Well it's good to be back with you here this week. I had it planned that we would end the series on unity and division in the church in February and Lord willing start a new series in March but the winter weather had other plans. So we'll go ahead and dive into unity and division one more week here before we start a new series. We've been obviously going through first Corinthians chapters 1 through 3 on this particular subject. As we have gone through those verses, we have seen the pitfalls of the wisdom of the world. We have seen the Apostle Paul show the necessity of the work of the Spirit of God for us to be given spiritual understanding. We have seen the glory of God and the greatness of His wisdom as the unifying factors for the church in Christ. And now I want us to turn our attention to 1 Peter as we continue and close out this series. I want us to specifically look at 1 Peter chapter 3 verses 8 through 12. And before diving into that text, I want to open up a couple of things here as far as context that this passage is placed in. As we saw back a few months ago whenever we discussed the doctrine of suffering. Peter is writing to a congregation that is undergoing persecution, that they are experiencing the animosity of the world. In chapter 1 verse 6 he says that the church is going through various trials. In chapter 3 he actually spends a lot of time opening up specific issues and specific situations that these Christians need to know that they must suffer faithfully. for the sake of the glory of Christ, and he actually urges the believers to look to the Lord as their example and to follow Him. But leading up to this particular section that we'll cover here tonight, Peter has addressed specific situations in the text. If you look at chapter 2, verses 13 through 18, you can see that he addresses submission to authority, and he primarily dives into how Christians should relate to the Verses 18-25 discusses masters and servants. Verses 1-7 of chapter 3, that references husbands and wives. And so he's given a lot of time really focusing in on these specific individual situations here leading to our passage. And our text is actually a fundamental transition point in the letter of 1 Peter. because he begins to address the believers at large, not just these specific situations. And what he is going to do is to give us the marks of Christian fellowship. He is going to show us the character qualities that should characterize us individually as believers, but also collectively as local churches. And so following what Peter outlines here, it promotes unity in the Church, it honors the Lord Jesus Christ, and it expresses true Christian fellowship amongst the saints and the Lord, and especially being addressed in the midst of persecution. This text is particularly amazing to show the character qualities that Christ wants His Church to exhibit. And so let's dive in here and read 1 Peter 3, verses 8 through 12. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. So as we said, and evidenced by this phrase, all of you, Peter is addressing the saints at large within the congregation. And the very first aspect that he mentions in this passage is unity of mind. And this provides a foundational point for us to consider, which is my first point as we walk through this passage here this evening, and it is the centrality of biblical doctrine. To be unified means biblically that you are grounded in the truth of Scripture together for the glory of Christ. We obviously saw the importance of that as we walk through 1 Corinthians and we saw the elevation that Paul gives to the wisdom of God and to the scripture. But I want you to notice how that truth plays out in this passage. That really whenever Peter mentions good and evil and righteousness and unrighteousness, what is undergirding that is the fact that scripture is our sufficient standard. You'll see how verse 9 says, not to repay evil for evil. Verse 10, we are to keep our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking deceit. Verse 11, turn away from evil and do good. Verse 12, the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, but his face is against those who do evil. The entire premise of pursuing that which is good and shunning that which is evil is based upon the sufficiency of Scripture because it is our standard. How else are you going to know what is good as opposed to what is evil? instead of coming to the Word of God itself. There is no other true standard. And so, the reality of holding fast to biblical doctrine is undergirding everything within this particular text. And so, whenever Peter says, have unity of mind, we're absolutely right to understand that as being anchored in Scripture and in biblical doctrine. And so, how do you as a Christian undergo difficult periods of suffering? You know, that's the context Peter is writing here as a church going through suffering. Well, fundamentally, you must be anchored in the Word. You must have a deep understanding of Scripture that guides everything in your life, that keeps your feet upon the path of righteousness. It's the discerning light by which you're able to see the schemes of Satan and all of the temptations that are put in your path. enables you to discern truth from error. It is our strength to live for the glory of God, even in the midst of difficult moments like this. If there is ultimately one area where we individually are not thinking biblically or where a