The Fiery Trials of Faith: Embracing Persecution with Joy

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life. Today what we have for you is a message that I had preached at my church that I first pastored that was on 1

Peter chapter 4, 12 to 19, dealing with persecution. I think this is going to be a very timely message because, well, here in the

States in one week we'll have an election, which I think one way or another is going to lead to persecution, and so it is good for Christians to have a plan to be prepared and to expect persecution.

It's common in other parts of the world for Christians, but in America not so much.

So this is an important message to help all of us prepare ourselves for a coming persecution against Christianity.

So may you listen to this message, may you share it with others, and may you be prepared to glorify

God even in the midst of persecution. That's coming your way right now on The Wrap Report.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Good morning. It is a pleasure to be back with you guys. It's been many years since I've been behind this pulpit.

For those who don't know or are new, I used to pastor here.

I was actually the first English pastor behind this pulpit in this building, so it's been a little bit of time.

Let us turn to 1 Peter chapter 4. I'm going to read again. I'll ask if you turn to 1

Peter chapter 4, you get to verse 12. If you wouldn't mind rising out of reverence for the

Word of God, as I'll read, I will be reading out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

That's a newer translation that's come out, but this is what

Peter, by the Inspirational Holy Spirit, has written. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trials among you which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you.

But to the degree that you are sharing in the suffering of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exaltation.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the

Spirit of glory and of God rest upon you. Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a troublesome meddler.

But if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be put to shame, but is to glorify

God in this name. For it is time for judgment to begin with the house of God.

And if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome of those who do not obey the gospel of God?

And if it is with difficulty that the righteous are is saved, what will be the outcome of the godless man and the sinner?

Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God must entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing good.

Let us pray. Lord, we come to you in worship, whether it be in our singing praises to you, in our giving to you, in the fellowship we share, or in the reading and proclamation of your

Word. May all of it be an act of worship to you. May each and every one of us enter, leave this building different than we entered.

May we leave more in awe of how great you are, knowing you better, loving you more.

We ask that in this time, as we open your Word, that you in the personal Holy Spirit would bring illumination of your

Word to our souls and the application thereof, so that we would leave this building knowing your

Word better, knowing you better. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. You may be seated.

We are jumping into the middle of 1st Peter, so we need a little bit of context. I, myself, and my pastor are co -teaching right now through 1st

Peter in our church out in Pennsylvania, and the reason we started to do this is because we perceive a coming persecution in America.

We've been spared in America of persecution, but I think that day is over for Christians, and I believe that being, as many of you know, me being raised

Jewish a generation after the Holocaust, we were always in Hebrew school, we're taught to look for another persecution that would come for the

Jewish people. We anticipated another Holocaust type of moment, and as I look in America, I see that we're at that moment, but it's not going to be the

Jewish people, though I guess after the past year Jewish people are now kind of could be included, but it seems that it's more going to be

Christians that are going to be persecuted. We see right now a political party that is starting to have their rhetoric to get into power by blaming

Christians for all the ills of the country, that this current administration that declares that if you believe in Christianity, if you follow

Christian beliefs, you're a domestic terrorist. Well, when you run on language like that, what you get in power with, you stay in power with.

And so when they run on rhetoric like that, it's only forthcoming that if they hold power that they will continue the rhetoric.

We saw that in Nazi Germany, and so I anticipate that for Christians, we're starting to see some of the things, the freedoms we loved evaporating.

People who are Christians are being arrested just for being outside, and I'm saying

Christian now in a broad sense because I'm including Roman Catholics, but there's Roman Catholics, and just recently an 80 year old man who was just praying the rosary outside of an abortion clinic, not even talking to people, just praying, was arrested, 80 year old man, 11 years in prison.

The reality is we see that the right now the FBI is targeting

Christians as, you know, in a broad sense

Christian because including Catholics, so they're looking at that and saying that these are people to be targeted.

