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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from 1 Peter
3:1
through 12.
Likewise, wives,
be subject to your own husbands,
so that even if some do not obey the word,
they may be one without a word
by the conduct of their wives,
when they see your respectful,
pure conduct.
Do not let your adorning be external.
The braiding of hair and the putting out
of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear.
But let your adorning be the hidden person
of the heart, with the imperishable
beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit,
which in God's sight is very precious.
For this is how the holy women
who hoped and God
used to adorn themselves
by submitting to their own husbands.
As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord,
and you are her children
if you do good, and do not for anything
that is frightening.
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives
in an understanding way,
showing honor to the woman
as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs
with you of the grace of life,
so that your prayers may not be hindered.
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 are called, that
you may obtain a blessing
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.
Everybody, good
morning and welcome to Christ
Community Chapel.
I am really glad you're here.
Thanks for coming.
All right.
This is our sixth week of our ten week
series we're calling Rise Up.
We're spending ten weeks
in the book of First Peter.
And every week
we remind you that first Peter
was written to a group of Christians
who are living in a hostile culture.
Culture is to a human being a little bit
like a water is to a fish.
It is so much a part of your environment,
it's hard
to recognize the impact
it's having on you.
But when you become a Christian,
you realize that culture has a current
like a river
and it's taking you somewhere.
And sometimes as a Christian,
you not only have to recognize
the impact of culture,
but also resist where it's taking you.
And that can require courage
and intentionality.
The early Christians were able to live
in such a way that they actually
changed their culture, and a lot of us
would love to change our culture.
Now we just don't know how.
Well, that's why we're spending these
ten weeks in first Peter,
last week,
pastors that covered the passage
that dealt with the governing authorities.
It's easy
to think of culture as being out there.
What happens when the culture you want to
change
is really close to you?
What do you do
if the people you want to change
are the ones that live in your home,
or the ones that you worship with?
That's what this passage is about.
So if you have your Bibles,
you can go ahead and turn to First Peter
chapter three.
If you don't have a Bible,
don't worry about it.
The verses that I'm going to reference
will come up on the screen.
If you want to hold a Bible in your hand
and kind of follow along with me,
you can use one of our church Bibles
and it's on page 954
and our church Bibles, page 954 are here
are the three points we had it read to us.
Let me give you the three points
I want to pull out of these 12 verses.
I want to talk about the transforming
power of true beauty,
the transforming power of true strength,
and the transforming power of true
community.
First,
the transforming power of true beauty.
This is what it says.
The first four verses.
Likewise, wives,
be subject to your own husbands,
so that even if some do not obey
the word, they may be one without a word
by the conduct of their wives.
When they see your respectful
and pure conduct,
do not let your adorning be external.
The braiding of hair, the putting on
of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear.
But let your adorning be the hidden person
of the heart, with the imperishable
beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit,
which in God's sight is very precious.
I went off
a a woman became a Christian back
in the first century.
It could cause
a major disruption in the home.
It still can.
So Peter
is actually answering the question,
how does a believing wife impact
an unbelieving husband?
How does any wife change her husband?
All right, wives,
if you are wanting to change your husband,
I'll tell you how to do it.
Make a list of the top
ten things you want to change.
Read him that list in the morning,
every night.
Go over the list.
Tell him how he's doing.
All right.
If you're writing that down, stop.
I just want you to know
some of you are really pumped.
You're just going to.
Finally,
something I can use from a sermon, right?
That's not the way
you're going to change your husband.
You know,
when we think about changing someone,
we usually focus
on them, which makes sense.
But when the Bible talks about changing
some of that,
the focus is always on us.
You know,
I almost made these three points.
Instead of the beauty and strength
and community almost made him.
Don't worry about him. Worry about you.
Don't worry about her. Worry about you.
Don't worry about them.
Worry about you.
Because the
the Bible is always focused on us
in this passage.
But what Peter does is he
actually gives a wife two things.
Two ways to change her husband one,
he restates the pattern
and then he redefines beauty.
First, he restates the pattern.
There's a pattern for changing people
that is older than the Earth itself.
It's weaved
into the very fabric of the universe.
And that pattern is surrender.
It is laying aside.
I'll give you a good definition of
of submit or surrender.
It's laying aside your desires
for a higher purpose.
Zach mentioned
that last week in his sermon.
