Greetings from the Saints in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And if Texas is on the outskirts of the OPC, New Mexico is further out. There are two churches in New Mexico, one in Albuquerque and one across the river in Rio Rancho. And so, we're kind of out there alone. But we're never alone, because the Lord is always with us. I direct your attention to 1 Peter chapter 3. I'm going to read verses 13. Through 15. I know the Bulletin says 14 to 22, but that's because I am old and I didn't remember the exact verses. But I'll begin reading in verse 13 and I think I will read through 22. Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed and do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled. But sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. Yet with gentleness and reverence. And keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should so will it, that you suffer for doing what is right, rather than for doing what is wrong. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which Also, he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for good content through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of your beloved son, Jesus Christ, and we pray for the Spirit of God to work in us. Search us in all our hearts, try us, and see if there be any wicked way in us. Take your word and by your Spirit, Work in our hearts and lives that we may walk in the light of your word and that we may walk in the light as you were in the light. And we ask you this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? Well, a lot of people. And when you look at what Peter's talking about in suffering, that theme kind of runs through his entire epistle. He mentions it a lot of times. Peter's melodic line can be stated as follows. Having been redeemed by Christ, live holy lives in the midst of suffering, following Christ's example and fitting your hope firmly on the grace to be revealed at his coming. That's the melodic line that just runs through the epistle. And everything kind of hangs on that line as you read through. And that idea of suffering is something that we really kind of don't like to think about much. And sometimes we think about suffering in terms of, well, somebody's doing something bad to me or I'm being treated unjustly, but we can suffer in a lot of ways. My daughter suffered at the hands of her husband, and he tried to kill her. My grandson is 18. He's never seen his father. She got through that, but now she has MS. She's had it for a number of years, and she's getting weaker, and she's being more and more disabled as time goes on. She can't take a shower without hurting. It actually causes her pain to take a shower. She has to go to bed. She didn't ask for that. She didn't do anything for that. But she's suffering. Well, how does she fare in that suffering? What is her response to God in the midst of that suffering? Does she have anyone say to her, Cheryl, how do you hold up? on that saying that she does or she doesn't because I don't know. I mean, I'm not with her every day, but her response should be something of a defense of Christ. She should say something like, I can make it through this even though it's hard because of Christ. When I went to seminary, I had the honor of making one of the best friends I think I ever had in my life. I was the first white man that his wife would let in her house, because they had suffered so much prejudice, all while they were growing up. And when they went to Bible college, a Bible college, a Christian Bible college, they were discriminated against. He was part of the token black community that the school wanted so that they could get their PhD program going. And all these guys knew that. But Larry was... Larry... Larry Payne taught me things. You see, seminary could give me some good information, theologically, but Larry Payne taught me how to live. He taught me how to look at my life through the lens of Christ. No one else did that. A number of years ago, some lady driving in the street lost her consciousness, and she ran over him. She hit him. Broke both of his legs. That was suffering. When I talked to him on the phone, I said, Larry, what is going on? He just said, you know, John, He said this to me all the time. He said, John, the Lord is good. The Lord is good. Last week, his daughter, who was younger than my eldest daughter, Cheryl, but her name is Michelle, and she died of cancer. She struggled with it for seven years, and Larry had to bury her. That's suffering, guys. You're going to go through this in your lives. And people are going to look at you and they're going to wonder, you know, how do you go through this? How do you deal with this? And you can respond as a Christian would respond when someone asks you, how can you have a hope in the midst of all this? Well, we can have hope because of Jesus Christ, because we know that this life will end for all of us. And we will be in glory with our Lord Jesus. And we can bear testimony of that to people. And we can be an encouragement, even to those who don't believe, by just being good Christians. And living a godly life before them. And giving them a defense of the gospel. That is, to tell them why you have hope and what keeps you going. Well, when you