And so that's where their focus is. Their focus is not on, as we've now ended up seeing, that there's people that are child molesters and child rapists that have been able to continue in their crimes, even though they should have been seen, because the focus, unfortunately, of the

FBI right now is focusing on domestic terrorists, which include Christians. People who are against abortion, people who are for pro -life, this is what is the definition, unfortunately now, of a domestic terrorist.

And so as we we look at this, can we turn to Scripture and see somewhere in Scripture that would help us in times, in preparing for times of persecution?

American Christians haven't had to face this, but our brothers and sisters around the world, that's a regular thing.

We don't often think about that. I'll encourage for you to get Voice of the Martyrs.

It's a free magazine you can get and see the persecution that our fellow brothers and sisters have been facing around the world, and that's just what they know.

If you live in Muslim countries, you don't have the freedom to worship like we do.

If you live in communist countries, you don't have the freedom. It's why there is an underground church.

And yet the Christians, I still remember back many years ago now, unfortunately, but when

I was pastoring here, and I remember Voice of the Martyrs did a article on the Chinese Church.

The Chinese Church was under great persecution, but how is it thriving? The number one thing that Voice of the

Martyrs identified with the Chinese Christians, Chinese Christians being those in China who were worshiping illegally, was that they had an eternal perspective.

They had a perspective of God that was so grand that though everything in their life could be removed and taken away, it didn't bother them, because it gave them a greater desire to be with Christ.

We see that throughout Paul's writings, where Paul will talk about life and death, where death is better than life, because in death he gets to be with Christ.

He says it's far better in Philippians to be dead, but while he's alive he can do ministry.

Well, Peter gives us here in 1st Peter a pastor's heart to people who are persecuted.

If you go back to 1st Peter 1 .1, you end up realizing he is writing to those who left his congregation in Jerusalem, or in Judea, and they had fled.

And where he was ministering, they had fled how far? Well, from Jerusalem, we end up seeing in 1 .1,

he says, Peter, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, to those who reside as exiled scattered throughout

Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Well, how far is that from Jerusalem?

Anywhere from 600 to a thousand miles. Now think about this.

This is in a time where people only traveled about 15 miles a day is a day's walk.

They didn't have cars. They didn't fly there. A thousand miles is a lot.

Why did they flee? They left everything they knew. This is a time where most people only traveled no more than a mile from their village.

So most people didn't know what was beyond their own village. And they go 600 to a thousand miles away because they were fleeing persecution that was occurring in the land of Israel that was so great that they left everything they knew to go to a new town and do what they did.

You enter in, you don't have the family business. You don't have the the friends and the support structure that they would have in a village.

Typically, whatever job your your father did, you would carry over. So they had to leave family, leave the business, leave everything because of persecution.

And Peter is concerned for them. And so he's writing to them and giving them instruction how to handle persecution.

In chapter 1, which is when I was talking to Pastor Kin, I originally was gonna just preach at a

Pastor 1, and I realized that there's too much here and I'd take way too much long because there's nothing here

I would want to leave out. But in chapter 1, what Peter first does for these saints is to give them a very, very high view of who

God is. When we go through trials and testings, we'll get into that in the passage, but when we go through testings of our faith, what is going to make all the difference in how we go through that testing is going to be what is your view of who

God is. The higher the view of God, the easier the testing will be.

Because what happens as we go through a trial and we have a high view of God, the more the trial comes and the harder the trial is, the more we look to Christ and we can't wait to be with him.

And we have that feeling of what Paul talks about in 2nd Corinthians 5, where we look at this body as a temporal tent.

We can't be we can't wait to be done with it so we could be with Christ. So the high view of God is the first thing that we have to understand of how to deal with trials.

He then gets into talking about what Christ did for us. We as believers inherit eternity.

We who were enemies of Christ have been adopted into his family as co -heirs with Jesus Christ.

That is unfathomable. We become children of the

King when we were his enemy, all because of what

Christ did. Then he gets into chapter 2 verse 13 all the way into chapter 3 verse 12, this idea that none of us enjoy.