local church is not thinking biblically, that is the chink in the armor through which Satan will try to come and to take up his crafty schemes. And so we must see here the commitment to the Lord, the upholding of biblical sufficiency leads to unity. You know, Peter is making the same point that we saw in the Apostle Paul. And it's almost like they were inspired by the same God or something like that, you know, that their their writings are incredibly consistent. Whenever you're living through this type of a period of persecution, There will be all kinds of difficulties that arise, all kinds of doctrinal situations that come to the forefront. For one thing, there will be heretics, there will be false teachers coming into the church trying to cause disunity. Darkness will creep in trying to pervert the light. That's why we can't be unequally yoked. That's why we have to guard ourselves. For another thing, during these times there is the world trying to ridicule you for your It's not just that the world dislikes what you're doing. They actually have to come against you. And as the persecution ramps up, the overall hostility against Christianity, it continues to increase and to increase and to increase. And the more they want you to compromise, the world will laugh at you for simply holding a belief because the Bible says so. Even though we see that as the foundation for unity, the world laughs at that. I remember a friend of mine getting into a discussion around the issue of homosexuality back a little while ago, and he just simply cited the scripture in that discussion where the Bible very clearly says that it's a sin. And an individual told him that it was dangerous to believe something simply because the scripture says so. Now hold on a second. It's not dangerous to believe something because God has revealed it in his word. It's dangerous to believe something simply because a man says it. However, if we as believers, if we compromise, if we back down when the attacks of the world come, whether it's animosity like that or it's all out persecution, then we will not be unified. And as a different situation during these periods, you have all kinds of ethical situations that arise, what do you do and how do you be faithful to Christ in the midst of all these situations? And if you and I and everyone else and every other church is simply trying to do what we think is right in our own eyes, then we're going to be going in a thousand different directions because we have different ideas. But whenever we lay aside those opinions of our flesh and submit to scripture, that's when we have unity. When an individual mistreats us, we go to chapter and verse to see how we should handle it. Whenever there's an unjust law coming from the government, we look at the scripture and we see examples of civil disobedience and examples of how we should undertake those situations. That brings unity. That brings a unity of mind together. That's the foundational point here that's going to undergird everything else in this passage. If we're going to stand strong, then we must be rooted in the word. Now, before we move on to point number two here, are there any questions or thoughts or comments on this particular point? Point number two, we see the character and the necessity of Christian fellowship. You'll notice that after verse eight, where Peter gives the command for unity, He goes on to actually list various traits that he wants the church to be marked by. And first of all here he says sympathy. The King James Version translates this as having compassion for one another, which I think summarizes Peter's point here better in this particular text. The church is to be marked by sympathy, by compassion for each other, which fundamentally comes from Christ himself. How could you not be compassionate towards those whom our Lord has redeemed? How can we not be compassionate towards our brothers and sisters knowing that Christ himself has given his life for them? We might be tempted to think that compassion is only something that you show whenever somebody is in a dire situation or whenever they're in a difficult period of life, but that really is not the case. It's a trait that we should be continually demonstrating in our lives towards others, that we're always looking for an opportunity to help other individuals. Our focus is on serving others and our focus is on blessing them and encouraging them in Christ and especially those amongst the saints. The local church should be a place where people are looking to continually bless one another. It's good for us to go to those great lengths to help one another as Christians. Next we see brotherly love mentioned here as well which helps us to know that Peter is talking about all of these traits. fundamentally within the context of the local church. And so certainly we should exhibit these things at all times. Yes, be compassionate, be loving at all times, but his emphasis here in this context is primarily within the Christian fellowship, within the church. The Greek word here is philadelphos, which literally means a love amongst the brethren. It comes from two words, one of which is philos, which means a dear friend. And the other is Adelphos, which means brother. And taken together, they mean to express a brotherly love for the saints. It's a pure love that comes from Christ, who is himself pure. It's a deep love that Christ himself has exhibited towards us, for he has loved