Sunday Night, February 24, 2019 PM

and they malign you. But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.

The end of all things is near. Therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer."

All right, does somebody have the New King James and will you please read verse 6? Okay, Ryan, thank you.

And the point of it is that they are judged according to men. They are judged according to the ways of men, the standards of men in the flesh.

But no matter what the men, what men may say about them, they live in the life of God.

And the point that Peter is making is one that he's making throughout the whole of the letter.

And I'm going to say a little bit about this, but as I talked to the elders this morning, as I've been studying this passage, my heart is so knit to this passage,

I'm going to preach it Sunday morning. And I got permission from Ken, since he's been preaching through 1st

Peter, to go ahead and preach this. But I wanted to do that because when

I read it and understand it, it's such a vital message for us as the church. But also, we just finished up Jeremiah 25, and this is a critical point in the book where we're going to move more out of the sermons and the preaching of Jeremiah, the lengthy sermons of Jeremiah, and we're going to see more and more of the stories of Jeremiah about not just what he said, but the people that he was interacting with.

And there's going to be more and more historical narrative that we're going to see as we move forward. And if you know anything about the story of Jeremiah, it's going to be about suffering for the preaching of the gospel.

It's about suffering and being condemned by your own countrymen, being condemned and judged by the people you're trying to tell the truth to.

And this is what Peter is talking about here in this passage. So let's notice a few things.

Something to remember about 1st Peter, if 1st Peter was a newspaper article, the headline, the title for the article would be this,

Christian suffering glorifies God. I think that would make a good headline for the article, because Peter talks about Christian suffering over and over and over again.

How are we to understand Christian suffering? And there are critical passages in chapter 2 and 3, of course, and even before that, chapter 1.

But notice in chapter 2, beginning in verse 13, always just start in verse 11.

1st Peter 2, verse 11. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify

God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves for the

Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him, for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.

For such is the will of God, that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

Just note that the kings, the ones in authority, make

Donald Trump look like a saint. The people that Peter's talking about, okay, make him look like a ivory tower theologian and a saint.

So when Peter's saying submit to the governing authorities, you know, he's talking about out -and -out criminals, despots, people who, you know, kill others and torture them for sport.

Okay, so, but Peter's saying there's some divine structure into this world and you need to obey those who are in charge.

And he's not saying, for this is the same Peter who stood before the Sanhedrin and said, we must obey

God rather than men. When the Sanhedrin said, stop preaching the gospel, they said, well, we're going to obey God in this matter.

Okay, but nonetheless, he says, submit yourselves to the Lord's sake, for the

Lord's sake, to every human institution. Okay, verse 16, act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God.

Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.

That's just, this is, this is crazy, you know. This is definitely not the message that we're taught today.

And Peter's talking to slaves. He's saying, you have slave masters that are unreasonable, be submissive with respect.

That's just, this passage doesn't get talked about a lot. But this finds favor, for if the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.

This finds favor. This is, this, this, we see grace in this, that if we, if it's conscience towards God that we're suffering, bearing up under sorrows.

Now, verse 20 says, what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you treat it and you do it with patience. If you, if you, if you cause your own suffering because of your sin, that's not impressive.

Okay. But if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

God, God is pleased with that. Okay. This is going to be the same thing that Peter says to wives who want to win unbelieving husbands.

Okay. This is the same thing, except this is, this is for the whole, whole church,

Christians in all sectors of life, is the way that we, we bring glory to God is the way in which we suffer under various injustices, but we do it as unto the

Lord. Verse 21, for you have been called for this purpose. Since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin or any deceit found in his mouth.

And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds you were healed.

So our example and how to suffer is in Christ. Okay. And he was put to death by evil men.

Now, when we think about that, we come back to chapter four, verse one, therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose.

I think other translations say, arm yourselves also with the same mind. That we, you know, we're supposed to arm ourselves with a way of thinking, a way of thinking.

And our way of thinking is informed by Christ. Christ suffered. We suffer.

How are we to think about that? We are to arm ourselves with the proper perspective. And Peter points out, you know, the time to run around and live in the lust of the flesh and, you know, do everything the world does and celebrate the excesses of the world.

Time's up. We're done with that. It's over. It's gone. What does it mean that Christ died for your sins?

That you died to those sins. Right? That I don't ever live for these things.

And as soon as you stop living for these things, when you say, I would rather not to someone, if you purposefully keep yourself out of these things and you say no to these things, you're a walking condemnation to those who do.

And what is the result? They malign you. Verse 4.

They malign you. They blaspheme you in the Greek. They blaspheme you. So now notice that we as Christians are the aliens and the sojourners.

Okay? But these are the ones who have made this world their home. This is the contrast.

Peter talks about Christians as aliens and sojourners. Our home is not here. It's beyond. Versus those who have made this their home.