It's the word that nerdy s -word, submission. We hate that one, right?

He talks about the fact that as believers going through persecution, we should submit.

That goes against everything of Americanism, right? America is this rugged individualism.

To submit to others? That's not American, but that is

Christian. He starts with that we are to submit to an authority. Now keep in mind, what authority is he telling the

Christians to submit to? An authority that is persecuting

Christians. Hmm. Even those that are telling us that we have to do things that, you know, we don't want to do?

We talk in America about our rights. We have certain rights in America. And then we went through a time in the past few years where we saw people that were

Christians that were out fighting for our rights that aren't actually in the

Constitution, right? And so the law of our land is not the president, and it's not actually

Congress. The law of this country is called the Constitution. So we abide by the law.

Now there's times where this government has, our government has gone against the Constitution, and we have a right to stand up for that because we're given that right in our

Constitution. But we are to be submissive. We're to stand out as Christians in submitting.

Then he starts to get into other areas we should submit. And he gives the examples are just examples of the farthest way that you, the least way you'd want to submit.

So he talks about a government, and a government that is that's taking away freedoms. And then he talks about Christ being the example of the ultimate in submission.

But then he gets into wives submitting to their husbands, even unsaved husbands, even husbands who don't want them to be

Christian, who probably, you know, verbally or mentally abuse them because they're not

Christian and the wife is a Christian. And it says to quietly submit because in that submission they stand out.

He talks about how slaves and basically employer -employee relationships.

We should be a submissive people. That's not natural. I always think it's funny because when my bride and I are in American churches they argue or they try and make the case that Yim is naturally submissive because she's

Asian. And some of you here go, yeah, no. They just assume the

Asian culture is submissive and that's why she's she's so submissive. She goes, no, no, that's not it.

You see, it is a Christian principle that we all, not just wives, we all are to be submissive.

And that is hard to do when you have a government and the people that are persecuting you. When the government is okay's persecution against the people, you'll see that the people are willing to persecute as well.

I forget the town, but there was a town in, I think it was

Czechoslovakia at the time, where when the the Germans came in and took over, neighbors, both

Jewish and Gentile, got along just fine. But when the Germans came in and said that it is okay to just steal from Jewish people or take whatever you want from your

Jewish neighbors or beat them, overnight people that were friends saw the property of their

Jewish neighbors and just said, I want it. And overnight were beating, killing, and stealing from people who just a day before got along with fine.

That is the the situation here. You have a government that says it's okay to persecute Christians, it's okay to beat them, it's okay to do whatever you want to them.

That is who Peter is writing to, people that are under that type of mindset.

And so he starts with chapter 4 talking about love, that we as Christians have to be marked by love.

We have to, the way we behave, it's everything that we do in our behavior, the world is watching.

And so what makes us stand out will be our character.

Voice of the Martyrs, I remember reading many years ago about a man that was preaching the gospel in South Korea.

And he shared his story about how he got saved. He talked about a guy from North Korea who had escaped into South Korea.

And when he got to South Korea he became a Christian. And he realized that in North Korea there was no one there to share the gospel.

So this man who managed to escape North Korea went back to North Korea so that he could share the gospel.

He was captured, arrested, and beaten daily.

And as this guard would beat him, this man would pray to God for the guard's soul.

Well the man whose story Voice of the Martyrs was telling, this guy who escaped from North Korea into South Korea was the guard.

After this man was beaten to death, the guard had such conviction that he gave his life to Christ and ended up being able to flee and go to South Korea.

What is it that a Christian could be beaten by a guard and his concern is to share the gospel and pray for the soul of the man beating him?

That is who Peter is writing to. So we get to our text in verse 12. And what we see in this text is

Peter is laying out for us two types of suffering. Righteous suffering and unrighteous suffering.

We always want to think that when we suffer, we suffer for Christ's sake. But not all suffering is

Christian suffering. I used to work with a guy back in the late 80s and he got fired at the job.