suffer, Peter gives us some ideas about how we can go through it. And he says, first of all, when you suffer for the sake of righteousness, and that can come in many ways, so don't Don't block this off in your mind and say, well, it has to be that I'm dying or a martyr's death or something like that. Don't get that out of your mind. Suffering for righteousness is suffering as a righteous person regardless of the source of that suffering. Now, there will be people who may attack you. Our days are coming when the church may be attacked. And so we will be suffering for righteousness in a different way then. But you suffer as a righteous person, a person who believes in Christ, as you go through your life. Just live your life every day, and you're going to find there's suffering there. You can't avoid it. Because life in a broken world is full of suffering. Well, what do you do when you go through that? Well, Peter tells us, first of all, don't fear. Don't be intimidated by anything. Rather, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart. You all have something that you hold up that is like your Lord. It could be Christ, but we all have these little idols in our hearts, don't we? I'm afraid of men. I'm afraid of what they'll say to me. or woe is me, this bad thing happened. We all have those kinds of things in our lives, and what Peter says is, don't elevate anything as Lord in your life except Christ. Sanctify Him as your Lord. Now I know we're in Reformed circles, and so we don't often hear the term, you know, or often hear the phrase, choose this day whom you will serve. We hear that in the Old Testament, but we rarely hear it from the pulpit. But Peter's telling us something just like that. Choose this day whom you will serve. Is Christ your Lord or something else your Lord? If Christ is your Lord, then when you go through suffering and you have Him as your Lord, it's then to Him that you appeal for help. It's to Him that you rely when you're facing things that will bring you to your knees. It's on Him that you will place all of your confidence. And in that last hours of your death, you will place all of your confidence in Him because you know that He cares for you. Sanctify Christ as the Lord in your heart. I had cancer a few years back. And chemotherapy is horrible. I hate it. And so somebody said, well, you're going to go be checked for cancer. And I said, no, I'm not. Because I'm not going to go through that again. I'm thankful that I'm clean. But in the context of that trial, of that suffering, I learned that my only hope, my only comfort in life and in death, is Jesus Christ. So I want to live each day as full as I can to the glory of the Lord that I sanctify in my heart. And when people ask me, and they have asked me, well, you know, aren't you afraid? And I said, no, I'm not. I trust fully in my Lord and my Savior. I'm not worried about what's going to happen. I'm not worried about if my life will be short. Christ and Christ alone is my Lord. So that's the first thing. When you face suffering, whatever kind of suffering it is, and if it's unjustly given to you, remember this, Christ is the Lord and he is not letting that come into your life to hurt you. He's allowing that to come into your life to mold you and shape you. That's why Paul says in Romans 8, All things work together for the good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, those He predestined. And those He predestined, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. So if you're in a pressure cooker right now, if the world is pressing you in, if life is making you feel like you're going to collapse, remember this, God has you in that place. for a good reason, and that reason is to conform you to the image of His Son, who is your Lord and your Savior. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. And then Peter says, always be ready to make a defense, that is, always be ready to offer an apologetic, that's the word that is used, apologetic, To everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. What does Peter mean when he says offer a defense or offer an apologetic? We often think of apologetics, well that's what they do at seminary and you have to learn philosophy and you got to know all those weird people like David Hume and Immanuel Kant and you think to yourself, that's just too heady for me. That is not what Peter has in view. When Peter says, make a defense, he means that we need to be like the Apostle Paul. Paul gives us some of the greatest examples of apologetic. Okay? Look back at Acts chapter 26. You get a good example of an apologetic. Acts chapter 26. Now, I'm only going to just read a few verses here and there. I don't want to go through the whole chapter. But let's ask ourselves, well, what is the defense? This is the context. Paul is standing before King Agrippa. He had been examined by Thestis, who really didn't think he did anything wrong, and Festus wanted Paul to go back to Jerusalem, and Paul refused, and then he appealed to Caesar to hear his case. And so Festus kept him around a couple of years, I think, and then he made his defense before King Agrippa, and that's the context of Acts chapter 26. And the first thing that we notice when we Look at Paul's defense. It's a