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What a joy to be back with you
this morning. I would if you would honor God's
word by standing on your feet. And, Brother Allen, would you
read 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 13 through 17? Turn in your Bibles,
1 Peter chapter 3. verses 13 through 17. Precious
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you do
not leave us to wander aimlessly in this world, but you sent your
word, God, and you moved upon 40 men to pin them down, God,
and Lord, you moved in miraculous and supernatural ways through
the centuries to preserve your word for us, God, that today
we're able to read the word of the living God in English and
understand it and pursue it and study it and exposit it and exegete
it. Oh God, what a blessing you have
given us that you did not leave us to ourselves, Lord, to do
the best that we knew how to do, but God, you've given us
infallible truth, God, and we praise you now. Oh God, I beg
you, Father, that you would now give us insight as we look over
Peter's shoulder this morning, God, as he was moved along by
God, the Holy Spirit, to pin down these words, God, and I
pray, God, that you would give us insight into what he had in
mind when he wrote these words, God, that we can be your people
and that you can be our God. In Jesus Christ's most precious
name, amen. God bless you, you may be seated.
I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in Gulfport.
It's always a joy to be here with you. I'm always surprised
when anybody invites me back. I'll just be honest with you.
I get invited to a lot of places once, but I'm usually not ever
asked to come back. This is many times I've been
here and it always amazes me. It's not my fault. The elders
have invited me. The song that we sang a while
ago about Christ is mine forevermore. Oh, if that was ever a theme
for this message, that would be it. But I have sought for
a number of years to understand suffering biblically and that
why God allows us to suffer, why God calls us out of sin and
washes us from our sins and cleanses us and inhabits us and empowers
us and blesses us and changes us and then he burns us up. And what that's all about and
why terrible, horrible, horrific things happen to some of the
most godly people. And there's a lot of noise out
there about why people suffer and most of it's wrong. And so
I've sought to develop a theology of suffering that would be biblical. My wife and I were blessed to
experience a season of suffering that has lasted over 20 years.
where we've had one calamity, the doctor told us, he said,
you don't get head colds, you have biblical disasters in your
family. And I was seeking to understand
what that's all about and God dealt with my heart to journey
through 1 Peter. The book of 1 Peter is primarily
about suffering and why God allows horrific things to happen to
the best of the people that he has chosen This was a group of
people who had been removed from their homes by Nero and they
had become scattered aliens in chapter one. And Peter is reminding
them that they're called and chosen of God. And then he gets
into really deep theological issues that stagger us in the
second and third chapter. So your elders have asked me
to come back the first Sunday of July and I'm going to finish
this sermon then. But this is part one to examine
verses 13 through 17. It took me 54 sermons to go through
1 Peter. And this is, so I'm gonna have
to begin in the middle, so to speak. So just please bear with
me. But the apostle just finished
a very important section of this inspired letter in verse 12 about
prayer. And he quoted from Psalm 34 and
he said, for the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous.
and his ears attend to their prayer but the face of the Lord
is against those who do evil. So Peter was telling us that
our prayers will be hindered even if we are saved unless we
are pursuing righteousness. Now the word righteousness is
used in this context is talking about obedience. So unless we
are actively and consciously walking in obedience to that
which God has said, Peter says that our prayers are hindered.
And in context, the obedience that Peter was referring to was
with husbands and wives. Peter commanded believing husbands
in 1 Peter 3 verse 7, live with your wives in an understanding
way as with someone weaker since she is a woman and show her honor
as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Peter commanded believing
wives in 1 Peter 3, one through six, be submissive to your own
husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the
word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their
wives as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. Your
adornment must not be merely external, braiding the hair,
wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses, but let it be the
hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a
gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way in former times
the holy women also who hoped in God used to adorn themselves
being submissive to their own husbands just as Sarah obeyed
Abraham calling him Lord. And you have become her children
if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.