We used to work together and he got fired. And he came to church and he he asked for prayer because he was being persecuted for his faith.

He got fired for his faith. And after prayer meeting I had to walk over to him and say, Joe, you did not get fired for your faith.

You got fired because you were sharing your faith when you should have been working. See, six hours a day he walked around and shared the gospel with people.

He wasn't getting paid to share the gospel. He was getting paid to do a job he wasn't doing.

That's why he got fired. But he's viewed it as I was fired for my faith. Peter's going to address that kind of thinking whether all of our suffering is really suffering, righteous suffering or not.

He says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial among you.

It's very interesting. He's telling his audience and carries down to us today, we should not be surprised when trials come.

We should expect them. What kind of trials? Fiery ones. What's a fiery trial?

Well, in that day and at that time of Nero, a fiery trial is when they lit you on fire.

That's what Nero did. Nero was a pyromaniac. Nero liked fires.

In fact, he wanted to rebuild Rome. So it's assumed, historically, that Nero set

Rome on fire so he could rebuild it. And that didn't quite go over well with the people who lived in Rome when their houses and everything burned.

So what did he do? He blamed the Christians for the fire. Because Christians at the time were talking about a fiery judgment that was going to be coming.

He said, see those Christians, they tried to set Rome on fire because they keep talking about a fiery judgment. And so he blamed them.

What happened? He allowed for persecution. He actually would take Christians and light them on fire to be the light for his for his parties at night.

This is not a nice man. So when he talks about a fiery trial, this is what they're thinking of a fiery trial.

They understand Nero. That's not what we think of when we read a fiery trial.

We don't think about a government that comes in and is gonna light us on fire. That was the case many years ago even in England, right?

When the battle in England between the Catholics and the Reformers, that whoever was king or queen, they would just burn people.

So what we call persecution in America, that's what the

Bible would call light affliction, right? He's gonna get into some of that.

You know, what we call persecution is someone didn't, you know, treat me nicely because I'm a

Christian, or they didn't give me a promotion at work because I'm a Christian, or maybe

I got fired because they don't like Christian values. We'll get to that.

But that's not what Peter's talking about here. He's talking about the fact that we as Christians should expect that a government would come and burn us alive.

Don't be surprised at that. We should expect the world to hate the things of Christ.

We should expect the world to want to silence the things of Christ.

Why? Well, Romans chapter 1, they know God exists. There's not a single human being alive that does not know

God exists. So when atheists tell you they don't believe in God, God who knows everything and cannot lie says different.

He says they know God exists. They suppress that in unrighteousness. How do you suppress things?

Silence them. That's why the world hates the gospel. When I get up in New York City and do open -air evangelism, and I stand up and proclaim the truth of God's Word, people walk by and tell me to shut up.

You know, if I was playing jazz music and they didn't like jazz music, they wouldn't say to shut up. They wouldn't say to stop.

They would do what? Keep on walking. Why is it they tell me to shut up? Because the

Word of God is convicting to the unbeliever, and they want it silenced.

Peter recognizes that. So he says we should expect this. But when this suffering comes, he wants to address how we behave.

He says, do not be surprised at the fiery trial among you which comes upon you for your testing, as though it's some strange thing were happening to you.

It's not strange that our faith gets tested. Now when we talk about a testing, the word testing is really a general term for two more specific things.

Peter here talks about trials. The other thing is a temptation. Both trials and temptations are subsets of a testing.

So we talk about testings. Trials are things that happen from without to us, from outside.

You lose your job. That was not from within. That's an external thing to you that occurred to you.

A temptation is from within. Temptation is something where you are tempted to do something.

I was tempted very much this past week as I was out in Ohio, and we went to a buffet with my greatest weakness, food.

And I gave in far too much. I even topped it off with ice cream. But the reality is is that temptations are from within.

So what he is talking about is not temptations when he refers to testings. He's talking about those that are external to us that occur to us.

He says we should expect these things. We shouldn't think it's strange.

