Introduction of 1 Peter

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Introduction to the 1 Peter Bible Study

Today on The Wrap Report, I have for you a special Bible study we've done. We started at Striving Fraternity having a Bible study on 1 Peter, dealing with the issue of suffering. Now, what we're going to do throughout the year, hopefully, is give you different episodes that will include the Bible study we're doing.

Or you can go to the YouTube channel for Striving Fraternity and watch them there. Now, this is the introduction to 1 Peter. We're going to deal with issues that deal with suffering, but a lot of it's going to also deal with an introduction to the book, who Peter is, and, well, we're going to get into some cultural issues as well.

So I hope you enjoy this episode, which will be an introduction to the book of 1 Peter. This will be very, very helpful, I think, for many Christians as the coming persecution that I believe is happening for Christians in America.

And so this is something to help prepare you for what is, unfortunately, probably to come.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, so we are in 1 Peter. Tonight I'll actually do a little bit of an overview of 1 Peter to get started. And I only expect that we're going to get maybe to verse 2.

All right.

There's enough there in the first two verses, you know, that it'll be a bit. But with the Bible study, you know, it's good to have interaction. You know, I don't want to just be teaching. But let's at least read the first two verses.

We won't get far. And I know that I will probably not pronounce all the cities properly. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.

May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. So, you know, we think about this book. I mean, first off, it's an easy question. I've always got to give an easy question so you guys actually get used to answering.

Who do you think wrote Peter? Hey, good. See, that one's easy. I said it'd be. There's actually the liberals try to debate it. But there's, you know, there's a whole bunch that you can read where they try to say this was actually written, you know, about 250 A .D.

It couldn't have been written by Peter. They try to say, well, it couldn't have been written by Peter because he's a fisherman. And, you know, it's got a more educated Greek. One of the things you see there is the assumption that, well, if you're a fisherman, you can't be educated.

So that usually comes from scholars who think very highly of themselves and their education. And they think less of anybody else who's not educated. So that tends to be what we end up seeing. He's written this, as he says, to those who are scattered in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

So these are these are areas that are all around their spread. They're all the way up to modern day Turkey. And so the fact that they're he called them aliens scattered. We know that James used similar language.

If you look at James chapter one real quick, James one one. And it's only a few books over. But James one one says, James, a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes who were dispersed of rod readings.

So a very similar opening. But what you have is that they're both writing to people that were scattered. Why were they scattered? Well, James is writing specifically to those who are scattered of the tribes of Israel.

Peter's not making that specific, but he is writing to areas that are not Jewish areas. So when there was the persecution in Jerusalem, you know, what do people do when there's persecution? They flee.

They flee to somewhere that's a little bit safer. Right. Many people would would scatter to, you know, to the U .S. to find somewhere safer to live. And we want to scatter, but there is nowhere safe. This is the problem.

So. But this is the thing is that this is what people do when persecution comes. There will be a segment of the population that scatters and a population that stays. The overall this book, we're going to see this, you know, with James, he was writing to the people that scattered.

And he's he's writing to them because I think they're questioning what genuine faith is. I mean, keep in mind that the Jewish mindset back then, and it's no different than with many professing Christians today, is the idea that if you're doing God's will, God's going to bless you with what you want.

Right. That's that's very prevalent in word of faith. I remember I had one church I was at and there was a pastor and he got it. He got this car from a Jewish guy and he said he got this great deal. And it was it was you know, he was just praising this, you know, and the guy was fixing this on it and doing this all for free.

And he was like, oh, you know, God just blessed me because I've been so, so good. And I said, you know, God would have blessed you even if it was a lemon. It turned out it was a lemon. All the work the guy was doing was to cover up the failure of the car.

And about a month later, everything was falling apart. So, you know, but the reality is, is that even when things don't go our way, that's still God's blessing. We don't think of it that way, but it is.

And so the thing that we end up realizing is that we have to always look at it. It's God's blessing because it's that's bringing that's doing what God has willed to happen. And so in the book of James, there's a lot of a lot of thought, because in the Jewish mindset and you see this in the book of Job, you're going to get stuff from God, riches and things like this if you're obedient.

