Peter. And my text is the verses 12 to 19, though I'm especially concerned with the verses 17, 18, and 19. First Peter 4, the verses 12 to 19. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is beside you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. Suffereth joy, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's suffering. But when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified." But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator." You see here at once this morning how the Apostle Peter reverts in the opening verses of this passage which we have before us as our text. to the theme of martyrdom and the suffering involved in being a Christian. He's concerned with this theme again and again in his epistle. He's writing to Christians who are to be called upon, many of them have already been called upon, to suffer for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he speaks of that in striking terminology. Think it not strange, he says, concerning the fiery child which is to try you, as though some strange, some alien, some inexplicable thing had happened unto you. There is a sense in the view of the Apostle Peter in which persecution is the Christian's native air. The Lord Jesus said, Woe unto you, if all men speak well of you, for so did their powers of a false prophet. And if a man is faithful to the gospel and faithful in his Christian testimony, then at the very least he's going to be the object of scorn and derision from some quarters. And there are periods in the history of the Christian Church when persecutions have broken forth on a large scale, as they have done even in our own generation in some parts. of the world, so that one is to be prepared, as a Christian, to suffer, to pay a price for belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not as though one paid a price for becoming a Christian. One receives God's redemptive and saving grace as a free gift in the nature of the case. It's impossible to earn salvation. It's not by working of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy that he saved us. But having become a Christian, we are to live disciplined and obedient lives, lives of faithfulness to the ordinances and commandments of God. And we are to obey God rather than men. Now when that's done, and Christians are faithful, then they must expect that there will be opposition, hostility, animosity directed against them. Then, in the second place, you see here the link which the Apostle Peter establishes between the suffering of the present time and the joy and glory which will be revealed. But rejoice, he says, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's suffering that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy." Put one in mind these words of Peter's, of what Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans in the eighth chapter, when he says that we are persuaded that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed. As we become partakers of Christ's suffering, therefore, we discover also that that way of suffering and persecution, that way of paying the price for belonging to Christ, is the way to glory, the way to God, the way to blessedness. There's an intimate and an integral connection here between the suffering of this present and the joy and glory which are to be revealed. In the third place, you see again that Peter makes it an occasion of joy and privilege to suffer for Christ's sake, verses 14 and 16. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part he is evil spoken of. but on your part he is glorified. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf." Here again, one thinks of a parallel passage in the New Testament Scriptures, the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and there the fifth chapter at verse 41, where we find the word, and they, the apostles, departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. They took it as an occasion of thanksgiving that they were privileged, now mind you, that they were privileged to pay the price involved in being a Christian. It wasn't something that caused them to break out in lamentations and complaints. That's very often our reaction in this respect. We're resentful. We ourselves are filled with a kind of hostility when we, as Christians, know that others corn us and regard us as ignorant, for example, or as intellectual obscurantists. To give another illustration, rather than to rejoice and to give God thanks that we're entitled that we have this great privilege of suffering shame for Christ's sake. Then in the fourth place, you see also how carefully the Apostle Peter indicates we are to be that we suffer for Christ's sake, and not for other reasons attributable to our own faults and sins. But let none of you, he says, suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf." And this accent of the Apostle Peter's, upon suffering as a Christian, suffering for Christ's sake, is an enormously important one. You know, we all have disagreeable aspects to our personalities, things with which we have to struggle as Christians, and to bring captive to the obedience of Christ. We are covered with war, with disfigurement, with the relics of sin, with quirks of personality and of character, which other people often resent and find distasteful, and against which they react, and on account of which they may regard us with something less And there is a temptation on the part of an earnest Christian, who is in such a position as this, to ascribe what he suffers for the warps on his personality to his belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we dare not do that. We're not entitled to do that. The Apostle Peter explicitly warns us against that very thing. He says, let none of you suffer for his own sins. Let none of you suffer for a murderer, for as a thief, for as an evildoer, for as a busybody in other matters, as an interferer, as a gossip, or whatever it may be. Never let it be said that you, a Christian, are blameworthy at some other point of attack than at that one that only matters in these things, that point of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. letting those warts and disfigurements, those unattractive assets of your personality, stand in the way between you and your witness to the world, to those about you who do not belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we come to the crux of our text and to that with which we are especially concerned this morning. Observe in the fifth place The principle at work here, that judgment is to begin with the people of God. For the time is come, says the Apostle Peter, that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first begin at us, what shall the envy of them that obey not the gospel of God? There's a principle here, and that principle is that when God begins to move in judgment, the point at which he begins is the house of God, his own people. And this is a principle which is not introduced here by Peter for the first time in the Scriptures, but which is to be found elsewhere as well. Let me give you just one or two illustrations of this very thing from the Old Testament. I refer, first of all, to the prophecy of Isaiah. The prophecy of Isaiah, the tenth chapter and the twelfth verse. Wherefore, it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and Jerusalem, his work of