In other words, there's a way to think And there's a way to
live that will either help or hinder our prayers. And from
this we can formulate a doctrine, a divine teaching, a biblical
truth that we can teach and learn and proclaim with great confidence
from these texts. And here's the doctrine. Christians
must endeavor to think and live in a way that does not hinder
our prayers. And this doctrine has three parts
to it. Number one, it is possible that our prayers be hindered
even if we're saved. Our prayer life can become clogged
and blocked. Number two, what blocks prayer
is often the way we think and the way we live, the way we relate
to wives or husbands or kids or parents or colleagues or neighbors,
even those who have wronged us. And number three, opening the
way to prayer to God involves a conscious endeavor. Peter is
telling us to do something so that our prayers will not be
hindered. And the motivation behind us
being of sound judgment and of having a sober spirit is the
end of all things is near, he says. He wrote that 2,000 years
ago. The end of all things is near.
Jesus is soon to come. And he desires that when he bursts
the clouds and comes back that he finds us faithful, fruitful,
and busy in the work of the Lord. The Bible promises great rewards
for those whom the Lord finds like this. And the Bible promises
terrifying punishments to those who are not like this. And that
knowledge will motivate us. But this doctrine tells us something
else. A free, open, real, satisfying
life of prayer is not automatic. It just won't happen by accident. A free, open, real, and satisfying
life of prayer does not automatically come simply because you were
saved. Because it is possible that saved
people can still sin. So it matters how we think. It
matters what we believe. And it matters how we live our
lives. And if that was not true, there would have been no reason
for Peter to go to such length to talk about this. So the name
of the game as it pertains to those who have already experienced
the miracle of the new birth is righteousness. Because righteousness
or obedience is the end result of our belief. The Apostle Paul
taught that salvation was a matter of what we believe with our hearts
and what we confess with our mouths. When he wrote this in
Romans 10 verse nine, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus
is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. If you've ever wondered why Isis
is so interested in getting people to recant Jesus is Lord before
they cut heads off, it's because they believe this verse. I wish
Christians believed this verse. We're not saved by what we do,
we do after we're saved. We're saved by what we believe
in and what we trust in and what we confess and therefore what
we believe and what we trust in and what we confess matters.
You must believe that Jesus is Lord. You must confess with your
mouth. You must believe that God raised him physically, literally
from the dead. But in the very next verse, the
apostle tells us what the results are to that belief and confession. Romans 10 verse 10 says this,
for with the heart, a person believes, resulting in righteousness. and with the mouth he confesses,
resulting in salvation. So we are not to simply believe
and confess. We are to believe, resulting
in righteousness, or obedience, and we are to confess, resulting
in salvation, which is new spiritual life. So true, genuine biblical
salvation always results in the individual being radically and
eternally transformed so that he has both the power and the
desire to follow Jesus, to walk in humble and joyful obedience,
to bear godly fruit, to love God and the things of God. So
obedience or righteousness is the sign or the fruit or the
goal or the result of correct belief. There is no such thing
as anybody who has truly experienced the miracle of the new birth
who does not gladly pursue obedience to that which God has said. The
Bible teaches that saved people are to live our lives in such
a way that two things are always true, that God is glorified by
how we live our lives and that our joy is made full. And Peter says that living like
that will always guarantee that our prayers will be helped. And there are no exceptions to
this truth because even though his immediate audience is being
horribly persecuted, Peter issues these apostolic commands. So
what Peter has described so far in this first epistle is what
faithfulness to what God has said looks like. He has told
us how obedience to God's commandments will make us behave. But as we
have discovered all forms of obedience are not the same. There
are at least three different kinds of obedience that are possible
in a person's life. The first one is forced obedience. If you've ever had children then
your children are familiar with this type of obedience. It's
called forced obedience. Then there's fearful obedience. If you've ever been to school,
you know about fearful obedience. And then there is glad obedience. Forced obedience occurs when
there is some power or authority that is exercised over an individual
that compels him to obey. such as in school, where the
environment is controlled and there are teachers and principals
who will administer punishment if the student doesn't obey.
