Thank you very much.
Would you please turn your Bibles to 1
Peter chapter 3.
1 Peter chapter 3 beginning with verse 18
and reading on through verse 22.
While you're turning there let me tell you
how very honored and thankful I am to
be here with you and already to have
worshipped with you in the presence of our
Christ.
1 Peter chapter 3 beginning with our verse
18 and let's read through verse 22.
And would you please stand out of reverence
for the reading of the words of our
God.
Apostle Peter writes in the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit.
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 formerly did not
obey when God's 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
a 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.
Let's pray.
Holy righteous Father, as we come to your
word, Father, we ask you to have mercy
on us, sinners, who come into your presence.
And, Father, we know that the only reason
that we are bold enough to come and
worship to the heavenly Mount Zion is, Father,
because we stand before you, hidden in Christ
Jesus.
And, Father, we pray that you would accept
our worship.
We pray that you would accept our prayers.
And, Father, we pray that we would hear
the voice of our shepherd as we listen
to his word.
Father, we ask all things, Father, we ask
in everything that is done here in the
next several days.
And, Father, indeed, everything now and in the
age to come, we pray would be to
the glory of our Lord Jesus, in whose
name we pray.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Several years ago, I called a friend of
mine who was pastoring a church and was
experiencing some trouble and some conflict in his
church in a very small town in Alabama.
I called him on the telephone and I
said, How are things going at your church?
And he said, Can I call you back
on a secure line?
And I said, Todd, I called you at
your house.
He said, I'll explain it to you later.
And he called back a little bit later
and I said, What in the world is
going on?
He said, Well, you don't understand.
He said, In this particular town, there's not
a lot to do.
He said, And the newest fad around town
is for people to get police scanners.
He said, And they turn the police scanners
on and you can pick up cordless telephone
conversations on the police scanners.
He said, So people sit around often at
night and they'll turn on the police scanners
and they'll listen to whatever telephone conversations happen
to be picked up.
He said, I didn't really feel like I
could share with you what was going on
in the church not knowing who was listening
to the conversation.
So I shared that with a mutual friend
of ours, also a pastor.
I said, Todd's really in a difficult time.
I told him what was happening.
And he called up.
He said, Todd, are you at your phone?
He said, Yeah.
He said, Are you on your cordless phone?
And he said, Yes.
He said, Would you please step back from
the phone for a minute?
And he said, People of this small town
in Alabama, listen to me.
Get a life.
Find something to do.
And then he proceeded to go on and
talk to them about gossip and about violating
people's privacy on the telephone and preached a
sermon right there.
We realized the longer this went on, the
more paranoid this pastor friend became because he
never knew who was hearing, who had what
information, what kind of context it was set
in.
And the longer that went on, the less
effective he was in ministry.
He never knew who was really a friend
and who was sitting there listening to him
at night.
In that situation, he wasn't all that unusual
from those out there in this culture.
You're going to find all around you conspiracy
theorists, people who believe and people who have
a deep suspicion that there is something going
on behind the scenes that we just can't
see, that we just can't understand, which is
why movies and books such as The Da
Vinci Code are so popular.
It resonates with people who don't have any
historical basis for believing the claims of the
book, but it makes a claim that there's
a secret, that there is some type of
a global conspiracy working itself out that is
hidden somehow from view, that everything is not
the way it actually appears to be.
You can see this with gatherings of people
who get together to talk about UFO abductions
or any number of wild ideas.
Now, why do they do that?
Why do people resonate with conspiracy theories, with
all types of paranoid ideas?
They do so, perhaps, because there really is
a global conspiracy.
Perhaps because there really is something that is
hidden back behind the way things appear to
be and human beings are designed in such
a way we know that there's more to
life than this and we know that there
are forces at work and beings at work
that perhaps we can't even identify.
It terrifies us.
There's something about that that's deeply true.
Indeed, the Apostle Peter, as he is writing
to the churches, in this passage that we
have read, writing to churches dispersed across Asia,
churches that were facing an increasingly hostile Roman
Empire, an empire that is mighty, an empire
that is unchallenged, that is unparalleled, that has
spasmodic outbursts of anger and of power.
