Christ Sanctified as Lord in Our Hearts

Please turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 3. We do have a lot of ground to cover in a brief amount of time, because when you're the speaker right before lunch, you do not go long, okay?

I don't want anyone to hear the last few words that you say anyways, so I will not do that.

In fact, somebody told me last night about a conference a few years ago where Kirk Cameron was speaking.

He was the last speaker of the night. He was supposed to go 45 minutes. He went for 2 hours. And I just want

Kirk, if he ever hears this, Kirk to realize, no one heard the last 90 minutes, okay?

It's just like, he's still talking. What's he talking about? I don't know him. I can't hear over my stomach. And it's just, you know, don't do that.

Gotta be focused. Gotta be focused. And that's what we will do here. As an apologist, as a person who gives a defense for the faith, 1

Peter 3 .15 is our verse. It is the verse of apologetics.

It is the verse that, well, it's where the very term, apologia, comes from. It's found there in the, why am

I still in Psalms over here? Oh, the Greek Septuagint does not contain 1 Peter. I just thought I would mention that to you right there, just in case you're wondering.

Where'd that Greek over there come from? Well, it's from the Greek Septuagint, but that's not really where we want to be. There we go.

That's where we want to be. There is the term from which we get apologetics, apologion. It means a reasoned defense of the faith.

And so every apologist knows how to find verse Peter 3 .15, because when the folks after the church service come up to you, and why do you go bother all those fine, nice Mormon people and things like that?

And they wonder why you always want to be in arguments and fights, which hopefully isn't what we're known for, but frequently is.

You have to turn to this text and say, well, right there, we're commanded to be able to give a reasoned defense for the hope that's within us.

And yet I learned last year that no matter how many times you may read a text, there is a danger of familiarity.

When you hear a text over and over, especially, I had the great privilege of being raised in a Christian family, and so I've heard the word of God being preached from a very young age.

There is a real danger that when you hear a particular text in a particular way, you just come to the conclusion that, well, you know what it says, and your mind just sort of maybe even briefly, or for a longer period of time, sort of shuts down.

When you are reading it, when you see it cited in a book that you're reading, when you're hearing someone speak, there's a great danger there that we will not hear what the text is actually saying, because we're so convinced we already know.

Now maybe I'm the only one that has that problem, but something tells me there's probably fewer of the people in the audience. You're going, yeah,

I've had that experience. You know, preachers frequently, you'll be preaching through a book, and let's say you encounter a text that you've preached before, but you really intently study it, and you really want to make sure that where you've been coming from all along is correct, and whole vistas open up in text that you had never seen before.

I'm not talking about the contemplation of the navel type thing, and where you're trying to get some new type of thing to come out of it.

I'm talking about stuff that was right there on the page the whole time, and you just didn't see the connections, maybe, with other texts of scripture.

My experience has been, for example, in our church, we preach verse by verse through books. My fellow older is preaching through Romans in the morning, and Jeremiah in the evening, and when

I preach, I'm going through Hebrews, which is some of the most difficult preparation and preaching

I've ever done. And just simply that in -depth study has provided me with so many connections and arguments of the early writers in the

New Testament that has deepened my reading of other texts of scripture as well.

This has happened to me in regards to this text. I have heard many apologists start with 1

Peter 3 .15, but to be honest with you, I had never heard anyone actually make application and to really exegete the text.

And so that's what we're going to do in the brief amount of time that we have this morning. You know that Peter is writing to a persecuted people.

You know that in the beginning of this chapter, it is taken for granted that the people who will be reading his letter are people who are going to be experiencing persecution and difficulty for the

Christian faith, which means, obviously, that they were not hiding their Christian faith. They were people who wanted to speak the truth that Jesus is the

Lord, that he died and was buried and rose again. And so there is just a given that there is going to be persecution.

And Peter's concern is make sure that the persecution you experience is because of Christ and not because you basically are a jerk.