Back when they used to be able to spank children, they really
did used to be able to spank children in school. And I was
one of the children who was spanked. And I thank God. And when I got
saved, I wrote a letter to all my coaches and all the people
who administered that punishment to me. thanking them for administering
that. But the coach had a paddle, it
was about that wide, it was about that thick, and he had holes
drilled in it so when he moved it, it wouldn't slow down with
the air. And I wasn't as big as I am now, and so he grabbed
the edge of the desk and the first swat would get you over
the desk into the garbage can. Then the other three your cerebral
cortex would have a revelation of God. And back then it was
about great bubble gum, the nickel kind, that you put about three
of them in your mouth and your jaws are out like that and they're
so sour and it's so delicious. But we couldn't chew gum in school
and so I was disobedient and I got sent to the coach's office
once. And after that, there was something
happened to me. I was tempted many times to go
get some more gum, but something, my feet would freeze, and I would
remember the administration of this forced obedience, and I
was forced to obey, and it was a way of obedience that was better
than disobedience. So, but if you stop and think
about it, in this case, the motivation to obey is outside of you. It's external. And that brings
glory or praise to the coach or to your mother or to your
father or to whoever. Fearful obedience occurs when
punishment is promised and the fear of the punishment is greater
than any pleasure derived from the rebellion. In my home, we
didn't have a democracy. We had a benevolent dictatorship,
and I was the head honcho, and so we ran a very tight ship,
and so my children were terrified to cross certain lines until
they got old enough to grow up, and then they had children of
their own, and they hated me for a while there, and then they
called me and told me I was the smartest man they ever knew.
That's fearful obedience. The result is that many people
don't do what they really want to do. And the cause of that
restraint is a fear, a repercussion of a fear of exposure, a fear
of punishment. And a person motivated by this
fear may obey the law. He may remain faithful to his
wife, but he does so not out of any genuine love for his city
or his wife. but only because the punishment
or the publicity is greater than he's willing to risk. So in this
case, the fear that he has causes his obedience. And the catalyst
by which that fear is put into practice is his own human willpower
and discipline to restrain himself based in that fear. And that brings glory to us. But I suggest to you that neither
one of those kinds of obedience glorifies God. Now to be sure,
both forced and fearful obedience is better than blatant disobedience.
But only glad obedience. And obedience, a righteousness
that is based in joy, has the ability to bring glory to God. Now why is that? Because both
forced and fearful obedience has the wrong motivation. So
even though from the outside, both of these kinds of obedience
look good, the motivation is all wrong. And so neither one
of them honors God. The only kind of obedience that
honors God and that displays the inherent worth and value
of Jesus Christ is an obedience that is based in a radically
transformed nature that now truly loves God and that seeks to please
him. One that trusts in what God has
promised. A thousand years before Jesus
was born, King David wrote this in Psalm 16, verse 11, in your
presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand there are
pleasures evermore. Jesus echoed that when he said
in John 15, 11, these things I have spoken to you that my
joy might be in you and that your joy might be full. So there is a joy that belongs
to Jesus. It doesn't belong to you or me.
This joy is not of this world. It is a supernatural joy, a powerful
joy, an eternal joy. This joy is different from any
other kind of human happiness that exists. David said this
joy was in the very presence of God, so you can't work it
up, you can't manufacture this joy, and the phrase the presence
of God refers to this righteousness, this obedience, and that means
that obedience brings you near to God, while disobedience would
place you at a distance from God out of his presence. And David said these pleasures
were at God's right hand, which is where Jesus is. who always
obeyed his father. So this joy is a gift from God
through a strong and real and powerful and obedient relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that this relationship
is called salvation because salvation brings us near to God. It empowers
us to obey and to follow after Jesus Christ gladly. And we receive this gift of joy
the very same way we were saved in the first place, by grace,
through faith. But the grace and faith of this
gift of joy flows out from an obedience that results from us
already being saved. And this is why it must be a
glad obedience, an obedience that is based in joy, not an
obedience based in either fear or force. So righteousness is
obedience and that means that disobedience is unrighteousness
or sin. But what exactly are we supposed
to obey? We are either obedient or disobedient
to what God has said, what he has decreed, what he has commanded,
what he expects out of us. So we are either righteous or
unrighteous depending on whether we have obeyed or disobeyed God's
commandments. Okay. But what are commandments? Well, commandments are mandates
