Transcript

1 Peter · HBCWestminster

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For those of you who don't know me, I'm Valerie Celia. I've been a member at Highland for, I don't know, 20-some years, something like that. If we haven't met yet, I'm working on it. I've been trying to meet as many of you guys as I possibly can. One, it's on the bucket list, but two, then I didn't feel like I was talking to a group of strangers, that I was talking to friends, and I could just share the lessons that I learned.
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In all the years that I've been at HBC, it's a rare occasion that I'm up here. It's usually a part of a group, and I don't have to say anything. So this has been a challenge. It's been good, though. Thank you, Hallie, for asking me to teach. I have to share a funny story with you guys that happened last Wednesday night. It was right after Dina's lesson. I think most of you are familiar with kickback. We take a group of kids out to a lake, and we toss them around with the boat.
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Hope nobody gets hurt. I was one of the crew members for that capsized ship because we got rained out. It was crazy. I was manning the RV, and we had, I don't know, I guess we had 20, 25 kids crammed into the RV. And I was at the front door manning the door, making sure that nobody was getting out. It was lightning. It was hailing. And up front sitting with me was this.
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wonderful girl. Her name is Izzy. She's adorable. Anyway, her and I had a fast friendship and we suddenly became best friends over just a short period of time. So last Wednesday after this lesson, her mom came up to me. We had a brief conversation and Karen shared with me that Izzy was trying to come out of her shell. I didn't see that. She must be quieter around other people. I don't know.
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I ran into Izzy after I had spoken to her mom, and I asked Izzy if she was going on the Utah missions trip. And she answered me and said, yeah, I'm going. I said, you guys are evangelizing up there, right? And she goes, yeah. And I'm so nervous about it, Val. I'm working on it. Me, always being filled with great advice for other people, I told her, I said, Izzy, it's going to be awesome. Just go. Be bold. Be brave. Tell the truth about Christ as you know it.
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And you'll be amazed with how those conversations go. It'll be awesome for you. And she thanked me. And we kind of parted ways. And I had just turned around to talk to Dina. And Dina, I was telling her how great I thought her lesson was. It was awesome. She did a great job. And she said, you're teaching next week, right? And I said, ah. And I'm really nervous about it. But I'm working on it.
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And as if on cue, Izzy comes around the other side of me and in my face and in front of Dana. And she goes, you know what somebody told me one time? Be bold, be brave. Go tell the truth about Jesus as you know it. You'll be amazed. So here I am, being bold, being brave. It's been really quite interesting. Let me just say the very first thing that happened, almost the very moment when I told Hallie that I was willing to teach, I became busier.
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I became distracted. I even purchased Rosetta Stone for Spanish because I was going to learn Spanish this summer. Hola. My point is, I feel like I have been just attacked in trying to learn these verses. I don't think that Satan wants this happening.
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1 Peter 5.8, it says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, resist him. I've never felt this so much as actually studying these verses.
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Somebody also said,
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Sometimes the difficulty for me was defining what the lesser things were and to be able to put those aside. And I'm really thankful that I did. I had an amazing time with studying this. So let's pray, and then we'll get started sharing the verses that God gave me. Lord, I just ask you for a calm nature, a peace of mind, and I ask for your words to come, Lord, not mine. Speak through me, speak through me to the hearts that you know.
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are open to this and the minds are open to this. Lord, thank you for bringing all the people here this evening. And I pray for my husband, Henry, who is also teaching tonight. I'm just so grateful for these opportunities, Lord. In your name I pray. Amen. So my verses, I'm teaching on 1 Peter 3, 8-22. Let's have a quick review over it, though. Molly taught us a few weeks ago.
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that we as individuals are called to be obedient. Through our obedience, we live in hope and we lead holy lives. Jen taught us in Chapter 2, don't be a filthy temple. I told her I was going to say that verbatim. But really, seriously, meaning not to be malicious, deceitful, or a hypocrite, envious. Along with that, we need to build into our church families. Dina showed us it's not about us.
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It's always about God and that there is joy through submission. The two things that really caught my attention last week, as believers, we are free, but it doesn't allow us to ignore those in authority. God placed them in authority. I thought that was important to me to hear because sometimes we think they don't have authority or we want to subvert that somehow. Another little piece of wisdom that I have written down.