Now, unfortunately, sometimes we get those two things mixed up and we let our jerkiness be the reason that the world hates us and think that because the world hates our jerkiness, that that means that we are somehow suffering for Jesus, when in point of fact, we are not.

I mentioned last evening the kind of preaching that some people think is street preaching up in Salt Lake City.

And the result is they get persecuted, all right. I mean, sometimes people want to come up and bop them in the nose for the things they say.

But that's not because of Jesus. That's because they're jerks and they're acting like it and they're proud of it and they want to be that way.

Peter says, no, no, no, you do not want that. To sum up, verse 8, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit, not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead.

This is the exhortation that is being made, and no, it's to everyone. It's not just to the elders of the church.

What we have in 1 Peter 3 is for everyone who is in this room who names the name of Christ. We live in a post -Christian society.

We live in a society where I don't understand it fully myself, but in the 10 years since 9 -11, it has become politically incorrect to question someone reading the

Quran, but politically correct to question anyone reading the Bible. I'm not really sure how that happened.

I'm not really sure what the exact mechanics were, but that's the situation that we face. And so we are going to have that kind of opposition.

How then do we respond to it? What is the responsibility for each one? And Peter draws from the

Old Testament. He noticed the lengthy citation. This is the New American Standard on this side of the screen.

And so for those of you who are younger and have grown up in the cyber generation, Peter wasn't yelling all of that just because it's in Catechism.

Just so you know. Too loud.

I can't hear. That's the only drawback of the

New American Standard. Trying to use it for cut and paste on a blog is just worthless, because if you quote the Old Testament sections, you have to go back and change it all back to something else.

Why are you yelling at me? Don't worry about it. It is good to know when you have Old Testament citations.

Unfortunately, that way of doing it just isn't the best way to do it anymore. But you have the moral exhortations from the

Old Testament coming forth. And then you have these words. Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?

But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled.

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.

And keep a good conscience so that the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ, will be put to shame.

For it is better if God should will it so that you should suffer for doing what is right than for doing what is wrong.

Now what I want to do in just a few moments we have is to focus your attention on what it means to sanctify

Christ as Lord in your hearts. And to get past sort of the surface level examination of this text, we have to recognize that Peter is drawing from the

Old Testament text repeatedly. Even notice, look at verse 14 there on the screen.

And do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled is in capitalized form.

And so that is again a citation coming out of the Old Testament from the

Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible that his readers would have in their hands or hear read in the congregation of the church.

And so he is saying, look, just as there was persecution in the past, there will be persecution now. We stand in the grand line of the people of God.

And then we have this command, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Always being ready to make a defense. Now before we can make the defense, and that's always where the emphasis goes, is okay, you're making a defense, a reasoned defense.

I finally stopped and asked myself the question not that long ago. What does it mean to sanctify

Christ as Lord? And so I look over at the

Greek text and it's literally, but Lord, the Messiah, Christos, you know, is the

Greek word, but I'm a little concerned that in our theological vocabulary,

Christ has become Jesus' last name. And it's not. It's a title.

It's Jesus the Messiah. And if we want to use Christ, okay, but we always have to keep in mind what that meant to these individuals.

So, but, Lord, the Messiah, sanctify in your hearts.

That's what the text says, but what does it mean? This is a command not just for the elders of the church.

This is a command not just for people in quote unquote apologetic ministry, because I've never been able to find apologetic ministry in the

New Testament specifically. I mean, the elders of the church are supposed to be able to refute the gainsayers and things like that, okay.

This is for every believer. And notice the end of the verse is, so that, so you may give that reason the fence.

To whom? To those who ask you for a reason for the hope that is within.

That seems to indicate that it is given on Peter's part. That something about what you, this incredible impact on your life, that people are going to see it.

They're not only going to see it, but they're going to go, you're different. And not only are they going to see that you're different, they're going to see that you have a hope that they don't have.

