Wait on the Lord – 1 Peter 1:13

Good morning, let's pray together. Father, my desire is to speak as one who speaks the utterances of God, because that's what I have in front of me. And so Lord, I pray that you would make certain that I don't go to the left or to the right, I am simply not up to the task.

And so I pray for your power, I pray for the power of the word to make its changes in the lives of these who were bought with such a high price,.

The precious blood of Christ. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Reading 1 Peter 1:1-13 and the Basis for the Command in Verse 13

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 1. We'll be continuing on in 1 Peter 1. For those of you that haven't been here when I'm preaching, we've been working through 1 Peter 1 very slowly. I heard Cornell last week talk about how slow he's going through Thessalonians.

And I think I may have him beat, I'm still on verse 13 today of chapter one. So we're gonna read the first 13 verses together. 1 Peter 1, verses one through 13. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as strangers, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood.

May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which perishes though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you've not seen him, you love him, and though you do not see him now, but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the spirit of Christ within them was indicating, as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.

It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, and these things which now have been announced to you through those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And our focus today is on that verse 13. Verse 13 marks a transition in this epistle.

Starts with the word therefore or wherefore in pretty much every English translation. And the use of that adverb therefore, it's a common feature in English translations of the biblical epistles. You'll see it often.

It's common to have a therefore or something similar to mark a movement from statement of facts in an epistle to application of those facts. Usually those facts are important theological truths related to the gospel of your salvation, and the implication is usually in the form of commands, ethical requirements under the new covenant.

Usually it's done that way. Here's some high, lofty theological set of truths, and then there's a therefore. This is how you ought to act in light of your identity in Christ and what God has done for you.

That's exactly what Peter's using the therefore for in verse 13. He moves from facts to application of those facts. If you're into English, he goes from verbs that are into an indicative mood to verbs that are in imperative mood.

So from statements of fact to commands. So the first thing we have to understand is what are the statements of facts? What's the basis for the therefore? So if the therefore is a hinge from some truths that he's told us to some application of those truths, what are the truths that require the commands?

We have to understand that. So is it just verse 12, just the statement of verse 12, or is it more than that? So conveniently, I think it's all of the first 12 verses that we have to have some understanding of the facts of.

So when you preach very infrequently, you have to do a review anyway. So it fits perfectly, we have to do a little bit of a review of the first 12 verses. What a coincidence that is. So I broke the facts that are expressed in the first 12 verses into six points.

It's arbitrary, but here are the six. We here on the audience of this letter are chosen by God in eternity past for this great salvation. You can follow along, you see in verse one, you'll see who are chosen or the elect exiles.

God chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him. The first word used to describe us there in the Greek language is actually that word for chosen or elect. Number two, we don't belong here.

You see that in verse one, we're strangers or exiles. This world as presently constitutes not our home. We're placed here, we're scattered or dispersed by God for a particular purpose. Three, that purpose is our sanctification.

You see it there, the sanctifying work of the spirit in verse two, so that we might obey Jesus Christ. The sprinkled with his blood that hearkens back to the sprinkling of blood as a mark of a covenant relationship.

So the purpose of our being here is to fulfill our commitment in the new covenant, to obey Christ, to be obedient to Christ. That's the purpose of all of this. It's the purpose of trials, for having Christians live and die in the midst of this world that hates Christ and hates his children.

There's a purpose for that, and that purpose is our sanctification. We learn, we learn through the joys and sufferings of this life to be more like Christ. Life prepares this life, short as it is, it prepares us for our real life, our eternal life.

Number four, we're regenerated. We're made alive when we were spiritually dead. We were totally unable to respond to spiritual stimuli like the gospel, we couldn't come to God. And so he made us alive.

We were dead in our sin, but God being rich in mercy, even when we were dead in our sin, made us alive together with Christ. In the verse three, you can see that. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again.