If you didn't, if you missed
last week's sermon, you should watch it.
It was really, really a great sermon.
But in it, what
what Zach did was
he drew attention to how Jesus
actually changed you,
how Jesus actually changed me.
And he referenced,
in the Garden of Gethsemane.
He hours before Jesus goes to the cross,
he is struggling in prayer.
And this is what it says.
And going a little further.
And he fell on his face
and prayed, saying, My father,
if it be possible,
let this cup pass through me.
That was his own personal desire.
And then it says,
let this pass for me
nevertheless, not as I will,
but as you will.
That was the surrender.
And from that
that unleashed the power of the gospel,
which is the power to transform human
beings and life on this planet.
No power has ever
no greater power has ever been unleashed
on this world
than what happened right there.
So, and last week,
the thing that that struck me in Zach's
sermon, too, he had
a, he drew a Venn diagram
with two circles that were intersecting
and one circle represented you,
and the other circle represented Jesus.
And what he said was the overlap,
however big that overlap is between
those two circles
is how much you are like Jesus.
Now, what Peter is saying
when he says, wives,
be subject to your own husbands.
He is not telling them to be a doormat.
He's not telling him to accept abuse.
What he's telling them
is to have the quiet confidence
that when they become more like
Jesus, when they're willing to put aside
their own personal desires
for a higher purpose,
they will actually unleash a power,
the power of God in their home.
So, ladies, I will tell you this
if you want to change your husband,
the best way to do it is for you to become
a little more like Jesus,
to serve a little bit more
like Jesus for love, a little bit
more like Jesus.
That's the first thing that Peter does.
The second thing is he redefines beauty.
He says, don't focus on outward beauty,
but he says, focus on inward beauty.
There.
There is a movie that came out in 2001
called shallow how the comedy
with Jack Black and Gwyneth
Paltrow and Jack black.
This is the premise of the movie
Jack Black,
played
how and how was struggling to find a woman
who would meet his very,
very high standards of beauty.
And then he gets stuck in an elevator
with Tony Robbins, who's a self-help guru,
and he, Tony Robbins, hypnotizes
him, reprograms him to see the beauty
inside of a woman not on the outside
and the whole rest of the movie.
Jack black is seeing things
that no one else sees.
I think it's fascinating
that Hollywood would make that movie
when our culture focuses it.
Maybe particularly Hollywood focuses
so much on the external.
And I want you to know when when Peter
is saying, don't pay attention to.
He's not saying
that you can't do any of those things.
You can't braid your hair, wear jewelry,
or try to look good on the outside.
What he's saying is that is that beauty
doesn't have the power
that inward
beauty has the the beauty that God values.
There's a story in Samuel where Samuel
is sent to find the next king of Israel,
and he sent to the home of a man
named Jesse, who has eight sons.
And God says to Samuel, one of those sons
is going to be the next king.
Now God could have told
him which one right then,
but instead
he wants to teach Samuel something.
So sure enough, Jesse brings out his
firstborn son, who is tall and handsome.
And Samuel says,
this has got to be the guy.
What a great king he would make.
And God speaks to Samuel and says, it's
not him, Samuel.
You look on the outside,
but I look on the inside.
I look at the heart.
And then David, who was the youngest
and least
impressive, is the one that God says
he's the one.
So even in the Old Testament
when it talks about the coming Messiah,
what Jesus was going to look like
physically, it says he was not going to be
an attractive man physically.
But I just started to read a book
this morning on the beauty of Jesus.
It was the beauty of Jesus
that drew people to him.
So what
Peter is telling wives,
there's a way for you
not only to impact your husband
and change them, but there's a way for you
to become even more beautiful.
And that, again,
is to become a little bit more like Jesus.
So those are the two things
that he gives the wife.
Then he moves to the husband.
And this is what he says, the husband.
Verse seven likewise, husbands, live
with your wives in an understanding way,
showing honor to the woman
as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs
with you of the grace of life,
so that your prayers may not be hindered.
All right.
If I was a woman right away, I'd be irked
by being called the weaker vessel.
I get that, so let me cover that first.
When Peter says weaker
vessel, he's not talking about value.
He's not talking about equality.
What he's talking about
is physical strength.
But even more than that
social vulnerability,
it was much more dangerous
in the first century
to be a woman than it was to be a man.