And as a result, they're going to come, they're going to go, what's with you?

Why do you respond to tragedy differently than people around you? I mean,

I was just hearing that New York is on high alert. They're running around looking for three men.

And with credible evidence, the possibility of a dirty bomb. Wow. Now, how do people respond to that?

If I live in New York City and I don't have any hope of eternal life, I'm looking to go someplace else.

There are so many reasons for fear and anxiety today, and yet, as Christians, Jesus tells us that's not how he wants his followers to behave.

Because there's a reason. Because we have a Heavenly Father, and he cares for his people, and we are in his hand, and nothing can touch our lives that he has not allowed there for a purpose.

We have a completely different view of the world. And if we live consistently with that, that's going to show itself.

So there's something about this sanctifying Christ as Lord. Let's think about the word

Lord first, shall we? That term, kurios, it's in the accusative here, kurion.

That term, remember, what is Peter quoting from? He's quoting from what's called the

Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And the word Yahweh, which we slaughter in English as Jehovah, the word

Yahweh was rendered in the Greek Septuagint by the word kurios, or Lord.

That's why in your Old Testaments, your English Old Testaments, most of them today, they follow a tradition, one that I don't really think we should follow, but I don't get to make these decisions.

Instead of having the name Yahweh, which appears thousands of times in the Old Testament, we put

Lord in all caps. If you look at it, the O and the R, they are capitalized form, but they're a little bit smaller in font.

That's how you know that the underlying Hebrew term is Yod -Heh -Wau -Heh -Yahweh, the name of God in the

Old Testament. And so, these individuals will be reading a version of the

Bible, a translation of the Bible, where Yahweh is called kurios.

It's an exalted term. It is the son's Trinitarian name that is in the

New Testament, a document written by experiential Trinitarians. They had heard the Father speaking from Heaven, they had walked with the

Son, they were now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Normally, the Father is identified as God, and normally the

Son is identified as kurios, as Lord. There are a few exceptions here, there, and everywhere, but that's the general rule.

No one can say that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is kurios, except by the Holy Spirit. And so, you have this

Lord, and clearly this is the Messiah. And so, the

Messiah is being sanctified as kurios in our hearts.

Well, keeping that very high view of kurios in mind, what does it mean to sanctify?

We automatically hear that word, we think of sanctification, we start thinking of positional sanctification, and experiential sanctification, this is

God's will for you, your sanctification, your being made holy, etc., etc. But that's obviously not what is in mind here.

This is something that we are commanded to do. And you would think that for most of us, one of the first things we'd want to know is if the

Bible commands me to do something, I need to know something about what the commandment involves.

And I had never thought about that. I mean, I guess as I read it, oh yeah, treat the

Messiah as Lord. Well, okay, but what does that mean? Especially in the realm of your hearts, the very center of your being, that which determines, this is, you know, we would normally in the

West would think this is the mind, it's the seat of emotion, yes, but it's not the fluffy, you know, little heart, you know, valentine type thing.

The heart is the seat of one's being. So what is decided there, what is done there, will determine everything else.

So in our hearts, in the most innermost being that we have, not just as an external thought, but as an ordering principle within ourselves, we are commanded to set apart and treat as holy the

Messiah as kurios. Now we might be helped in understanding this by recognizing that there is a

Old Testament background to this. So if you'll turn with me back to Isaiah chapter 8, or I'll just put it on the screen, it may be a little small to see there.

Think with me for a second about Isaiah 7, 8, and 9. 7, 8, and 9.

May I challenge the believers in the audience. You know, there's all sorts of Bible study methodologies and things like that out there.

Not only the memorization of God's word, but knowing what the books are about, knowing an outline of 1

Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, those are awesome tools to help you in your study of God's word.

And if we look at Isaiah, and sometimes it's very difficult in the Prophets because they're not necessarily organized in a way that would be very easy to automatically do this, but when we think of Isaiah chapter 7, what's the first thing that pops into your mind from Isaiah chapter 7?