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I thought it was genuine. Our behavior as wives is key to our husband's ability to follow the Lord. What a responsibility that places on us. It's not just our behavior that affects us. It's not just what we do. But it's that we're responsible for them. And we're not responsible wholly. But we certainly play a part in it.
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I'm going to read my verses in two parts. I'm going to read 8 through 12 first. So we're in 1 Peter 3, and this is, I'm going to read 8 through 13. It says, Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing.
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For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? I love these verses. Look at the first few words here. It says, finally.
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Finally, all of you. That's us. That's us as believers. Peter's been writing to different groups of Christians through the first chapters. In 2.13-17, he was referring to Christians as citizens and how we relate to authority. In 18.25, he spoke to about servants and their relationship to their masters. And then in 3.6, he was talking to Christian wives. And in 3.7, he was writing to husbands.
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And now here, finally, an eight, finally, all of you, us, members of our church family. He's covered how we live in the world, and now he's speaking how we live with each other as Christians and what kind of people that he should be. He gives us five things, and they're at the beginning of the sentence. Unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, tender heart, and humble mind. The first one, unity, harmony, the word that I like with this one is compatible.
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When I grew up through the Catholic Church, if you found your mate or mate-to-be and you wanted to get married, you needed to make an appointment with the priest. You needed to go in with counseling, and through that counseling, he would either tell you whether you were compatible with each other, if you were matched, or if you could be unified. You either were or you weren't, and it was his decision to tell you that.
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And it was interesting to me because what Peter is saying here is that we need to work on being compatible. We're not just going to wake up and be compatible. We actually have to work at that. And it's not just with ourselves. It's with our family, with people around us. We have to work at being compatible. The reason I like the word compatible, it's interesting to me because with just two different letters, it changes the meaning.
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A lot of you know that Henry and I are going on a motorcycle trip with Bob and Dina. I think it's the fourth year that we've done this. We spend two weeks together. Some of you also know that Bob and I have a love-hate relationship. I think we drive each other crazy. He drives me crazy. Seriously. Let's be honest. Bob drives me crazy. We were talking at the picnic after church, and he said, you know, I just haven't had any time.
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to get a route drawn out. I don't know what we're going to do. I guess we're just going to have to see how it goes if I don't have time. And I said, you know what, Bob, don't worry about it. Through my study of 1 Peter, I am going to be the most compatible person I can be. He believed me. I said, no, really, compatible, compatible. I'm going to be compatible.
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Two letters, guys. Two letters either puts you on one side of that or on the other side. You're either being compatible or compatible. And it's up to us to figure out what compatible looks like. Number two, sympathetic. The ability to share the feelings of another. I loved how John Phillips looked at this word. He felt that Peter's intention was for us to share the happiest times as well as the saddest times.
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That our hearts should go out to other believers no matter the situation. We can't just share the good times. We need to share both. Number three, brotherly. We shouldn't view each other as people that we just kind of know at church. Second servicers, first servicers, the Californians, the newbies.
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You know, it's cool to describe each other in those ways, but we actually need to be looking at each other that we're family. We're close family. And when one of us has difficulty, if we're being sympathetic, we all can share in that heartfelt emotion with them. Number four that he gave us, tenderhearted. This word isn't about our outside behavior. The literal Greek translation meant, and I love this, it says, feel generous in your belly.
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It's the exact opposite of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy that acts tender on the outside, and yet your inside feels malicious. Being tenderhearted means that all of you, not just your outward action, but all of you matches and all of you is being tenderhearted. I found it interesting, the Roman Empire, they didn't care for the sick, the widows, the orphans, or any other maladies that people might have. Their hospitals mainly consisted.
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for the army. If you were in the army, then you typically got care. If you were anybody else, you just didn't. Modern care hospitals didn't actually come about until the rise of Christianity. They weren't always great at their medical duties. I wouldn't say that they were first in line for that. Sometimes it was just a last stopping place before somebody would die. But the tenderheartedness was there.
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They had a place for them. They wanted to care for them. They wanted to do their best for them. And I found a verse for that, Ephesians 4.32. It uses the same word. It says, be kind to one another, be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave us. Tenderhearted. Humble. Humble in mind. This one also, again, it's not just an outward. It's a deep, authentic feeling of humility.