or orders given by God. And all commandments have to
do with one of two components of human existence, our actions
or our disposition. Most of the time when we think
about God's commandments, we think about the Ten Commandments
from Exodus 20, like, you shall have no other gods before the
one and true living God. You shall not make an idol to
bow down in worship. You shall not take the name of
the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep
it holy. Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not commit murder, adultery. You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness, and you shall not covet. And
from these 10 flow out literally thousands of other commandments
that pertain to our behavior. And the kinds of commandments
that pertain to our behavior almost always limit our behavior. If you've noticed, they restrict
what we are allowed to do. All commandments restrict your
behavior. So commandments that have to do with our behavior
are almost always understood through us refraining from other
types of behavior. For example, in Leviticus 18,
there are 18 verses that forbid the kinds of sexual behavior
that was common with both the ancient Egyptians and the ancient
Canaanites. And as you study this along with
the rest of the Bible, you come to realize that every single
expression of human sexuality is forbidden by God except one. Between one naturally born man
and one naturally born female within the confines of holy matrimony. Every other expression of human
sexuality is sin. But why is it that the only sexuality
that is allowed by God is very narrowly understood? Sexuality
is a huge part of who we are. Human sexuality is a very powerful
biological as well as an emotional reality. Some would say it's
even a spiritual reality. The intensity of the desire of
humans to procreate is second only to the intensity of self-preservation. And that is why sexuality is
one of the most common areas where people sin. But why would
a good and gracious God limit the sexual behavior of human
beings so drastically knowing how large an issue it is? Well, we have two choices, that
God is a killjoy or that God is very wise. God is either an
old-fashioned fuddy-duddy who doesn't want anybody to have
any fun, or there is a very wise reason behind such a radical
restriction. And if you think that God doesn't
want anybody to have any fun, you haven't read the Bible very
much. God is more concerned about joy and happiness than you are.
God is the happiest being in the universe. You've never known
happiness the way God is happy. You've never experienced it a
single time in your life. We taste only a taste of what
is to come on this earth. That's the best it gets. God
is eternally, fully happy all the time. God is more concerned about happiness
and joy than any human on earth. God promotes things like joy
and pleasure and love and happiness on nearly every page of sacred
writ. So it is precisely because sexuality
is so important that it is restricted so drastically. It is precisely
because human sexuality is so different from almost any other
act that makes sexual sins so devastating. And it is because
the ramifications about engaging in sexual expressions are so
deeply experienced and bring about such a depth of despair
and turmoil as to why God forbids it almost exclusively. So there
are two reasons why God tells us not to engage in certain activities. Number one, they do not honor
him, which is the main reason. Then number two, they hurt us.
The main reason that God forbids certain behaviors is because
they do not bring him glory. Those behaviors dishonor God.
They belittle his majesty, and that is the biblical definition
of sin. Whatever doesn't glorify God,
and that's enough. There doesn't have to be any
other reason why God forbids certain behavior other than that
they dishonor him and rob him of the glory that only belongs
to him, but many times, There is another reason why God forbids
certain behavior. You see, God loves everyone in
the sense that he provides many good and kind and merciful things
for us in this life. It is an expression of God's
overall love and kindness to all of mankind that gives us
nice sunny days and barbecues and children's laughter and comfortable
chairs and antibiotics and waterfalls, even though most people sin against
God with impunity. So the fact that there is any
laughter at all in this broken world, the fact that there is
any peace, any joy, any goodness, any kindness shown to any extent
to anybody at any time is a testimony of God's general love, his common
grace to all of mankind. Now it's true that this general
love doesn't save anyone, but the many ways that God demonstrates
this common grace is an expression of the fact that to some extent,
God loves everyone, even those he has no intention of saving.
But God loves his elect even more than this general expression. God loves those he has chosen
to save to such an extent that he will invade their lives. He
will interrupt their plans. He will forcefully transform
their nature so they can be saved. So it is God's overall love for
all of mankind that results in such a narrow allowance of human
sexuality. Firstly, because these expressions
do not bring him any glory. They dishonor and tarnish the
vision of Jesus and his church. That is the main reason God restricts
our behavior as it pertains to sexuality. But God also tells
us no. Because without those restrictions
found in the commandments, human beings would annihilate ourselves.
