I Peter 3:8-17
A Christian Apologetic
Turn with me to I Peter chapter 3 and we are going to pick it up at verse 8 and reading through to the end of verse17.
May God bless to us the reading of His holy and inerrant word. Let’s pray together.
Our Father in heaven, bless now this word to us. Be our teacher, we pray; make us teachable. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
Now we have been looking together at I Peter and we’ve seen something of the context in which Peter has been expounding some of the rich privileges which are ours in the gospel. He has spoken of believers as having been brought out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light. And as a consequence of that transformation, Peter has been applying that principle to various areas of life in which we find ourselves. He has said something about our relationship to the state; he said something about our relationship to our earthly employers; and last time we were together we saw Peter saying something to the context of the home and of the family and in particular of the relationships between husband and wife. In all of those three areas, in the state and in the place of employment and in the home, Peter has actually drawn from contexts that are less than ideal, in contexts that are difficult. And now in this section, Peter is addressing yet another context and that is the context of the church and of the family of God and yet again in a context that appears to be less than ideal.
I. Persecution and suffering are
certain.
And Peter’s focus is that we should live in harmony with one another.
That’s how he begins in verse 8: “To sum up, let all be harmonious” and that’s
his great burden. Now it appears as somewhat of a shock, doesn’t it, that here
in the middle of I Peter, and we’re about half-way through the epistle, that
Peter should be saying, that he should have the impetus to apply this message to
the context of the Church. It reminds me a little bit of one of those Snoopy
cartoons, you know, where Snoopy says, “I love the church, it’s people I don’t
like.” And that’s the problem, isn’t it? The problem of the church is people;
the problem of the church is one another that in the context of the household of
God, there are situations and contexts and relationships that are less than
ideal.
Now, if you have a Bible where, as for example the New American Standard or the NIV, where the quotation that Peter is lifting is actually indented, you can see very readily from verses 10-12 that Peter is actually citing from one of the Psalms. I like to think that Peter, as he was penning this epistle, might that morning have been reading in his morning devotional exercises, reading through Psalm 34. And just as preachers know, what you’ve been reading recently will surface somewhere in the discourse for that day, I like to think that Peter may well have just been reading Psalm 34 in order to see what it has to say to this context. Now you remember Psalm 34, it’s one of those great psalms of David. David was fleeing from Saul, went into Philistine territory. King Achish was the king there, and you remember David feigned madness and he was drooling all down his beard and the king says, “We’ve got enough crazy people in this land without one more; send him back.” And it’s a wonderful story of David’s deliverance. It has to be inspired; nobody would want to write that about himself unless it was part of the inspired word of God. It’s in that context that David writes Psalm 34 about knowing something of the blessings and mercies of God in situations of trouble and stress. It seems very appropriate that he should lift Psalm 34 and apply it now in the context of the church.
And he seems to be saying to us three things. He has here in verse 8 a list, actually there are five things in verse 8: let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit. And each one of those is deserving of being expounded in and of itself. Time will prevent me from doing that here this evening, but let me say it in this way that what that list shows, and it’s one of several lists. You could go to many places in the New Testament that have lists of that sort, what are the characteristics that define the godly man or the godly woman, and what that says to us is that it’s a call to imitate the qualities that are most apparent in Jesus Christ, that to be harmonious and to be sympathetic and to be brotherly and kind-hearted and humble in spirit is in fact to display a Jesus-like quality. So that what Peter is essentially saying as he makes this list is that sanctification, godliness, piety, if you like, consists of being Christ-like.
And Peter goes on to cite something which he no doubt heard from Jesus himself but the way to get even when somebody curses you is to bless them by way of return. And there’s a wonderful example of that, isn’t there, in the pages of the New Testament in the person of Stephen when he was being stoned to death and he makes that prayer, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And that prayer was answered because standing there before Stephen was Saul of Tarsus and God hears that prayer and answers that prayer and brings Saul of Tarsus into a saving relationship with himself. And the answer to the problems that can so often define even a church body, even the Lord’s people, is to show a Jesus-like spirit, and that’s what Stephen was doing. Because it echoes a very similar prayer, doesn’t it, that Jesus himself prayed on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And that prayer, too, was answered on the day of Pentecost when many of those people, six weeks later hearing Peter proclaim the wonderful news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, God rescued and delivered them.