You have synagogues that are increasingly, in places,
upset and outraged about the early Christian communities.
You have suffering.
You have persecution in the marketplace, in all
kinds of places.
And you have a little gathering of Christians,
gathering around firelight, perhaps, to read from a
fisherman's hand as he is outlining what lies
behind their suffering, what lies behind their persecution.
And what does he say?
Peter shows them, he points out, as he
moves through this letter, that yes, they are
really suffering.
Yes, they are really persecuted.
But he shows them that the roots of
their persecution, the roots of their suffering, it
lies behind what they can see.
He doesn't say to them, things are not
as bad as they appear.
He says to them, things are even worse
than they appear.
He says there are things that are going
on that are ancient and old and evil.
What he is showing them is that Christianity
is about warfare.
Christianity is not about jihad.
Christianity is not about taking over the structures
of this world by the sword.
But that does not mean that Christianity is
not violent.
It means that Christianity is more violent than
violence.
Notice what he says.
He shows them, talking about their suffering, he
talks about in chapter 3, those who would
harm them, those who would come after them.
And he says, I want you to make
sure that those who persecute you always persecute
you for doing good.
That they are never persecuting you for doing
unrighteousness.
And then he points them to Christ.
It is better, he says in verse 17,
to suffer for doing good, if that should
be God's will, than for doing evil.
And then in verse 18, he immediately points
them to Christ.
Now, at first glance, it appears here, that
what the Apostle Paul is doing, or what
the Apostle Peter is doing, is simply giving
them an example.
He is giving them a moral truth.
And to say, after all, Jesus suffered.
You suffer the way Jesus suffered.
And that is true.
He is doing that.
But he is doing far more than that.
He says, Christ did indeed suffer, but he
then moves them into what seems to be
the most obscure, the most difficult to understand
passage that we can ever find in the
New Testament.
He says, Jesus suffered, but what Peter is
doing here is not veggie tales.
He is not showing them some moral principles
that can help them to emulate.
Instead, he turns around and shows them what
this warfare looks like.
He shows them what the conspiracy actually is
that they fear.
He shows them how dangerous it is.
And then he shows them how they have
already triumphed over it.
The church has confessed from very early on,
the Apostles' Creed, for instance, that Christ suffered
under Pontius Pilate.
He descended into hell.
And it seems like such an odd thing
to confess as a church together.
First of all, that you would even use
the name of Pontius Pilate, this two-bit
governor who handed over Jesus to execution.
It's like including Lee Harvey Oswald's name in
a confession of faith.
And yet we confess together he suffered historically
under Pontius Pilate, and then we speak of
his descent into hell.
Notice what Peter is doing when he points
them to this kind of warfare.
Notice that Peter, first of all, is showing
them the humiliation of Christ before the powers.
He says here, Christ also suffered once for
sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.
There's a sense in which there is no
way that we can imagine the context of
the early Christian communities.
After all, you and I have just walked
into this room today.
We didn't come through cursing mobs.
As a matter of fact, we came out
from this table back here with books that
are published by Christian publishers that are able
to print these publications, to sell these publications.
They're able to put these things freely on
display at Barnes & Noble or at any
other bookseller.
We can't understand what it would be like
to live in a world in which Jesus
Christ is viewed in something of the way
that we would have viewed David Koresh, a
madman, someone who had messianic aspirations, someone who
was executed.
They are seen with this kind of reviling,
with this kind of contempt.
And Peter says, I know that you are
suffering.
I know that you face the threat of
persecution.
But he points them to the crucifixion.
Jesus also suffered for sins, the righteous for
the unrighteous.
Why?
That he might bring us to God.
He shows them what the problem really is.
He speaks here, notice in verse 22, all
the way down at the end, when he
sums up what is happening, he talks about
angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to
him.
Now you think about this for a moment.
These are people who are facing authorities and
powers.
And there is always the threat that these
authorities and powers who have the power of
the sword will be able to turn on
them in an instant, will be able to
wipe them out.