That is something that God did. Number five, we've been given a promised inheritance, a living hope given through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You see that in verse four. Which is imperishable, this inheritance, which is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

And number six, our salvation is so great, it is the focus of the Spirit himself as well as of the angels and the best of mankind. You see that. We talked about that last time, which I know is a long time ago.

The prophets puzzled over our salvation in the Old Testament. The apostles proclaimed our salvation in the New Testament, all under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And now the angels long to look into salvation to understand the salvation of man.

So Peter has shown us in those 12 verses. Here is your salvation. Here is the gospel of your salvation. Here is what God has done in all of its beauty presented to us. 12 verses expounding the greatness of our salvation.

Therefore, in light of this great salvation, therefore, now we come to verse 13, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Okay, so you see that? Because of all that has been said before, because of all that God has done for you, all that God has made you into, all that God is making you into, therefore, there are certain commands that you must follow.

And we're gonna start looking at those commands. So we're gonna diagram verse 13 a little bit. If you read 1 Peter, you'll see basically the rest of it is commands. It's how to live in a world of suffering and persecution in light of who you are in Christ.

So we're gonna diagram the sentence verse 13 a little bit, which I know that was everyone's favorite thing in school. So we have a therefore to start the verse. We've talked about that a little bit. It's a part of a logical argument.

Then there are apparently three commands in the verse, probably, depending on your translation. And they're all really collapsible into one. We're to prepare our minds for action and to keep sober so that we rightly set our hope completely on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So the ultimate end of the purpose of the action, all the action in that verse is the command, set our hope completely on this grace. So there's a few questions that we have to answer as we go through this.

So we're gonna kind of do this a little bit backwards. What is the grace, first of all? I wanna understand what that is. What is the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ?

What does that mean? Secondly, what does it mean to set our hope completely on it? So first we have to understand what the grace is. Then what does it mean to set our hope completely on it? And then what does it mean to prepare our minds for action and to keep sober?

And then last, how does that, how does preparing our minds and keeping sober contribute to our fulfilling the command to fix our hope on the grace to be brought to us? So do you see where we're headed?

I'm more of a Sunday school teacher than a preacher because I like to like, but I can't know if you are.

So hopefully you are.

I guess maybe someone will tell me later. So we have a command here. In other words, we are commanded to fix our hope on some future grace. So we have to start with understanding what that is. And then once we have that, once we understand what that grace is, we'll look at what it means to set our hope on it and then understand how preparing our minds and being sober contributes to that, fixing our hope.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ and the Grace to Be Brought Then

Okay, so first we gotta start with what is that future grace? The grace that is to be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So there's a hint there in the timing of when this grace is to come. The timing is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And those are the exact same words that start the book of Revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ. So to be explicit, the revelation of Jesus Christ is the second advent of Christ. Okay, the very public revealing of King Jesus to the world.

Revelation 1 .7, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. So it is to be, amen. That is the point of time when Peter says, grace will be brought to us.

There's some grace that will be brought to us on which we ought to fix our hope. The moment of Christ's return. Do you think about that? Think about it. The moment that Christ returns. It's gonna be the highlight of our eternal lives.

It's gonna be that thing we look back for in a million years and we'll remember that, the return of Christ. He's coming again. John 14 .3 says, and if I go, this is Christ speaking, if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to myself so that where I am there you also will be.

Jesus told us he's coming again. The personal, physical, visible, sudden, glorious, triumphant return of our Lord Jesus is a cardinal doctrine of Christianity. It's clearly taught in scripture. What a day that will be.

And verse 13 tells us there'll be some additional grace, some undeserved, happy-making blessings that will be ours when Christ returns. So it's not really that hard to understand what those blessings are, at least in broad terms, because we've seen reference to this timing before and to some blessings.

I'll look back at verse seven. So that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which perishes though tested by fire may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So this grace that is to come, that is being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ must include at least this praise, glory, and honor. That's part of what Peter's referring to, at least. And I want you to notice here, it's not called merit, but grace.

