Good evening.
Take your Bibles, if you will, and open them to 1 Peter.
We are in chapter three this evening.
Should be finishing that up this evening, but we'll see, no promises.
I don't know what started blooming right after all those storms, but boy is it blooming.
All right, let's begin with a word of prayer.
Our gracious God and Father of all mankind, we come before you grateful for your blessings, for your love, for the outpouring of your grace and mercy through the sacrifice
of your Son Jesus Christ for our sins.
We pray that as we open up your word and strive diligently to learn what you would have us to do, that we apply the things that we learn to our lives, that we grow in wisdom and
knowledge and understanding by doing so.
and that we grow closer to you on a daily and continual basis.
We pray for those who are ill from physical ailments.
We pray that they be able to recover fully.
We pray for those who are weak in their strength, and we pray that they might be able to regain that strength and once again have the capacity to do the things that they have been
able to do in the past.
Or we pray for those who perhaps are weak spiritually or sick spiritually.
We pray that they might be diligent to open your word, to study your will, to correct their lives, to repent of their sins, and strive to walk in the light as you were in the
light.
As we pray and consider the evangelism seminar coming up this next week, we pray that we might all be diligent to put our hand to the plow and to not look back.
that we might be open to the opportunities to fulfill the commands that you have placed for us in Scripture and might learn better how to do that, that we might work together and
pull together as a congregation to accomplish the work that needs to be done here in Collierville and reach the lost who are in this community.
All these things that we pray for, we ask if it be your will that they be done, and all this we pray and ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Peter writes, for he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
Let him turn away from evil and do good.
When you refrain from something, what are you doing or not doing?
Alright, you're not doing it, you're avoiding, you're actively avoiding that thing.
If you are keeping your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit, then what are you doing instead when you speak?
All right, you're speaking good.
The opposite of deceit.
Truth.
Sometimes when we approach a passage and we read, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, it is important for us to pause and flip it around and go, wait a minute, since
obviously we're still going to use our mouths, we're still going to use our lips, what then is that a command to do?
Certainly there are some things that we're going to speak that are going to be
Neither good nor evil, they're indifferent, morally speaking.
You know, when I tell somebody, it's seven minutes after the hour, hopefully that's true.
I mean, it's as accurate as the clock is and my ability to read it, but the fact of matter is it's indifferent, morally speaking.
But when he says, refrain from this, you keep yourself from this, that implies we are to be doing something else.
We are to gather from that, that we are to speak good things.
We are to speak the truth.
Now, are there times?
where in a situation you choose to say nothing because saying, speaking the truth would make the situation worse, speaking a lie is not an option.
Are there times you just simply say nothing?
Sure.
There's a reason by the way in the jurisprudence world that we have the Fifth Amendment.
I'm sorry, we have the ability to plead the fifth.
When you plead the fifth, you're saying, I'm not going to say anything because to say anything would endanger incriminating myself.
Doesn't mean I'm guilty.
Now lot of people will assume that.
If you take the fifth, it's because you're guilty.
Nonsense.
You take the fifth because what you would have to say would cause you to appear.
to be guilty, whether you were guilty or not.
And so we created a way in which someone could not cause themselves or be forced into a scenario of speaking, answering a question so as to appear to be guilty when they're not.
Also, by the way, are there some questions that should never be answered?
Absolutely.
There are some questions that should never be answered.
What type of questions should never be answered?
Yes, questions created to entrap and ensnare the person answering.
Just like when a wife says, does this make me look fat?
Those are questions created to ensnare the person answering.
Are there questions that Jesus did not answer?
Absolutely.
Sometimes we're told why he didn't answer them.
Sometimes Jesus didn't answer them and instead answered with a question.
Sometimes Jesus didn't answer them because the people asking them weren't ready for the answer.
One of the things that I want you to key in on.
because it's one of the single most important lessons about evangelism and personal Bible studies that you will learn beginning on Sunday and going through Rob's time here, is many
of the questions people will ask you in a personal Bible study you should not answer.
Wait a minute, it's a Bible question.
They're honestly asking a good question or an honest question.
Why shouldn't I answer them?
Because they're not able to understand the answer.
We often have been guilty, and I say we collectively, in the body of Christ, we have often been guilty of arguing about issues and answering issues and answering about differences
with people who do not understand the authority of the Scriptures.
Do know what happens when you try and teach someone who believes that there's no such thing as absolute truth, that it's absolutely wrong to worship with instrumental music in
New Testament worship?
You want to know what happens?
Nothing.
You accomplish nothing because they don't believe there's anything that's absolute truth.
Well, that's what you believe and this is what I believe and everything will be fine.
They're full force postmodern in their belief about truth and therefore they don't really think that there is such a thing as right and wrong in religion.
So when they ask you, as you're trying to get them down a train of understanding authority of the Scriptures, when they go, hey, you know, I heard something about the church the
other day.