Peter turns around and says, such has always
been the case.
The Lord Jesus himself faced authorities and powers.
They are subjected to him, but it certainly
does not seem that way as he is
facing them.
After all, he is humiliated.
Christ also suffered.
This is someone who came before the Sanhedrin.
Someone who came before the Roman government.
Someone who came before Herod, the governing authority.
Someone that it seems had an indictment placed
upon him.
Someone who had his beard ripped at.
Someone who was ridiculed and mocked and laughed
at.
Someone who was sentenced.
Someone who was arrested.
Someone who heard, crucify him, crucify him, crucify
him.
Someone who drowned in his own blood.
Someone who faced a vast right-wing conspiracy
and a vast left-wing conspiracy.
Who faced all of these political powers and
all of these authorities.
Someone who also, Peter tells us, faced the
angelic powers.
Faced the fallen angelic element at work within
this world.
The principalities and powers.
So that when we see the betrayal of
Jesus, what happens?
Satan enters into Judas.
We have much conversation these days about Judas.
And whether or not Judas is a protagonist
or an antagonist in the Gospels.
And the Gospels make it very clear that
when Judas is betraying Jesus, this is not
just an act of human jealousy or of
human ill will.
This is not just some type of a
soap opera being worked out.
This is the work of the evil one
who is working in conjunction with Judas to
hand over Jesus to the authorities.
So much so that when Jesus is arrested,
what does he say?
I've been in the temple every day.
I've been out in public before you.
You could have come to me at any
point.
You could have heard what I was saying
at any point.
But this is your hour.
And the power of darkness.
He faces these angelic authorities and Peter says
he also suffered.
What is Peter telling them?
The same principalities and powers that were after
him are after you.
That's the point he's going to make later
on when he says you don't resist in
the way that a pagan resists.
You don't resist in the way that an
evildoer resists.
You resist in the way Jesus resisted without
reviling, without cursing because the spirit of glory
rests upon you.
The same spirit that anointed Jesus, that rested
upon Jesus, that would cause a demonized man
in a synagogue to jump up and say
I know who you are, the Holy One
of God.
That same spirit rests upon you.
So of course you are going to antagonize
the authorities.
Of course you are going to antagonize the
powers.
Of course you are going to antagonize the
demonic strongholds.
You belong to Christ.
Christ also suffered.
This is something that we do not communicate
in our churches in an American context in
which we see Christianity as being the highest
point of the American dream.
I mentioned veggie tales some moments ago.
Have you seen the veggie tales episode where
Bob and Larry, the tomato and the cucumber
are martyred for their faith by Islamic terrorists?
Have you seen that one?
Where you have the cucumber pickled behind glass
with cold dead eyes looking out.
The tomato sliced apart Julianne for the faith.
Of course you haven't seen that episode.
And you never will because that aspect of
Christianity cannot be mass marketed in the way
that we mass market Christianity in our Christian
subculture.
That kind of suffering, that kind of derision,
that kind of mocking is not a commercial
product.
It does not give you the kind of
moral lesson that can be easily digested.
It gives you something that is far more
counter cultural than that.
Peter turns to these churches that are facing
the evil one and what he is showing
them is exactly what the Apostle John sees
in Revelation chapter 12.
He says, I see all of human history
in this vision given to him by Christ
himself.
And what is this vision?
It is of a dragon who is seeking
to consume a child.
A dragon who is chasing after this child,
seeking to consume him.
A dragon who is faced, who is put
down, who is defeated, who is thrown down
from the heavens.
Peter says, I want you to know Christ
also suffered, but Christ is not a victim.
Christ suffered once for sins.
He makes it very clear where this warfare
is focused.
That the evil one has a hold, he
has a claim, and what is his claim?
It is what John tells us in Revelation
chapter 12.
He is the accuser.
He has the power of accusation so that
every child born of woman who stands face
to face with the serpent receives the accusation,
you share my nature, and you share my
inheritance, and of every single one of these
human beings he is right, with one exception.
He suffers, he says, once for sins, the
righteous for the unrighteous.
He doesn't suffer as a martyr.