personal testimony. Did you ever think that your personal testimony of Christ's work in your life is an apologetic? Well, it is. Some people think, well, I really don't have much of a testimony. I grew up in the church, and I kind of always believed in Christ. and I still believe in Christ and I trust in Him, so I don't have much of a defense. I mean, who wants to listen to my life story? You know, that's the greatest life story you could tell anyone? Do you know the testimony of God's faithfulness that's in your life for you who have grown up in the church and have continued in the faith all these years? Do you know how great that is? Don't ever diminish that. Don't ever think, oh, well, I was never a druggie or a drunk, you know. I was never that way, so I don't have much of a testimony. You have a great testimony. You have a great testimony of what Christ has done in your life throughout your whole life. He's been faithful. Now Paul, he had one of those Damascus roads. His was THE Damascus road experience. And some people have those. I had one of those. You know, this is what I was. a bad, drunken person, and then Christ changed me, and this is what I am now. So I have a testimony like that. But remember, it doesn't matter what your testimony is like, how you grew up, and whether you have this dramatic Damascus Road testimony, or whether you have just a normal, you know, Christian testimony, doesn't matter. It's personal. You are telling people what Christ has done in your life. That's what Paul did. Paul says to Agrippa, beginning in verse 6 of Acts 26, And now I am standing trial for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers, the promise to which our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly serve God night and day. And for this hope, O King, I am being accused by the Jews. Why is it considered incredible among you that people that God would raise the dead? So then I thought to myself that I had many things to do, hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that's just what I did. Verse 10. And not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priest, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. He's speaking there in particular of Stephen. If you remember when Stephen was stoned in Acts 7. And as I punished them in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme. I mean, Paul, he was really ruthless. And being furiously enraged with them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities. Now, he says, I was on my way to Damascus. I was on my way to Damascus, and we're going down the road, me and some other guys, and I see this great light. Oh, it blinded me. And the men didn't understand the words, but they heard the voice, and King Agrippa Jesus spoke to me. And when I heard his voice, I said, well, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but stand up. This is verse nine, 16, on your feet for this purpose. I have appeared to you to appoint you a minister and a witness, not only to the things which you have seen, but also the things to which I will appear to you, rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you. to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by me." Paul's personal testimony of what Christ did in his life. Do you have a personal testimony of what Christ did in your life? Whether it started as a child and has continued to this day or whether you have been changed from a different person that you once were, now you're something else, it's your personal testimony. It's powerful. All you have to do is make sure that when you give it, you're sincere and that you're consistent in your life. And that's the other thing that you need to understand. When Paul stood before Agrippa and he gave his defense, his apologetics, they could not find fault with him. He lived a consistent life. His testimony was consistent before then. In fact, in verse 32, King Agrippa says to Festus, this man might have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar. Why? Because he hasn't done anything wrong, and it's obvious. When you give your personal testimony, what you need to understand is that your life must accompany it. Your life and your faith should not be two separate, distinct things. Your life should complement your faith. There should be a consistency between your actions and your words. Because if there's not, I can tell you that your personal testimony will fall to the ground. I once worked with a man, we always had arguments, because he was not reformed, and I was kind of reformed at the time. So we always had these great discussions, and he would come down to the chem lab where I worked, and he would say, you know, what about this, and what about this, and we'd get into these discussions. And I looked at him one day and I said, you know something, you talk A lot. And you seem to have this grasp of theology. But I said your life is despicable. You know, you stand around and you curse your employers. You curse this place. You curse the people you work with. You're always talking bad about everybody. And yet you come down here and you talk to me about theology. I said, there's something wrong with that. He told me, he said, well, you know, at home, I'm a humble guy. And I said, well, you need to be