1 Peter chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3, find verse 15 if you will. And we'll look at our passage for today. 1 Peter 3 verse 15 says, But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. having a good conscience that whereas they speak evil of you as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it is better, if the will of God be so, that you suffer for well-doing than for evildoing." For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedience, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him. Draw your attention to verse 15. When he tells us in verses 13 and 14, And who is he that will harm you, if you be followers of that which is good? But, and if you suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye, be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. And then he says, But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, Here's something you need to grab a hold of. And be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. You need to have a ready answer to every man that asks you of the hope that's in you. Do you have hope this morning? Is there any hope in your life right now? We are living in some very difficult, dangering, depressing times, whereas people are losing hope. People are giving up and giving in and giving out in this thing called life. In the book of 1 Corinthians, the great resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul made this statement that if only in this life only men have hope, they are of all men most miserable. To the billionaire, they got hope because they got enough money to make it through difficult days. To the middle class and the poor that's living paycheck to paycheck, they ain't got much hope right now. Right? No, not in this world exactly right. And you move beyond that and you look at certain cities. that's overrun with corruption, and it looks like nothing's going to get better, those people don't have hope. Don't have hope! For a lot of Christians, the old said and the mentality of people today that are abandoning the church, that are abandoning the gospel of Jesus Christ, that are abandoning the Bible, it looks like for Bible believers, it looks like there ain't much hope for the church. Hope is not some wishful thinking. I want to remind you of the biblical historical context that Peter is writing to people who are being persecuted and falsely accused, they're being slandered, they're being labeled evildoers, though they are living for God. And in the middle of all that, where it seems like all hell has broke loose, they're fighting hell by the acre, it looks like they have no hope and yet people keep coming to them and he reminds them, even when you're at your lowest and you're fighting your hardest battles, when people ask you for a reason of how you keep pressing on, you need to have an answer for them of the hope that lies in you. What makes the difference between a believer and an atheist? When trouble comes, do believers act the same way the atheist does? Do you respond to the trauma and the chaos and the conflicts of life the same way an atheist would? those that are outside of Christ. It's amazing that the littlest amount of things can happen into a Christian's life, so-called Christian or professing Christian or what we would call a nominal Christian, a Christian by name only that claim to believe but they really don't believe because how they respond to crises. How did Job respond in his day of crisis? He ran his mantle, wept, sat down in sackcloth and ashes, and he worshipped the Lord. So your hope better not be in your possessions. It better not be in your position or your career. It better be in Christ because possessions can be stolen and taken. Possessions can be lost. Your position can be done away with at the job and get pink slipped and you are out of a job. But the only person that you and I can truly have hope in is Jesus Christ. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. How do you respond when life doesn't go your way? See, there is a whole lot of teaching out there today. If you're living for God and you're right with God, you'll never suffer, you'll never go through hardship, you'll never be persecuted, you'll never have to deal with hard things in life. And can I tell you, those things are lies straight out of the pit. If Christ, the Son of God, suffered his time in this earth, do you not think we will too be called to suffer? And I want us to just reiterate something here about hope in times of crisis. I believe we are seeing and living in a time of crisis, a time of chaos. that maybe we thought we would never see in our lifetime. Huh? And how do we keep living our lives? How is it that we keep pressing on in spite of our feelings? Right? You're trying to live your Christian life based on feelings, son. It's up and down. But if you are living by faith and have hope in Jesus Christ, You've got something that gives you some hope when it don't look like there is much hope. I began to think about life and the problems of life that come. Faith being what makes a believer a believer. Because it is by faith we got in. It's faith that we keep on. continuing, and it's faith that's going to carry us home. Faith, it acts upon the reality of the truth that has been illuminated in our hearts and minds. How do we reach a world? Here's a question I began to think this week. How do we reach a world that doesn't understand the Lord, His Word, or His ways? How do you reach a world that doesn't understand the Lord, His Word, or His ways by His people living in the world? Has it ever occurred to you… He draws our attention to verse 18, to Christ being our example. And Christ didn't suffer for His own self. He suffered for other people. Has it ever occurred to you the suffering you're going through ain't for you, it's for somebody you love? And that's going to be the means that brings them to faith in Christ. Oh, absolutely. If the sufferings that befell upon Christ brought about our salvation, couldn't it not be God would use our suffering, our pain, our problems, and how He works in our life in those moments that we have hope when there is no hope, hallelujah, and we see our family, our friends come to faith because of what we went through and God at work in our lives. Now, this is why we need to have a ready answer. This is the only way you're going to reach the world. This is how we're going to reach our friends, our family, our co-workers, is that when they know what we're going through, and they see God actively at work in our lives and we still have joy unspeakable and full of glory, their life ain't always peachy. When we go through difficult moments is that we as God's people need to understand we are not without hope. What will you do when you get diagnosed with something that the doctors keep giving you the run around on? How is it that you're going to continue to have faith in Christ when you can't get no answers from nobody? How is it that you're going to keep on serving God when you keep praying for God to turn things around, yet God isn't turning anything around? Real life, y'all know, every one of us is living somewhere in those lines. We're praying for something, we're desiring God to do something, and God seems to be silent about it. How much longer is God going to put up with this? How much longer is God going to cause us to have to wait? He's fixing to give us the example of Noah who preached and worked for 120 years and only eight people got in. Was Noah's work of faith in vain? No, because he got eight in. If you just reach one person, your suffering and your hardship has been worth it all. This idea of mass conversions and these big evangelistic crusades that are pumping out thousands upon thousands of quote unquote converts has made people who can't reach but a handful in their lifetime feel like they're insufficient in God. Can I tell you that's the people God's using more than the crusaders. I'm trying to encourage us this morning about our hope has to be live in Jesus Christ. Our hope can't be in numbers. Our hope can't be in people. Our hope can't be in government. Our hope can't be in your pastor. Your hope can't be in any other human being. Your hope must be founded on Christ alone because everything else and everybody else is seeking sin and it will fall. Our hope must be secure in Christ alone. And with that being said, this text brings us to verse 18, a verse about Christ's suffering. And I want to preach just for a few minutes this morning on the Christian's hope being found in Christ alone. If you look at these verses, in verses 13 and 14, in verses 16 and 17, there's not a lot of good things that you find. You find God's people are being falsely accused, they're being persecuted, they're being tried and tested by society, and while they're down, they're getting poked and prodded and pulled with a thousand questions about where's your God at now? And some of you may feel like you'll never get an answer about something you're going through. And it's possible you may never. But the most important thing is you don't need an answer. You need our advocate, Jesus Christ. I don't have to know how this thing is going to play out. I just need to know Him. And I need to know He knows me. And that I belong to Him. And if I have Christ, it doesn't matter what happens. Because whether I live or whether I die, I still have Christ. So you look at verses 13, 14, 16, and 17 of this passage, and it's almost like it's so easy for us to get bogged down about what's wrong. Let me ask you, is your attention on what's wrong? I heard a lot of talk today already about what's wrong. But I've heard very little attention about what's right and who's right. The enemy has got you because you're focused on what's wrong, not who you belong to. Your mind and your mindset It matters. You keep following the news and statistics if you want to, they're there to fear monger you. They're there to get you to lose hope and say there's nothing else we can do. But we serve a God who can do anything. But everybody's sitting around saying, well, it is what it is. It's just the last days. It's going exactly like Brother Paul told us to. And the church is laying down and quitting. We're still here to make a difference. But many people don't believe that. Because they say, what's the use? See, because we're too busy trying to build a church, not build a kingdom. We want to get them saved and we want them to come here. Yeah, it'd be nice. And because if we can't get them to come here, we're not going to bother evangelizing them. Uh-oh. Because we want our crowds. We want all these people. We want all this. We want to all be able to do this, this, this, this and this. How do we get hope when everything seems to be declining, when it seems like God's not important in our society anymore, even in the South? How do we have hope? Let me tell you, you better quit looking about who's walking away and you better start looking to one who ain't never walked away from you. First thing I want us to say, number one, we've got to learn how to look to Christ. We've got to learn how to look to Christ. Look at verse 18. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. Was it the will of God for Jesus to suffer on that cross and to die for you and me? And this is why He said it's better for you if the will of God be so that you suffer for righteousness sake than for evil. Because it was God's will for Jesus to die that awful death that He died. Can I tell you sometimes it's God's will you and me die awful deaths. People say, oh, when I die I just want to go to sleep and wake up in glory. We don't have a say in how we die. Can I tell you, let's look to God. People start looking at how old they get and say, well I done went past the three score and ten and you know, any day death can come. Like God's gonna keep you alive to 70? Go to the cemetery. I've preached funerals of graves this big and I've seen them where 12 people had to tote the casket. Death is no respect for a person. And let me just remind everybody that everybody in this room is a sinner and as a result of our sin, we are physically going to die one day. You and me are going to leave this temporary world one day. And none of us know when we're checking out. And the only thing that's going to matter is have you looked to Christ. And are you looking to Christ to be saved? Christ said He once suffered for sins. The just for the unjust. That doesn't even make good sense right there. Why would the Son of God, the second person of the Godhead, have to suffer for sins He did not commit? And how is it that the just, the righteous one, would be substituted for me who is unjust and unrighteous? Some of you that's got siblings, brothers and sisters, because one of you got in trouble, y'all all got in trouble. And you toted a butt-whooping, Maybe you were innocent, but you ain't altogether innocent. They just got you for something you didn't get caught doing. See, everything you and me to go through and suffer, don't take us the wrong way, but we deserve that and more. But Christ, who suffered for sins once, the just for the unjust, and here's the reason why Christ suffered, that He might bring us to God. So you look to Christ, and if Christ suffered for other people, if the purpose of that suffering was to bring you and me to God, could it be that you and me are suffering and going through things that He might bring others to God through our suffering, through Him being at work in our lives? Quit looking to doctors for hope and help. Just being honest. Look to God. I'm not telling you don't go to the doctor or none of that nonsense. I'm just telling you, you can't put your hope in a broken system that a patient cured is a patient lost. Don't trust in our government who wants to keep you in poverty. Yeah. Quit trusting in the things of this world to give you hope. See, some people even in the church think Donald Trump was going to turn everything around. He don't have that ability nor power. Jesus Christ is the only one that can turn things around. You and me better have our hope in Christ and Christ alone. Our hearts cannot serve two masters. We can't hope in the government and God at the same time. We can't hope in a physical doctor and the great physician at the same time. Yes, God can use doctors. Yes, God can use government. But the way this thing's looking, sir, you better not trust nobody but God. We've got to start looking to God, because let me tell you, we belong to God if we're saved, and this is Christ's church, and He is building His church, and the gates of hell ain't prevailing against His church. Look to God! Listen to John chapter 11 about death, He says that He might bring us to God in our text, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. In John chapter number 11, Jesus told Mary and Martha that He is the resurrection and the life. Right? He says, I am the resurrection and life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, Yet shall he live. And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die." Huh? Dead? And alive? Now wait a minute. The Bible says it's appointed unto man once to die and after this to judgment. And these skeptics say there's a contradiction in the Bible. The death Jesus is talking about is the second death, the one that matters, which is eternal damnation and the lake of fire. He that lives and believes on me shall never die. There's going to come a day, Bodhi Balcombe, some of y'all have seen where he went on to glory this week. And Brother Bodie, years ago, was preaching and he said, y'all gonna get word one day that Bodie Balcombe has died. He said, don't believe it. That's a lie because I'm just now gonna be living. And would the God, the church, the people of God would realize that? One day y'all see Daniel Bookman's obituary, but I won't be in that casket. I won't be in that ground. I will be with King Jesus, the one who has saved my soul. Don't believe it when they tell you Daniel's dead, because Daniel will be alive and well with my Savior who reigns. People don't want to talk about death. People get discouraged when their mommas and daddies go down and plan their funerals so the kids won't have to. Get all bent out of shape. It's a fact of life. And number two, if you know Christ. It's a home going time. None of us want to leave our family behind. None of us really are looking forward to the day we actually do die. But buddy, when that day does come, hallelujah, it's a wonderful day for the child of God. We're out of a world of suffering and chaos and sin. And the same God that provided for you while you were here will take care of your family when you're gone. Huh? Don't put all that on you because I want to tell you it's God who woke you up. It was God who gave you the ability to do what you do to provide for your family. There'll come a day you won't be able to provide. But the God that we serve owns