit of it. It's not only about fleshly sexual sins but it is even more than that. I want to show you that in a few places in other passages of Scripture. But it's every carnal inclination of our old flesh. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 3.3, and he gives us an example of this carnality.

He says, for you are still carnal, for where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?" That is an example of fleshly lust. That's an example of a carnal mindset. There are envy, strife, and divisions. That's carnality. That's a fleshly lust.

And he says, I tell you to abstain from fleshly lust. So carnality means behaving like mere men. Behaving like mere men, behaving like Gentiles, that's specifically what he calls them. He also tells us in Galatians, Paul does, Galatians 5, 19 and 21, and you know this passage very well, he says, now the works of the flesh are evident, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, there it is again, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. So he's not giving us an exhaustive list here in Galatians, but he says, in things like these, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So as the people of God, as God's chosen people, as God's special possession that we are in Christ, we are to abstain from fleshly lust that war against our soul. So you see that these fleshly lusts include everything that comes from our fleshly desires. We need to understand that in order for a Christian to have any impact in this world, because that is what Christ has called us to do, as he says back here in verse 9, that we may proclaim the praises of him who called us out of darkness and then later on here in verse 12 he says having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles and there's a purpose and a reason behind that. So I want you to think to yourself right now, is your conduct honorable among the Gentiles? Peter is exhorting us to that.

Do they have something to say against you? And you can think, well, yes, of course they do. They don't like that we're meeting without mask, or they don't like this, that, and the other. And I want to clarify some of those things for you. But is your conduct honorable?

But is your conduct honorable. So, we have seen many in our day fall into various sins that I have mentioned and their impact for the kingdom of God and in the world is greatly diminished. You need to understand that these fleshly lusts, they're not a game. These lusts war against you. And not just against your flesh, they war, as Peter says, against your soul.

They war against your soul. What would you give in exchange for your soul? Don't ever believe the lie that the fleshly sins will not affect your soul. What you do in the body has spiritual consequences and they will not only affect you but they will affect those around you. Brothers and sisters know that you are not on a playground.

You are on a vicious battleground. What makes this so vicious and so difficult and so challenging is that you have multiple fronts at which you must fight. In this room right now you are not safe. We think we are. We enjoy being here.

We love each other. This is no place to take your armor off. You war against principalities and powers, and You must war against your own flesh. You can be in a room all by yourself and must be doing battle. I know that some families with our inclinations would love to protect their children and just raise them in a bubble.

And I said, if you do, in that bubble, you will find when you open it a lying murderous adulterate heart because the battle is not only external from the world and the devil but it is our very flesh. Our heart is full of these things and it's what I read I believe last week where out of the heart comes these things and it's what Mike preached on. So there is never a place of ceasefire. There's never a place that you sit down and take your armor off. There's never a place that you sit down and you think to yourself, I am safe here.

You are safe nowhere until you're in heaven. Don't believe the lie of the enemy. The enemy has the advantage over us in this sense because he uses the weakness of our flesh, he uses the appetites of our flesh to lead us and to tempt us into sin. And you not only have to do battle from without but also from within. As I was saying, remember that your enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil, but don't blame everything on the devil.

I've known some people, some believers in my past that everything that happened to them was the devil. If it wasn't be wrong I would almost feel sorry for him for some of the things that he gets blamed for when the fact of the matter is it was Your sinful flesh that did that the devil didn't have to do much to encourage you in it Because you just delighted in the simple inclinations of your flesh We are to abstain from fleshly lust, he says. Fleshly lust, these things that are so natural to us, this lust is a desire, this yearning that we have in our flesh to have that desire, that pleasure, meted out to us that we can indulge in that thing whatever it may be. It looks different for all of us, yet they overlap. So we need to remember and need to understand that there is something bigger going on in your life than just you and your desire for pleasure.

There is more at stake than your reputation. There's more at stake. What you do speaks of who God is. What you do speaks of who God is. What you do speaks of who God is.

You call yourself a Christian. That is why Peter exhorts us and he says this, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles that when they speak against you as evildoers they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation. This whole thing of your conduct, it affects not only those who watch us, not only affects us, but it affects Gentiles, and it also affects the glory of God. Not that anything diminishes the glory of God, don't hear me wrong, but you can give occasion for those outside to blaspheme the God that we serve and thereby you in fact can aid in robbing God of glory that he so rightly deserves. So that as strangers and pilgrims in this world our conduct must be honorable.

Specifically Peter's focused focusing in on our conduct or our behavior as it relates to the Gentile world. We must live honorable lives in our workplace. We must live honorable lives everywhere we are and everywhere we go. It could be with lost family members. We must live honorable lives.

Our words are weak if our lives do not support what we say. And so the gospel can come across as powerless if we live fleshly lives. The gospel is not powerless. But if we give into our fleshly lust, it can come across that way. It can come across as a gospel that just saves you from the penalty of sin.