You think of Emmanuel, God with us. A virgin shall bring forth this one called

Emmanuel. And if you think of Isaiah chapter 9, and what do we have in Isaiah chapter 9?

We have this one, a child will be born to us.

A son will be given to us. His name, his government be upon his shoulders, he has this series of names.

Wonderful, Counselor. Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So we have

Emmanuel in Isaiah 7, we have Mighty God in Isaiah 9, and sandwiched between we have

Isaiah 8. And notice what we have here, then it will sweep on into Judah, this is talking about the coming of the

Assyrians, and will overflow and pass through, will reach even to the neck, and the spread of its wings will fill the breadth of your land,

O Emmanuel. Here's Emmanuel. And there is a literal fulfillment in history, concerning a king and a time frame with the

Assyrians coming on. There is immediate fulfillment, but almost every Messianic prophecy has an immediate fulfillment and a greater fulfillment than the one who is to come.

So here is Emmanuel in chapter 8, continuing on from chapter 7. And then we have this discussion about a believing remnant.

Be broken, O peoples, and be shattered. And give ear, O remote places of the earth. Gird yourselves, yet be shattered.

Gird yourselves, yet be shattered. Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted. State a proposal, but it will not stand.

For, and I'm not sure why the numeric standard did this, God is with us,

Emmanuel. There it is again. For thus, Yahweh spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people.

At this point in time in history, the Jews were trying to get the Egyptians to help them and it turned out to be a really bad thing to do.

Do not walk in the way of this people, saying, you are not to say it is a conspiracy, regard to all that this people call a conspiracy.

And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. And that's what Peter quoted in verse 14 of chapter three, right before verse 15.

So we know this is where he's driving us from. That's right where he quotes. So he wants us to be thinking about this text.

It is the Lord of hosts, whom you should regard as holy. Sound familiar?

It is Yahweh of hosts, whom you should sanctify.

So this is exactly what Peter is drawing from. He's drawing from right here in Isaiah 8.

And he's saying, it is Yahweh of hosts, but he says, it's

Jesus. You should set the Messiah apart as Yahweh, as Kurios in your hearts.

You should regard him as holy. And he shall be your fear and he shall be your dread.

Then he shall become a sanctuary, but to both the house of Israel, a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over.

Hmm, sounds like a lot of people in the early church were seeing Jesus in this text. This is exactly where Paul went, remember?

The same terminology he uses. And a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Many will stumble over them. Then they will fall and be broken. They will even be snared and caught.

The scandal of the crucified Messiah in Isaiah 8. Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples, and I will wait for Yahweh who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.

I will even look eagerly for him. Behold, I and the children whom Yahweh has given for me,

Hebrews 2 .13, quoted of Jesus again, are for signs and wonders in Israel from Yahweh of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion.

All the New Testament writers, the writers of the Hebrews, Paul, Peter, they're all pulling from this very text in various places in the

New Testament and making application to the fulfillment of God's plans to a remnant people and that that's being fulfilled in the

Christian church. And so there is our background. There is our background.

So keeping that in mind now, what does it mean to treat as holy the

Messiah? To treat him, to sanctify him as kurios.

This is a command. If you came here this morning and hopefully part of your prayer, your desire as you came through the door, hopefully this is your desire as you go to any place, especially the meeting of the church where the word of God is to be opened, our prayer should be,

Lord, I desire to be an obedient servant. I'm coming into your presence. I wish to hear from you.

I wish to have your spirit expose me, to convict me, and I want to be obedient to what your word says.

I have a real pet peeve when it comes to the terminology of much of evangelicalism.

I was at a conference once in Chicago. This was many moons ago. I had hair and Norm Geiser liked me.

Because he was speaking there. And I was just about to speak on the

Roman Catholic Doctrine of Mary. And they had a praise band. And they got up and they did their thing.