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I believe it really comes from deep inside, feeling and knowing that we are as low as anybody else. All of us have only been saved by grace. That's the only thing we have. Ephesians 2, 8-9. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. This is a gift of God. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast. An example of humility is in John 13, 3-5.
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And Jesus is washing the disciples' feet. I would be Peter. I would have a hard time. I'd be like, really? Until he explained it and said, you know, without me doing that, the rest of it's not available. And that's the price that he paid. He paid the ultimate price for us and made this available to all of us. And so being humble, I just feel that's so important to remember that we didn't do this. You know, this wasn't us.
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Verse 9. I spent a lot of time on verse 9, and I had all this stuff written down about the golden rule. Do unto others as you'd have them do to you. Serving up others what we think they deserve. But the actual truth of this verse is kind of simple. If we're being the kind of people that Peter was instructing in those first five attributes,
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Why would we repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling? It wouldn't come to us. That wouldn't be our natural instinct if we were really focusing on the attributes that he asked us to. And to this we are called to speak words that are beautiful and edifying, not because the recipient deserves them, but we are called to be imitators of Christ and his example to us. Ephesians 5, 1 through 2, it says, Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.
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And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. And we just learned, I think, one page back in chapter 2, verse 23. And it says, when he was reviled, Christ, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. But he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. And one more verse here that I thought...
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When I read this verse, it kind of fit. And then the more that I thought about it, I really felt it was important here. And it's Hebrews 12, 15. It's the latter part of it. And it says, don't let a root of bitterness grow up, thereby defiling many. The reason that I thought this was important was because the evil for evil and the reviling for reviling, those things start somewhere. They start with a small seed.
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of some discontent, a small seed of not feeling good about somebody. And it turns into everything that that somebody does turns into you just dislike them. And now everything they do is not good. And I think that's what this verse is meaning. You know, don't let this grow into something that you can no longer control. I feel like this is too high. Is that better? Nope. The second half of that verse, verse 9?
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No, I'm not hearing it at all. Where it says that you may obtain a blessing. It's not actually saying that this is meant to imply works for a blessing. You can't work for the blessing or goods for goods. The blessing is already given to us. I think what Peter was trying to say is that we are to behave as people whom a blessing is bestowed upon. I also thought, too, isn't it possible for the people that we bless?
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For that to turn into something further down the road, and maybe that's the blessing that we see. Maybe we see, when we see somebody that we know was not walking with Christ and now they are, what a joy that is. You know, what a joy that we've watched and been able to witness, and now they can do those things that we were called to do as well. I also think that we live in a current state of...
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Simply being blessed just because we're Christians. I know that I do. And when I read these, it was really apparent that I don't see them every day. Matthew has a whole list of them. They're so awesome. Matthew 5, 7. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Matthew 5, 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5, 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
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Matthew 5.10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And in 11 it tells us, blessed are you when others revile and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. And lastly in 5.12, I mean there's more blessings, but I mean I could have went on for a long time, but 5.12, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
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For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. I think that we live in a state of being blessed every day. I don't think that we're called to be nice to people so that we will in turn get a blessing. I think that is part of the blessing that we're in. And I think that through these previous verses, they kind of speak through 10, 11, 12, and 13 as well. The thought here is that those who set themselves on a right path,
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will naturally have a better life. And it's just through fruition of the things that they do each day. They would take better care of their minds. They would take better care of their bodies. In following a Christ-like walk, one wouldn't indulge in sexual permissiveness, avoiding the diseases that are attached to that.
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They would avoid some of the stresses in life that come with anger and bitterness and hatred and jealousy. Because all of those things wear on you as a person. And if you can set those things aside, life is easier. That's not to say that we're not going to be challenged. But in verse 12 where it says, For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. How crazy is that?
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How bad is life with the Lord against you? That, to me, was like crazy. Like, who wants to do that? And how good is it when he's watching over us and he hears our prayers? 1 Thessalonians. This is my favorite memory verse, by the way. 1 Thessalonians 5.17. Pray without ceasing. Three words. You can all memorize that one. He's listening. Pray without ceasing. He's listening.