Left to ourselves, we would ruin genuine love. We would not only
become hard-hearted and diseased, but we would become more and
more miserable. You gotta remember, entire civilizations
were wiped out by venereal disease before the common grace of God
invented penicillin and antibiotics. But there are other commandments
that don't have anything to do with our behavior, and they aren't
restrictive in nature either. These commandments have to do
with our disposition, and they enlarge our capacity, and they
don't restrict it. For example, in the very beginning,
this is what God said in Deuteronomy 6, verse four and five. Hear,
O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
and with all your might. And Jesus underscored the importance
of this commandment when he said in Matthew 23, 37 and 38, you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and foremost
commandment. Jesus said that the greatest
and foremost commandment of God was not keeping the Sabbath.
It was not reading the Bible or praying or keeping ourselves
sexually pure. The most important commandment
that God ever gave was not telling us to refrain from idols or to
honor our parents. In fact, the greatest commandment
has nothing to do with any action on our part at all. It has nothing
to do with any exercise of our willpower that we can demonstrate
or any discipline that we can muster. The foremost commandment
has to do with the disposition of our hearts. We are commanded
by God to love him. How do you command somebody to
love you? Why would God have to order us
to love him? Shouldn't love flow out from
our hearts naturally? And if you have to command it
and coerce it, is it really love? If God is as good and as lovely
and as beautiful and as wonderful as the Bible declares, why would
he have to threaten us to love him? And the fact that he does
this, does this not indicate to us that any love that we might
have for God is forced? How do you order or issue a mandate
to love? Isn't love a free response of
the human heart? And by definition, doesn't love
have to be voluntary? And if it isn't voluntary, how
is it love? How do you order the human heart
to produce love? Would that not constitute forced
or fearful obedience? Yeah, it would until you realize
that we're fallen. And unless and until God sovereignly
and powerfully intervenes in our lives to give us the gift
of love for himself, no human being would ever love God. The reality is that nobody loves
God on their own. That's a lie. We lost that desire
and ability in the fall. So without God granting us a
love for himself, nobody could love God. So while we're pondering
this, we must also understand that loving God is not optional.
We are commanded to love God and God has promised terrible
and frightening and eternal punishments to those who will not love him.
The Bible says that God casts people into hell because they
don't love him. So not only am I ordered to love
God, but he has promised eternal damnation to me if I do not.
And since that is true, how do I prevent any love that I might
could muster up for God not being a love based in fear? Well, it
would be fearful obedience if we could muster up a love for
God on our own, but we can't. Love for God must come from God. Every son and daughter of Adam
are entirely incapable and unwilling of loving God unless and until
God graciously gives them that ability. From the moment Adam
sinned, loving God became abnormal for anyone. It became completely
unnatural for humans to love God. It is strange, odd, and
weird for any of us to love God. We should be amazed that any
of us loves God. It ought to startle us. It should
flabbergast us that we could love God because loving God is
only by permission. No human can manufacture a love
for God. It does not originate from inside
any person and nobody can work it up. According to 1 John 4,19,
love for God is a gift from God. But then it gets even worse for
us because in John 14 and 15, Jesus linked all of our obedience
to all of God's commandments to our love for God. When he
said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus says
here that by me keeping and me obeying God's commandments that
that is the result of, it is the product of me loving Jesus. So my obedience to those commands
that involve action on my part proves that what I say about
my love for Jesus is true. And that means that obedience
is the outward and the visible and the tangible proof of my
love for Jesus Christ. So even though I'm not always
successful, the fact that I am willing to struggle against the
various lusts of my flesh and strive to obey God's commandments
proves that I love Jesus, that I value Jesus, that I see Jesus
as the treasure of the universe. Okay, got that. But how do I
make myself love God, Brother Blair, in the first place? How
can I suddenly turn on the switch that will allow me to obey the
command to love the God of the universe? How can my very unpredictable
heart begin to love God? In his mercy, God has chosen
the most unusual way of all. It's called suffering. and not
just any kind of suffering. It isn't that an increase of
pain or agony brings about a love for God. No, simply hurting doesn't
make anybody love God. But Peter talked about a special
kind of suffering that does have this effect on us. Here's what
the apostle called it. He called it suffering for the
sake of righteousness. Suffering for the sake of, suffering
for the purpose of, suffering for the cause of righteousness
for the sake of obedience. Here's what he said, 1 Peter
3, verses 13 through 16. 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. Are you
kidding me? The guy's got a whip and he's
beating the stew out of me and I'm not supposed to be troubled?