But before they did their thing, the person sort of in charge of stuff said, so before the speaker comes, we're going to have some worship.

I wasn't happy about that. And in fact, I couldn't help but say something about it.

That's just the way I am. But you see, in our church, everything's worship.

But the central act of worship is when the word of God is open and His truth is presented to His people.

That's where we present ourselves before God to be instructed as obedient servants.

That is the central act of worship. Sometimes people come to our church and go, boy, you guys aren't very fancy about stuff.

We're old -time Puritans. If you want to see what the Puritans look like, come on by. But part of the reason for that is, to sort of keep it simple, stupid, if the central act of worship is the proclamation of the word of God, then everything else should lead to it, not shorten it, not get in the way.

And we need to be focused upon that presentation. And so if our desire coming here today was to be obedient to this command, then as we walk out of this place today, as you even go into lunch here in a few minutes, and hopefully you don't forget what

I was talking about, but are pondering it and thinking about it, how are you going to fulfill this command?

What does it mean for you, where you are in your life? Whatever it is you do, to sanctify, to treat as holy, the

Messiah as kurios, Lord. That is the

Christian confession. Jesus is Lord, Lord of all of life. There is no such thing.

I know it is a popular teaching. I consider it an abject heresy. There are people who will tell you that Jesus will be your

Savior without being your Lord. There is no schizophrenic Jesus. There is no

Jesus who is Savior, who is not Lord. And we are commanded to treat

Him as holy. This is something we are to do. May I suggest that what it means is this.

First of all, we need to recognize who the Messiah is. We need to recognize He is the fulfillment of all of the promises given to the fathers in the ages past.

We are to recognize that He is kurios, that He is Lord, the second person, divine

Godhead, identified as Yahweh by many of the writers of the

New Testament, took on human flesh. We need to recognize who

He was. But then recognizing that fact means nothing if we do not treat that fact as holy in our hearts.

Because you see, your heart is the central aspect of your being.

And what you treat as holy there cannot help but have a massive impact upon the rest of your life.

How you speak, how you act, how you respond to tragedy, persecution, and difficulty.

To death itself. If you set upon the throne of your heart, the central aspect of your being, the thing that determines all of your priorities, what really has meaning for you, we all know how to determine what really has meaning for us.

When you start daydreaming, what are you daydreaming about? Is it that retirement home?

That boat? That car? What takes up that element of our life very frequently reflects what we're really thinking about and what is really central and what we are treating as holy in our hearts.

When we purposefully, reverentially, in love, each and every day, say,

I am the servant of the Lord Christ and I am going to treat

Him as holy in all of my existence this day. In how

I do my work, in how I respond to my wife and my children, in how

I respond to what's going on in the world, how I think about the world. I want to be the servant of Christ.

I confess Him to be kurios. That is setting

Him apart and treating Him as holy in our hearts. That's what results in people coming up to us and saying, you don't respond like others.

I've seen you faced with difficulty and tragedy while other people are cursing or crying or they're in despair.

You are not. Why? And the whole exhortation of this text,

I hate to tell this to my fellow apologists, but the apologetic part is the minority element of the text.

The positive element, the central element of this text, is the command.

And it's not something you do once at a conference. It is something you have to do each and every day.

Sometimes, for some of us, more than once a day. To make that purposeful decision to treat the

Messiah as kurios in our hearts. And when we do, and the opportunity then comes, then we are to always be ready.

Not just when we feel like it, not just when it's convenient, but to always be ready.

That does not mean, by the way, that does not mean that every single moment of the day is the appropriate time to whip out the

Bible and start Bible bashing. There needs to be wisdom. But what it does mean is that when those divine opportunities are presented to us, how many of us, how many of us have let them pass by because of the fear of men?

Right now, one of the most obvious examples of this I can think of is the fact that a large majority of evangelicals are afraid of Muslims.