Now we have an American Christianity that's being preached by many on TV, and we're not, you know,

Joel Steen's and many others who preach a health, wealth, prosperity gospel. Everything should go your way.

If you're a Christian, you should have everything that's good. God wants you to have the best.

Joel Steen writes a book, Your Best Life Now. If this is our best life, you know what that means?

We only have hell to look forward to. For the Christian, this is the worst that life gets.

We have heaven to look forward to. This is not the best life now for a Christian. The best life for the

Christian is yet to come. And so as Peter is writing here, he's saying we should expect trials.

If you have someone that's preaching that everything is going to go smooth for you, you're getting someone that's not preaching the

Bible. The Bible says expect fiery trials, expect them to be willing to kill you.

But he says in verse 13, but to the degree that you're sharing in the suffering of Christ.

Now, here we see a distinction he's going to make. There is a suffering where we suffer with Christ. In other words, we are suffering because the fact that we are proclaiming the truth of God's word, not because of our behavior, but because they hate

Christ, so they want to silence you. He says in as much as you're sharing in the suffering of Christ.

Well, what is the suffering of Christ? Well, he's mentioned it earlier in his epistle, that the suffering of Christ is that God Almighty decided to take on human flesh, go to a cross, die a death that was horrible as a payment of sin for those who hate

Christ, so he can offer forgiveness. See, what makes that different is that Jesus Christ being

God, he can pay an eternal fine because he is an eternal being.

See, a temporal being can only pay a temporal fine. If someone never broke God's law, they can only pay a fine for one person because it would take them all eternity to do it.

Because when we sin against an infinitely holy God, it has an infinite holy consequence. So it would take off all of eternity to pay it.

But an eternal being, who is both eternal and a man, as a man he never broke

God's law so he could be a substitute. Being eternal God, he could pay an eternal fine. Therefore, Jesus Christ being truly

God, truly man, can be a proper sacrifice. That is the ultimate example of suffering.

Did Jesus do anything wrong? No. He never deserved the death because he never broke the law.

But he took that on submissively so that we could be free.

Because apart from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, there is no way you and I could ever earn salvation.

We can never earn being right with God. We all rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire because we broke

God's law and he's infinitely holy. And because of that, it is only what he did on the cross that we can have eternal life.

So that is when he talks about the suffering of Christ, it is not a suffering because we want to argue for our rights.

It's a suffering because the world wants to silence their conscience.

Because their conscience is screaming out that they are guilty against a holy God. They want to silence that.

How do they do it? By killing the Christians. And they feel, oh look, there's many of us in agreement, therefore we feel we're right, we're justified in doing this.

And Christians in this day and age went into Colosseums being fed to lions for entertainment.

And the reports of the time show that the Christians did not run from the lions.

The Christians did not try to try to avoid being eaten. But they would go to the center of the

Colosseum, they would kneel down and pray. Some would even sing as the record with Polycarp, a disciple of John the

Apostle, would sing as he's being killed, eaten by lions.

That is the suffering for Christ. But he says here that if we're sharing in the suffering of Christ, then keep on rejoicing.

Keep rejoicing in that suffering. When you know you're suffering because of Christ's sake, we can rejoice in that.

Do you know the difference, by the way, of joy and happiness? In America we talk about happiness, the pursuit of happiness.

Happiness is in circumstances. Easy way to remember this. Happiness is based on what happens.

Circumstances. We are happy when circumstances go our way. Joy is in an object that is beyond what happens.

Joy is sought when we have an object that we look toward that is greater than our circumstances.

That is how we can have joy even in suffering. That is why he commands here that we are to rejoice.

This is an imperative in the Greek. We are to rejoice. Wait, you're saying we should rejoice when someone is burning us alive?