Even though this is reward, this praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ, I believe that is praise, glory, and honor given to us by Christ. An unfathomable idea. But it's reward, but it's not merit, it's grace.

And you understand that. Nothing we do in Christ or for Christ is done apart from Christ. It's still all of grace. Both our ability to serve and our will to serve, it's all from God. But I think even beyond that notion, beyond the notion of individual reward, and I think that that individual reward takes the form mainly of that well done, good, and faithful servant.

You've been faithful over little, I will set you over much. Enter the joy of your master. And what beautiful words those are, but even beyond that, it's just a great privilege of participation in the revelation of the glory of our master.

You think about that day. We get to share it. We get to share that joyous moment, and then we start a new era in our eternal lives. Much better. So there is maybe even more than that, the idea of a glorified state.

This would make sense in the context of 1 Peter. Freedom from present suffering and persecution. All of the contrast between this world and the next. Involved in this, this grace. It's a privilege of participation in that revelation.

Think about no more sin curse. We know what that, no more sin curse. We're talking about wind storms tonight. No more sin curse. No more suffering. No more trials. No more distress. The trials will have served their purpose of refining and revealing our faith.

That's genuine. They'll cease. The time for trials will be over. No more persecution. No more dealing with those who reject the truth and love the darkness. That's all done. No more darkness in myself.

This may be the best part. I don't have to exercise self-control anymore. No more vigilance. No more moral effort or failure. 1 Peter 5 .10, after you've suffered for a little while, the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Perfect rule from a perfect king. How would that be? Perfect relationships with my now perfect friends. Glorification of our bodies. The completion of the work of God and salvation of his elect. We have, in other words, a lot of grace to look forward to, much to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 4 .13, but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing so that at the revelation of his glory you may also rejoice and be overjoyed. You may rejoice and be overjoyed.

Like Peter, Damien know how to say it. How comforting and motivating is that thought, right? That's what awaits us. The glory of Christ, the praise of our master, an end to the race. Eternity with him and you in a place that's perfectly suited, in a body that's perfectly suited to that place.

Complete, happy, at peace. We will rejoice and be overjoyed at the revealing of his glory. That's the grace. That's the grace that's to be brought to us at the revelation of Christ. This is the grace to which we are to fix our hope or set our hope.

More literally, we are to hope perfectly or completely, hope to the limit for this grace. King James has hope to the end. That end doesn't mean your death or the end of time. It means to the end, to the end of what grace can be.

Maximum, complete, full, perfect. The hope that we have for this grace should be without any sort of doubt and without any rival in its object. Just a few weeks ago, Jim was in Hebrews 10 .23. He'll probably still be in Hebrews 10 .23 when he gets back.

But he talked about hope and how hope is not wishful thinking. Hope doesn't lack confidence. Hope in the context of the Christian faith is confident expectation. He talked about that. And then here, the adverb that translated fully or to the end or completely or perfectly, it means that we're to hope, to have that hope with a complete confidence, but that's already in the word.

But also, that hope must be without any rival. There must be nothing else in which we place our hope. It must be exclusive. Exclusive trust in this grace alone. Let's think about that for just a second.

Without the content of our hope, that for which we wish, that for which we hope, shouldn't use the word wish in this context, that for which we hope, that's what makes us optimistic about the future. That's what it means to hope.

It's what we want to happen in the future. And in a biblical context, it's what we expect to happen in the future that we look forward to, that we want to happen. And here, we see it's the grace of Christ and only that, only the promises we have through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our future happiness will flow from the grace that is to come at the revelation of Christ. We have to recognize that. Nothing else that holds our affection, holds our attention here is of any ultimate value unless it falls under this heading.

The blessings that are to be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We're to hope fully, completely on that. Everything else is just fool's gold. Has to have no rival. We're to place all of our positive aspirations, our confidence of future good, solely in the promises of grace given to us in the word of God.