He doesn't suffer as an example.
He says he is suffering that he might
bring us to God.
He is humiliated.
He is standing here in a suffering that
Peter says all of us are called to
enter into as we share in his spirit.
You think about the way that Luke tells
us of the thief on the cross who
as he is there being executed for crimes
that are so vile probably they would cause
us to shudder.
We probably wouldn't speak of them in polite
company.
Who is able to look over at this
trembling, convulsing, naked man who is being laughed
at and who is being mocked and say
something that sounds so crazy that people probably
thought he was delusional.
Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom.
Nothing seems more ridiculous at that moment than
Jesus coming into his kingdom.
This is a man who is utterly humiliated
in the face of the authorities, of the
powers, of the angelic beings.
He even bears a mocking sign over his
head.
This is the king of the Jews.
Laying down on the ground are purple garments
that had been placed on him as an
act of ridicule.
They are treating him almost like he is
some type of a circus act, some type
of a dancing ape for their amusement.
And this thief looks in that humiliation and
in faith says, remember me when you come
into your kingdom.
Peter says, remember this.
He suffered in order to bring us to
God.
He did this suffering in order that he
might once for all deal with sin.
Notice what he says.
He says, he is put to death in
the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
Now what Paul is not doing there, what
Peter is not doing there, is not saying
that the flesh, the body is that that
is unimportant and the spirit, the soul is
that which is greatly important.
What he is doing here is precisely the
same thing that the apostle Paul will do
to the Galatians for instance.
And to say you've got this age of
the flesh, you have this age of the
spirit, he's able to say he became a
life-giving spirit.
He is able through the power of the
spirit to be made alive.
He is part of this new order, this
new age that God is bringing about.
Peter says you need to understand even though
he is humiliated, even though it seems that
he is crushed, even though he has suffered,
God is with him.
It doesn't appear that way.
It doesn't appear that way when he is
hanging there limply on that stake of execution.
He is humiliated.
So are you.
He also tells them, I want you to
understand, I want you to confess the proclamation
of Christ to the powers.
He says something that is very difficult for
us to understand.
He is made alive in the spirit in
which he went and proclaimed to the spirits
in prison.
Something very difficult for us to understand as
we read this.
There are those who will say, for instance,
Kenneth Copeland, who will say what this is
referring to is Jesus going down into hell.
And Jesus in hell is bearing the punishment
for sin.
Yet clearly that is not what the scripture
is teaching.
There are others who will say, well what
this is referring to is Jesus going to
the Old Testament saints who are now kept
in captivity.
He is coming and he is leading them
out of captivity into the very presence of
God.
I don't think that is what he is
talking about either.
I think when Jesus is proclaiming to the
spirits who are in prison, I think that
Peter is referring to precisely what he is
talking about in verse 22.
To the authorities, angels, and powers that have
been subjected to him.
Who are these spirits?
This word is used elsewhere to describe angelic
beings.
The principalities and powers.
I think Peter's readers would have understood exactly
what he is speaking of.
What you will see, for instance, in 2
Peter chapter 2 and verse 4 and Jude
6.
These angels that are kept under gloomy chains
of darkness.
They are waiting for the day of judgment.
Those angelic beings that have transgressed their original
boundaries.
These spirits in prison, how is Jesus proclaiming
to them?
What is he proclaiming?
He is not here proclaiming a gospel.
The writer of Hebrews tells us there is
no gospel.
There is no atonement made for these angelic
beings.
What is he proclaiming?
He is proclaiming triumph.
He is proclaiming victory.
This has everything to do with the situation
of the people who are being persecuted.
Peter writes and says to them, Yes, you
need to understand that there are enemies standing
against you.
Enemies that are not only human.
Enemies that are working against you.
That these vast conspiracies that we see, they
are more ancient than humanity itself.
But he says, that has been triumphed over.
And how has it been triumphed over?
Through the cross.
Through the empty tomb.
I don't think what Peter is saying here
is that Jesus is going down into anywhere.
I think what he is saying is that
this proclamation is being made.
Where is the proclamation being made?