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He's on our side. When I first studied through these verses, I thought that 13 went with the ones after it rather than the ones before it. But I think that 13 really sums up the previous thoughts. If in doing all of these things, being zealous for good things, who will harm you? Nobody.
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It doesn't mean that you're not going to come to harm, whether it be slander or reviling or whatever. It doesn't mean that's not going to happen. It doesn't mean that you're not physically going to be harmed either. Peter knew what was coming. He wanted to encourage Christians that your bodies may go through pain, your hearts may feel sorrow, but as believers, if it is a physical suffering, you're only going to have a moment of suffering until it's all surrendered, and then you'll be in glorious heaven.
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Peter knew the pain of life. Even a well-led life entails suffering. I was reminded through here, Peter watched his own wife be crucified. Peter knew what was coming. Peter had been experiencing these things. And yet he was still strong enough to write these letters and encourage us as Christians. The reason I think through this letter specifically that Peter knew what was coming, because the next verse tells us that.
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It starts with the word but. I'm going to read 14 through 22. But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect.
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Having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formally did not obey. When God's patient waited in the...
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Patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for good conscience. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels' authorities and powers having been subjected to him. So going back to verse 14.
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It starts out with the word but. It could have read when. Most times Christians, it's not like here in America, we're not a persecuted group of Christians. It's not like the world is persecuted. We have it pretty easy. There's a lot of Christians who are greatly persecuted. And Peter was talking, even through his time, he lived through Nero. Well, okay, so he didn't live at the end.
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But that was the time. They were not only being persecuted, they were being put on display for others to see their persecution. And here Peter is encouraging them. And when he says, even when there is bitterness and anger towards you, that you needed to keep your mind and set your sights on Christ. He knew all of this was coming. He had to do the same thing. He had a death warrant out for him. This was his intention.
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Keep your mind and your sights on Christ. Verses 15 and 16. Those are the go-to apologetics verses. Defending your faith. I think a lot of people know these verses, and they have some kind of semblance of them in their head. I know I'm familiar with them. I should be prepared to defend my faith. I should be prepared as to why I believe in God, why I'm a Christian. I feel like I've read...
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parts of this over and over and over and over, and I really focused on the latter half of this verse. Do you guys do that? Do you ever have something that you read so many times, maybe even a recipe or something that you just know it, only to find out that you were missing something in it? I've done that. The funny thing that came to my head, Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham. I have three kids. I have two grandkids. I'm telling you, I have read Green Eggs and Ham.
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At least 1,000 times. Seriously, I did the math. There was like a month of time for each one of these children who Green Eggs and Ham was the go-to book. And I read Green Eggs and Ham, Green Eggs and Ham to these different times in my life, but in their lives when they were like in the, I don't know, three to four. So four times a week for four weeks times six children, that's 96 times. Seriously, though, do you ever read it once?
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Have you ever sat down to read one book one time? No, because they want you to read it again and again and again. So I multiplied that by like 10. So that's 960 times. That's 1,000 times. That's how many times I've read Green Eggs and Ham. I've read it so many times, I began to make up my own lines. I will not eat green eggs and ham, not on a train, not on a plane, not with a goat, not on a boat, not on a moat, and on and on. And I just wondered.
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While I was thinking through these verses, do we read these verses the same? Do we read the second half of verse 15, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason we have hope? To me, that was always the big question. I always wanted to have the right answer. I felt that that answer carried so much weight. Because if it was somebody who wasn't a believer and I needed to answer that question for them, it needed to be the right answer.
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not realizing that my testimony was supposed to be the right answer, but there was a right answer for the hope that I had. In saying this, I thought of a verse that I came across that was so telling to this and so good. Luke 21, 12 through 15. It said, But before all this, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons.
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and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. What a freeing verse. It's not really a right answer.
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Not saying that we shouldn't study. We should study those things. But God will give us the words that we need. When we need to defend our faith, he's there. That was so freeing to me. The other thing in these verses, there's three verses, 14, 15, and 16. And there's one sentence in the middle. Or there's one section in the middle that is kind of sandwiched in there. And it begins a third of the way through 14. Where it says, oh, I've got to turn back. Hang on.
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It says, have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, above always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for this reason, for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, and that sentence goes on. That's like a mega long sentence. But right in the middle of that sentence, it says, in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy.