That's what Peter says. But sanctify Christ as Lord in
your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to anyone,
everyone who asks you to give an account of 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. Now Peter says something here
that's almost ridiculous. It simply makes no sense to the
natural mind. God, the Holy Spirit, moved along
this man who walked on water with Jesus to say, but even if
you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. So there is a version of suffering
that has as its end goal righteousness or obedience. And Peter says
that it is for the sake of this righteousness that we suffer. In other words, this form of
suffering brings us into right standing with God. This form
of suffering transforms us and brings about an obedience in
us. And the way that it is worded here in the original Greek tells
us that this righteousness, this right standing with God, this
obedience is a product of or a result of our suffering. But what is also curious about
this is that Peter doesn't specify what righteousness or obedience
he's talking about. He doesn't limit this righteousness
or this obedience to simply the commandments that require action
on our part. So this is all inclusive. The
righteousness that Peter is referring to here is the product of this
kind of suffering, has to do with all of God's commandments,
even those that pertain to the disposition of our hearts. So in that sense, this kind of
suffering will produce in us an all-inclusive obedience, a
comprehensive righteousness about the command to love God. the
command to enjoy God, the command to find our complete satisfaction
in God, as well as the many, many commands to do certain things
or to refrain from doing other things. And this is why the apostle
tells us we are blessed. when we suffer like this. Now,
most of the time we sense that we are blessed by God when we
get a raise on the job, or when we are able by God's mercy to
buy something that we need or want, or when we are healed from
a terrible disease, or when we're delivered from a terrible and
painful situation. But Peter says here that we are
blessed, meaning we are favored by God, meaning we are in a good
place with Jesus when we suffer for the sake of righteousness. but that also explains why the
apostle didn't use words like endure here. No, he used the
word blessed. Peter said, but even if you should
suffer for the sake of righteousness, you're blessed. So this is not
talking about a suffering that we need to close our eyes and
grit our teeth and hope we can outlast or endure. This is not
a suffering that the only way we are blessed is after it's
over with. This is a suffering that should elicit a praise from
us toward God, a thanksgiving to God. In other words, we're
better off having suffered like this. We are more obedient, more
righteous, closer to God, in more of a right standing with
God. Things become more focused in our eyes precisely because
of this suffering that would not have been had we not suffered. These are strange words. Now,
most of my journey as a Christian, when this passage has been read
or studied, the teacher or preacher has gone past this as fast as
possible. And I think there are a few reasons
for that. But the main reason is because
nobody wants to suffer in the first place. The line for receiving
spiritual gifts is real long. The line to receive material
blessings will go down the aisle, out the front door, and around
the block. But the line to receive suffering is almost non-existent. But the second reason is because
very few people actually understand God's purpose behind why genuine
believers suffer in the first place. There is very little teaching
about suffering in general. And what little teaching is out
there is mainly about how we can avoid suffering or get out
of it as soon as possible. But I want you to please turn
with me to read what the Apostle Paul wrote about this. In your
Bibles, Philippians chapter 3. Philippians chapter 3. I want
your eyes to look at this with me so you can think I'm not making
this stuff up. This is radical theology. Philippians chapter
3, beginning with verse 8. Philippians chapter 3, beginning
with verse 8. I love that sound when pages
are turning. I tell everybody in my church, if you've got an
iPad, you have to get the app that when you turn, it makes
that noise like the pages are turning. I always love to hear
pages turning. You want to read this for yourself.
