Now we will continue with 1 Peter, beginning
with verse 12 and reading the rest of
the chapter.
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery
trial, which is to try you, as though
some strange thing happened unto you.
But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of
Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall be
revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding
joy.
If ye be reproached for the name of
Christ, happy are ye, for the Spirit of
glory and of God rested upon you.
On their part he is evil spoken of,
but on your part he is glorified.
But let none of you suffer as a
murderer, or as a thief, or as an
evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's
matters.
Yet if any man suffer as a Christian,
let him not be ashamed, but let him
glorify God on his behalf.
For the time is come that judgment must
begin at the house of God.
And if it first begin at us, what
shall the end be of them that obey
not the gospel of God?
And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where
shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the
will of God commit the keeping of their
souls to him in well-doing, as unto
a faithful creator.
Those words of Peter continue his epistle, upon
which I have been preaching sermons now for
some time.
He says here in the opening verse, Beloved,
Think it not strange.
Now here is a curious and lovable twist
in human nature, that we can bear adversities
better if we can get three things straight.
We can bear adversities better first if we
can identify them.
Strange evils are always more terrifying.
We're always afraid of that which we can't
identify.
If we don't know what it is, we're
scared.
That's human nature, and I suppose it isn't
anything for us to worry about or imagine
that we need to see ahead, Doctor.
It's just humanity, that half the victory is
won over fear, when we can identify the
object of our fear.
When we know what it is that's troubling
us, much of the trouble disappears.
I might add that that is one of
the half-dozen, maybe four, basic tenets upon
which psychiatry is established.
And they are right that far.
That if you can identify your troubles, you
can have them halfway.
Maybe not the other halfway, but at least
half.
And Peter said, Beloved, Think it not strange.
He was identifying their troubles for them, and
pointing out that these were not strange, but
that they were familiar, and that these persons
were suffering along with all the rest.
And the second thing that helps us to
bear adversity is when we expect them.
Unexpected blows are always the ones that do
the deadliest work.
A blow that is expected, we can brace
against, both physically and psychologically.
But a blow that comes out of nowhere
is the one that does the greatest harm.
And the third thing is, if we know
that the adversities are common to all, it
is, I say, a lovable, if queer, twist
in human nature.
That if we know that everybody else is
as bad off as we are, it makes
it easier for us to be bad off.
Now, I can't explain that.
I only know that it works that way.
The last three weeks we have had frightful
heat.
And let me ask you, suppose that you
had been cut out from all the four
million in the Chicago area, and subjected to
three weeks of that frightful heat, knowing that
everybody else in the city of Chicago, from
the greatest to the least, was comfortable and
relaxed and going about in comfortable clothes.
It would have stepped up the intensity of
your suffering very greatly.
But there's something half humorously comforting in the
knowledge that if you're sweating, everybody else is
too.
And that if you have to go out
and face the hot breath of nature, everybody
else does.
And even if they're in an air-conditioned
office, you know they'll step out onto the
street and nearly fall over, and somehow you
get a restful feeling.
Well, I'm not alone in this.
Now, I say, that is not a divine
thing, and it's not a spiritual thing, but
it is a natural thing.
And remember this, that there are three things
that God takes account of in human life.
Those things that are natural and good, and
those things that are natural and bad, and
those things that are spiritual.
So there are some things that are natural
and bad.
That is, they stem out of an evil
disposition, which is natural but bad.
Then there are things that stem out of
nature itself, and that are not tainted particularly
like this.
These things of which I speak are part
of our human nature.
They're neither to be apologized for, nor repented
of.
It's that it comforts you to know that
you're only one of four million other suffering
people who don't bother you.
Just take what comfort you can out of
it when it gets hot.
So Peter identified the fiery trials for them.
And this cooled the fire of the furnace
very greatly.
Said little children, they love it.
Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial
which is come upon you, which is to
try you as though some strange thing happened
unto you.
No, this that's happening to you isn't strange,
it's familiar.
It's a part of the pattern of life
under the sun.
Then he said, Rejoice ye, and they are
told here to rejoice, that they are given
a part in the pains of Christ.