a humble guy here. Because, you see, his actions and his words were not complimentary. And his testimony was not a defense of the faith. What it was, it was the defense of hypocrisy. We have to Be careful about that. Thirdly, then, I would point out to you that Paul's defense is biblical and gospel focused. As he talks to the king, he says, I stand, this is verse 22 in Acts 26, I stand to you, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but, nothing but, nothing but, What the prophets and Moses said was going to take place, that the Christ was to suffer and that by reason of his resurrection from the dead, he would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles. So Paul's defense wasn't appealing to some philosopher somewhere. His defense was an appeal to scriptures. Don't ever underestimate the power of the Word of God in your testimony. Don't ever underestimate it. I had two conversations over a period of years with two physicists, and neither one of them believed me. believe the Word of God, not me. They wanted to talk to me, so I would go meet with this one, and he'd waxed eloquent about this certain group that he was with, how they gave him all these nice principles to live on, and he wanted me to go to that. And I said, no, I don't want to go to that. He said, I'll pay your way. And I said, I don't want you to pay my way. I don't want to go. I said, the Bible gives me all that I need. I don't really need all that other stuff. One day, I was in his office, and I was just about ready to leave, and his mother called. And as he talked on the phone, I noticed in about five minutes, he said, Mom, I love you. He said it like five or six times. Mom, I love you. Mom, I love you. And so when we're leaving, he was talking to me, and he said, well, you know, I really don't know about you know, this Christianity stuff. And it was actually our last meeting. And I said, well, let me tell you something, Mark. I said, you just got off the phone with your mother. And you said to her at least five or six times, Mom, I love you. I said, from your worldview, you can't even tell me what that means. And he couldn't talk. I literally saw a lump form in his throat, and he gulped, and he said, you're right. The other physicist I met with was a skeptic. Well, actually, he wasn't a skeptic. He just didn't believe the Bible. And one day we were having lunch, and he said, you know that Bible you believe in? He says, I don't know why you believe that junk. You know Joshua, right? You know Joshua?" And I go, yeah. He said, you know about the sun standing still? You know that story? And I go, yeah. The sun standing still in the Valley of Aguilan. I remember that story. He said, let me tell you this, as a physicist. If that happened, The whole universe would have just came apart. It would have all fallen apart because to stop the world from moving so that the sun would stay where it was, everything would just come apart. It would just fly apart. The whole universe would have been destroyed. And I said, really? I said, yeah, that makes sense to me. I said, but the Bible also says that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power. I said, now, if Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power, And he said to the sun stands still, and he still upholds all things by the word of his power, then it seems to me that the world would not all fly apart, the universe wouldn't fall apart, because he'd be still holding it up by the word of his power. I said, does that make sense to you? And he just didn't have anything else to say. He said, yeah, if that's true, then that would work. And I said, that's why I believe the Bible. I believe Christ. I trust him. So, as you're thinking about defending the faith, don't exclude the scripture from your defense, because the scripture is self-attesting, and it is your best defense. Also, we're supposed to thank Christ as Lord in our heart, and we're supposed to offer a defense of the gospel. And that gospel, that defense of the gospel, the defense of our hope is to be personal, is to be consistent with our lives, and it is to be biblical and gospel-focused. When you go through suffering, whatever it is, bear this in mind. People are they really do want to know why you have hope. People really want to hear, when they see you struggle, they really want to know what holds you together. And it's your opportunity, in that context, to tell them about the power and the wonder of your Savior. It's in that context that you can declare to them your only comfort in life and in death. Let's pray. Our gracious God, we thank you for your love. Christ, our Savior, you have done everything for us. Our God, you have given us all that we need for life and godliness. You call us to cast our care upon You because You care for us. You love us while we were unlovable. While we were yet sinners, You sent Your Son to die for us. And in doing so, You demonstrated Your love for us. Our God, as we live our lives in our world, help us to be consistent. Help us to be Bible-focused, help us to bring Christ as the center. Christ as Lord. Help us to sanctify Him. That we may declare Your grace to all men. That You may be glorified. That You may be honored. And we ask it in Christ's name, Amen.