Here's what Paul said, Not having a righteousness of
my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith
in Christ. The righteousness which comes from God on the basis
of faith that I may know him and the power of his resurrection
and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it or already become perfect,
but I press on. so that I may lay hold of that
for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren,
I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one
thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to
what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the
upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Now look what he says.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude. And if in anything you have a
different attitude, God will reveal this also to you. How
you reckon God's gonna reveal this to you if you have a different
opinion about what the purpose of suffering? Maybe by you suffering. Now, I know this is a lot to
grasp, but it echoes exactly what Peter is talking about,
so we need to try to grasp it. And I have found that the best
way to grasp deep and profound truths is to take them one bite
at a time. Look at verse eight again. More than that, I count
all things to be what? Loss in view of what? The surpassing value of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. Now
the all things that Paul is talking about here, the things he counted
to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus are not
his many sins and transgressions. Paul is not talking about the
wicked things that God had forgiven him for in this passage. The
things that Paul counts as nothing but loss are all the things that
Paul had accomplished in his life before he was gloriously
saved by Jesus. And he lists them back in verses
five and six. Circumcised the eighth day of
the nation of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the
Hebrews. As to the law, I was a Pharisee. As to zeal, I was
a persecutor of the church. As to the righteousness, which
is in the law, I was found blameless. The good things that Paul had
accomplished, he says, now I count all things as loss. In other
words, Paul was talking about all the things that God had blessed
him with. All of his religious and spiritual
accomplishments, all of his efforts at studying and learning the
Bible, his zeal at protecting Pharisaical Judaism from this
new upstart religion that before he was saved, he viewed to be
a radical departure from the truth and a heresy. We must understand
that Paul persecuted the church. He had men and women killed.
He made children to be orphans and did as much as he could to
destroy Christianity, not because he was an atheist. It's not because he didn't believe
in God. It's not because he saw religion
as the enemy of the state or the opiate of the people. Paul
did great damage to the church because he loved God. Because he was defending his
warped understanding of the 39 books of the Old Testament. And
Paul said that he counted all of his accomplishments as rubbish.
Now that's an interesting Greek word, and it has to do with rotted
human excrement. So because of the surpassing
value of, it's the word skubalon, in case you wanna know it. That's
skubalon. So because of the surpassing
value of knowing Jesus, Paul counted not his sins, but he
counted all of his human accomplishments before Jesus, things that most
people would consider to be blessings from God. has rotted human excrement. It's easy to cast away your darkness
of your soul before you were saved. It's easy to call that
something that's terrible that you don't want. What about all
the things that you had? Paul said, I count the loss of
all of them for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ. That's a level of dedication
that goes beyond the average person. Why was that? The issue at stake here, the
situation that God has worked to deliver him out of was a wrong
understanding of righteousness. Paul said that I may gain Christ
and may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived
from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. So in order to come into the
truth concerning righteousness, Paul had suffered. And he suffered
the loss of the very things that most people would consider to
be good things and things worthy of praise. And this tells us
that this suffering was not a punishment for his many sins. It wasn't
divine retribution for his unwillingness to repent or his refusal to believe. This suffering was God's mercy. bringing Paul into a correct
understanding of righteousness. So Paul's suffering was exactly
what Peter said, suffering for the sake of righteousness. And just like Peter, Paul said
he was blessed for having suffered like this. He was better off
for having suffered. His life with Jesus was made
more favorable because he had suffered. In other words, Paul's
suffering was not something for which we should offer him condolences,
but something for which we should desire to have as well. But to
what end was this suffering for the sake of righteousness? Four
things. Paul said that he suffered the loss of all things so that
he could, number one, know Him. Number two, that he could know
or experience the power of Christ's resurrection. Number three, that
he could know or experience the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. And number four, that he could
be conformed to Christ's death. But to what end? What would be
the goal of knowing or experiencing those four things? Paul said,
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
which is simply another way of saying that Paul desired to remain
faithful to the end so that what is promised to all believers
could be his. But who among us would not want
to know or experience Jesus Christ? Who among us would not want to
know or experience the power of Jesus's resurrection? Again,
the line to desire those two things is very long, but without
the last two, we simply would never experience the first two.