Now this knowledge took the rest of the
fire out of their sufferings.
That they were not only suffering familiar sufferings,
that their adversaries were familiar adversaries known to
all good people since time began, but that
they were given the high privilege of suffering
and bearing the pains of Christ.
These first Christians were uncritically simple.
The involved reasoning with which we overcast everything
now, the pale cast of thought that takes
away the simplicity of our living, wasn't known
to them.
Those first Christians trusted the sufferings of Christ
and they related their sufferings to his.
Christ was the great sufferer, they said, and
when we suffer for his sake, we're relating
our suffering to him and bearing his suffering
along with him.
Then they related their reward to his.
Peter said that plainly here.
Rejoice because you know that you'll also be
partaker of the glory that follows.
And so they rejoiced in the great honor
that was done them in being permitted to
suffer for Christ's sake and thus endure the
pains of the Lord Jesus after him.
And then he said, if ye be reproached
for the name of Christ.
Now it's hard for modern men to understand
this, if ye be reproached for the name
of Christ, but if you will imagine a
man whose whole person was wonderful, a man
around whose head clustered miracles and healings and
deliverances and kind deeds and forgiving words and
consolations and encouragement, who shone like the sun
on men, who fell like the gentle rain
on the earth, this man whose bold claim
was that he was the one whom the
world had long expected, the one whom the
ancient prophets wrote about, this one who was
adored by children and outcasts and honest men
and serious women, and yet was hated by
organized religion.
Institutionalized religion could not find a place for
him.
He was the stone that didn't fit into
the building.
You read that in the Bible, of the
stone that they couldn't make fit.
They had all the stones they wanted.
And when the chief cornerstone appeared, the architects
got busy, but they couldn't find a place
to fit this stone in, so they threw
him aside and rejected him as being useless.
And then they finally executed him by prickery
and sent him out to die on a
cross.
And now, worst of all for them, it
was claimed that many had seen him alive
and that this criminal who had been put
to death wasn't dead anymore, but that he
was now alive and was more at the
head of his followers than he had been
before.
Now, can you imagine the violent effect that
that name would have?
That name would have not only reasonable meaning,
it would have violent, emotional, explosive power.
Because the name of Christ divided to hold
us under like an earthquake cleaves a mountain.
And every man stood to be counted, he
was either for Christ or against him.
Neither reverently worshiped him and believed that he
was God indeed, and knelt in quiet worship
for the clusters of healing and hope and
consolation and peace and rehabilitation, were around the
head of Jesus, for they accepted the beliefs
of organized religion and they said he was
a madman filled with bedevil and was out
to destroy organized society.
There could be no neutrality there.
They had to get on one side or
the other.
If ye be reproached for the name of
Christ, he said.
Now, you can see under that simple, quick
sketch against that backdrop, you can see how
it was that they were reproached for the
name of Jesus.
In this smoothed-over age, it's not so
violent, not so sharp.
Men are not so lined up as they
were then, because they're not so simple, not
so direct, not so woman.
In this age of plastic, men are not
so simple.
Yet it was this simplicity that Jesus Christ
praised above all human virtues.
When he said, except ye become as little
children, it was the simplicity of childhood, not
the ignorance of childhood, not the dirt of
childhood, not the noise of childhood, but the
simplicity of it.
Little children have lots of qualities that will
outgrow as fast as they can.
You know how that is.
But the one thing that we don't want
them to outgrow, but yet grievously, with great
grief see them outgrow, is simplicity.
That direct immediacy that belongs to the unspoiled
human race.
So they got on one side or the
other, and his detractors flared into fury at
the mention of his name.
And his followers bowed their heads and said,
My Lord and my God.
That was the division, the sharp cleavage.
And it's existed wherever the Church has been
pure.
It's existed wherever men have put away their
half-knowledge and have come like children to
look into the face of God.
And he said, Here now, let none of
you suffer as an evildoer.
And here we see the salty practicality of
the Christian way.
The Christian faith is not to provide immunity
for wrongdoers.
It's often done it.
We admit that it's often done it.
But according to the Bible, it's never to
be so.
Let none suffer as an evildoer.