Now, last time I preached, it was on verses 10 through 12, and basically the same application because for the prophets and the apostles, the angels and the Holy Spirit himself, salvation is such a great thing and such a consuming passion that it ought to be ours as well, really to the exclusion of anything else.

Preparing the Mind and Remaining Sober

Okay, so having understood what that grace is and that it is to be the object of our hope, we can back up now to these participles to reveal the prerequisites for the fixed hope. They tell us, in other words, how we're to have this hope.

So the first two verbs in the verse that are translated as commands in most of your translations are actually participles that modify the main command, and we looked at the main command, which is to fix your hope completely on grace.

So these kind of tell us how to do that. So since they're prerequisites for obeying a command, they have the force of a command. If you have to do this in order to obey the command, then they have the force of a command, but they're just not, the verb tense is not actually imperative, and you'll see what I mean easily enough.

Young's literal translation is one that I consult when I'm studying something. You can't read Young's literal translation. It's way too literal. Like, it's completely unreadable, but it comes in handy for study.

And here's the YLT version of this verse. Wherefore, having girded up the loins of your mind, being sober, hope perfectly upon the grace that is being brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And that does a careful job of accurately translating the verb tenses. Having girded up the loins of your mind, or if we translate the idiom, we'll talk about that idiom in a minute, girding up the loins of your mind, what that means.

If we translate that as preparing your mind, so it would say, having prepared your minds for action, having prepared your minds for action. So it's not a command there, you see. It's something that you are assumed to have done, having done that.

And once you have done that, now being sober, continuing in that state you would be in if you'd prepared your mind, you're now capable of obeying the command to hope perfectly, okay? So we have really the one command, which is to set our hope or to hope perfectly on that grace, that's the command.

And then we have two other things that we have to do to get ready for that. Prepare our minds for action or gird up the loins of your mind and then be sober or keep sober, remain in a sober state of mind.

So we're gonna look at each of those participles individually, briefly, and then kind of come back and put them together. So first, prepare your minds for action. I mentioned just a second ago the gird up the loins of your mind, you'll see that in King James, New King James, and it is the more literal translation, that's what the words actually are.

But modern English readers may not understand what it means to gird up the loins of your mind. That's kind of a strange idiom to us. So the more modern translations translate that idiom into prepare your mind or something like that.

But as Bible readers, you probably understand how these are equivalent translations. To gird up your loins, for ancient readers, would have been understood as the practice of tucking in the long corners of their robe into their belt.

So instead of it being long, it would kind of shorten it up and it would free them to perform some physical action, to run or to fight. And so that's what they would have understood gird up the loins to mean.

So really, it's preparation. Gird up the loins of your mind here. Well, we'll get to that in a second, but one illustration of that is the Passover, the first Passover. The Israelites were told this, Exodus 12, 11.

Now you shall eat it this way, with your garment belted around your waist, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in a hurry, this is the Lord's Passover. So they were told, have your staff in your hand for getting out of there, have your sandals on your feet, get your loins girded, get your robe belted up so you can get out of there.

You'll be ready to run.

And that's what this means, be prepared. Now, what does it mean in 1 Peter? It's not that, it's not having to do with a robe because it says of the mind. So it's an activity of the mind. So it's using an idiom.

It's not actually referring to girding up anything or anything like that. So it means to prepare your minds. So gird up the loins meant to prepare for some physical activity where the robe would get in the way.

So gird up the loins of your mind means to prepare for some mental activity where something might get in the way. So what is that? It means then to tuck things away, to put in proper place in your mind, anything that might entangle or complicate or confuse or detract or distract from what we're told to do here, the desired action, which is to fix our hope completely on the grace that is to come.

So focus.

Focus on what's important. Focus on your salvation. Peter's been telling us that. Focus on your salvation, past, present, and now especially future. So think about that. Think about all that God has done in history, from creation, all the events of the Old Testament, to accomplish the gospel of your salvation.