judgment because of their unfaithfulness and their own spiritual adultery in turning to idols and away from the true God. Wherefore, it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the south heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high look." God, you see, was to begin his work of chastisement and of judgment with Judah and Jerusalem, Mount Zion, his own people, and then proceed to those who were strangers to his word and message. Again, the prophecy of Jeremiah, the twenty-fifth chapter. and the twenty-ninth verse. Jeremiah's prophecy, the twenty-fifth chapter and the twenty-ninth verse. For lo, says the Lord, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished. The prophet is denouncing judgment to the nation. If, says the Lord, I'm going to begin by bringing evil upon my own city, and upon mine own people should ye be utterly unpunished. No, ye shall not be unpunished, for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the Lord." And then one more, from the prophecy of Ezekiel this time, the ninth chapter and the sixth verse, where the prophet tells us, both maids and little children and women, but come not near any man upon whom is the mark, and begin at my sanctuary." Begin this terrible work of judgment at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house. These illustrations to demonstrate to us that there is a general principle at work here, a principle which the Apostle Peter expresses in the words, The time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God. Now, in the sense in which the Apostle Peter speaks of it, the Church is God's house, of course. And there is, in that fact alone, a great deal of comfort and of encouragement The Church is God's house. He's promised to build it. And the Lord Jesus Christ has said, that those whom the Father has given to him, his sheep, shall never perish. None of those for whom he poured out his life's blood can be lost at last. those who come to God by him, he is able to save to the uttermost, that is, absolutely and completely. And the church which he has promised to build, he intends, in fact, to build, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Furthermore, not only does he intend to build it and to give it victory and triumph, but he also intends to keep it and to provide it with everything that his people may need. But in the face of that comfort and encouragement, as we have called it, why does judgment begin with the house and the people of God? Surely if the Church is God, and there is no question but that it is, It is a strange thing that he should so judge and chastise his people. Why judgment upon the church? For what reason is Peter able to say, for the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God? And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? Well, surely various reasons for this may be suggested. amongst them the following. First, because even the Church in times of affluence and prosperity is subject to corruption and spiritual decay. I say, in times of its prosperity and affluence, the Church is especially susceptible to corruption, and the entrance upon it and within it of decay. And so the Lord, to reprove and to chastise his people, and to purify and refine his people, sends judgment upon his own house, upon his own Church. It was so in the first century. It was so also in the time of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. And the principle applies in our own generation as well. When the Church is not confronted with difficulty, when it is not, at least for the most part, made to suffer for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ and not refined and made pure in that way, For when persecution comes, then those who do not mean business in this thing, or only false professors of the gospel, simply fall away. They can't take it, you see. When the church is not called upon to suffer for the sake of Christ and his gospel, it tends to become self-confident, insulated with its own prestige and importance. And it begins to take spiritual reality for granted, and the whole matter of its own obedience to the Lord very much too lightly. And so God stretches forth his hand and he touches his people in judgment. You can see this operative at the present time, surely, as you analyze the situation in the Church, in the Church at large, in our own denomination. in our own congregation. You see what affluence and prosperity have done to us. You see how careless so many people are about the gospel and about the duties of the gospel, how indifferent men and women are who have professed to make regular use of the means of grace, about church attendance, about family worship, about the reading of the Word of God, about prayer. and about a whole host of other ordinances and prescriptions in the New Testament Scriptures as well as in the Old, we begin to think back in our spiritual easy chairs and to think that, after all, if we only keep up a relatively good facade, it will come out well in the end. And so God seeing us in the stench of our spiritual corruption arising to evoke and to fill his own nostrils, stretches forth his hand, and submits us to judgment, and to his work of chastisement, and rebuke, and reproach. And I tell you, my friends, as I think upon my own experience and the experience of our congregation here at King Street, and to go no further afield of our experience in the Presbyterian Church of the United States, then I cannot but tremble for fear of the impending judgment of God upon us, when I think of the way in which we have opened ourselves to the application of God's rebuke and justification. Think of what the Church has done. Think of the ungodliness that prevails, the false doctrine that tolerated, the looseness, the indifference, the approbation, even on the level of the General Assembly, of abortion for socio-economic reasons, the murder of unborn children at the whim of parents who think they've already children enough. Think of what the Church has done in entering more or less officially into the abortion then you'll soon discover that we've grown fat and rich, and we're decayed within and corrupt. The time is upon us for an administration of the judging hand of God. And then in the second place, the Lord begins with the administration of judgment upon his church, because the church is the people and family of God, called by his own name. You remember those striking words of the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews in chapter 12 and verse 6, where he says, For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. In virtue of the very fact that the Lord does count his church as his family and his children, his people he begins his judging and chastising work with. You children know, you who have faithful fathers and mothers, that when your parents administer discipline, it's to you they administer, not to the children of a family next door, not to somebody else's little boy or little girl, but to you. It's their business to discipline you. When you're disobedient and rebellious, and you talk back, and you do something that you know perfectly well you ought not to do, and that your parents have told you you must not do, you receive a reward. You receive the chastening hand of your father. Or there's some other form of discipline that's administered. Well, the same principle