If you suffer, remember, it's not a strange
thing, but easy to understand that your Lord
went that way before you.
But if any of you are being reproached
for wrongdoing, don't hide behind your Christian immunity.
The deacon who doesn't pay his bills, the
pastor who leaves the city all in debts.
He cannot, he dare not hide these evils
behind clerical immunity or Christian immunity.
The Bible says now that nobody suffers as
an evildoer.
To use the faith of Christ to hide
evil is to prove ourselves false and bring
down judgment on our own heads.
And judgment must begin at the house of
God.
Now this is a club often used against
Christians.
Judgment must begin at the house of God.
People shrug their shoulders, toss their nose in
the air, and turn away from the church
saying, Let judgment begin at the house of
God.
Or more simply, sweep your own doorstep first.
But I wonder if they have read the
rest of that verse.
Judgment must begin at the house of God,
and if it begin at the house of
God, what shall then be of them that
obey not the gospel of God?
And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where
shall the ungodly and sinner appear?
There is one thing, brother, that God won't
permit.
He won't permit an outsider to interfere in
his family affairs.
He just won't permit it.
He will not allow the outsider to quote
or misquote garbled or emasculated scriptures.
He won't allow them to use a club
over the head of his child.
He says, Judgment must begin at the house
of God.
And the angry unbeliever says, Yes, judgment must
begin with you.
Why don't you mind your own business?
And he and God add, But if it
begin among my own children, how terrible it
will be for those who did not even
care to become my children.
The ungodly and the sinner, where shall they
appear?
One of those dramatic questions that have no
answer, a rhetorical question that carries its own
answer, rather, in it.
Where shall they appear?
For the ungodly shall not stand in the
judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the
righteous.
David had said centuries before, and now Peter
repeats it almost word for word, and now
we come to the conclusion, Wherefore, let them
that suffer according to the will of God
commit to keeping their souls in well-doing
unto a faithful Creator, whatever kind of suffering
that may be.
If you suffer out of the will of
God, you have no reward, no encouragement from
heaven or earth.
But if you suffer according to the will
of God, then we're told plainly what to
do.
Commit your soul in well-doing unto a
faithful Creator.
I love words, and I love to unwrap
them and unwrap them and find out what
they have.
Sometimes by unwrapping a little further, you'll find
a buried disc there you didn't know was
in it.
Commit, says here, and what does commit mean?
It means to deposit for protection.
A man buys a safe deposit box and
puts deeds and insurance policies and things he
wants to keep.
He puts them there for protection, knowing that
by and large they're safer there in a
bank, surrounded by guards and with steel gates
and all the rest.
They're safer there than they would be in
his bedroom or in a cookie jar.
He puts them where he thinks they're safe,
he commits them, he deposits them for protection.
And so, salty old Peter says, your sufferings
are not strange, they're familiar, everybody's had to
endure them.
And if you're suffering in the will of
God, why turn your soul over to God
for protection?
Deposit it, make a deposit of your soul.
Deposit means take your hand off the thing.
Some people, some old misers we hear about
sometimes in the newspapers, love their money so
much that they will not give it up.
They want to count it when the lights
are low and the window blinds are tight
and the doors are locked.
They want to take it out and feel
it.
They can't deposit it because they feel if
they don't keep body contact with it, it
isn't safe.
They don't know that it's more safe away
from them than it is with them.
But that's the peculiarity of people sometimes.
So we must deposit our souls, turn them
over to God.
I have likened committal to God to mailing
of a letter.
You take a letter and drop it in
a mailbox, and you hold on to it
and pull it back out and look to
see if it's stamped and addressed correctly.
Give it that last-minute look.
You still have your letter.
Uncle Sam can't touch it.
Not all the soldiers in Cook County dare
lay a finger on that letter.
President Eisenhower could not, under law, take that
letter out of your hand.
Remember McCarthy?
Nobody can take that letter from you.
That's your letter, and you will hold it.
It's yours to do with as you please.
You wrote it, you addressed it, you stamped
it, you sealed it, you carried it there
to the corner, and you finally put it
back in your pocket.
You still got your letter.