It's being made in the resurrection from the
dead.
In the triumph of Christ over all of
these authorities that accuse him, that indict him,
that sentence him to death.
After all, Jesus, when he is looking toward
the cross, he speaks of the cross not
simply as an instrument of suffering.
He speaks of it not simply as an
instrument of death.
He speaks of it also as the place
where he is going in John chapter 12
to meet with the ruler of this age
who will be cast out.
He is coming for me, Jesus says, but
he has no claim on me.
He is proclaiming, he is speaking, Peter says,
to the spirits who are in prison and
he goes on to explain exactly what this
means.
He is confessing here, I think, redemption from
these powers, from the power of the powers.
Notice what he says.
He says the spirits in prison, they formerly
did not obey.
When did they not obey?
When God's patience waited in the days of
Noah while the ark was being prepared.
You have something that is happening in Genesis
chapter 6 and all the way through Genesis
9 when you have the account of the
flood coming.
A passage that is very difficult for us
to understand.
The sons of God and the daughters of
men.
Many of us will have different interpretations of
exactly what Moses is telling us.
I think he is speaking here of demonic
beings.
He says God's patience is waiting in the
days of Noah.
You have Peter pointing them back to judgment.
And he will do this consistently.
God judges, God condemns the world through this
act of the flood, through this wiping away
of those who are standing in opposition to
him.
Peter uses this image and he ties it
immediately to baptism.
He says just as God's 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 water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you.
It makes us nervous.
We read a passage like this.
We read a passage like this and it
sounds almost as though if we were to
hear someone say it without knowing it is
a Bible verse we would assume he is
a heretic.
He says this baptism, it saves you.
But Peter goes on to explain exactly what
this means.
He says not a removal from the dirt,
dirt from the body, but what an appeal
to God for a good conscience.
Peter turns and speaks of baptism and he
ties baptism with deliverance, with freedom from these
powers, with freedom from persecution.
I'm here today before you as a Baptist,
as a Southern Baptist who is deeply concerned
about the way in my own community, in
my own tradition, baptism is being wiped away.
And I'll talk about this more a little
bit later.
But there are many communities, especially in the
Bible Belt of this country in which baptism
is just our version of a bar mitzvah.
You get to a certain age, you need
to be baptized.
And if one is not baptized, it's because
something is wrong with one's parents.
And so there's great social pressure that is
placed upon baptism which means that you have
some areas in which everyone is baptized and
you may have people who will come through
the waters two, three, four times.
Because as a four-year-old child, someone
has walked up and said, do you love
Jesus and do you want to go to
heaven?
And the answer is yes.
And let me assure you, if you find
a four-year-old child who will tell
you, I hate Jesus and I want to
go to hell, you have found a disturbed
four-year-old child.
Every four-year-old child loves Jesus and
wants to go to heaven.
And I'm not saying that a four-year
-old child can't repent and believe.
But what I'm saying is when you have
baptism that is disconnected from this appeal to
God for a good conscience, you have baptism
becoming something other than the momentous act that
Scripture records, that Scripture mandates.
Notice what he says.
You are in like manner saved through baptism.
What is Peter doing?
Peter is saying, I want you to realize
God in the time of the flood with
great patience, He bore with humanity through the
construction of an ark.
He will talk about later on how all
of the citizens of Noah's arena were mocking
and scoffing and laughing and saying everything has
continued in the way that it always has.
And then suddenly God comes in judgment, in
judgment with water.
And what happens?
God through His deliverance brings Noah, brings the
people of Noah safely through the wrath of
God, safely through water.
He delivers them through to the other side
to a new creation.
You have Jesus who will come later and
will speak of His crucifixion specifically as a
baptism.
I have a baptism to undergo and now
I am anxious until I undergo it.
John will look to Jesus and say, I
baptize you with water, He will baptize you
with fire and with the Holy Spirit.
Peter stands and is speaking here to these
poor persecuted peoples who are tempted perhaps to
somehow raise the white flag, somehow tempted to
say we believe that we are going to
be extinguished by all of this suffering and
all of this persecution.
And what does he point them to?
