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[0:00] Now let us turn to God's Word, where we read in 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2, and reading verses 1 to 3.

[0:30] Now if there is one thing that seems to characterize the society in which we live today, it is an obsession with clothing and with food.

[1:00] People want to be dressed in the latest fashions, and particularly among young people. If you are wearing something that was in fashion two years ago, but it's no longer, you are a laughingstock.

[1:13] And the same thing is true of our obsession nowadays with dieting, and with eating certain kinds of food, and avoiding other types of food.

[1:24] Now Jesus said a long time ago, when he preached in the Sermon on the Mount, that this sort of obsessiveness with clothes and with food, not just as necessities of life, but also in terms of fashions and of fads, was something that characterized the Gentile world, and shouldn't characterize his people in this faddish way at any level.

[1:53] He said to them that they were not to have any anxious thoughts about what they would wear, or what they would eat or drink, for after such things do the Gentiles seek.

[2:07] We are not, the word of God says, to be obsessed with fashions and fads, in clothing or in diet. But there is one area where clothing and where diet are tremendously important.

[2:25] And Peter is saying in these verses that we should be obsessed with these things in this particular area. And that is of course because Peter in verses 1 to 3 of chapter 2 is using the picture of clothing, and then the picture of food or of drink, to speak of spiritual realities.

[2:51] And I think that Peter here is asking two questions of the Christian, and these are also two questions that have implications and relevance for every non-believer also.

[3:06] And these two questions, or at least the first of these two questions is this, in terms of clothing. Peter is asking the Christian, what are you wearing?

[3:18] And he asks that question in verse 1. What are you wearing? Now you might look at verse 1 and say that it says nothing about what are you wearing.

[3:30] It says nothing about clothes. But you see the word that Peter uses here for laying aside is a word that speaks of taking off, of stripping off garments.

[3:44] It was a word that was used in that area of living. And so Peter is literally saying to these people, take off certain clothes, lay aside, strip off certain garments.

[3:58] Now we are perhaps familiar with this image, with this picture, from the word of God and from the way that this picture has been developed in Christian preaching, in terms of an appeal for conversion.

[4:13] That we must be changed, we must have the filthy rags taken off, we must have our sins forgiven, and we must have the new robe, the righteousness of Christ placed upon us.

[4:27] The righteousness of Christ must be credited to us, so that when God looks at us in Christ, he sees the spotless purity of the Lord Jesus.

[4:39] And he says, I find no flaw, I find no fault. This is a justified sinner. Now perhaps that's where many of us today need to begin.

[4:51] Have we yet looked to Calvary, and seen there Jesus taking my rags, and Jesus being punished for my sin.

[5:02] And have I by faith received that justification, that means that I am clothed with the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[5:13]  If we are not clothed with Christ, we are standing before Him.