Think about your history. Think what he's done in your life to accomplish your salvation. Your calling, your election, your regeneration, your calling, your conversion. And now think about what he's doing now in your life, the trials, the tough things, the things that you don't wanna talk about, the sins that you're committing, and the constant repentance that you're going through, the relationships, work, all of those things that you're going through, those, remember, are for your salvation.

They are for your sanctification, which is part of the whole road of your salvation ultimately. I don't mean your conversion. I don't mean you go from being unsafe to saved because of your sanctification, but sanctification is an ongoing process to get you ready for your eternity.

That's what God is doing now. But now let's think about the future, like what we talked about, the grace is to be yours at the return of Christ, the praise of Christ, the glory of Christ, the presence of Christ, the freedom from sin and unbelief and death, freedom from not only the power of sin, which you Christian are already free from, but free from its actual presence.

That will be amazing grace. That's to prepare for your mind. Think about, prepare your mind, think of those things, and other things, put them away, put them in the right place, make sure there's nothing distracting you.

Then Peter tells us to keep sober, and the NASB adds in spirit. If you have NASB, you see italics there, means the words aren't really there, that they're added for clarity, and I think it's added here so that you can see so you know that it's not just like don't get drunk, it's not just talking about physical sobriety.

Okay, but the word is just sober, it means sober in all of your being. Here it would include physical sobriety, but also any influence that doesn't deserve to be an influence, any intoxicating influence, free from any figuratively or spiritually or mentally intoxicating influence.

The addiction to anything that is generally sinful or useless, or anything that would prevent us from having a proper focus on these things that really matter. That's to be sober. Alexander Strock, an author that I like a lot, he defines the word this way, sober, self-control, balanced judgment, and freedom from debilitating excesses or rash behavior.

Negatively, it indicates the absence of any personal disorder that would distort a person's judgment or conduct. Positively, it describes a person who is stable, circumspect, self-restrained, and clear-headed.

All right, so this word sober means able to focus and actually focused. Focused on the right things. It doesn't mean just not distracted, but also alert and clear-eyed and looking at that which is important.

Okay, so now let's put these together so we understand the command. Prepare your mind for action.

Put away the distractions.

Get ready to take action toward that which is important. Lay aside that which is not. Remain sober, remain free from those distractions. Remain in that state. And now that you're able to focus because you have prepared your mind, you made yourself sober, now fix your focus on that grace.

Fix your hope, your confident expectation on grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Remember the return of Christ, the day when all things are made right. That's the thing upon which we place our hope.

Without doubt, without rival. This isn't in here, but I was thinking about this. I think the events of the last whatever, how many months it's been, this is a little bit easier for us now, isn't it? We may have been tempted to fix our hope on other things.

Not anymore. I think this has helped us. That's what suffering and persecution does. Tune's our focus. Okay, so here's a little bit of a test about how well we've done, or we're doing, on fixing our hope on the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So if you haven't been listening yet, just listen for a second. Think about, just do a little thought experiment, okay? You find out without any doubt somehow, and this is impossible, but you know for sure that Christ is coming to us.

He's coming to us tomorrow.

Now I know I'm not talking eschatology here, so whether it's the rapture or the second coming or whatever your cosmic eschatology, today it doesn't matter.

It really doesn't.

So just think about when is your time over in Christ, you're about to meet Christ, and now you know it's tomorrow, okay? Is there any hesitation, any dread or disappointment in your mind? Is there anything that you're thinking,.

Oh, I wish you could wait a week.

Is there anything like that, if you're honest? Because I've heard people say that they would want this or that to happen in their lives before Christ would return. There's some things that they'd want to accomplish.

Depending on why you would desire such a delay in the Lord's return, you're either completely lost in sin and still in love with darkness, or you are ignorant beyond imagination. A believer wants nothing more than the presence of Christ.