To their identification with Christ.
He points them to a baptism that is
an appeal to God.
What kind of an appeal is it to
God?
He tells you, He says it is an
appeal for a good conscience.
How is it an appeal for a good
conscience?
Exactly what the Apostle Paul will show to
us in Romans chapter 6.
You are united with Him in death, in
burial, in newness of life.
Exactly what Paul is going to write to
the Colossians when he says you are buried
with Him in baptism.
And what does that mean?
That means that the church is announcing there
is therefore now no condemnation.
You are now already judged.
You are now already condemned.
And the person who comes up out of
the water, the person who stands before God,
who has the pronouncement of the church together,
we receive you as a brother, this is
someone who is confessing I am already damned.
I am already crucified.
And I am already raised from the dead.
Peter says baptism, which corresponds to this, it
now saves you.
He says it is an appeal to God
for a good conscience.
And he sees this as being essential to
warfare.
If you are going to stand against the
enemies of God, you must stand against the
enemies of God as one who is not
condemned.
I have two four-year-old sons.
And when I leave to go to work
in the morning, they'll come in and say,
Daddy, where are you going?
And my answer is I'm going to fight
the devil.
They think I have a very exciting life.
And when I come home from work at
the end of the day, they'll always come
up and say, Where did the devil hit
you today, Daddy?
And we'll talk about fighting the devil.
And they'll say, I want to go with
you and fight the devil with you.
And I'll always say, You can't fight the
devil yet because you don't have the Holy
Spirit.
If you were to fight the devil without
the Holy Spirit, Jesus says He would sift
you like wheat.
But I'm praying for the day in which
you will be able to fight the devil.
And we speak about, as we move through
the Bible, reading these passages of Scripture, I
find that little boys resonate with exactly the
same passages of Scripture that I resonated with
when I was a four and five-year
-old little boy.
It's the sword going into Eglon.
It's J.L. with the tent peg.
It's David and Goliath.
And it's not the Veggie Tales version.
It's the real severing of the head and
holding it up on the stick and everything
else.
And I realize that's not because little boys
are any more depraved than little girls.
It's because...
It's precisely because little boys understand deep within
them there's some kind of battle going on
out there that I am called upon as
a future protector to engage in.
And one of the things that I am
trying to communicate to these little boys is
that I am raising them to be violent.
I'm not raising them to be gangsters.
I'm not raising them to be jihadists.
I'm raising them to be more violent than
that.
I'm raising them to be as violent as
Jesus was.
Someone who, when he is being arrested and
has the authorities coming to take him before
a two-bit governor, when Peter takes up
the sword and cuts off the ear of
the arresting officer, Jesus turns and speaks to
him, and Jesus says something very different from
what I would say.
If I were writing the Gospels, I would
have Jesus say, You sissy, let me show
you how to use a sword.
See, right here.
But Jesus doesn't do that.
What does Jesus do?
Jesus sees that the warfare is deeper and
more evil than this man can ever imagine.
It is more problematic than Peter understands.
It is because Jesus understands that he could
call legions of angels, he could call the
armies of heaven, he could completely annihilate and
wipe out Jerusalem and all of the inhabited
earth, and what would he accomplish?
Damnation and condemnation.
He understands that in order to crush the
head of the serpent, he will stand in
the place of a sinful humanity, he will
bear the wrath of his father, he will
be raised from the dead, he will stand
in the presence of the Almighty, and he
will say triumphantly, Here I am and the
children you have given to me.
When Jesus says put down the sword, it
is not because Jesus is some kind of
a tie-dyed pacifist.
It is because Jesus understands that Peter is
not violent enough.
If your eye offends you, Jesus says, gouge
it out.
And when you are facing an evil one
who is holding humanity captive by accusing them
because of a right condemnation before a holy
and a righteous God, the way that you
defeat him is to remove the accusation through
the sacrifice of himself.
Peter says, when you are facing these powers,
when you are facing these principalities, when you
are facing these authorities, when you are facing
an enduring suffering, you are enduring suffering not
because you are afraid of them.