And when Job wasn't, when Job had everything taken away, what were they accusing him of? There's must be sin in your life. It's a similar thing here. James is writing to them and they're starting to question, you know, we really like, do we actually have genuine faith?

Because look at everything that's happening in our life. So James has written really to encourage people in what genuine faith is. But Peter has a little bit of a different take on it. He's also writing to the people who scattered all over.

But instead of trying to encourage them in what genuine faith looks like, he's trying to encourage them. You basically the overall theme of this book, right? And how to suffer and and deal with the persecution and how to move forward.

You will see throughout he's going to deal with false teachers. This is very similar. First Peter. You're going to see a lot of similarity here in the book of Job. Sorry, the book of Jude. So Jude is one chapter where first Peter's five.

But, you know, Jude also is going to deal a lot with false teachers. But there's there's a whole lot here that we end up seeing that, you know, just as a kind of overview. The first chapter and a half is going to deal with the suffering that, you know, Christians to remember their salvation.

We're going to get into a little bit tonight. But why? Why to remember our salvation? How does that help us in suffering? And then chapter two, midway through chapter two to beginning of chapter four.

It's going to deal with, you know, remembering the example of men before us. So it's suffering. Christians should remember the examples that came before us. And then the rest of the book, chapter four and five, is going to deal with that, you know, the Christian suffering and remembering the Lord's will return.

And so if you see the overall thing, it starts with here's our salvation. Here's the people that went before us and were faithful. Right. And then here's we got to remember where we're headed. And if we think about it, like so why?

You know, this one of the questions I have for us to start is why might that kind of outline help when suffering? The idea of remembering our salvation, remembering the other godly examples of men and then remembering where we're headed.

How does that help when suffering?

The communion of suffering, like it reminds you of the communion of the saints before you. And I just think the reality of this is kind of a format of being a Christian. Yeah. This is what to expect. Yeah.

More or less. And that's don't think it's comforting until you want something else.

I mean, should should Christians expect to suffer? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's inevitable. You know, Scripture doesn't say if you suffer as a Christian, it says when you suffer. Right. And so that's the reality.

We will suffer. And there's you know, we think about there's not many books that deal with suffering. Right. There's there's Job from a personal perspective. But really, First Peter is the main book that we would turn to.

And you're right. It's it gives us the idea of this is we're not unique in suffering. God's people have always suffered. You know, it's amazing to think this is just a side note. But it's always amazed me that you look at Islam and atheism.

I was thinking of doing a video, a short video on Islam and atheism, because you think like you look in America right now, both Islam and atheism like are targeted at wiping out Christianity, which on the atheist side, if you think about it, they should be a little bit concerned with that.

Bill Maher has figured it out. And all the atheists now don't like him. Right. He was he was their favorite for a while. Now, all of a sudden, when he like goes, hey, guys, I'm like, if you think about this, we're all trying to get rid of Christianity.

But you get rid of Christianity. What's left is Islam. And they want to just blow everyone up. That doesn't agree with them. You know, Christians want you to believe what they believe. But the Muslims will kill you.

You know, you think about it. Atheism and Islam, who wins? Well, the Muslims, because they have something to live on beyond this life. The atheists are going to try to preserve their life. Right. So, you know, but it's amazing to me that you'd think that like the atheists would be against Islam because they have a much stronger view on the things that the atheists seem to want to hold dear.

Right. All the liberal views. You'd think they'd be against that because like what do we do when it comes to homosexuality? What do we do? Share the gospel. What do they do? Throw them off buildings. Right.

You would think they would say, well, the Christians are not as bad when it comes to homosexuality. No, they all say we're the worst. And you look at it and go, how do they get along? Ultimately, because they're on the same side.

They're different strands of the enemy, but they're all inside of darkness. Right. And so it's it's always Christianity that is that light. And that's the reason we should expect that we're going to suffer.

And we stand out different than the rest of the world. And so, you know, this is the thing. I mean, you see Christians that stood up, you know, at different periods of time, whether it's, you know, during the Holocaust or the Boxer Rebellion in China and these different times where when the persecution came, they, you know, they recognized they needed to stand up.

That's not everyone did. Right. But those that did become easily identifiable. I almost kind of wonder if this whole mask mandate stuff is just to be able to identify the Christians who are like, no, we're going to stand up for truth.

Right. Because you kind of have with the masks, you have three different categories of people, those that are in fear, those that are compliant and those that are going to rebel. Right. And get rid of all those that rebel.

And guess what? Now you have just the compliant or fearful. And then the Marxists get the win in that case. Right. So but as Christians, when we stand up, we stand out against the world. Right. We don't go with the flow.

I was just watching a video before you guys came over where there was an atheist doing a video because there's a Christian that had a moral failure and he's out of ministry. And the guy's going, well, you would never see this with an atheist having to put a statement out saying, I'm I'm not doing it.

I'm not going to be speaking anymore because I had a moral failure. And I'm like, of course not. Because you think immorality is moral. You don't have a problem with, you know, having sex outside of marriage or having homosexual relationships or some having sex with kids.

I mean, they don't think there's a problem with that. So, of course, you're not going to have that because your standard of morality is yourself. But when we stand up in a culture like that and say there is right and wrong, that becomes a problem.

Right. That all of a sudden stands in the face of everything that they that they're going to promote. So we see this in light of that, that we have to expect persecution is going to come. Right. We're going to suffer.

I think I think none of us here are deluded to think that we're not going to be going under a stricter time of suffering in the next year, months. That's right, because the more we desire to walk godly in Christ, the more we stand out in the world.

Yeah. And I think that's why what we're seeing now is so many churches that there's churches that are still closed a year. Now, I don't mind Joel Osteen's church being closed for a year. I wouldn't mind if he closed for good, you know.

But the reality is that you're starting to see what the real churches are. I mean, I talk to pastors across the country and and after, you know, when they started to open, there's so many churches that have been flooded with new people that because because their churches close.

I have a friend in California, pastor in California, who was telling me his his church when they opened, they got a couple that came into the church brand new first time visitors. And they said, Pastor, we don't we don't want you to think we're rude, but we're going to leave exactly at eleven forty five because they are they're in a liberal church, but they get paid to teach Sunday school.

And so they have to be home in time to get to Zoom to teach Sunday school. But they they believe that church kind of by definition. Right. Ecclesia is is a gathering. It's kind of the name of what church stands for.

Right. And so they wanted to gather. So they're going to his church. Liberal is all get out. And yet he's like, but I'm going to teach him God's sovereignty. I mean, they're going to hear from the pulpit.

And if they if they learn the truth, they learn the truth. Right. But he's been having a lot of people that would never come in his church that are starting to come. Why? Because they want to be in a church.

They want to gather. And those churches that are gathering are starting to get targeted. So it's like you said, the more we stand for Christ and say, no, we're going to take a stand, the more suffering we're going to have.

Do you think there's a just thinking of human nature? Is there you know, are there going to be people who are not going to want to suffer and just try to comply with culture? Yeah. Isn't that easier? Right.

Interesting thing of church history was then when the Romans came in, the Romans came in to take anyone's Bibles and Bibles are hard to come by back. That's not like us who, you know, I have downstairs in my bookshelf downstairs.

I have three shelves, three feet long of just Bibles. OK, so you can do the math and figure out how many I mean, shelf space and they're not just all lined up because some are kind of stacked up. OK, and it was funny because Jim and I had a friend who comes over, looks at looks at my shelf.

And that's when I didn't have as many Bibles. And he looks at him and goes, you know, with all those Bibles, you should be the holiest man I know. And Jim goes, only if he's reading them. Right. Yeah.

Brush that dust off. But that's that we have a lot of Bibles back in the in the first century, a Bible was very expensive. So Romans came to people's homes to take whatever scriptures they had. And you had two groups of people, those that basically said, no, I'm not giving you the scriptures.

And they just took those people, threw them in jail and went and found the scriptures anyway, just went through their house. Or those that figured, well, you're just going to take the scriptures out of my house after you take me to jail anyway, so I'll give them to you.

And at least I can continue sharing the gospel and ministering just without a Bible. Well, when Constantine legalized Christianity, you have all these people that have been in jail because they wouldn't allow their Bibles to be confiscated.

And then you had those that compromise. They were called the compromisers. And so it actually turned when those people that were in jail got out. They looked at those that didn't give up their Bible and said, well, you don't really you're not really Christian.

Now, is that right to say? Right. It's hard to judge. Yeah. It's hard to judge. Right. You know, the thing is, you know, is it right to then say, oh, well, you're not really Christian again. You know, it's it's easy for someone to just to put themselves in a position to walk.

I went through the suffering. And if you weren't willing to, then you're not really Christian. That's easy to say after the fact. But, you know, none of us really know what it's going to be like until we end up suffering those things.

I was hearing a story of you probably know it. I don't know if my church will see it real well. I think it was before Luther was in prison. Who was the one that was set on fire and killed Addy?

Oh, no, I think that's going to be after Luther. You're thinking in London, in England, I mean.

I'm just going to come to this, Jason. There was a friend of his, he denied the fact, he didn't accept whatever the verdict was on his life because he was afraid of it. Afterwards, he changed. Yeah. Yeah.

That's why.

So Mortimer and Whitley are the two friends. And so I'm trying to remember the archbishop. I think it was the archbishop. So I was actually at the spot where they burned him. Yeah, when I was doing some evangelism out in England, we got to go up to Oxford and we had a professor there that actually walked us where these events happened.

So he brought us to where Mortimer and Whitley were burned. And he showed us right. They burned him right outside of this bishop's room where he was in prison. And so that he could watch his friends burn.

Now, the bishop was the one that I guess was married before she came in. And he's the one that removed all the Bibles that were in the Latin and replaced them with English Bibles that the reformers want.

And he just transformed everything into the whole church of England before into a reformed church. And then when Mary came in, she goes back to Catholic. So it kept going back and forth really until King James.

And so this guy was like the leader. And so they wanted him. What they did was they actually burned these two guys right outside of the yard. And like, you know, it's just he was in the second floor and the guards made him watch and he had to watch his friends.

And this is where the famous quote comes, where I forget which one I think it was. I think it's Mortimer. No, I think it's Mortimer that turns that was burning with Whitley. And I think it was Mortimer that said to Whitley, you know, today we'll light a match that, you know, figure out how it goes.

Like no flame can put out. And so he watched his friend, his friends burn. And at the sight of that, he got he got scared and actually he he signed the confession. And so part of what they wanted to do is they had him in the church there at Oxford.

And we walked over to that church and sitting in a church right at where he would have been. And then the guy explains the story that here he would have been with Queen Mary right there. She's like in the in the front row.

And he had to part of what he had to do is read this statement of of confession that he, you know, if he was wrong. And what he ends up doing is realizing like he was wrong to have signed that statement.

And so what he ends up doing is he ended up getting up there and instead of reading the statement, he ends up confessing that it was a sin for him to have done that. And and that the it basically preaches the gospel.

The only way to to, you know, come to true and saving knowledge is through Christ. And so he preaches that to the queen. Of course, the guards grab him. And we actually walked from that church right from that pulpit.

We walked all the way down to the same spot where his friends burned. They dragged him all the way back there to burn him there. And he he had one request. He did not want to be tied. So the first thing that would burn would be his the right hand that signed his confession.

And so when the when they lit the fire, he leaned down. His two friends were, I think, singing a song when they were burning. And so he leaned down into the fire, letting his hand burn first, singing a hymn.

And so when we were all there, we we got a picture, all of us, the whole team. We all at that spot and put our right hand down. Of course, I had I was standing up so I could take the picture if someone had to.

So so I have this picture of all of us. I did an episode of my podcast on the Rappaport podcast with Andrew Smith, who does a podcast called Today and His Story. And he dealt with that in detail. So we talked about church history.

And and we he he knew because I forget some of the names. He remembered all the names and the details. I guess if you have a podcast on church history, you better remember the names. I do it on theology, so I don't remember.

I said that you don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's what we do see that when whenever there is persecution, it spreads the gospel of two reasons. You know, some of the early church fathers said that, you know, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

Right. The more that people were willing to die for the sake of Christ, the more people ended up believing. I remember reading on if you ever read Voice of the Martyrs, the free magazine you can get just things, you know, persecuted church, not order persecution, persecuted.