us profoundly. He has loved us deeply. In fact, the Christian love, it's to be so deep that our calling is to seek to love as Christ has loved. The Lord made this clear in John 13, 34 through 35. I knew a commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. And so the calling of Christians is to pattern our love after the love of our Lord. It's a clear testimony to the loss that we have a sound, deep, biblical love for the glory of Christ. This is something that local churches truly have to focus on maintaining. It's something that you can become distracted from just simply by the busyness of life, that you can quickly have your your glance taken away from being locked in on this objective to other things. Other activities that if we're honest many times don't really matter in the end. That our love, our commitment can grow cold and that is why we must focus on this command given here in the scripture. That this is something that we must intentionally pursue after. You know, meet with other believers throughout the week. Like go buy their lunch, come early to church just to visit and to fellowship and to encourage others and stay afterwards. All of these type of things and all these type of activities are just basic ways that we can love one another as believers. It's not something that just happens on Sundays. Essentially what we're called to do is to do life together, to point each other to Christ. That is showing brotherly love. I remember back in 2020, whenever my grandmother passed away, we had a lot of Christians who were trying to encourage my family and I were coming to love and to bring food and to pray and all of those things. And you know what really stood out to me was three widows from the local church who came to just visit with our family. They brought food and they stayed for an hour and they put up with all of the harassment from our little dog licking them and wanting attention and everything. And they just sit there, and they visited with us. And it really was just an example of a few individuals just trying to show Christian love, just being there for someone when they had lost a loved one. And a lot of times, that's what the love of the church looks like, just simply going to be with someone whenever they've just had a loved one passed away, reminding them of the goodness of God, of the sovereignty of God. and praying for them and helping them as you're able. However, this is not something that's for those difficult moments alone. We are always continually called to brotherly love. A biblical church seeks to find joy in helping one another, not only when persecution breaks out, not only when a loved one passes away or something like that, but at all times. And I want you to notice the next aspect Peter mentions here in verse 8. He says that we must have a tender heart. The King James Version translates this as be pitiful, which I find a bit humorous because in our modern day English that sounds like we're supposed to be pathetic or something along those lines. But the idea of being communicated is nothing like that, but rather that we're to be sympathetic, we're to show great kindness towards others, that our heart should not be hard towards those in need, kind and generous, that the local church should be a place of giving. Obviously we're wise, we don't want to, it would be unwise for example for us to give a thousand dollars in cold cash to someone we know is just going to go around and turn it and spend it on illegal drugs or something like that. We might help them in another way by taking them to the grocery store and buying food or something like that. So we certainly want to exercise wisdom. But the local church should be a place marked for generosity, marked for this kind of sympathy. Paul in Galatians 6.10, he says, So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith. And so Paul very clearly says it's good for us to do good to all men. But a particular emphasis is placed upon the saints, is placed upon the local church. And this type of a heart, it takes cultivation, it takes sanctification to develop this type of an attitude. That you and I must intentionally seek to be aware of someone's greatest need and to try to help them. You know, the person next to you in the pew hopefully is a solid Bible-believing Christian In which case they do not need salvation because they've already been justified by the blood of Christ. They've already been redeemed. But if we're trying to help those outside of the church, the greatest need that they have is to be saved by the gospel. And so the gospel should be at the center of it all. As an illustration, you know, there are many faithful Christians, many faithful pastors, faithfully fighting the issue of abortion. In our current day, those who have abortion clinics near them, they'll go out and they'll plead with these women, urging them not to take the life of the child. In many cases, they're ready to take on the child if the woman actually decides to go and to have the baby, or they're willing to help her out in any way that they can. But the gospel is central in those conversations. So they're willing to help, but fundamentally they're proclaiming the gospel message, they're bringing the gospel to bear in that scenario. That's a good example of the church helping those in need, helping a situation while also meeting the greatest need of their soul. But if the church is not willing to help those within