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And that actually fits what's prior in that sentence, because if you are honoring Christ the Lord as holy in your hearts, you won't have fear of them. And again, if you're honoring Christ the Lord as holy in your hearts, you'll be able to do the second half of that, which is always being prepared to give your testimony, always being prepared to defend your faith. It fits the entire sentence just in that one section. It suits the beginning and the end of that sentence.
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sandwich right there. And to be honest, the back part of that gentleness and respectfully, I don't know about you guys, sometimes I have trouble with that. I get passionate about what I know to be true. I become animated, sometimes sarcastic, not always, sometimes. I think when I do that, it makes it hard for people to see past me and to see Christ. For me, it's important that I make sure they can see Christ through me.
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Verses 16 and 17 deals with that also, having a good conscience. As a sinner, I'm always reminded to be humble. I don't know how Peter managed in his life after denying Christ three times, how overwhelming and heavy that must have been for him, knowing what his conscience was. But he overcame that, and this gives me hope, because Peter went on to do great things, and he gave us these words.
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John Philip uses this Shakespeare quote that I really appreciate. And it says, Conscious doth make cowards of us all. And I thought that was really poignant in my life. I have to make sure that I give my testimony a chance by having a clean conscious. If you don't have a clean conscious, your testimony just doesn't have a chance. John MacArthur stated in his commentary, it says, Believers are constantly exposed to a world system energized by Satan.
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And his demons. Their effort is to discredit the church and to destroy its credulity and integrity. One way these spirits work is by finding Christians whose lives are not consistent with the word of God. And then parading them before the unbelievers to show what a sham the church is. Christians, however, must stand against the enemy and silence the critics by the power of holy lives. And I think this is what our conscience and what our lives, this is what Peter is referring to.
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through these verses so far. Verse 17. There's so many things written about verses 17 through 22. For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will. Yep. If I have to suffer, let it be for good. There's so much written about it, honestly. 17 through 22, I had a hard time grasping because these are some of the most...
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Some of the most difficult verses for even the scholars, they disagree with them. So I took Danny's word and said, yep, that's what we're doing. They have some of the most difficult interpretations. 18, Christ who is righteous suffered for us the unrighteous so that he would bring us to God. Christ died. He was just for the unjust. His death was substitutionary.
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He took my place. He took my place through his death. Number 19. The verse in 19 explains it. He went to hell for three days. And he preached of this victory. His death was our victory. He knew his death was our life. And he didn't go there to evangelize. Because there was nobody that was going to be saved that was there. He went there with a victory speech.
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Again, there's a lot of controversy over these verses. He was preaching to those who didn't listen during the times of Noah. That's what it says in verse 20. For those who formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah. He's referring to, in Genesis 6, the Nephilim. The Nephilim were part of a large plot to contaminate the human race that God had put here.
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They were evil. They were sinister. To a point in Genesis chapter 66, it says, And the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Only eight people were saved. How much grief God went through. So these are the people that Jesus was giving his victory speech to. The people who were in hell from the times of Noah, the Nephilim, the people who were...
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who weren't the eight. And it says eight who were brought safely through the water. It shows an example of baptism. It says in there, it says, now saves you. But be clear, that's not what saves you. Baptism doesn't save you. You are saved only by the blood of Jesus Christ. I am only saved through Jesus. John Phillips wrote it. The fact is that the candidate for baptism is a saved person.
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And his natural defilement washed away in the blood of Christ. And his good conscience is quickened by the Holy Spirit. So if you're going to be baptized, if you're a candidate for baptism, that doesn't save you. You're saved prior to that. In verse 22, all are subject to him. All. Not some. All. Even Satan. The day will come. He governs all. Angels, authorities, and powers have been subjected to him.
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And I thought this was such a powerful statement for the God that we follow, for the God that we believe in. In closing, if I confused you, talk to Hallie. I'm going on vacation. Seriously though, preparing for this lesson was challenging. It's the first time I've taught and like it had to be like this. But I learned so much that I wouldn't have otherwise seen in these verses. And I hope that...
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Through these, there's one little piece or one little something that resonated with you. But if not, go. Be bold. Be brave. Tell the truth about Jesus Christ as you know it. Thank you guys for listening.