Don't forget. Just type Voice of the Martyrs. But there was a magazine I remember reading one of the articles of a North Korean prison guard that escaped North Korea into South Korea. And he and so he was part of the church and he shared how he got saved.

A gentleman had escaped North Korea and came into South Korea. And once he escaped, he eventually heard the gospel and he got saved and realized that in his in his belief, escaping North Korea, there was no one there in North Korea to share the gospel.

So he went back in to North Korea to share the gospel. And so he was arrested. And so as they would beat this guy every day, all he would do is pray for his beaters, pray for the guards. He would pray for them.

He would share the gospel with them. And this guard got saved because of it, because of the testimony of this guy that wasn't reacting in anger. He expected it. And instead of being angry with them or trying to fight them, he just prayed for them.

And this guy had said that as a guard, that was so hard to deal with. It was such an unusual, you know, because he said that this guy would often pray for his forgiveness, pray to forgive him as he's beating him.

I can't fathom if I would actually do something like I just don't know. I'd like to think so. Right. We don't like to think like we would do that.

Someone's like, oh, we're going to cut your hands off if you don't deny Christ. You know, we'd all like to say, you say, oh, sure, bring it on. But I don't think we're in that moment. Like you could have a weak moment.

And I've heard teaching on that doesn't necessarily mean you're not saved. But we all sin. We all have a weak moment and fall away. You know, the disciples do. You know, I don't know. So it's hard to say if you would just say yes.

Yeah. Cut them off.

Actually, I just took a look. I'm sure enough, someone who's watching on Facebook, Laura Anderson, said VOM .org. Yeah, that makes sense. VOM .org. I figured someone who's watching might pop up the answer.

So what you end up seeing, though, is that, you know, when we stand up, like you said, we stand up in light of the way they expect us to behave, the light of the gospel shines even brighter. Right. Which is really why I think this book that, you know, First Peter becomes so essential for us as we as we look at it, because I do think that we're coming into a time of suffering.

Right. And I think that just as, you know, the gospel needs to spread around. Right. So when you think about Jerusalem, where they all wanted to stay together, that persecution from Rome forced the gospel to go to the other outer parts of the Roman Empire.

It's what actually it seemed was many of the Christians that got saved coming in for the holidays and stayed. There's three Jewish holidays where you're supposed to return to, you know, stay and come back to Jerusalem.

And here they they come to Jerusalem, they get saved and they don't want to go back. And we can understand that, I think, because you go back. Who's a Christian when you go back? Right. Now, all of a sudden you're, you know, especially as Christianity started separating from Judaism, it becomes like a traitor to the faith.

So now you go back and you lose everything. They would they bury empty caskets and you'd be dead to the family. And in a culture where your job is tied to your, I mean, you think about a village where most people, everyone knows each other in the village.

We don't have this concept. Right. Think about how many thousands of people live in our in each of our towns. But you'd have a couple hundred people, you know, everybody, you have the business there. So if someone buries an empty casket, they treat you like you're dead.

The whole village does that forces you almost have to move out. And so you had things like that going on. You have things where, you know, people are having to just deal with the fact that they don't want to go back to that.

I mean, my own testimony, for those who know, when I got saved at 16, I knew that if I said anything to my parents, they were going to bury an empty casket. So I I didn't say anything for two years. Actually, I probably wouldn't have said anything for even longer.

But by God's providence, it was really weird because my first year of college, they put this this letter out to all of the all the students, at least in my dorm, that we all had to take all of our belongings home during Christmas break.

And it's the only time that they've ever did that. They didn't do it any other year. I don't know why. Maybe I do know why. Because what ended up happening was when I brought all my stuff home, when I was away at college, I was starting to collect Christian material.

And when I came home, I had I put it away and I went down for to visit some friends during, you know, for Christmas Eve, Christmas. And, you know, I spent a couple of days down there at a friend's house.

And my parents went through all my stuff and they saw well, they saw I had chick tracks. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the chick tracks, the cartoons. And I used to have the magazine ones. And if you don't know a chick track, the chick tracks are.