But my friends, I want you to realize the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ can and will save you from the power of sin in your life. It will enable you to do battle with your flesh so that you can be victorious over that battle and over that enemy. Don't give me this defeatist mentality of I couldn't help it. If the Spirit of God is living in you, by the power of God in his gospel you can overcome it. Don't believe that lie that says you can't.

By God's grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit working in you, you can abstain from fleshly lust which war against your soul. It's not a game. It's life and death eternal. But there's this great purpose that we are living for that is beyond ourselves. You see we need to realize he says that when they speak against you as evildoers, That when they speak against you as evildoers, he does not say if they speak against you as evildoers, but when they do it.

You live your honorable life before the Gentiles that, there's a purpose statement here, that when they speak against you as evildoers they may by your good works which they observe glorify God. The world remember calls good evil and evil good. The world puts light for darkness and darkness for light. If the world has nothing bad to say about you, then you probably ought to examine your life to see are you living an honorable life and a godly life. Now remember what Paul says to Timothy in 2nd Timothy 3 12, yes and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

I do not believe that this means that they will suffer in the same way or to the same extent as all believers have throughout all of history. We have been very, very blessed in that sense that we have been relieved from much of that. So I'm not saying that your persecution is going to look exactly like Paul's persecution, or you're not a believer, it's not what I'm saying. But you will suffer persecution. When you call what the world loves sinful, you will suffer persecution.

When you call murder what the world says is a choice, you will suffer persecution. But they will see your good works and they will remember. And I want you to know that there is a purpose. It's a glorious purpose. It's something that is bigger than you.

It is something that is, God is working out in this stage in your life, on this stage that you are living right now that will bring glory and honor to God as we live lives in obedience to God. Listen to what Peter says, He says that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. So these Gentiles have seen how you live. And then on the day of visitation they will remember what is this day, this day of visitation. I believe there's two ways to understand this day of visitation and I believe, it's kind of interesting, unusual I guess, I believe both of them are right.

The day of visitation and I'll tell you up front the first one is that the day of visitation and we see this throughout the Old Testament and even into the New, and I'm going to show you a couple passages in the news specifically that it speaks of this day of visitation as being both of these things, but this day of visitation in the Old Testament is often spoken of as God's coming to either judge or bless people or nations, God's visitation. He visited this people or visited this nation and at times it was for judgment and at times it was for blessing. The same is true in the New Testament and I want to show you this first of judgment and they're both found in the gospel of Luke, Luke 19 43 through 44 and you can note that and look at it later if you'd like. Luke 19 43 and 44 he says, for days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you, and close you in on every side and level you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation.

God was going to visit, in this instance, a nation and a people, the people of Israel, in the nation and in Jerusalem with judgment. It was the day of visitation when he would destroy Jerusalem. But we also see it in the Gospel of Luke of that of redemption, a great blessing in what God was doing in Luke 7 16. It says, then fear came upon all and they glorified God saying, a great prophet has risen up among us and God has visited his people. It was a day of visitation.

So they understood, the people of God have always understood that when God visits his people, he could visit them for judgment or he could visit them with blessing. And so I believe that the interpretation of this passage in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 12, when he speaks here that they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation that this honorable conduct of believers in this world is partly for the purpose of bringing glory to God in both instances. It will bring glory to God in the day of judgment and also bring glory to God when he redeems a person who once spoke evil of you. So the loss will glorify God because of the good works that he worked in believers lives. The honorable lifestyle that they spoke evil of they will remember and they will glorify God.

How many of you can remember somebody before you were a believer that stood out to you as a person of honorable conduct? I have people like that in my life. I remember them. I glorify God for them because God used them to bring me to the point of repentance and faith in Christ. Now we know that's all the work of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of God works through the people of God to bring about the purpose of God for the glory of God.

So think about those people in your life. Those are spiritual markers that you should remember and that's what he's talking about here. So when considering your conduct among the world know that they are watching, they will speak evil of it and on the day of judgment they will glorify God for it, and if God redeems one of these evil speakers, again they will glorify God for it as well. So therefore in closing, by living a godly life now, you will bring glory to God both in the judgment of the wicked and in the redemption of the wicked. For there is a day coming when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And therefore, what you do in your body matters. Therefore whether you eat or whether you drink, do all to the glory of God. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word. Oh Lord, how it convicts, how it causes us to consider, Lord, our thoughts and our actions, our relationships and our work and all that we do, Lord.

Your Word reaches into every area and you teach us, Lord, I pray that you have taught us this morning that what has been spoken is something that will bring glory and honor to you through the fateful living of your people not for our glory God forbid but for your glory So Lord use us as a people this week as we go for from this place in our homes and in our work and as we go bring glory and honor to your name. Help us to live godly lives before a watching world so that you will receive more glory and more honor because Lord you are worthy. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus and for his sake. Amen.