We're all about this world. We're gonna get everything we can out of this life.

Okay? So, in other words, we're going to be judged by basically those who own this world.

They malign us. But that's okay. Why? Verse 5. They will give account to him who's ready to judge the living and the dead.

That's okay. You know, they're gonna say what they're gonna say. They're gonna malign us.

They're gonna blaspheme us. They're going to write us off. They're going to condemn us. Call us dangerous and threat and bad and so on and so forth.

But the truth of the matter is that they're gonna give an account to him who's ready to judge the living and the dead. Now, verse 6.

This is the critical question. For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead.

How did they die? What has been the thrust?

What has been the thrust all the way through, Peter? Persecution.

Christians suffering. That they are called what they are called and then many of them are done away with.

Okay? Even to those who are dead. They are judged in the flesh as men.

Or in other words, they are judged. They have been sentenced in the flesh according to the ways of men.

Men have looked at them and said, you are guilty of disrupting our society.

You are guilty of bringing treasonous elements into our society. You are disrupting our way of life.

We will do away with you. And this is of course the the daily peril of our brothers and sisters in Christ in China and Iran, Iraq, many different places.

So they're judged in the flesh according to men. But these who have died, these who have been executed by the state, these who have been lynched by the mob, these although man has passed their ruling about what they think about them, none of they've had the gospel preached to them.

And so what's the truth about them? Are they condemned? They are not condemned. They live.

They live. Right? Ever much as Abel still lives.

What was the issue between Cain and Abel? Abel was righteous, lived righteously.

Cain hated it and hated him and killed him, didn't he? Jesus says,

Abel though he's dead, his blood still speaks. He still lives. He still lives. So they live in the

Spirit according to God. They live in the life of God. Now, so Peter is saying in the context of suffering, when people suffer for living righteously and following the mandates of Christ and they preach the gospel, if they suffer, this is such an important message for us, when they suffer because the greater population or the state, or even if it's just a mob, people get angry at Christians for saying what the

Bible says and living according to what the Bible says. And people get all angry and the majority rules and says, you're condemned and even you now die.

Have we gone about things in the wrong way? Have we done it wrong? Have we failed as Christians?

Have we failed as the church? No, absolutely not.

But our instincts may say, oh we've done something wrong. We've messed it up somehow because we've not won everybody over to our side.

But the truth of the matter is, we all have to answer to Christ.

Verse 7, the end of all things is near, right? The judgment seat is near. This whole thing is gonna get sorted out pretty quick.

The end of all things is near, therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.

So Peter wants to put the suffering in perspective, right?

The end's almost here. Let's think very carefully about what is going on.

Let's think very carefully about what values we assign to what outcomes.

Okay, so that's what's going on in this passage. And I think of it, it's such an important passage to flesh out.

We're going to take a look at it Sunday morning. Yes ma 'am. That's a good way to put it.

That would be another good headline. Okay, do we have any other questions yet?

Oh, well, honor your mother so she gets to go first. Okay, sure.

All right. Okay, well, as far as a hymn, what

I would see as a hymn, let's go to 262. Let's just take a look at something that would probably be an easy example.

Holy, holy, holy. In some ways, we might, because of the scriptures, we might say that holiness is one of the chief attributes of God.

When we look at, there's a, Stephen Carnot wrote a, I think it's a 2 ,000 page book.

I have it on my library. I have not read it. The existence and attributes of God. And it's basically taking the attributes of God and setting it within the nature of God.

And so, so here's an attribute of God. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

So we've moved from the attributes of God to the nature of God in the first line. Okay, so we have

God as holy. He's thrice holy.

He is supremely holy. We have this from Isaiah 6. This is an attribute of God. The attribute of God being holiness is now set within the nature of God.

The attribute of God is set within the nature of God. What is the nature of God? Well, we have, of course, the names.

We have the names in between the two, but what is it said about who this

God is? Now, this is the omnipotence of God.

This is the nature. Okay, and I'm making this distinction between the attributes of God are those things that we can share in.

That God is holy. We can be holy too. Not to the degree that he is. God is love.

We can be loving too. Not the degree he is, but we share in that. We cannot be omnipotent.

We cannot be omnipotent. So, what we've done here, we've taken an attribute of God and we've set it in the nature of God, and this makes for magnificent praise.

Additionally, to this apple of gold in the setting of silver, now is our response.

Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee. Do you see that?

Okay, now that we have the apple of gold in the setting of silver, this is our response to that.

How we magnify. Early in the morning. This is worth getting up early for. This captures our attention from the very beginning of the day, because of how worthy and beautiful this is.

There is also the next line, next stanza.

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty. Again, I think the mighty here,

Reginald is comparing this to the Almighty before, but now he's putting merciful and mighty together.