We're afraid of them. And when the opportunity comes for witness, how many people close their mouths because, well,

I don't really feel prepared, I don't know. If we're really honest, there's fear.

They might get violent. Well, I suppose if you're standing on a street in Saudi Arabia, that is a possibility.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, if the guy's got an AK -47 in his hand, that is a possibility. But there are a billion

Muslims in the world. And the vast majority of them do not want to kill you.

But the vast majority do not. And in fact, the vast majority of them have a very ready willingness to talk about Jesus because they think they believe in Jesus.

They've just never met the real one. And they really need somebody who would actually have the guts to tell them about the real one.

But you see, if we are afraid, if we have not prepared ourselves, then we won't be ready.

We won't always be ready to give that answer. And certainly, we should respond differently to tragedy than the

Muslim does because we have an intercessor in the presence of God. Our surety has gone through the veil into the holy of holies.

We have an anchor, a steadfast anchor in the holy place that they don't have.

And that means we should respond differently. And we have a message, a glorious message for them.

But you see, the always being ready to give, that apologetic, that reasoned defense, it flows from obedience to the first part of this text.

That is obedience to having set Christ apart, proclaimed

Him to be holy in our hearts. That's a sanctifying thing for us as well.

To set Him apart as holy means we do not see ourselves as the center of our being, the center of our purpose.

That is one of the great tragedies of the shallow evangelicalism that fills our land.

When you build massive monuments to man and fill them to the brim with people and then you refuse to proclaim the whole gospel to them.

You don't talk to them about sin. You don't talk to them about God's wrath.

Instead, you placate them. You desensitize them. You convince them that God is perfectly fine with where they are in their sin and their selfishness and their self -righteousness.

And then you smear some religiosity over the top. You have made them twice as son of hell as yourself.

And people who have been given that not half a gospel have no concept of what it means.

To set Christ apart as holy because they've never been challenged on the fact that they set themselves apart as the most important thing in their experience.

We have lost in our society and we have lost in the church part of the language of the

Bible. What I mean by that is God's described as king. We don't have kings.

We kicked ours out, didn't we? We Americans did. But they also had servants, slaves.

And that terminology is used in Scripture and there's a reason it's used. And we don't like those terms.

But you see, to sanctify, to treat as holy, the Messiah as Lord, means

I can't be the one that I see as the most important. I have to recognize myself as a redeemed servant.

I have been bought with a price. My life is no longer my own. If I recognize that, if I live in light of it each and every day and I have to be reminded of it.

That's why the Bible tells us do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

We are so short -memoried. How many times?

I've known the Lord for many decades now. The Lord saved me at a very young age and I'm thankful for that.

But how many times have I learned these things and then forgotten? Only to rediscover it again, over and over and over again.

So my prayer for us today is that we will take seriously what this text says and we will obey this command.

And we will ask the Lord, Lord, what does it mean in my life, where I am, where You've put me, to obey this command, to treat the

Messiah in a holy fashion, to set Him apart in my heart as kurios.

I'm not Lord, I'm not in charge, He is. What does that mean in my life?

What does that mean in my work, in my family? My prayer is that we will think on this and we will ask the

Lord to give us guidance, to give us understanding, to make application. Because that is the only way we will then have the foundation upon which to properly, in a biblical fashion, give an answer for the hope that is within us.

Yet, with gentleness and reverence, first and foremost toward God, toward His truth, and toward those who ask us a reason for the hope that is within us.

Let us pray together. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank

You for Your Word that You have preserved for us and its commands that You have given to us that are not burdensome.

They are the very source of life. You have given us guidance that we might understand how we might live in a way that is pleasing to You, that we might demonstrate our love for You.

So we thank You for Your Word. And we would ask that You would help us to make application, that we would know how to set the

Messiah apart, to treat Him as holy in our hearts, to treat Him as Lord.

Make us to be obedient servants, always looking for Your honor and glory.