You are enduring suffering because you know they
cannot hurt you, ultimately.
You know that if they cut off your
head, Jesus knows how to reassemble it.
He says, there is a redemption that is
here and in the act of baptism you
are confessing what you believe, you are appealing
for a good conscience, and then notice finally
what he points to.
He confesses here the triumph of Christ over
these powers.
Notice in verse 21, through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
And so often in our churches we act
as though the resurrection is just God putting
a happy face on the end of a
sad story.
And Jesus was raised from the dead.
We've had a difficult time in our house
because last Easter when my boys were three,
I was reading through the gospel accounts with
them.
We came to the death, burial, and resurrection
of Jesus.
They could understand death.
They've seen things that are dead.
I was trying to explain resurrection and I
didn't have as much success.
And so we would be in the middle
of the grocery store and my son Benjamin
would look at a lady who walks by
and announce, Jesus is dead.
And I would have to turn around and
say, but he's alive now.
He died, but he's now alive and he
understands this.
And he would see someone else and say,
Jesus is dead.
Jesus died.
Yes, but now he's raised from the dead.
And I came home very despondent and said
to my wife, we're raising him to be
an Episcopal bishop.
And after great prayer and talking through him,
he finally understood what I was saying when
I talked about someone who was previously dead.
And I realized, you know, it really isn't
all that surprising that it should be more
difficult to explain to him resurrection than death.
And it really isn't all that surprising that
we have in our churches people who may
believe in resurrection, but they don't understand the
centrality of resurrection.
So that when Jesus is speaking of resurrection
and when the apostles are speaking of resurrection,
Jesus is speaking of it in these triumphant
terms.
Psalm 68, you defeat your enemies and then
you can go to Mount Zion.
He is the firstborn, the one who is
raised out of this captivity to death, the
one who can come and show us, I
am the resurrection.
Resurrection is not a thing.
Resurrection is a who.
And I am the resurrection and I am
the life.
Peter says to these little communities here, you
need to understand that through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven is
at the right hand of God, this humiliated
person, this executed criminal, this one that everyone
around you is saying is a cult leader,
he is seated at the right hand of
God.
He has regal power and authority and it
doesn't matter how the authorities roam.
It doesn't matter how they stand.
It doesn't matter how they foment.
The day is coming in which every foe
will be placed under his feet and every
tongue will confess those on the earth and
those under the earth, Jesus Christ is Lord.
He says angels, authorities, powers have been subjected
to him so why do you tremble in
fear when you see them coming?
And why are you so desperately afraid of
suffering?
So many of us are so afraid.
Peter isn't here calling us to have some
type of a martyr complex and some of
us do.
Some of us in pastoral ministry act as
though it's a mark of pride to have
difficult business meetings and we're able to sit
around the table and we're able to speak
about the troubles that we have and some
of us believe that that actually is a
mark of holiness.
I've survived three special call business meetings in
the past year.
Sometimes it is.
Peter isn't saying here to seek after suffering.
But what is he saying?
When suffering comes why do you tremble?
Why are you fearful?
He says you need to understand that what
you are living through, what you are going
through is a warfare that was going on
long before you ever arrived on the scene
and will be going on long after you
are gone.
It has been, they have been subjected to
him.
He says this is the way that you
prepare people to face suffering.
We've lived so long in this kind of
an American context that we are not training
people for suffering because it doesn't exist.
The suffering that we may face is so
miniscule compared to the suffering that any other
generation of Christians that they have ever faced.
And yet the day may be coming when
your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren will
have to look into the barrel of an
AK-47 and decide whether or not they
can confess Jesus as Lord.
Are we molding and shaping and conforming Christians
who will be able to answer the right
way?
Do we have in our churches the sense
of gravity?
And I'm not talking about debates over contemporary
music and traditional music.
There is sappy and syrupy traditional music.
There is sappy and syrupy contemporary music.
I'm talking about do we have a sense
of when we're gathered together in worship that
we are a band of brothers and sisters
marching triumphantly through this present wilderness to Mount
Zion.
Is that sense of gravity present?