And what Peter is telling a husband
is, you need to take all of your advantage
and make sure you use it
on behalf of your wife.
It just like he gives the wife two things.
He gives the husband two things.
He is the way to live with his wife,
and then the way to see his wife first,
the way to live.
He says, live with your wife
in an understanding way.
In order to understand
your wife, you have to know her story.
You have to know her strengths.
You have to know her pressures.
You have to know her pain.
Years ago, I don't know
what precipitated this conversation,
but my wife Karen and I were talking
and she ended up saying to me,
Joe, you really don't know
what my life is like.
You don't know what I do day to day.
What she was saying
is, you don't understand me.
And I remember feeling really defensive
and I was about to respond.
But those kind of conversations to me
are a little bit like playing chess.
And I have to anticipate the next move.
So if I said to her, that's crazy,
of course I understand you,
I know what you do.
And then her move would have been, well,
then what did I do yesterday?
At which point I would go, yeah.
So I just knocked over my king apologized,
and I said, let's go to lunch on Tuesday
and I had lunch on
Tuesday, had a yellow pad.
And I said,
I want to know what you do on Monday.
I don't know what you do on Tuesday.
And I went through every day.
And now for years
now, before I leave for work, I ask her,
what do you have going on today?
And then I try to remember
when I come home to say, how did that go?
Well, I'm trying to do is live with her
in an understanding way.
Men, can I can
I ask if the two of us just sat down
with no one else?
And I said, tell me about your wife.
Tell me her five greatest strengths.
Tell me what keeps her up at night.
Some of the pain she is carrying today.
Could you tell me?
So, according to Peter,
if you're a Christian and you're married
as a husband, ignorance is not neutral.
It's neglect.
That's the first thing.
The second thing he gives them, he gives
husbands, is how to see your wife.
He says they are fellow heirs
with you of the grace of life.
When he says that, he's not just saying
that they are co-equal heirs
with you
and are equal to you in every way.
He is also reminding the husbands
that your wife is a daughter
of the King of the universe.
I have two daughters.
I love them fiercely, and I always have.
Now they're both married,
so I watch how their husbands treat them
right.
Both those guys come to this church,
so I'm watching.
The reason is because I care,
right?
You know,
at the end of that passage, it says so
that your prayers will not be hindered.
Listen, men, you mistreat a daughter
of the king of the universe.
Heaven will go silent.
So, Peter say, all right,
so Peter starts out by saying, listen,
if if the culture you want to change
is the one that you lives
right in your home,
this is the way you do it.
You got to work on.
You become more like Jesus.
Jesus is always easier.
It's more powerful to experience
Jesus than to just hear about him.
And that's particularly true in your home.
Then he jumps to the community at large,
to the whole church, and he says this.
Finally, all of you have unity of mind,
sympathy, brotherly
love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.
Do you not repay evil for evil or reviling
for reviling, but on the contrary, bless?
For to this you are called, that
you may obtain a blessing.
You know when when you read
that you don't have to think very hard
to realize that inside
the walls of the church was not a picnic.
When he says, don't repay evil for evil,
he's talking about inside of here.
And the reason is because
churches are full of half
baked followers of Jesus, right?
You're half baked the people around you.
And that means we're all these consent,
these these circles, this Venn diagram.
Some of us have a tiny sliver
where we're like, Jesus,
some of us have a little bit more
that we are like Jesus,
but it makes sense that there's
going to be conflict inside of here.
But one of the things that made
the Christian community so much different
than the culture out there is when
people came in, they realized something.
They do things differently.
One of them,
one of the negative things about having
a lot of churches, a lot of good churches
in the same area,
is that it's easy to just get upset with
somebody
and just leave and go to another church.
And, and I get that
there are good reasons to leave a church,
but sometimes you can short circuit
what God wants to do, and you
because remember it, my points were almost
don't worry about them, worry about you.
God can use anything and everything
that is happening to you
to make you more like Jesus.
That is so
hard to actually wrap
our heads around and embrace.
But it's true.
God can use anything and everything
that's happening in
you right now to make you more like Jesus.
Peter then goes through kind of the five
characteristics of a community,
a church that can actually have the power
to transform
the first thing he says unity of mind.
I love that.
That means the we have one thing,
one thing that we can agree on.
I was some years ago
when the Cavs were in the playoffs.