I think he's still talking about the omnipotence of God, that God in all the sovereign power, this is his attribute, this is his nature of who he is.

Now, he's more merciful than we'll ever be, but we are to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful. This is something that we are to reflect in our lives.

This is an attribute, this is part of his character, his character of God. So, merciful and mighty set together, and then he concludes with the nature of God, God in three persons, blessed

Trinity. So, there's this mixture throughout the whole of the attributes of God being set in the nature of God.

So, we have, when we sing those hymns, to me there's a distinct, there's a different feel to it, there's a different tone to it when we sing hymns like that.

This is not to say that all other Christian music is somehow inferior, I'm just saying that's what, when

I think of a hymn and what makes for the majestic and the magnificent kind of praise, the transcendent kind of hymn that lasts for a really long time,

I think that's what it is. Dan, you get a question?

Yes. Well, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in our mother's womb.

It is the truth that the individual is a truth in the

Scripture. Why is it that that becomes the all -important note of celebration?

Why are we celebrating individualism, is the question.

Why make a t -shirt out of that? Why make a song out of that? I think the challenge is, of course, what are we going to worship?

The thing about us, again, is since we're made in the image of God, the worship switch is hardwired on. We just can't ever turn it off.

And so we're always looking to breathe in worth and exhale worship.

Worship coming from the old, the Middle English worship. We are bringing in worth.

This is what I value. This is something good. And then I ascribe glory to that.

I magnify that. So the worship switch is always hardwired on.

So some people, I think it goes all the way back to the

Garden of Eden. God made Adam and Eve in his image, said they are very good. The worship switch is hardwired on.

They're going to be worshiping God, ascribing worth to him, everything around them. It says how glorious God is. And then

Satan tempts Adam and Eve with what exactly?

It wasn't murmuring, so just shout it out.

What was it? Autonomy. To understand themselves apart from the

Word of God. The image of God does not live by bread alone and does not live by fruit alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So yeah, the fruit was tasty, but they chose to eat this.

But what was beyond that is we choose to live according to our own words now, rather than the

Word of God. The critical failure is explained in Genesis 3,

I think verse 22. Yes. Remember that Satan mixes his deceptions in with a whole lot of truisms.

I forget which preacher it was who said it, but some preacher said that Satan would be willing to flood the whole

Grand Canyon full of truth if he could just get one stick of a driftwood of lye through. If that's what it takes to get his lye through, he would flood the

Grand Canyon full of truth just to float one lye through. And in this situation, he told the woman, he told

Eve, God knows in the day that you eat from it your eyes will be opened, you'll be like God knowing good and evil.

And this term knowing is the idea of a definitional knowing. When God cast out

Adam and Eve from the garden, he said this in verse 22, the Lord God said, behold the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil.

And now he might stretch out his hand and take from the loss of the tree of life and eat and live forever. What does that mean?

Like one of us? Like one of the Trinity? Like the triune

God knowing good and evil? If we say that Adam and Eve, when they ate from the tree, simply became like God in the sense that now, having only experienced good, they've now experienced evil.

We lie about God for God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

He has never experienced evil. So that's not what that means.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the crisis point at which

Adam and Eve decide to define for themselves the knowledge of good and evil. The point they disobey by eating the fruit off the tree is the point at which they say, we will now say what good and evil are.

Because they have rejected the Word of God, disobeying his word, eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And Eve said for herself, eating this fruit is not evil, it is good. And so she grabbed definitions out of God's hands for herself.

I will now define what this is. Autonomy. And the world in which we live today wants to celebrate autonomy, individualism.

You get to say what's good for you, what's bad for you. Nobody else gets to tell you that.

And so in the celebration of individualism, it goes back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve decided to try to be

God for themselves, defining good and evil for themselves. Now, the second

Adam comes and he does all that the Father wants him to do. He says all that the Father wants him to say.

Whatever pleases the Father, that's what the second Adam does, as the very

Word of God in human flesh. And in this way, what

Christ does in restoring all things, is saying everything will be according to the

Word of God. And his fast in the desert, or fast in the wilderness, said this,

I don't have to eat anyone's fruit. I don't have to turn the stones into bread and eat what the devil puts before me.

I can live by the Word of God alone. That's where true life is for those made in the image of God.

As we follow Christ, he'll teach us that and we'll grow in that. We'll see more and more how we really, truly live when we live according to the

Word of God. And that's what it will be in heaven, a new creation. The Word of God is eternal, it's everlasting, never failing.

And the joy of living forever in the new creation is that we will all be living according to the Word of God.

Our t -shirts will look very different in the new creation. All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close by singing the doxology.

And after that, Truth Group, we're going to go ahead and meet over in Ms. Jill's classroom for our lesson time.