Without God being good to grant us the ability to know or experience
the fellowship of Christ's sufferings and being made conformable to
his death, we will never know or experience Jesus in fullness
and we will never know or experience the power of Christ's resurrection
because the first two brings about the last two. But based
on what is being taught in the modern church, the line to receive
this kind of suffering for the sake of righteousness, which
will produce in us a deep and powerful knowledge of Jesus Christ,
which will produce in us the power of Christ's resurrection,
is almost non-existent. And yet Paul actually prayed
for these things. He asked for them. He sought
them. He volunteered for them. These
hardships didn't just happen to him. They weren't some random
accident or product of chance or fate. God didn't merely push
this kind of suffering onto him for no reason. Paul desired this. Why? Because he saw the benefit
of it. So he earnestly desired to experience
this. Now this is almost beyond comprehension. A man who had accomplished in
life what most people could only dream of, sincerely ask God to
take it all away. Why? In view of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. How does a person get
like this? How does an individual become
a person who would earnestly desire that God would strip him
of all his worldly accomplishments so that he could possess Jesus
to that extent? I would suggest it's suffering
for the sake of righteousness. And that means that this kind
of suffering, this kind of suffering for the sake of righteousness
is to be desired. It is to be prayed for. It is
something we should sincerely request. Not because we simply
want to hurt, not because we're gluttons for punishment, not
so that we can wallow in our misery, not because we are brave
or courageous or so that we can prove to everybody how spiritual
we are. Why? One reason, the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. It either is or it is
not surpassing in value. Now all of this should work to
make sense as to why Peter asks a seemingly silly question in
verse 13. Who is there to harm you if you
prove zealous for what is good? What? You gotta remember who
he's talking to. These people, they were refugees
in every sense of the word. They've lost all their worldly
possessions because they were serving God. There are several groups of people
who would love to harm these scattered aliens to whom the
apostle addresses this epistle. There are the unbelieving Jews,
there are the pagan Romans, both of whom would gladly do the believers
harm. So why is Peter asking this kind
of question? I mean, the very fact that the
people he's talking to have been forcefully removed from their
homes and are now refugees, doesn't that reality answer the question
itself? Has Peter forgotten how these
people have become displaced? We have to remember that the
reason why Nero has forcefully removed these people from their
businesses and their homes was because they were trying to live
the Christian life. So the fact that these people
were already zealous for what is good is the reason they're
suffering right now. So why is Peter asking this question? Peter is focusing on what is
really happening to these people. Because Peter knows that since
God is absolutely sovereign over everything all the time, that
evil men could not touch these believers unless God had sovereignly
allowed it. And if their heavenly Father
who loves them with an everlasting love has voluntarily stepped
aside and has allowed evil men to touch his elect, then there
is a very good and a very wise and a very beneficial reason
behind it, and that reason, my beloved, is righteousness. The
fact that Nero has been allowed by God to drive these people
from their homes and make them to be scattered throughout very
dangerous pagan lands tells the apostle that God is at work in
their lives to bring about a great transformation. God has allowed
evil men to do great harm to God's people so they can become
obedient. Peter says in 1 Peter 3, 14 through
16, 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 do what? Sanctify Christ as Lord
in your hearts, 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 were slandered, those who revile
your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. Now, this
doesn't sound like the language that helpless victims use. This
sounds like the language that people who are being used by
God in evangelism use. This doesn't sound like people
who are sitting down waiting to be slaughtered. This sounds
like people who are faithful and fruitful and busy in the
work of the Lord. This sounds like the language
that people use when they are in the safest place in all the
world, the hands of God. People use language like this
who are being transformed into the image of Christ. So this
is the language of sanctification, not simply martyrdom. This is
the language of growing in respect to salvation. not annihilation. This is not the language of being
a sheep led to the slaughter. This is the language that people
use who are more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. People don't
talk like this who are simply trying to outlast their tormentors
and hold on until Jesus rescues them. People talk like this who
are actively being used by God to help expand the kingdom of
God, one converted soul at a time. And the reason that I know that
to be true is because of what Peter said in the very next verse,
verse 17. For it is better, if God should
will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than
for doing what is wrong. And when I come back, I'll get
into that. Let's pray. Father, we thank you and praise
you for your word. We praise you, God. that Peter
wrote these words down 2,000 years ago, not just for them,
but for us as well. Help us to ponder these words. Help us to apply these words. Help us to comprehend them. Help
us to believe them and trust them, Father, even though they're
very radical to us. Help us, O God, to hold on to
the truth and believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the
land of the living. In Jesus' name, amen.
Suffering For the Sake of Righteousness - Part 1
| Sermon ID | 691915916277 |
| Duration | 55:48 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Peter 3:13-17 |
| Language | English |
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