But if you want to deposit it, you
have to let loose of it.
Put it in there, reach through the slot,
and then let go.
And until you've let go, you have not
made your deposit.
When you let go, then you don't dare
touch it.
Then any cop in the city can arrest
you if you touch it.
After you drop it in, Uncle Sam has
it.
His big star-spangled hand throws it on
your letter, and you're through with it.
And if you reach your arm in there,
if ever possible, and pull out that letter,
you could be arrested.
Committal means committal, brethren.
It means depositing for protection.
Then it means something else.
It means to deliver to another's charge and
to mark an absolute transfer, or make an
absolute transfer to a superior power.
So Peter says, Now make a transfer of
your soul to a superior power.
Turn yourself over to God.
Have you done that?
If you haven't, then I do not know
that I have much consolation for you, because
you're a victim of the ebb and flow
of circumstances.
You're a victim of every new fear that
comes on the horizon.
You're a victim of luck and chance and
happenstance and perchance and possibility, enemies known and
unknown, the latest germ that slips in.
You're a victim of all the uncertainty of
the world, if you have not made that
deposit.
But if you have made that deposit, you're
a victim of none at all.
Nobody ever worries about a letter that he's
dropped in the mailbox.
It'll get there, all right.
It'll get there.
Four years and over, I've been sending almost
daily packets, letters, packages, airmail, space delivery mostly,
and we've never lost one.
And there's never been one sent us that
we know about that ever has been lost.
It always gets there.
Uncle Sam is pretty trustworthy when it comes
to the mail.
He may be a little slow, a little
expensive, but he'll get into there, and he'll
commit it.
So, you commit your soul and well-doing
unto a superior power, and then you won't
have to worry about yourself.
Now, that's the only true peace I know,
and the only way I know how to
tell you to find peace.
If I tell you death isn't real, I'm
lying to you.
If I tell you there are no enemies,
I'm lying to you again.
If I tell you that you have absolute
assurance of so many years ahead for you,
I'm lying some more.
If I tell you that pain isn't real,
it's only thought to be so, you know
I'm not telling the truth.
But if I tell you, yes, death is
real, pain is real, adversaries are real, but
I know where you can put yourself, like
a document in a safe deposit vault where
nobody can get to you, where you're as
safe as the character of the bank that
holds you.
Not a bank this time, but Almighty God
called you a faithful creator.
Turn yourself over to a faithful creator through
Jesus Christ.
Put yourself in his hands by one final
act of your soul.
Say, Lord, suffering or rejoicing, whatever the circumstance,
I turn myself over to thee, and you
will be as safe as the throne of
God.
For God is a faithful creator.
A dollar is only worth as much as
the government back of it.
You buy a, they call them, bond, a
government bond, and you're assuming the government's going
to stand.
But if it falls, your bond will be
no good.
Your bond, the currency of a country, is
only as safe as the government of that
country.
Let the government fall, and your bonds and
your currency and everything else falls to the
ground.
Now, when I tell you, you commit your
soul to God in well-doing, turn yourself
over, take your hands off, and deliver over
to that higher power for keeping, then I
have to qualify it by saying, you'll only
be as safe as God.
Is that enough for you?
If that isn't enough, what can you add?
Where can you go?
Where can you turn?
If God isn't enough, where will you look?
But God is enough.
We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee
to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father
everlasting.
To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens
and all the powers therein.
To thee, seraphim and cherubim, continue to do
cry, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabbath.
Heaven and earth are full of the majesty
of thy Lord.
If he isn't enough, better had we never
been born.
But God is enough.
He upholds the heaven and the earth.
I quote to other congregations occasionally, maybe I
ought to quote to you again, that wonderful
saying of the Archbishop of Tours, where he
said, God is above all and beneath all
and outside of all and inside of all.
He is above but not pushed up, beneath
but not depressed, outside but not excluded, inside
but not confined.
He is above all presiding, underneath all sustaining,
outside of all embracing, and inside of all
filling.
This is God.
He is enough.
So commit the keeping of your soul to
the Creator.
Turn yourself over to God through Jesus Christ.
You will be all right.
Amen.