Yes! We're to rejoice. There's two men that were out in Oxford, and I was actually there proclaiming the gospel at the very spot where, back at the time,

Queen Mary was killing the Christians, and so what ended up happening was there were three men that, before she had come in, they were very instrumental in bringing about the

Reformation to England, and there was one guy, he was the lead bishop that led everything, and they had arrested him, and they really wanted him to confess, and they were trying to get these guys to confess, and there were two of the guys,

Ridley and Mortimer, who refused, and what they did to the bishop to really try to get him to confess was that they had him imprisoned, and right outside the window, the guards made him watch as the

Queen demanded for Ridley and Mortimer to be burned right outside his window, and as the younger man was getting nervous with this, as they're lighting the fire, the famous quote, play the man,

Mortimer, play the man. In other words, we are Christians. We're gonna go to heaven.

This is something that men will do. He was telling him to expect it, and as they sat outside that room watching his friends burn, he was at first encouraged to see that they were singing, but he got overwhelmed with the fact that they were threatening him with the same, and he ended up confessing and saying that what he was doing was wrong.

They brought him, as would be done, they bring him to the church, and I stood at that church, at that pulpit, where he was supposed to read his confessional statement with the

Queen of England sitting right there in the front row. He was to read this confession of denying

Christ what he did, denying justification by faith alone, and as he stood there, he ended up realizing what he was doing and what he had signed, and before the

Queen, he said, I confess that this right hand of mine should be burned first, for how dare it sign a confession to deny my

Lord and Savior, and they dragged him from that pulpit, and I walked the mile they took him to, to the same spot where his friends burned, and they burned him on that spot, and he requested not to be tied so that he could take the right hand that signed that confession and shove it into the fire, so it would be the first thing to burn as he sang a song in the fire of his own death, singing praises to God as he burned alive.

That is what Peter is talking about, that kind of behavior, that we would suffer for Christ's sake, but there's a second suffering, he says.

He says here, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you're blessed. We don't usually think of being insulted as a blessing, but if it's for Christ's sake, we're blessed, because the

Spirit of glory rests upon you, so we know we're suffering for Christ's sake, we're doing it because the

Spirit is with us. We're honoring Christ in that suffering. However, he says in verse 15, make sure none of you suffers at a murderer.

Now, he is not using, for those who, when I used to pastor here and we trained people to evangelize, we talked about, you know, using the

Ten Commandments in evangelism, and when people say about murder, we would go to Matthew 5 and show how

Christ says that even if you're angry with someone, that's murder of the heart, right?

Well, he's not, he's speaking of murderers here, and we can feel safe, well, hey, I'm not a murderer, so I'm good on that case, that wouldn't be me,

I wouldn't be suffering for being a murderer. Well, how about a thief? Okay, well, maybe we stole something when we were younger, but, you know, none of us are really, you know, kleptomaniacs today as Christians, we're not known as being thieves, so we feel pretty good on that one, too.

Or an evildoer, well, most of us don't think of ourselves and characterize ourselves as evildoers, but then he's got to throw this last one in.

Or a troublesome meddler, a gossip, ouch, you know, it's basically like, okay, you know, he goes from one extreme and just says, okay, now

I'm gonna go catch all. In other words, if you are suffering because you're gossiping about people, that's not suffering for Christ.

You know, if you're suffering because you're a murderer, or a thief, or someone who's doing evil, in other words, what he's saying is you should expect that suffering.

If you murdered someone and you got caught and now you're being thrown in jail, that's not suffering for Christ's sake.

That's suffering because you deserve it. But he goes and has to throw this last one in, you know, being a gossip.

Gossiping is when you have idle talk to diminish someone's character, just an idle talk.

It could even be true, but not necessary. And he says, idle talk for the purpose of diminishing someone's reputation.

If you suffer for that, well, there's plenty times people suffer for that. They say something, you know, and unfortunately at most churches, their prayer meetings are nothing but, you know, gossip.

You know, pray for so -and -so, they were, you know, out somewhere doing something they shouldn't have been doing.

Did everyone really need to know that? No, but some, but people like to do idle talk because it makes them feel better by putting others down.

Well, when he talks about that as an unrighteous suffering. See, there's suffering we do because of the fact that we deserve it.

As I go on the streets and do open -air evangelism, there's many, I would say most even, that I don't think do it well.

The most out there that are proclaiming Christ out of their own self -righteousness, they like to condemn the sins of those that are listening to them.

They act as if they're the Holy Spirit and it's their job to convict them to convert them, right?

So what do they do? They sit there and I got to convict you and tell you how wicked you are, and yet we get treated by the people in the crowd because most of those people are very arrogant in the way they're talking and conducting themselves.

They're not an ambassador for Christ, and as they're sitting there and judging people, the people don't like it and start yelling back.

It's the reason that, you know, we have to remember when we go out and do things that we are an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

This is 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We're ambassadors for Christ. Everything we do represents our

King, and if we act like jerks, people think our God is a jerk.

The reason so many people think that God is judgmental in the way that they define being judgmental is the fact that they see many

Christians acting that way. Now, we are to judge, that's clear in Scripture.

The issue is always the standard of judgment. John chapter 7 verse 24,

Jesus Christ himself actually commands, in the Greek it's an imperative, you are to judge with a righteous judgment.

The issue he's going to bring up here is that we are to judge, we are to start, though, within the household of God.

And that's why he talks about the fact that we must recognize what is righteous suffering from deserved suffering.

He says in verse 16, but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be put to shame, but is to glorify

God in his name. You know, even Paul in his day, we see this in Philippians, that when he was in jail and he was imprisoned, there were those who took opportunity to take

Paul's imprisonment and say, see, God's done with him. You shouldn't listen to what

Paul says. And Paul says that their falsehoods that they said, they do out of selfishness.

That's not a righteous suffering they would suffer. He says they do it out of self -righteousness, out of pride.

But was Paul's attitude? He rejoiced because even though they did it out of sinful motives, the gospel was being preached.

And he could rejoice. He says, yes, I will rejoice. And that is what

Peter is getting to here, is that we shouldn't be suffering if we're, if we are, sorry, we shouldn't be shamed if we're suffering for righteousness' sake.

What was it that those people were doing to Paul? They were trying to shame people for listening to Paul and follow what

Paul was saying, because he's imprisoned. And that was a shameful thing. So they're trying to bring shame on these people that were following Christ.

So Peter says, don't do that. Don't shame those who are actually suffering for Christ's sake. He, at the end here of this chapter, and I say chapter knowing that obviously

Peter did not include chapters. If you don't know that, chapter breaks and verses didn't appear in the

Bible until about the 700s. Okay, so Peter just wrote this. It wasn't, he didn't say turn to chapter four.

But he says, for it is time for judgment. And where is it to begin?

In the house of God. He realized that under persecution, we must judge our own.

We must be willing to recognize those who are doing things within the church that are not righteous suffering.

We must be able to identify the difference between a righteous suffering and an unrighteous suffering.

He says it begins with the house of God. And if it begins with us, if God is going to start with the judgment of the church, he then says, what is it going to be like for the world?

If God is concerned that we be pure and we know him, what will it be like for the world that are still his enemies?

Now that right there should get every one of us that proclaim the name of Christ a great concern for the lost.

He's basically telling these believers who are being persecuted that we can't sit back and go, woe is me, why is this happening to me?

But we are to be a people that are concerned even in persecution, even in suffering for righteousness sake, that we're concerned for those who are persecuting us.

Because if God is going to judge us, how much more will he judge the unbeliever? We must be concerned for their soul.

We must be concerned with where they will spend eternity, so much so that even under persecution, we will proclaim the gospel to those who are torturing and wanting to kill us.

Is that where I'm at in my Christian walk? Is that where you're at in your

Christian walk? I'm not gonna ask where you're at voicing it, but I don't know if I'm at that point yet.

I'll probably never know until, you know, they start lighting a fire, you know, at my feet.

I would like to think that I'd proclaim Christ just as boldly as I do in the streets in New York City or everywhere else where I go.

I'd like to think that I'd stand up and proclaim the truth of the gospel, but we really don't know until that happens.

