The Assault Against the New Heart (1)

The Assault Against the New Heart (1)

1 Peter 2:11

I. The Existence of the New Heart:

II. The Maintaining of the New Heart

A. The Call to Maintain One’s Heart (Prov. 4:23)

B. The Growth of the New Heart (1 Pet. 2:1-3)

C. The Assault Against the New Heart (1) (1Pet. 2:11)

! The Reality of the Already/Not Yet

! The Consequence of the Already/Not Yet

! The Context

1. The Seriousness of the Assault (2:11a2-4)

! urge exhort, appeal

2. The Combatants (2:11a1, 5-8, 12-13

a. The Allied Forces (2:11a1, 5-8)

! beloved esteemed, dear, favorite

! aliens to dwell beside or near; a non-citizen,

resident alien

! strangers stay in a strange place, a temporary resident

alien, exile

b. The Axis of Evil (2:11a12-13

1) The Member’s Identity (2:11a12

! lusts to long for, crave, desire

2) The Member’s Character (2:11a13

! fleshly worldly, fallen, human, material

While we have been given a new inner man or heart, made after the image of Christ, we are still united with our old bodies that are still defined by the principles and leanings of its fallen character.

While our inner man has been redeemed and therefore we can be described over all as a

redeemed person, our outer man is still waiting for redemption, which will happen on the day of Christ’s visitation.

Dr. MacArthur,

It is that longing to be satisfied with something which in and of itself maybe a good thing. In fact, most all lust is simply God’s good gift twisted and perverted. God, for example, gives us the blessing of sleep and some people lust after it until they become lazy, indolent sluggards.

God has given us the benefit of clothing to cover out bodies and keep us warm and for some people it becomes an absolutely consuming lust. Where they are so enamored with the satisfaction they get by having people see what they wear that it literally controls their budget and their life. It is wonderful that God has given us the gift of shelter from the elements, the wonderful reality of privacy and the ability to conduct our affairs in some kind of covert place with those we love, and yet for some people they want to be pampered and cared for in a manner that is far beyond human necessity and becomes a fetish. There is nothing wrong with thirst, God has given us that as a desire, which leads us to do things beneficial to our body, but some people drink themselves into the gutter. There is nothing wrong with food, but some people become gluttonous. There is nothing wrong with our needs supplied, but it’s easy to pervert your needs and get way beyond what they really are. Even sex is given by God as a wonderful glorious gift, but when perverted and sought for beyond the will of God becomes the baited hook to trap the person who is driven by lust for those things.

Our fallenness has as a part of its entity, desire for evil. Would you notice that it doesn’t say, he’s drawn away of lust but of his own lust. Very emphatic. His own, emphasizes that we are not talking about some generic term only that everyone possess commonly with everyone else in just the same way, but each individual, hekostas in the Greek, each individual has his own particular bent of lust, which is really the thing that lures him to the bait. And is it not true that one person’s passion is another person’s repulsion? Sure it is. I see people who are literally, by their lust, driven into homosexuality. That absolutely repulses me. You can bait that hook all you want in front of me, and you’ll see me go the other direction. We all have a certain I wouldn’t want to use the word character, but we all have certain characteristics of our lust which make some baited traps and baited hooks more alluring to us than others. And that’s why he is individualizing this by saying his own lust. Now this refers to the inclination of the soul to enjoy or acquire something.