its walls, it's certainly not going to have a passion to reach those outside in terms of assisting people, wanting to have a passion for proclaiming the gospel and all those things. And so Peter urges us here to have a tender heart, a heart that wants to help others, that wants to invest in them, to give of them of our time and our money and our efforts. Just as Christ was tenderhearted towards us, so also we must seek to have a heart that is attentive towards others, wanting to bless them. Now look at the last quality in verse eight here. Peter says that we are to have a humble mind. Other translations of this verse will simply say be courteous. Humble individuals are some of the most courteous towards others, meaning kind and considerate. That's because they understand that the world is not sitting here revolving around them as the central point of the universe. The most arrogant and prideful of people, they can't see anyone beyond their own eyeballs. In contrast, a humble person considers their needs last of all. It's important for them to be flexible, to bless others, and to help them. They're not interested in a prideful agenda somehow ensuring that they are the center of attention or the focus of it all. They simply serve others out of a humble heart. This is another quality which should be present in unified congregations. It characterizes local congregations because a prideful congregation will be resistant to the teaching of Scripture and they'll be continually biding against one another. Why is that? Because it all comes down to a focus on me, myself, and I. Why didn't you ask me to sing instead of them? Why didn't you shake my hand first instead of his? How come I didn't get to be first in line at the fellowship? It all comes down to I, I, I, I, I. But the opposite of this is someone who pursues the glory of God. Someone who is focused on glorifying God by serving others out of a heart of humility. Who is so consumed with honoring Christ and loving others that there is no place for pride. The local church should be a place of humility because we realize we're nothing in comparison to God himself. That we're mere creatures who rebelled against the one who breathed life into us. Yet God redeemed us so we should have a joyful humility in our lives. All of these character qualities here in verse eight, all of them should be dominant in the life of the local church. They should be dominant in the life of every believer. We grow in them by realizing the glory of God, the truth of his word and striving after them. You don't become unified any other way than a deep and consistent study of scripture and seeking to apply those truths. You don't grow in sympathy or love or tenderheartedness other than by looking at the way that Christ Himself demonstrated these qualities and earnestly asking Him to sanctify you and to grow you in them. It takes power by the Holy Spirit's work to bring these things into our lives. And as you pursue humility by knowing God so that you live your life centered upon Him, you'll see that your love for others will grow and your heart to serve others will continue to grow. In this text, we also see not only the character that we're called to have, we see the necessity of gathering together of the local church. Peter says unity of mind. If you're going to be united, the general idea is that you're going to have to know who each other is. You're going to have to actually see one another. He says to exercise brotherly love. Again, if you're going to love someone like a brother, then it's a logical deduction that you're going to have to spend time with them. And so this shows the necessity of the local church, that you actually must spend time with other Christians, getting to know them, fellowshipping with them, loving them, that we not only need this for the good of each other, we each individually need it for the good of our own souls as well. There is no type of Christianity where the church and the fellowship of the saints is not pivotal. Are there any questions or thoughts or comments here before we go into our third point? Alright, well thirdly here, we see the blessing of obedience to God. Verse nine, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. This is truly the heart of a humble person. It's as though Peter sees the sinful tendencies of our flesh and he just speaks right against them. That whenever we're undergoing evil, our natural response is to give evil back. But he says here to bless. The clear context is persecution. That's the dominant theme of 1 Peter. And so I think it's clear to say that the apostle is not outlying self-defense here. Jesus sent his followers out with swords in Luke 22, 36. Christ himself overturned the temples. My point is that Christianity is not a religion of pacifists who don't seek to defend others whenever evil arises. Self-defense is justified biblically speaking. You can read passages like Exodus 22 to explore that fact. However, in saying all that, whenever someone comes against you for your faith and persecutes you, you don't return evil by sinning. There is a time to go to prison and to suffer for the sake of Christ. It takes biblical wisdom to discern whether it is a time to go to prison or to engage in self-defense in other scenarios. When someone insults you personally, whenever they are taking anger against you, you don't follow the same course. You bless the other person. You pray that they would be