I’ve been in a context where the church divides; I know how that feels. I know something of that spirit, I know what it’s like when the pain of misused and inappropriate words get said amongst the Lord’s people. I’ve watched friends, even members of the same family, take different sides over secondary, tertiary issues. I know what it is to hear gossip from one segment and then on another part of the day to hear gossip from another segment of the church. I know what it is when in the context of the body of Christ, cliques can form. That’s painful, isn’t it? Isn’t that painful? You know, that is painful because even here at First Presbyterian Church, we can identify just a little bit with that, if we are honest, if we have the spirit of Jesus. And Peter is saying, “The way to deal with that, if somebody is saying bad things about you, is not to retaliate on that level, not to go off all guns blazing, ‘Well I can do better than that’” not to lift the phone and send e-mail, “but to have a Jesus-like spirit and to bless and not curse and to heal and not divide.” It seems to me that Peter is saying something here that is so pastorally significant that the way to godliness is to imitate the very qualities of Jesus Himself.
II. Yet we are safe and secure
with Jesus our Savior.
But a second thing is happening here because Peter now moves
on. Having raised the possibility of suffering he wants to add something to it,
namely that we are perfectly safe if we have Jesus Christ ruling and reigning
over us. Now look at what he says in verse 13: “And who is there to harm you if
you prove zealous for what is good.”
At first it may seem to be strange that Peter is suggesting that if we do good that no harm will ever come to us. After all, he’s been saying all along that trouble will come. He’s been preparing his readers all along for the advent of trouble, but that’s not what Peter is saying. Peter is saying here, “Harm,” that is ultimate harm, “will never come to you” so long as you do what Peter is saying here. And that’s where Psalm 34 comes into the picture. It’s one of those deeply personal Psalms in which David is saying, “I’ve been in trouble and the Lord has delivered me. Delivered me not out of the trouble, but delivered me through the trouble.” David was in deep trouble when he was in the land of the Philistines. When David was standing before King Achish, he was in about as big trouble as it gets. God didn’t deliver him from trouble, He delivered him through trouble. And Peter is saying, and there’s a subtle point here and we shouldn’t miss it. Look at the passage carefully because at the end of the quotation in verse 11 he uses, and in the New American Standard it’s the word “evil” and then in verse 13 the verb form is there and it’s translated “harm”: “Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good.”
If God is the one who is in absolute control, if God is the one who is in total control of everything that happens, who is there to harm you? Who is there who’s going to bring you trouble? And what Peter wants us to understand is that if you fear God as one translation and hymnic representation of Psalm 34 has it in our own hymnal, “If you fear God, you have nothing else to fear.” If you fear God, that is if you reverence God, if you set God apart as the Lord, then there is nothing else to fear. There’s nothing else to be frightened of. “If God be for us, who can be against us.” And Peter is for arming the people of God here for the advent of trouble that is to come by reminding them of the greatness of God in a situation in David’s life in Psalm 34.
III. Persecution, suffering and
trials are opportunities for bringing glory to God.
And then there’s a third thing that Peter says here, and what
is his point? We are to learn, Peter says, something about suffering.
Suffering amongst the people of God and suffering in the church of God, that and
perhaps this is the most important thing that Peter is saying here that
suffering can provide opportunities for witness of an unparalleled nature. And
that can only be brought about, you see, it can only be brought about if you are
looking beyond the trial to the Lord Himself. It’s only as you keep your eyes
upon the Lord that you can see trials in that way. It’s only as, see how Peter
puts it, “as you sanctify,” or set apart “Jesus Christ as Lord” that you can do
that. I think what Peter doing here is saying, “Look, I failed miserably here
myself.”