Is that sense of gravity present in our
homes as we are training and equipping the
next generation?
Is that sense of gravity present in this
Christian subculture that we have created in the
United States of America in which we have
all our own music and all our own
television?
Is that sense of gravity here that it's
warfare?
There was an article recently in GQ magazine,
secular atheist who was sent to a Christian
music festival, was told to write back and
explain to the readers of GQ what American
Christian culture is all about.
He wrote back and said, I think I
can explain it to you.
It's like this.
He said, have you ever seen this off
-brand cologne?
He said, you know, you'll go into a
truck stop or a gas station and they'll
have a cologne thing set up there and
it'll say, if you like Drakkar Noir, you'll
really love Sexy Musk cologne.
He said, not quite as good, but it'll
kind of give you the artificial scent of
what the real stuff is about.
He said, Christian culture is kind of like
that.
He says, what the Christians want to do
is they see whatever is going on in
the mainstream culture and they will try to
find a Christian version of that that's not
quite as good, but it still has a
Christian message.
So you've got boy bands.
We've got Christian boy bands.
They're not quite as good, but they're able
to at least sing about Jesus.
You've got death metal.
We've got Twisted Fisher or whatever it is
that we're able to bring forward.
He says, and this is what Christian culture
is all about.
It's about it's about having a safe alternative
to the regnant culture.
I'm afraid the secularist may indeed have been
right, but that is completely contrary to the
message of the gospel that is seen in
the New Testament.
The apostle Peter is writing and he is
not saying find a safe alternative to the
regnant culture.
He is saying instead the regnant culture is
held in captive in many ways to the
God of this age and you should have
hope.
You should have triumph.
You should have no fear because the God
of this age has already been judged and
the sense that should be present in the
Christian community is not a fleeing out from
persecution.
It is not a trembling in the face
of the culture.
It is a steeled confidence understanding we are
going to speak with winsomeness and persuasion and
power, but we will understand that ultimately at
the end of the day all of these
principalities and powers and authorities whatever their names
they will crumble.
They will fall.
Peter says do not flee from suffering.
He says understand your arm yourselves in chapter
four in verse one arm yourselves so that
you can stand against this notice what he
says in chapter four verse one since therefore
Christ suffered in the flesh arm yourselves with
the same way of thinking for whoever has
suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin
so as to live for the rest of
the time in the flesh no longer for
human passions, but for the will of God
the call for American Christianity is not to
find another celebrity to follow the call for
American Christianity is not to find another mantra
to celebrate the call for American Christianity may
be to stand before persecution may be to
stand before suffering may be to look to
our brothers and sisters who are confessing Christ
in Sudan and say why are there no
megachurches in Sudan and why are there no
liberal Christians in Sudan Peter says you understand
when you see the humiliation of Christ when
you see the crushing of Christ when you
see this Christ standing before the powers that
it appears to the eyes of sight that
he was extinguished that he was defeated says
but you see with the faith you see
with the eyes of faith something else you
see a serpent twisting in the ground tail
flapping back and forth but if you look
up a little further you see a head
that is thoroughly and completely crushed let's pray
totally righteous father father we live in an
age in which it is so easy to
be fat and lazy in our faith father
we live in an age in which it
is so easy to become prideful even as
we look around those who have gone before
us who have suffered so much those who
even right now may be gathered together in
prayer meetings around this world father listening to
the sound of boots in the distance father
those who right now have hearts that accelerate
when they hear groups of people confessing and
chanting down the road from them there is
no God but Allah and Muhammad is his
prophet father it's easy for us to to
act as though we are holier than they
father we pray that you would pierce through
our self-righteousness father we pray that we
would be able to see that behind all
of our comforts behind all of our self
-sufficiency there is a God who is just
as malicious as Allah or Molech and mammon
can kill us just as easily and yet
father we pray that you would give us
eyes of triumph eyes of faith father eyes
of a people who walk hidden in a
crucified and yet a resurrected Messiah and father
we ask that we would consistently and only
look to him and we pray this in
the name of and for the glory of
our Lord Jesus He is
Lord every knee shall bow every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord