We're starting in 1 Peter 3, verse 13. You probably know this is the apologetics passage. Let's read 1 Peter 3, 13. Now, who is there to harm you if you're zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you're slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it's better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you're the great God, as though you should ever need a defense. But, oh Lord, we find it necessary in this world for the good of those who hate us to give a defense for the hope that lies within us. So, oh Lord, please teach us the content of this defense. Please make us the kind of people with the gentle hearts that would give this defense. Please give us clean consciences. Help us to maintain good consciences so that we might live this in a way that the world would see it as a defense, a viable defense, a powerful defense, Lord God. Help us to take up your shield, your sword, your armor of righteousness again this morning. And may this prepare us, oh Lord, to make a defense. Give us opportunity to make a defense in the weeks to come. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. I always thought it was funny in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker goes into the cantina in Mos Eisley and the guy at the bar takes one look at him and says, he doesn't like you. I don't like you. And then a lightsaber comes out, a hand is chopped off, and things go south from there. But connecting that to holier things, I think this is what it feels like sometimes to be a Christian. So far in First Peter, you're seeing that Christians have a living hope, they have a bright inheritance, they're all bright-eyed with these things. It pushes us to be holy, like he is holy, to do good to those who wrong us, to strive to be the best citizens and employees and spouses we can be. That's what we've talked about all so far in First Peter. And you would expect most people would really like us. that they turn to us for help. Verse 13 asks the hypothetical question, well, who is there to harm you if you're zealous for what's good, if you're zealously doing good things? But here's the thing, though. We know this isn't always the case. We know the answer to the question, who is there to harm you if you're zealous for doing good? And the answer to that question is lots of people. Lots of people would harm us for doing good. Theologically, we know why this is the case. It's because you represent the Lord. You represent his goodness, you represent his commands, and people don't want the Lord and his commands. They want to do what they want to do. So Jesus says in John 3 that people want to turn off your light because they love darkness rather than light because their works are evil. So the question that this section of 1 Peter seeks to answer is how do you respond to this? If you're just a good, simple Christian, you're hoping and growing and doing good to your enemies, and they still hate you, they just look at you at the canteen and say, I don't like you. How do you respond to that? What do you do when your friends that you're really good to, what do you do when your friends start talking about you behind your back because you're a Christian? What do you do when your work starts passing you up for things because you're a Christian? What do you do when your society says that you're the threat because you're a Christian? There are two things that First Peter says we should do in response. We'll take them both up this morning. First, he says, do not fear. That'll be our first point, do not fear. Second, he says, be prepared with a defense. That'll be our second point. So let's look at these things more in depth one at a time. First, do not fear. I say that our first response is not to fear because that's the first command in verse 14. Peter says, even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Then here's his command. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. I think Peter has to say don't fear because persecution brings a lot of fears. Like if our peers don't like us, we can miss out on a lot of fun and respect. We can miss out on their opinion. There's fear there. Or if our co-workers don't like us, it can threaten your livelihood. It can threaten your day-to-day office life, your day-to-day work site life. If your society doesn't like you, you can miss out on privileges and freedoms. But Peter says, he says, have no fear of them. He says, don't be troubled. Don't even be troubled. And when he says don't be troubled, that word in the Greek means don't be emotionally shaken. Don't quake in your boots because of these things. Now, it's one thing to just tell people, don't be afraid. It's another thing to help them not be afraid. And that's exactly where Peter goes next. He tells us two things to help us to not be afraid. First thing he tells us is this. He says, brothers and sisters, you've got to remember He's promised to bless you. He's promised to bless you. I see this at the end of verse 14. He says, even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. You will be blessed. The idea here is that if you stick with Jesus, if you stay the course in this Christian life, even when you're being persecuted, he's going to see that and he's gonna reward you. Now this blessing can come in lots of unexpected ways in this life. Like, for instance, maybe your friends don't like you. Maybe one of them, though, starts to get interested in the gospel. Maybe that's the blessing that he would bring. Or maybe your coworkers don't like you, and maybe your lack of success at work causes you to reevaluate your priorities in good ways. If your society doesn't like you, maybe that makes for a pure church, and it makes for a closer-knit community, and God brings blessings through persecution in lots of unexpected ways. But what's even clearer here than that, he could bring blessings in this life while you're undergoing persecution, is he says he's definitely gonna bless you in the life to come. That's what Jesus promises in Matthew 5. Matthew 5.10, Jesus says, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Thing is, we have this idea that the path of suffering runs in the opposite direction of the passive blessing. You want either one or the other, and that's just not true. They don't run in opposite directions. We recognize this in the gym. We recognize this in home improvement projects that have those old wrestling t-shirts, no pain, no gain, right? The blessing runs through the suffering. That's the first thing we can do to not be afraid of persecution. We can remember that our suffering is actually the pathway to blessing. Jesus says the path to blessing runs through suffering. This is why we don't need to be afraid. Because our suffering is temporary. It's real and it's awful, but it is temporary. But the fact of the matter is, Jesus would tell you if you stick with him, and if you stay the course, he says you will be blessed. In the process of suffering and in the end, after suffering. That's the first thing you can do to not be afraid of persecution. You can remember that he has promised to bless you, and he always keeps his promises. The second thing we can do is right there in verse 15. He says, in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. So let's unpack what that means a little bit. If you break apart this sentence, the first part of the sentence says, in your heart. Peter's telling you, get this core commitment in the center of your heart. And then he says, honor Christ the Lord as holy. And that comes from the Greek word to sanctify, the word to make something holy. So Peter's telling us to separate Jesus out, apart from everything else as special. He's saying, lift Jesus up as high above all other things. And then he calls Jesus Kyrios. He calls him Lord. So you put all that together and Peter's telling you this, he's saying, make it your one solid rock hard commitment that Jesus Christ is Lord above all. Now how does that help you not to fear? Well the logic here is that when you fear Jesus the most, our persecutors, our fear of our persecutors, they start to fade away. Because think about it, you fear your persecutors, because somewhere deep down, you think your persecutors are in control. You fear your friends and your peers because you think that their opinions determine your worth. You think that they have the keys to your happiness. You fear your coworkers, your bosses, because you think they hold your living in their hands, which in some measure they do, but not completely. And you know what they would say behind your back, because you've heard what they say behind people's back. And you fear society for similar reasons, because they control your standing, because they control your freedoms, all these things. And you fear them because you think they're in control. And you feel like you have to please them, because functionally, they're your lords. We make them our lords. Here's the thing. Once you make the major heart commitment, to make Jesus your Lord above all other lords, all of these things can change. Everything changes when you remember that he's the one who's in control. Everything changes when you realize that he holds your worth, and he holds your living, and he holds your joy in his hands, and no one can ultimately take those things from you. So your best friend, or your boss, or Roy Cooper, or the police or anybody. They seem so big in our world. They seem so powerful in our world. For Christians in Northeast India, I heard this week, suffering right now under Hindu extremists, you better believe the torch bearing mobs seem so big. And we can't discount the real suffering that they're experiencing, but Jesus is bigger. Set him in your heart as holy. Make him your lord above all lords, and your fear will start to dwindle. It will lessen. Fear him and have nothing left to fear. Or as Zwingli said when he went into battle, Zwingli said, not to fear is the armor. Not to fear is the armor. So now to drive this point home, I just have two more things to say. The first is, in case you think that everything I'm saying is out of touch, You're saying, well, how can you tell Christians not to be afraid when they have very real things to be afraid of? Peter reminds us that this isn't the first time that God's people have heard this message. Because this whole section is a quote from Isaiah 8, 12. You could turn there if you want. Isaiah 8.12, in the context of Isaiah 8.12, King Ahaz of Judah is surrounded by enemies from northern Israel, from Aram and soon Assyria, and God tells them almost exactly the same message through the prophet Isaiah about people that are about to come and kill them all. Here's what God says in Isaiah 8.12. Hear the echoes of this passage in everything we just read in 1 Peter. He says, Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, let him be your dread. You see the similarities. You see, it's the same thing. This is where he's getting, this is where Peter's getting it from. The only major difference here is that in Peter, he adds the word Christ. He says, honor Christ the Lord as holy. Because he wants you to understand that that Yahweh from Isaiah's message, that's Jesus. All this is to say you're being told the same thing that God's people have always been told. And I think we always need this repetition because God's people have a great tendency to be afraid. What's the number one commandment in the Bible? It's don't be afraid. Then I just have one more thing to say about all this. Do you realize how powerful it is when Christians do this? Do you realize how powerful it is when Christians are confronted by something scary and they're not afraid? Our lack of fear is so powerful because it shows the world that there is substance to our hope. So this is part of how John Wesley got saved. He's crossing the Atlantic in a horrible storm. The boat looks like it's going to sink. He's terrified of sinking, terrified of dying. And he sees some Moravians singing hymns in the front of the boat at peace. And it blew his mind. How about this, another story. Some years ago, I heard the story, I love this story, of a missionary named Jack Vinson to China. Once in 1931, he was ministering to this small village in North Kangsu, China, and the whole village was overtaken by 600 bandits. Then the Chinese army found out about this, and they surrounded the 600 bandits. So you've got the village he's taking care of, held hostage by bandits, held and being confronted by the Chinese military of the time. And the bandits told Jack Vinson, they said, you know, do you want to live through this? He said, well, of course. They said, well, then, if you go, we'll let just you free and your missionaries. If you go, and we let you free, go to the Chinese army and tell them to disperse. We'll keep the people of the village here, and then you can go. Jack Vinson said, not on your life. Not on your life. If they stay, we stay. And so here's an account. His friend E.H. Hamilton collected an account of what happened. And here's what E.H. Hamilton wrote. He said, a little girl, the daughter of a Chinese evangelist, was one of the captives of the bandits. Child afterward told how she had seen and heard a bandit trying to intimidate Mr. Vincent. She said, the bandit pointed a gun at Mr. Vincent's head and said, aren't you afraid? No, I'm not afraid, came the answer. And again, I'm going to kill you. Aren't you afraid? Once more, the man of God replied, no, I am not afraid. If you kill me, I will go right to heaven. It was then that Jack was shot and killed and beheaded. Hamilton writes that in his death, Jack Vincent preached to more people than he ever had at one time in his life. And it's rumored that some of the bandits were later saved as a result. Writing about his friend, Jack E. H. Hamilton, was inspired to write this beautiful poem, this poem that's called just Afraid. I can send it to you later if you want. I'm going to read you this poem. It's so good. It goes like this. Afraid of what? To feel the spirit's glad release? To pass from pain to perfect peace? The strife and strain of life to cease? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? Afraid to see the Savior's face, to hear his welcome and to trace the glory gleam from wounds of grace? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? A flash, a crash, a pierced heart, brief darkness, light, oh, heaven's art, a wound of his, a counterpart? Afraid of that? Afraid of what? To enter into heaven's rest, and yet to serve the master blessed, from service good to service best? Afraid of that? And afraid of what? To do by death what life could not, baptize with blood a stony plot, till soul shall blossom from that spot. Afraid of that? I want to drive this in a little further. I want you to notice what Peter says our enemies will ask for. He says they'll ask for a reason for the hope that lies within us. That's what they're looking for. Why do you have this hope? Why do you cling to this hope? Why aren't you afraid in light of this hope? So here's the thing. Through our fearlessness, we're supposed to be head scratchers. We're supposed to be anomalies. They're not supposed to be able to figure us out. Why are these people not so afraid of America's decline? Why are these people not afraid of our social pressure? Why aren't they afraid of our economic pressure? I took their jobs. Why aren't they afraid of prison? It's because we have a hope. Our hope is supposed to make a difference in how we live. Our hope is supposed to be the most powerful testimony and evangelistic tool that we have. So don't be afraid, Christians. He's going to bless you, and he alone is to be feared. That brings us to our second point. Okay, what else is supposed to be our response to undeserved persecution when the world says, I just don't like you? First, we're not afraid. Second, he says, be prepared with a defense. Not a self-defense primarily, but something even more precious than a self-defense. He says, a defense of your gospel hope. The author knows that you'll need one. He knows scoffers are gonna come saying, and these are all things I've heard, they're gonna come saying, why do you believe in that big sky, daddy? Why do you believe in that book of just-so stories? You know it was just written by men, right? Others will just be more incredulous. They won't be as hostile, they'll just be incredulous. You mean to tell me you think the world is less than 10,000 years old? You think the entire world was flooded by a giant flood? You believe Jesus walked on water? You believe I can only go to heaven if I believe in this man who was killed on a cross 2,000 years ago? They'll be incredulous. They'll say, how can you possibly believe this stuff? It sounds crazy. So you need a defense. And what is this defense to be? I think Peter lays out four pieces to our defense. So let's look at those four pieces. First piece, number one, content, content. When Peter tells you to be prepared to make a defense, it means you have to know some stuff. The word here in the Greek is apologia. After all, it's the basis for our discipline of apologetics. This means you have to be able to provide truth content. You have to have something to say if you want to have a defense. Like, why do you believe in God? You could say, well, everything's evidence for the existence of God. If a man has eyes to see it, you could say the transcendental argument. You could say the uncaused cause or the unmoved mover argument. You could say irreducible complexity, so on and so on. So many arguments for the existence of God. They ask, why do you believe in the Bible? You come armed with, well, it's written by over 40 different authors over 1,600 years with perfect internal consistency. And then there's the manuscript evidence and the archaeological evidence and the power that it has in the lives of men. Of course, I believe the Bible. Why do you believe in Jesus? How about reliable testimonies of his miracles? How about the beauty and authority of his teaching? How about the empty tomb? How about all the prophecies he fulfilled? And so on and so forth. There's just no way around it. If you want to make a defense, you have to know something. Now, of course, not everybody is going to be Greg Bonson or R.C. Sproul. But if you don't have a good answer to the most basic challenges for the hope within you, and brother or sister, I tell you that you are delinquent in duty. You don't have something to say. And you've only weakened yourself against the devil's lies. But it's not just content that you need. Part two of our defense, part one is content, you have to have something to say, part two is gentleness. Look at verse 15, he says, yet do it with gentleness. In the Greek, this word can be translated gentleness, it can be translated meekness, it's that prowse word again, it can be translated humility, it really has shades of all three words kind of baked into it. You can't really be meek without being humble and so forth, so get this, it's not just what you say that matters, but it's how you say it. Some people forget that today. I think they think it's just enough to say the truth. They said, well, I said it. But when people think like this, I have to wonder, do you really care about who you're saying it to? Don't you want them to believe it? And no matter what we say, people follow the heart into what they believe. We can't forget that no one cares what you have to say unless they see that you care. You can present the truth with crystal clarity, but without love, you're a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal, right? So we defend our hope to our enemies humbly, not as superiors talking down to them, but as beggars showing other beggars where we found the bread. We defend our hope meekly. We could own the libs. We could own them. But we're choosing instead to be gentle so that they might actually want to hear what we have to say for their good. And so we share content and we share content and we deploy it in love. But even that's not enough. How about part three of our defense? It's fear. So this one surprised me because in the ESV, Peter tells us to defend our faith with gentleness and respect. That's what your pew Bible says. And I always thought this just meant you're supposed to be very respectful of your opponents. But I don't think that's what this is saying at all. We've already covered the gentleness part with the last word, but this is getting at something deeper, because this is the word phobos, you know, where phobia comes from. It's the word for fear. I think this is referring to the fear of the Lord. Let me make that case for you. You follow me on this? Peter's been setting this up throughout this entire letter. In chapter two, verse 17, he says, you honor the emperor, go ahead, honor the emperor, but fear God, but phobos God. He doesn't say fear the emperor, he says fear God. In chapter two he says, submit to your masters out of phobos. I think it's fear of God. Submit to your master because you fear God. He says to wives, he says in chapter three, wives, submit to your husbands out of phobos. Not out of fear of your husbands, but out of fear of God. Everywhere in this book you're told, don't fear men, but obey them, submit to them out of a fear of God. So now this is telling us defend your faith with gentleness towards your opponents, and I believe out of a fear of God. This means as you defend your hope, you're supposed to be conscious of the fact that he's watching you defend your hope. This is what keeps you gentle because you're pleasing God and not your ego. This is what keeps you from being inaccurate, bending the truth a little bit. It's easy to do that defending the faith because he is holding you accountable. This is what gives you confidence that you're not just speaking words into the air, that even as it blasts off their deflector shields, that some of those words are gonna get in because God is the one that's gonna help you. So this is our check, this is our guide, this is our confidence that whenever you mount a defense, you're doing it in the presence of the general himself. That brings us to our fourth part of our defense. Part four, a good conscience. You know the best way you can undermine your witness, the best way you can undermine your defense, the best way you can sap your defense? Satan knows what it is. It's just be a hypocrite. That's the best way to sap your defense. That's why a crucial part of your defense is having a good conscience. And let's be clear, when Peter tells you to have a good conscience, he's not just saying be forgiven by Christ. Of course there's that. Of course that's the only way to have your guilt truly forgiven, to have a truly clean conscience. Peter's talking about the way that you live. He's talking about living without reproach. He's saying you should live in a way that you either sin less and less as you get older, or that when you sin, you quickly go to God for forgiveness and you just get reconciled and you put it away. He's saying that you should live in a way that your conscience doesn't have anything on you, that you have a clear conscience. And here's why this is so important. Think about this. Because if your conscience is guilty, if you live each day with a besetting sin that you are not fighting, and you've got a guilty conscience, you will not be as bold or as heartfelt in your witness. Imagine having that scenario like Jack Vinson, and you've got all kinds of sins that you've never dealt with. you will not have his hearty of a witness. How can you proclaim God's greatness and his holiness when you're indulging in a disgusting sin? A good conscience is a part of the foundation of your ability to witness. Or how about this? How about if your conscience is bad, I think people today can smell phoniness a mile away. We're all about being authentic. We're all about being real. How can you expect people to take you seriously if you don't even believe in Jesus enough to follow him. Obviously, this isn't saying you should be perfect. Well, try. But if you're gonna talk the talk, you've gotta walk the walk. That's what this is saying. That's why it's so important for your defense that you have a good conscience. It's sort of the revetment wall that's underneath the wall of your defense. So that's what we've got, brothers and sisters. Now it's time to start wrapping up. I wanna put all this together. You put all these things together and you have a powerful defense. You've got a Christian, from all the first part of 1 Peter, you've got a true Christian who's zealous to do good, they're obsessed with doing good, even in the face of mistreatment, they're like, well, I'm just still gonna do good. And they're being opposed, probably harshly opposed, But even so, they're unafraid. Unafraid because they have a settled hope that Christ is in control and not their persecutor. And what is their defense? It's truth shared lovingly for the good of the hearer. It's truth shared accurately under the watchful eyes of God. All of this undergirded and supported by a good conscience. This kind of Christian is the real deal Christian. And this kind of Christian demonstrates that their hope is a real deal kind of hope. So not only is this a powerful defense, brothers and sisters, but you've heard the saying, the best defense is a good offense. This is how we turn the tables on our enemies. This is how God makes you more than a conqueror, not just a conqueror, more than a conqueror. In the face of the world's assault, we hold out Christ genuinely, meekly, and unafraid. And if the Spirit's at work in our enemies, then our defense will leave its mark on their soul and make our enemies into our friends. Make you more than a conqueror, not just a defeater, but a converter. So while persecution's strange, why would they persecute us? Why would you be mean to nice people? While persecution's awful, persecution's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity to save other people. And this is exactly what we see in our Savior. Peter says it in the very next verse. He says, Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Wouldn't you know? He would have us follow the same strategy that he followed. He would have Christians be like Christ. It was his godly defense that turned the tables and saved enemies like us. He would have us do the same and follow his example. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, this is potent stuff. But I already know that our faith is weak for this. And so we pray, oh Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. Give us more faith to fear you the most. Help us, oh Lord, to live each day Loving those who don't love us. Help us to live counter to our very natures. Give us a new nature. Help us, O Lord, to have good consciences, to grow in holiness and to take our sins before your cross right away. Help us, O Lord, to have a good defense for this hope. Thank you for this hope. We pray, O Lord, make it efficacious to save those we love, to save those we don't even love like we ought. Please help us, this is a tall order, but we follow Christ. So we ask that you would help us do it. Pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.