I was on my way to a Cavs game,
and it happened to be when racial tensions
here on our nation were pretty high.
And as I got close to Rocket
Mortgage Arena, I.
I was stopped at a stoplight
and I looked over at the car next to me.
And the driver was a man about my age
who was an African-American man.
We locked eyes
and we had the exact same Cavs t shirt on,
and we
looked at each other at the same time.
We did this.
Right.
If something is
as shallow as rooting for the same team
can overcome racial tensions,
even for a moment,
because at that moment
we had unity of mind.
How much more
should we be able to overcome
the differences of the people
sitting around us?
Because we believe in Jesus?
There isn't a person here.
You shouldn't be able to look at and do a.
Sit with.
Together we're together.
That's unity of mind.
Second thing he says is sympathy.
And sympathy is to feel
what somebody else feels.
But let me give you
a different kind of twist.
I think sympathy is is thinking the
the best of somebody,
not the worst of somebody.
You know, I've told you before that
one of my struggles is,
how I judge other drivers
when I'm out on the road.
And one of the things that bugs me
is when somebody drives
under the speed limit, like,
if you're driving 35
and it's a 45,
I'm like, what in the world?
And then I remembered when I
was teaching my kids to drive
and they were driving.
They drove slower than the speed
I wanted them to.
It was safer for everybody if they drove.
And I remember cars
being lined up behind me and just going,
just take it easy, just relax.
Don't you see? It's a it's a kid,
but nobody would think so.
Now, if you're driving in front of me
and you're going
35 and a 45, I'm going to assume
you're just learning how to drive, right?
That's sympathy.
But when you look
at somebody here in church
and they're not acting the way
you think they should act
or they've said something to you,
they shouldn't say, I want you to try to
have sympathy.
Everybody is carrying around
some kind of pain.
That's the second thing.
The third thing,
he says, is brotherly love.
That's a particular kind of love.
A lot of you have siblings.
One of the things that is
true is siblings.
You can't get rid of them.
You are stuck with those siblings.
That's
the kind of love that happens inside.
And that's
why it's good to just hang in there
and let God do the work inside of you.
He wants to do.
When there are people
with sharp edges around you.
And then he
he says, A tender heart and a tender heart
is not allowing pain to make you hard,
but allow pain to keep you soft.
I had a friend
give me this book last week.
It's called Sacred Fire and I read this.
It says all of us will get hurt.
That's a given.
However, this is the challenge.
How we handle that hurt with either
bitterness or forgiveness will cover
the rest of our lives and determine
what kind of person we're going to be.
Suffering and humiliation will either
soften our hearts or hardened our souls.
One of the things that stood out
in a Christian community
in the first century is when people walked
in, they realized people had the same
kind of pain that they did out there.
But people inside handled it differently.
Instead of making them hard,
it made them soft.
Instead of making them bitter,
it made them kind.
And then finally says
with a humbleness of mind,
I read this this week about that.
That that's having a
a healthy self suspicion.
That's what it said.
That means to
to believe that you might be wrong.
You might be wrong
when Peter is talking
to a group of Christians
who live in a hostile culture,
and he's talking to them
about not a culture out there
on the East Coast or on the West Coast,
but a
culture that is right where they live,
how they can change the people they live
with, the change
the people they worship with.
He basically gave everyone the same task.
He said,
you want to change the people around you,
be a little more,
be a little more like Jesus.
So this is my
my assignment for you.
And I started doing this in my quiet time
in the morning in my journal.
I would draw those concentric circles
or those that Venn diagram,
and I would draw it and how much
I felt like I was overlapping.
Jesus.
And then I pray,
Lord, by tonight,
would you make me
just a, just a little bit more like Jesus?
So for you, by tomorrow,
be asking God,
make me just a little more like Jesus.
And if all of us do that,
there is no telling the power
that will be unleashed
in our homes and in our world.
Would you pray with me?
Our father in Heaven.
I am grateful that you sent Jesus
to live in our place and die in our place,
and resurrect so that we could be
reconciled to you so we could experience
forgiveness, have hope.
But I'm also grateful
that you sent Jesus to transform us
into his likeness,
that even now we can become more like him.
And as we do,
we can impact the people around us
in a way that we could never do it before.
I pray that you would do that
work inside of each
one of us for your glory
and for the the world's good.
We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.