Not saying I'm looking forward to that happening, but I'm anticipating the day that it will be. He's telling them we must be concerned.

We must recognize that those who are outside of Christ are going to have a greater suffering if they don't turn to Christ.

Now, one thing that also says that those who are persecuting us, and we feel like, where is

God as we're being persecuted? Well, Peter's also saying that God doesn't judge in our time frame.

He judges in his own time frame. And so what he's essentially saying is that God judges on his timetable.

We would like God to judge today all the evils that we see in the world.

But if God was to judge evil immediately, would you have lived long enough to come to repentance and believe the gospel?

Nope. There'd be no one that's alive past two years old. One years old.

Right? The fact that there are people that do evil in the world, instead of looking at that and saying, why

God? We should look at that and say, how long suffering God is. How merciful

God is that he gives these people more time on earth to repent. But then it also means that he has called us to be that mouthpiece for their repentance, to proclaim the truth of God's Word.

So he says there, therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God must entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing good.

Even when we're being persecuted, when we are suffering for righteousness sake, we are to do good.

Why? Because we have a faithful creator. We can't stand evil in the world in a single day.

How often do some of us complain about the evils we see? We see things being done.

The human trafficking, abortion, name the evil, name what we think is vile.

We see it in our day and wish it would stop. God has let it go and has been enduring it for centuries.

And he understands the wickedness of that evil to the fullest extent. How much more, when he is so faithful, how much more can we endure and do good even in the light of persecution?

Where are we at on that walk? Can we feel confident that we would sing hymns and praise

God and pray for those who persecute us when that comes, even at the point of death?

The early church argued and many referred to the fact that it is the blood of the martyrs that was the seed of the church.

In other words, that when the martyrs were being killed, the way they were being killed, because they glorified

God in their death, that is what got people that said, what is with these people?

Even Pilate would ask that of Christ. Don't you know I have the right to give you freedom or death?

Why are you silent? People are not silent when they're sentenced to death. They argue for their own defense.

They defend themselves for their freedom. But Christ stood out when he was a lamb going to slaughter silent.

The martyrs that would sit there and be silent or even more, pray for those that were persecuting them.

Praise God in their persecution. So much so that in the early church, this is not biblical, but in the early church when we talk of spiritual gifts, the early church actually referred to a spiritual gift of martyrdom.

They believed that certain Christians just had a gift that they would be able to be martyred and praise

God in light of it. Obviously we don't believe in a gift of martyrdom here in America, but that was the case for many in that first century.

Where are we on that walk? We think of the small little suffering and think it's the world's coming to an end, and yet Peter is writing to those who are suffering far worse than we in a persecution that we have not experienced here in America, but I think may be coming very shortly.

I truly believe we are maybe five to ten years away to Christians being imprisoned because they're

Christians. That's not a foreign around the world. It has been in America.

How will we stand when that happens? Will we stand and proclaim

Christ? Well, I have news for all of us. If we will not stand and proclaim

Christ to our co -workers, to our family, to strangers that we come upon, if we won't pray proclaim

Christ when we don't have persecution, then we're not training ourselves to proclaim

Christ when there is persecution. While we have time, we should be taking the words of Peter, training ourselves to focus upon who

God is and how great he is, what he did for us, training ourselves to submit to one another, and preparing for a persecution that is coming such that when it occurs, we will proclaim

Christ because that is who we are and that is what we do even before that persecution comes.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you and ask that if it be your will you would prevent this persecution that I think is coming from occurring, but Lord, if that not be your will, then

I ask that you would use your word of what Peter has written in this first epistle to encourage our hearts, to prepare our hearts so that we as your children would stand firm, stand bold, so that even our persecutors like that North Korean guard would recognize there's something different with us, that we would be your ambassador, we'd stand out as different from the world, and that people would come to repentance, that your name would be honored and glorified, and people would be in awe of how great you are, and enable us,

Lord, that we would strive to make every day an eternal day for your glory.

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