How could I explain? They're they're they're a little bit harsh, especially toward Catholicism and things like this. KJV only. But what really got it was they were blasting Hitler. But you see, in a Jewish mindset, Hitler is the Catholic supported Hitler.

So Hitler represents, you know, Jesus represents Hitler's God. Right. So you don't have love for Jesus. So the mention of Hitler would Jack trick chick was trying to do. And the thing was to bash the Catholic church.

My parents saw with that I was I was Catholic in their mind because Jewish people don't understand. You know, Gentiles, all Jewish people are the same. You all believe the same thing. Well, Jewish people have the same view of you guys.

Right. You know, growing up Jewish, I thought everyone was just Catholic. I didn't understand the differences. Everyone's just Catholic. So my parents freaked out. They went casket shopping. And because it's something that happened in our family, they decided not to not to bury an empty casket.

But they were planning to. And then they they confronted me when I came home. Made sure everyone was out of the house. My my sisters were not home. Told my brothers to, I guess, take off. The housekeeper was given the night off.

And it was a surprise. But I probably wouldn't have said anything. You know, part of it being I knew what their reaction would be and part of it. I didn't feel strong enough. I mean, I became a Christian, had no one else, no one to guide.

It was just me and a Bible. That's all I had. And so that's what I was trying to, you know, trying to just study and learn. And so, you know, we do have to be careful not to fault people. Right. If when when they expect suffering, because, you know, you think of you think of like a Muslim and an Arab is in a Muslim country.

It doesn't want to get baptized because they know it. When you do a public baptism, it's a death sentence. Right. Does that mean they're not a Christian? Yeah. But just like in the case with the bishop, you may cave, but then realize you did wrong.

Right. Who else in Scripture can you think of that did that, that that caved and, you know, denied Christ? But then later, Peter. Oh, OK. That's who it is. Like the author of this book. Right. I mean, you see with with this as a background, you see why Peter may be one of the better men to write a book on suffering.

It's probably something that not only did he struggle with, he knew his denial of Christ. He knew was prophesied by Christ. He would deny. Then he denied. You know, we all still struggle with guilt, probably of things we wish we didn't do.

I think Peter probably still struggled with the fact of, you know, he always, especially when it was recorded in the Gospels. Right. This was written during his time. He's alive to see these recordings.

Yep. That was me. I I'm the one that did that. You know, I'm the one standing up to Christ over and over again. No, Lord. No, Lord. I would never do that. Right. Well, that's what you end up saying. I think that's why Peter becomes a apostle uniquely gifted at this.

Does that sound make sense? Yeah. All right. Well, let's actually start into the we'll see how far we get, because I think the first part of verse one or actually in part of verse one may may cause us to hold over till next week.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. So we'll start there and just look at, you know, what is an apostle means?

Go ahead. Well, one, he's seen the risen Christ, correct? What does it mean?

Oh, sent one. Sent one. It means a sent one. I mean, someone who is who sent out for a mission. Right. So what you what you brought up is, you know, one that saw the risen Christ. You're thinking back to an axe.

OK, OK. And so I have a little bit of a different take on that. OK, sure. So since you brought it up, I'll give you my take. What acts is recording is what did happen when when they when Judas had hung himself, he went out from the twelve and they said there we need to replace Judas.

And what scripture records is what actually happened. What actually happened is that they got together and they cast lots and said, let's find someone to replace Judas. And they chose, you know, Matthias.

So fine. That's actually what happened. The question is, should it have happened? Nowhere in the scripture do you see that God commended that behavior. You also don't see anywhere where he condemned it.

Right. OK, whenever we do hermeneutics, how to interpret the Bible, we always want to remember that there's there's different rules for different genres or types of literature. Axis historical narrative in a historical narrative.

It doesn't always teach you what should happen, but what did happen. OK, so my personal belief is that Paul was the twelfth apostle. Paul was the replacement that God had chosen. And people say, but did Paul, you know, see the risen Lord?

Was he alive during his you know, did he see him during the ministry? And people will try to say, well, Paul was around for his mission. We have no record of Paul being at the same place as Jesus. We do know that Jesus showed himself visibly to Jesus, to Paul.