Every once in a while, I don't do it too often, when I'm singing, I imagine that Christ is behind that wall and he's listening, and you can see why I don't do it all the time because it will just bring you to tears to think that he could hear your praise.

And he can anyway, but we're physical beings, and so for us, it's not the same. Think about the physical presence of Christ. If that isn't your one desire, then something's wrong and you have some things to repent of, you have some thinking to do.

Living in Light of the Next Life

Okay, so how do we connect this verse to the rest of the book? Remember, 1 Peter is written to persecute and suffering believers. It's intended to give them confidence and joy and comfort through this life, through the various trials that you saw earlier.

And then consistent with that message, Peter tells us how to live, how to live this life, how to live this life so that it accomplishes its objective, which is your good, the sanctification of your soul and the glory of God.

It tells us how to do that, a set of commands that come that we'll see over the next 20, 30 years. Or you can just read it tonight, it's a short book. So the way to win the reward of God's glory and your good, your sanctification for a race that is well-run, a life that is well-lived, a fight that's well-fought is to live this life constantly in view of the next.

This, well, this is the prayer of ASAP. This is Psalm 73, 25. This has to be our prayer. I think this says it better than I could. Whom have I in heaven but you? It's ASAP's prayer, he's talking to God.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. We have to be able to say that. There's nothing on earth that I desire besides you. It doesn't mean that we literally have no other passions or things that we enjoy, but in comparison, there's nothing.

I'll give all that up, nothing that I desire besides you. Everything else has to be in light of our hope in the grace that is to come. Everything else that we have any affection for. Everything else has to fit underneath our faith in Christ.

Robert Layton wrote a commentary on 1 Peter. He had this to say about this verse. If you want to enjoy this hope fully, cut off your affections for other things. The same eye cannot look up to heaven and down to earth at the same time.

The more your affections are disentangled from the world, the more they can be actively engaged in this hope. The more sober they are, the less they'll fill themselves with the coarse delights of earth and the more room they will have to be filled with this hope.

This, that's the end of his quote. This is a call to tying up or cutting off the loose ends. Remove the distractions. Anything that gets in the way of your making the gospel of Jesus Christ, his person and his work and his return, his promises, the thing on which you dwell.

Listen, having a mind on earthly things, that's a sign of an unbeliever. That's in Philippians 3 .19. That's given as a sign of an unbeliever. And having a mind on earthly things is just incompatible with living your life in such a way that you accomplish its goal, your sanctification, the glory of God.

2 Timothy 2 .4.

Well, before I do this,.

This life is just, remember, it's just practice. We really get into it, but it's just practice.

It's practice.

Now, practice is important. We use practice time to get better. How stupid would it be to use practice time to get worse? How ashamed would you be at his coming if you're his? 2 Timothy 2 .4. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him.

No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life. Charles Spurgeon. You gotta have a Spurgeon quote to get the ratings up, so there you go.

This is really good.

This is from his sermon on this verse. The rays of the sun are warm, but if you collect them into a focus by a burning glass, or we would think of a magnifying glass, you produce a fire which else you could not find in them.

Concentrate your faculties upon faith in Jesus. Concentrate your emotions upon the love of Jesus. Concentrate your whole being upon the glory of Jesus. You will accomplish marvels if you do this. A man who's all over the place is nowhere, but he whose life is one and indivisible is strong, and his influence will be felt in the service of his master.

Cornell read Psalm 130 this morning for scripture reading. This is verses five and part of six. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and I wait for his word. My soul waits in hope for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning.

So when you wait for something, it's what you want to happen next.

That's why you're waiting.

Even if it's something unpleasant, you're waiting for it. That's the thing that you expect to happen next. Wait on the Lord. Wait with the confidence and desire of a shepherd. This watchman would be a night shepherd.

A shepherd taking the night watch, what's he concerned about? The night is cold, it's dark, it's long, it's dangerous. It's the night when the wolves would come, it's the night when the bandits would come.