John Bevere - Addressing the Tolerance of Unholy Behavior in Your Life
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Listen to this again: don’t slip back into your old ways of living. What were the old ways of living? They were to satisfy your own desires. Okay, we just got through with Day 16. Now, in Day 15, I kind of touched on entitlement. I want to dive headfirst into this entitlement because if there is a thing that is plaguing many, many people today, it’s an attitude of entitlement, and this is causing many to fall away from their calling. Now Peter makes this statement in 1 Peter 1:14–17: «Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then, and remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. So let me say this: God has no favorites; He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of Him during your time here as temporary residents.»
Now, Peter wrote these words about, I think, ten years after Paul confronted Peter in Antioch because, remember, Paul said in the book of Galatians that Peter played the role of a hypocrite. He was trying to please his leader friends who had come from Jerusalem and were still kind of flirting with the Law’s ways, and he absolutely cut off the Gentiles. I’m sure this incident, this confrontation with the Apostle Paul, caused Peter to start really taking a good look at himself. I’m sure he probably considered King Saul and King David, whose problems resulted from entitlement. Saul lost his kingdom, and David would have a sword that would never leave his house. They got to a place where they thought they were entitled.
In other words, Saul was the leader, now he was successful, and God’s hand was on him, and what happened? He thought he could disobey the command of God. God told him to kill every animal and every single human being of Amalek, yet he spared the best ones. David saw a good-looking woman; he knew she was somebody’s wife, but hey, he was the king, so he took her. These are entitled attitudes, and I’m sure Peter reflected on this and saw his behavior doing the same thing. He’s thinking, «Wait a minute, what was fueling this?» It was his lack of holy fear. Listen to this again: don’t slip back into your old ways of living. What were the old ways of living? To satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then.
Remember that the heavenly Father whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear. He is saying that the antidote to having an entitled attitude is the fear of God. I want you to really stop and think about that. This is why this message is so crucial today. People are thinking, «You know, we’ve got so much available to us. I’ve reached this certain position. I’m a senior pastor, lead pastor, executive pastor, or assistant pastor.» Suddenly, an entitled attitude can slip in instead of maintaining that servant attitude. Peter is saying if you stay in reverent fear, it will protect you from it.