a cattle on a thousand hills. He's the one that can take little and much. of nothing, of a little cruse of oil and a barrel of mail. He can brush it and multiply it. He can take a little woman whose sons were about to go into slavery, good God Almighty, and tell her go buy her some vessels and not few but many and go around and pour that oil into all those little pots and when you get it go show her, pay the debt and live off the rest. That's the God you and me serve. So look to Him. Number two. You've got to listen to Him. You've got to listen to God. We hear a lot of stuff today and we listen to it. But it ain't all true. God is the only person who cannot lie. And the person that knows everything from beginning to the end A lot of times we don't want to listen because we don't like what he's saying. Where do you get that at? Verse 19, 20 and 21. By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water, the like figure whereunto even baptism doth now save, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Boy, there's a lot right here, but this is what I want you to understand about us listening to God here. I had never seen this until this week. I was really focusing on exegetical precision here. He, speaking of Christ, went and preached unto the spirits in prison. which sometimes were disobedience. Here it is, when once the long sufferings of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. There's your answer. Who are the spirits in prison? It's the world awaiting judgment in Noah's day. That's what the book says. Well, Christ didn't go preach. He preached through Noah. Christ preached through the prophets. Christ is still preaching today through His men. And we're offering hope, but hope is only good to people that want it and will listen to God and do what God says to do to get it. The reason Christ hasn't come back is that He's long suffering. Peter will allude to this in chapter number 3 of 2 Peter in verse 9 where it says, God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. And it has to do with the coming again of Jesus Christ. The reason Christ has not come again is because He's still patiently dealing with us stubborn, hard-headed, hard-hearted people who don't want to listen. If you get told and told and told and told and told and told again and again, and you refuse to listen, you're in prison. There's no hope for your soul that will not look to God nor listen to God. God has not gotten silent and God has not quit speaking. The fact is, we don't want to hear what God has to say because we don't like it no more. That's just honest to God's truth. People want their ears tickled, They want to be told how good they are. They want this kumbaya mentality. I'm okay, you're okay. Folks, we're not okay. We're broke. We're sinners. In a broken world that needs help and the only hope we've got is to live to Christ and then number two, listen to Christ. Last thing I want you to understand in verse number 22. You've got to learn how to lean on Christ. Will you listen to Him? Will you look to Him? But here's the real kicker. Will you learn how to lean on Him? Let me hasten to deal with something in verse number 20 before I move on to leaning on God. This passage has been used by certain denominations and certain belief systems because in verse number 20 it says that Noah and his family were saved by what? Water! What does it say in verse number 21? Does it say that now baptism saves? Uh oh! Is that a problem for you? It ain't for me. Hey, there you go. We fixed it. Look at that. So is water baptism essential for a sinner to be saved? No. We were baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ is what Paul taught in Corinthians. Water baptism is a like figure as the water, that ark that was built, that ark represents Christ. When the water of judgment came, the water destroyed the old world and the water saved Noah from the way things were. And after a time, dry land resurrected again. It's a picture of the resurrection. That's what he's talking about. That only through Christ can a man be saved. His life, his death, his burial, his resurrection. So look at verse 21 with me. The like figure, this water, whereunto even baptism doth also now save. Now parenthesis. Not putting away the filth of the flesh. Here's something y'all need to hear because you're going to run into people in your life that's going to tell you if you never got water baptized, you ain't going to heaven. And their main thing is that if I get dirty, I've got to take a bath and wash the dirt off. Baptism is not for cleaning your flesh. That's what he just said. So there goes that argument. But notice what he says. But the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now here it is. If Christ would sympathize with you and me and go the cross on our behalf, and He told His disciples that He was going to be baptized in death, And Peter and them wanted to go through the same baptism and Jesus said, y'all can't handle this baptism, I'm fixing to go through it. If Jesus would identify himself with us by being water baptized, to start his ministry, and if Jesus would go that cross and die for me, And then in His word, when He commissioned His apostles to go out into all the world, what did He tell them to do? Aha! You go! This is what He says in Matthew's gospel. Go ye therefore teach all nations. Literally rendered, go into the world and make disciples. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He would get in Mark chapter 16 in verse 15. He says, Go and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned. Well, it seems that Christ placed a great emphasis on baptism there. That's why it says to have a good conscience toward God, that now in my baptism upon my faith in Christ, I can follow the Lord in believer's baptism, that I'm identifying my hope is in the death, the burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You need to experience that as a believer. When you get dumped on the water, something happens to your mind. It reminds you that Christ was died and was buried for my sins and he's buried them in the sea of God's forgiveness never to bring them up again and it's liberating to feel that I went down, good God Almighty, into the watery grave and then he raised me to walk in newness of life because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ commanded you to be water baptized. So guess what? If you get saved and never follow the Lord and believers baptism, you know what happens? When it gets close time to die, it's in the back of your mind, am I going to make it? I never got baptized. You lived your whole life in rebellion to the commandment of God. The thief on the cross made it. But don't you know when you go to the end of life and they get ready for you to die and you know you're going to die? That you've followed the Lord the best you could. That I went on and got baptized for my conscience sake. Look at verse 22. I'm done. He says this, Who, speaking about Christ, is gone into heaven, and has on the right hand of God angels, authorities, and powers being made subject unto Him. Time out. Everything that I heard about what's going on in Mississippi this morning, everything that I heard that's going on in our world today, is under the authority and control of one. That's hope. I can lean on Christ because He's in control. And it's nothing more than the grace of God if you actually get a good doctor nowadays. It's by the grace of God you get a good representative of your local, state, and federal level. And if not, we don't get injustice or unjustice because God does not operate in injustice. See, grace is getting what we don't deserve. Justice is getting what we do deserve. And has it ever occurred to you, we're going through all this that we're going through, maybe God will wake us up because your love ain't like it used to be for Jesus? Yeah. Churches are empty on Wednesday night because nobody's got time for God anymore. No longer a priority. Our culture is crumbling because of this western style of Christianity that only operates when everything is convenient and going your way in life. I know a lot of you are living not in ideal situations right now. We have people in our church whose future is looking pretty bleak and they are living in the unknown. Huh? Careers and businesses are fixing to be closed. People's quality of life ain't what it used to be. All these things are happening to get us to look to Him, to listen to Him, and then start leaning on Him because He's in control. How's your prayer life this morning? How are you praying about the crises you're walking in? I hear a lot of talk about how things are so hard, but I hear very little of people talking about how much they're praying to God these days. The same God of the Bible is alive today. And he says we have not because we ask not. What are you asking God to do in your life this morning? If you ain't praying like you used to pray, it's because you've lost hope. And you no longer believe God's able to do anything about it. When I hear the average conversation of professing Christians today, they're acting like God's dead. and you're just living the way things are. We need to repent. We need to repent. God's able to do exceeding, abundantly, above all that we could think or ask. And we need to get rid of this mentality. Well, it is what it is, preacher. If it ever occurred on you, God put you in this place that He'd get you closer to Him and that God was willing to do something about it, but you choose not to ask Him to do anything about it, therefore you live with it. I look about and I see a lot of discouraged, defeated, disgruntled people. They don't have much joy anymore. They don't have much get up and go about them anymore. They're just existing. The God that we serve didn't just put us here to exist. He gave us a purpose. And that purpose is to make a difference in this world before we leave. I don't know about you, but over the past year there's been three giants in the faith that I know have died and gone on to be with the Lord. And two of those guys, there's five I know on one hand, five, that's all I can put, okay? Three's gone to glory and two's been disqualified from ministry. I don't want to be a casualty. I don't want to be two that gets disqualified. I'm trying to help us understand there's hope in Christ. Quit listening to the world. Quit listening to the news. Quit listening to social media. Listen to God. Quit looking to those things and look to God. Get your face in His book. And then learn how to lean on the God who is able. May God help us this morning. Let's stand. Father, we love You. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the time you've allowed us to have. Thank you for the patience of these people as I try to relay the message you've given me today. God, how fitting I think it is, is that it's so many people losing hope. Even in our culture, in our society today, even here in Hickory Flat, Mississippi, there's a lot of people that's just going along. No direction, no hope. No help seems to be, but God, I'm glad You're there. Father, lead and bless in this time of invitation. Get glory to Yourself. We'll praise You for what You do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. She prays. You need to come. You come.