saved. Essentially, you want to see that in their lives, that Christ would come in and redeem them. Or if it is an immature believer who has offended you somehow, you want to see their spiritual growth. You want to see their sanctification. The idea that Peter is communicating is that we don't return sin for sin. We don't return the sin of the unbeliever, but instead we focus on being faithful to Christ, blessing them, seeking what is good for them. And I don't have to tell you that following on the heels of verse 8, this obviously takes a heart that is full of humility. It takes an eternal focus and an eternal understanding. an understanding not only of our eternity with the Lord, but also how much we have been forgiven by Christ. We obviously should enact church discipline for real failings in the local church at points. There is a time for that. We should address real failings, but fundamentally we don't have a heart that seeks to return evil for evil. We want the best for others. We want to be patient whenever we are offended and we want to have that long-suffering attitude. If you shake your hand and someone else walks right by you, if you stick your hand out to shake someone's hand and they walk right by you, you don't just immediately jet past them next time you're standing beside them. You know, if it's something they start doing habitually, you might want to address it and make sure there's no rift in the relationship there, but otherwise, you know, give a little bit of grace and assume maybe they were just sick or missed you that day or something like that. But notice that Peter says that that type of an attitude, it's our calling here in the middle of verse 9, that it's given from the Lord. It's a calling from Christ himself. for us to act with humility, for us to serve Him in this way. Then at the end of verse 9 it said that we are given this calling that you may obtain a blessing, a spiritual blessing knowing that you are doing what is good before God. If you've sinned whenever someone mistreats you then all you've done is bring misery upon your own soul. You've done that which is evil on the side of God and you're guilty for it. You know a lot of people have a he started it reaction during conflict. I'm sure you've seen what that reaction is. If you've ever seen young kids play, you know this reaction. One child accidentally bumps into another child and so that child then turns around and he just shoves the child that accidentally bumped into him and they start fighting and everybody's just trying to tackle each other and hit each other and then an adult comes up and he breaks up the fight and he's holding these two young kids apart from each other, and he asked them what happened. And the child who got accidentally bumped, he's going to look at the adult, and what's he going to say? He's going to look at the other kid. He's going to have all of these tears streaming down his cheek. He's going to have his lip quivering, and he's going to have the pouty lip, and he's going to holler out, he started it. The adult is going to look at that kid and he's going to say, he may have started it, but you sure did finish it, right? That's going to be their reaction. But you know, you can see the same thing even amongst adults, that one of them speaks a little bit angrily, and so instead of trying to be graceful in your speech, the other individual instead comes right back even more angrily than the first person. And the next thing you know, they start insulting each other and hollering at each other and just angrily berating each other. And then someone comes up and they ask them, what's the matter? And the response is going to be some variation of that child on the playground. They're going to look and they're going to say, he started it. However, as Peter here is saying, that we should seek to bless those who persecute us. that if you take that action, then you've reacted in a way that is pleasing before God. That your soul overflows with joy knowing that you are living with faithfulness to Christ. You understand the reality that you have honored Him in that situation. The forgiven soul is a forgiving soul because it is a free soul because of the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so instead of adding sin to the situation, you've acted faithfully to the Lord. Those who repay evil for evil, they are enslaved by their own sin. They think that they're getting their revenge, but all they're doing is simply tightening the shackles of slavery tighter on their own wrists. And now here, Peter turns at this point. In the passage, he turns to quote Psalm 32 to expand on the blessing of the Christian life, look at verses 10 through 12. For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. The truly well-lived life is the one lived for the glory of God according to the commandments of God. And it's important for Peter to emphasize that point strongly for these Christians as they are going through suffering. Think about it for a second. If you're being targeted for your faith, the temptation is to shrink back, to shrink back and to think that maybe you need to choose a different course. Maybe it's time to choose another path because you're encountering so much difficulty. Maybe you should hit the reset button. and find something different. Peter says no. Peter says you are living the best way for the glory of God. It is not a good use of your life to indulge the sins of the