is operative so far as the Church is concerned. The Lord loves His people, and therefore the Lord scourges His people. The Lord disciplines His people. The Lord judges His people. Not in the same sense, mind you, as the Lord judges those who are strangers to Him and His grace. But He judges His people because He loves them, you know. More and more psychologists are coming to understand this, but the scriptures have always known it to be true that if parents really love their children, they're not going to refrain from discipline. The administration of wise discipline is itself a token of love and affection. Whom the Lord loveth, he scourges. Spare not the rod, for you spoil the child. We are told by that wisest of all the men of antiquity, so that the administration of discipline is itself, I say, a token, a sign, a proof of love. And when the Lord leaves us alone and abandons us and takes away the candlestick of his testimony from us, then our condition is really desperate, and we have reason to be concerned about it. But when the Lord touches us, he does it because we are his children, his family, the church There are strangers to his grace in the church, as we'll have cause to see, but I'm speaking now of the church as a whole. And those amongst the people of God go by that name and are his in very truth. And then a further reason for judgment beginning at the church is to be found in the fact that the cause of the gospel suffers through the presence in the church of insincere and superficial professors of faith. A moment ago I implied already that there are in the Church those who do not know the Lord. And so God administers this kind of disciplinary chastisement in connection with the life of his Church and sends judgments upon his people in order to point up this fact and to purify and to refine that Church and to expunge from it those who are no part of the true kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Church, mind you, in the New Testament, is entrusted with the responsibility for the administration of discipline. That's quite clear. It's entrusted to the apostles and then to the ruling eldership, and our own Book of Church Order understands this perfectly well. But you know, though this is put into the hands of the eldership, and though the Reformation understood that the three marks of a true church are the pure preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of Church discipline, yet there is a tendency to become careless about these things, and to suffer within the Church those who know nothing of the Gospel, so far as its life-transforming influences are concerned, and have never been born again. They're in the Church for a variety of reasons, because they're parents for members of the Church, and when the time came, they simply received some instruction and appeared before the elders and became members of the Church in their own right. And they may attend Church sporadically, or they may not, but anyway, they're still members of the Church, and they still regard themselves as part of the Church. And at the crucial times of life, when there's a wedding to be performed, or a child to be baptized, or a funeral to be conducted, then of course the Church is called upon. But for the rest, there's nothing vital about them, and they're still dead in trespasses and sins. They haven't been made alive. Well, the Church is responsible for dealing with people like this. And if we don't deal with them, we—into whose hands this has been instructed—if we don't deal with them for the good of their own souls now, mind you, because they're coasting along without understanding that the end of their coasting will be everlasting exclusion from the presence of God in hell, then the Lord will take it upon himself to deal with them, and to purge and to refine it, and to see to it that only those who are vitally connected by the news with the Lord Jesus Christ, who have a new principle of life implanted within, therefore, will persevere and continue to adhere to the judged and afflicted people of God. If judgment begin with the household of God, what shall the end be of them? that obey not the gospel of God. I give one more reason this morning and then we shall have done. Judgment begins where the scriptures tell us it does, with the people of God. Because when the church falls into a state of decay, the evil of it is far greater than that of the world. The Supreme Court only a few days ago delivered the Supreme Court only a few days ago. delivered a decision with respect to abortion on demand that went very far indeed, and that upset the laws of many states, revolutionizing the legal procedure in our country at this point. And we've been shocked by it. We stand here with those who have been firm and claiming in their outcries against it and denunciations of it. It's nothing less than murder. And let the Church of God raise its voice and denounce the awful crime that is now possible under the laws of this country. It's a terrible thing, and a thing that's shameful to make, to pause, and to stand aghast at the degree of corruption to be found is that long before the Supreme Court of this country gave such a determination, the Church had already done so. I say, the judgment begins at the household of Christ. Because when the Church falls into a state of decay, and when it suffers such wickedness and sin, such desperately hellish principles to prevail, and such ungodliness and immorality as are to be found on every hand at the present time, then it's far worse than when these things are to be discovered and discerned in the world. Oh, my friends, what a desperate condition we find ourselves in. on this Lord's Day morning. We have so much to be thankful for as a congregation of the Church of the Living God, and yet so much for which to be ashamed when we look at our own lives and we see how thrashed we've become, and how easily we succumb to temptation and to sin, how careless we've become in our employment of the means of bread. How indifferent we are to the doctrines of the gospel, when there are those who are so full of a love for the truth, that when the sound of it goes forth, tears flow from their eyes, so much are they moved by the beauty and the power. How much cause there is for shame and for self-reproach and humiliation before God, when we think of what the Church has suffered herself to do, and to accept, and to become. What is our response? How are we to react to all this, surely? It is by turning in prayer and deep repentance to the throne of grace. Judgment, judgment begins at the household for good and sufficient reasons. But before it begins, before it begins, God is still gracious, his ears still open, his mercy still rich and free. Let us seek his face in prayer. O God, we come to thee, we cry to thee in our shame and in our awareness of the judgment we deserve. and which thou dost send first upon my people. And we pray, O God, that thou wilt give us a spirit of grace and of supplication, that thou wilt enable us to turn from our sin, the sin of which we are guilty as persons, the sin of which we are guilty as a congregation, the sin of which we are guilty as the church of God. And do thou cause thy truth to prevail. And do thou exalt within us and through us the name of our Lord and Savior. And do thou spare us for his name's sake. Amen.