I was looking just yesterday, I don’t know whether you know Rembrandt’s wonderful painting of Peter’s denial. I don’t know if that’s your bag or not, but sometime it will do your soul good sometime just to get down. Go to the library and borrow a book of paintings by Rembrandt. They are absolutely astonishing and I have to say that I’ve only just discovered them in the last few years. I would have passed that by many, many times in years gone by, but recently I’ve begun to appreciate something about the way Rembrandt uses light. There’s a little girl and she’s holding a candle and she’s got a hand, you can’t see the hand, all you can see is the light and it’s shining on the face of Peter. And you’ve just got to look at that face because Rembrandt has caught that face at the moment where Jesus is looking across the courtyard and sees him and hears him deny the Lord. And, you know, the face tells a picture in and of itself and Peter is saying here, “Look, don’t do what I did.” Because what Peter did was he took his eyes off the Lord. He was frightened of man and Peter is saying, “Look, I have discovered something wonderful in Psalm 34 and it’s this: that if you fear God, you have nothing else to fear.”
And it can bring about the most astonishing opportunities in the midst of your suffering and you see that of Peter, don’t you? You see him on the day of Pentecost, you see him a little later in prison with John, and the authorities and the Sanhedrin are saying to him that he must not preach anymore in the name of Jesus. And what does Peter say? That “we must obey God and not men. We must set apart God and not be fearful of men.” And it provides for him an opportunity for witness and it’s the explanation, isn’t it, of what happens in the book of Acts. What is the story of the book of Acts about? It’s about what happens when men and women set apart Jesus Christ as Lord and live their lives in the fear of God and not in the fear of men. That’s what happens, that’s the story.
That would be a great evangelism principle to set ablaze, to ignite in this congregation, wouldn’t it? How can I witness for Jesus Christ? And Peter is saying when you fear God, you won’t be frightened of men. When you set apart the Lord Jesus Christ as sovereign Lord, no matter what happens, no matter what context you find yourself in, you will be an instrument for the dissemination of the gospel. “To give a reason,” as Peter puts it here, “to give a reason” to give an apologia, to give a defense “for that hope that lies within you.”
How can instances of persecution and trial become opportunities for witness? Peter’s writing probably a couple of years before the onslaught of Roman persecution. He’s probably writing in the mid 60’s and that onslaught, that wave of persecution, would come toward the end of the 60’s of the first century. And Peter’s forewarning them here and telling them that when that persecution comes, see it as moments of opportunity.
There would be a bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, who when he was being put to death at the age of 86 years would stand up in defiance of the authorities and say that Jesus had never let him down in 86 years so why should he begin to let Jesus down now? It would open up opportunities for Joni Eareckson in our own time, a young girl, 17 years of age, taking a swim in the sea, diving off a cliff, landing in the water, breaking her neck; she’s a quadriplegic. “If you had never known physical pain in your life,” she says, “how could you appreciate the nail-scarred hands with which Jesus Christ would meet you.” She says on another occasion, “In a way, I wish I could take to heaven my old, tattered Everest and Jennings wheelchair. I would point to the empty seat and say, ‘Lord, for decades I was paralyzed in this chair, but it showed me how paralyzed you must have felt when You were nailed to the cross. My limitations taught me something about the limitations You endured when You laid aside the robes of state and put on the indignity of human flesh.’ At that point with my strong and glorified body I might sit in it, rub the armrests with my hands, look up at Jesus and add, ‘the weaker I felt in this chair, the harder I leaned on You and the harder I leaned, the more I discovered how strong You are. Thank you Jesus for learning obedience in Your suffering; You gave me grace to learn obedience in mine.’” Very astonishing words aren’t they, when you think about it, when you think about the influence she has had on the lives of thousands and thousands of people, and continues to have in her words, in her paintings, in her spirit, in her demeanor. Teaching us, as Peter is saying here in the midst of the most awful trial and suffering to give a reason, to give a defense, to give a sure word for the hope that lies within us. That transforms churches when that happens. And I think my prayer for us this evening is that that might begin as a fire within our bones. Let’s pray together.
Father we thank you for our time together, for the time of prayer, for hearing from the Salvation Army, for the anticipation that we have now of Thanksgiving and of meeting with friends and family. But we pray and we covet your blessing upon us as a church and as a community here. Grant, O Lord, that we might see something of the spirit and tenderness of Jesus Christ in our words, and in our actions and in our spirit and that through the trials and stresses of life in this period before the second coming, that Christ might be honored and glorified through our testimony and through that opportunity which you give us to witness on behalf of Christ. Bless us we pray, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.