world, nor is it a good use of your life to cave into the world and to hope that they will just quit persecuting you and so to give in to their false doctrine. The best use of your life is to fix your gaze upon Christ and to follow him in obedience to his word. You know the American patriot and soldier Nathan Hill. He once said these words before being hanged by the British. He said, I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. those words inspired American soldiers during the war for independence, and I suppose even to this very day. The question is, could you say that if you had 1,000 lives to spend, the best way would be to spend them all in service to the Lord Jesus Christ? That it would not only be evil for you to use them in sin, it would also be the path of the least eternal joy for you to use them in sin as opposed to being Christ's servant. If you desire to love life, to see good, then follow the Lord. Do not give in to evil. That's what Peter says. He says, keep your tongue and your lips from sin, from evil and speaking deceit. In verse 10, do not gossip, do not slander, do not engage in lying, do not engage in evil guard your mouth so that it might be used for Christ's sake instead of for Satan's schemes. It's amazing how quickly we can cause a lot of trouble with our mouth. Just a word spoken in a second can cause a tremendous amount of damage, especially if you're talking about something like gossip in the local church. You know, you have one individual who calls someone and that person who's receiving the call, they just accidentally cut their finger. with a knife in the kitchen and it's just a little cut. They just put a band-aid on it and it's good. And they just mention it in passing. Well, the person who called them, they call the next person. The story changes just a little bit to where now instead of having a small cut, now they have a pretty bad cut. It's a pretty tough situation, you know? And then the next person calls and the story changes a little bit more. Next thing you know that person, they've had their finger cut off. They only have four fingers on one hand. And then the next person calls and they've had their arm cut off. And then on and on it goes until the person, eventually the gossip chain grows so much that they're declared to have died. And so the church funeral committee, they're getting together, they're planning the meal, they're trying to figure out who to contact in the family. And guess who comes walking in the door on Sunday? The person who was supposed to have died, they just come walking in the door and they're just wondering who the funeral's for. And if you're wondering, I did borrow that illustration from the Andy Griffith show with slight changes. But it's an illustration that really perfectly shows the dangers of gossip, that slander, All kinds of evil speech, they're thoroughly dangerous for the local church. And Peter says that we must be on guard against this. Verse 11 says we are to simply turn or to shun evil, seeking to do good, seeking to pursue peace. The particular word here used for turn away, it's only used three times in the entire New Testament. One of them is here, the other two are in the book of Romans. Romans 3.12 where Paul is saying that all have turned aside out of the way. In other words, humanity is sinful. They're not walking in the righteous paths of God. And in Romans 16.17, Paul says, turn away from evil and do good. When he says turn away, that's the same word here as Peter uses in our text. In fact, it's a very similar point to what Peter is actually making. We're to turn aside from the path of evil and we're to walk down the path that is good as defined by God. Then verse 12 reminds us why these actions bring about such joy. Peter points to the reality of God. He sees all. He knows all. He hears our prayers. God is for those who are in Christ, acting righteously according to his will. But he is against the wicked and the evildoers who will suffer his eternal wrath. It doesn't mean life's always going to go well for the Christian. But it does mean that the believer will be rewarded in Christ, that he will bring his followers to himself for eternity. Those who live in their sin will not be able to stand in the day of God's judgment. They will be placed in eternal hell. The wicked will find that God is against them. But he is for the righteous, bringing them to himself for eternity. The best use of our lives is truly to spend them in service to Christ, because Christ sees all, knows all, and will judge all. That is what Peter reminds these believers of in the midst of suffering, that it's meant to inflame their souls to be used mightily for the service of God. It's a critical aspect for us to understand here in the local church, because where believers understand this truth, they're united around the same goal. They're united around the same purpose for living. Each one seeking to do good, each one seeking to turn from evil, to turn from sin, to be unified, pursuing the glory of Christ, reaching the lost with the gospel, wanting to love one another in the fellowship of the church. Well, I've enjoyed going through this series on unity and division. It's been a blessing to be able to see what the scripture says on this particular issue. And I hope that you have found it helpful to dive into the word on this subject as well. Are there any questions or thoughts before we go into the prayer time here tonight?