Is it true that you all think you're the only ones going to heaven?
And they ask that question and you, in all sincerity and honesty, want to provide them book, chapter, and verse for the answer.
The reality is you should never have answered the question.
because they're not yet ready to understand the answer.
There were questions that the apostles asked Jesus that they were not yet ready to know the answer to.
And believe me, if the apostles after three and a half years have questions that Jesus says you're not ready to know the answer to yet, someone who's been sitting down and
studying the Bible in a personal Bible study for about an hour,
has a whole list of questions that they're not ready to know the answer to yet.
It's not that you're hiding it from them.
It's that they're not yet ready to understand what you mean when you actually answer them.
So one of the things that you should be looking for, and I know Rob's going to bring it out because I know Rob, he's going to bring out that there are some questions that you
don't answer yet.
As a matter of fact,
One of the techniques that he teaches that I have used and have appreciated him for teaching, which Bobby Bates taught before him, and that is on the back of the little
booklet, if you sit down and have a personal Bible study, before you ever begin, you just let people know, hey, you're gonna have questions that come up and things that come to
mind, and we love questions.
We'll answer all of them, but here's what we're gonna do.
When you think of a question that you want an answer to, we're going to flip over and we're going to write it on the back of the booklet.
And we'll answer all of them when the study is finished.
Because most of the time, it's a curiosity.
It's kind of like a teacher who follows a bunch of rabbits instead of teaching the lesson that he was supposed to be teaching, which is what I'm doing right now.
So.
Avoid chasing every rabbit that comes into the mind of a person you're studying with.
Write it down on the back.
They may still be interested in it later, but it's really not important enough to derail the whole study and possibly end up losing the opportunity to study because you give them
an answer they're not ready to hear yet.
So you write it down and you focus on what's important.
Okay?
So.
He who would love life and see good days.
Let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
Let him turn away from evil.
It's not just that he must do this with his mouth.
It's not just that he must do this with his speech.
He must do it with his life.
What is a person who avoids saying evil but then does evil?
He's a hypocrite.
What is it that Jesus said about the Pharisees to the people as He gave those woes against the Pharisees?
He says, do what they teach you to do.
Just don't live the way they live.
Why?
Because they would teach the law and then they would live the life of a hypocrite.
They would live out envy and murder and jealousy and all of these things that they ought not to have done and they would ignore God, but they would tell the truth when it came to
the Bible.
They would open the scriptures and they'd tell people this is what the law says.
So he says,
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 prayers.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?
If you remember all the way back in chapter one,
Ever since chapter one, Peter has been carrying on a theme of you will be persecuted for doing good, but do good anyway.
And then he comes to this and he says, and who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?
Is he implying that all the things he's set up until now were were false and there was naturally nobody who's ever going to do any harm to somebody who does good?
No, he's setting a principle.
He's establishing and asking a rhetorical question, who is the type of person who would harm you for doing good?
It's not most people.
It's not the general population of the planet that look for someone who's doing good and kill them for it.
because they can't stand anybody who does anything good.
That's just not the way the human nature is.
It's not the way humanity is, generally speaking.
But that doesn't mean there's not exceptions to that.
And it doesn't mean there are not times where individuals are deceived into harming those who are doing good.
What New Testament individual was deceived into harming those who were doing good who were called Christians?
Saul of Tarsus was.
Saul was deceived into believing these people who were feeding widows, who were taking care of the ones who were in need on a daily basis, who were gathering for nothing more
than worship, who were opening the Scriptures daily, these people.
were people who needed to be found, rooted out, cast into prison, or killed.
Now Peter is not about to say that there is no one on the planet who will harm you for doing good.
Peter had spent way too many nights in prison to believe that.
And yet he says, and who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you are blessed.
and do not be afraid of their threats nor be troubled." Verse 14, he quotes Isaiah and he quotes a passage where God is telling Isaiah and God is telling the people, when the evil
people come and they start threatening you for doing good, don't worry about them.
Doesn't mean you won't suffer, doesn't mean you won't potentially die.
God's saying, but I'm paying attention.
He's already said and He's reiterating that His ears are open to their prayers, that His face is against those who do evil.
Peter's making it clear and is establishing here that we don't have to worry about defending ourselves.
We don't have to worry about overpowering the evildoers.
All we have to worry about is doing good.
All we have to worry about is speaking the truth.
All we have to worry about is following after what is good.
God will take care of the rest.
Who does God use to punish evildoers?
If we go back and look in the Old Testament, we look at the history of the nation of Israel, typically speaking,
Who does God use to punish evildoers?
Okay, he used Israel at one point to punish the nation's government.
Who else?
Other nations.
If you go look in Habakkuk, Habakkuk will tell you, and God will make it clear to and through Habakkuk, that God will use those more evil than the ones who are evil to punish
them.
That's what God did with Babylon.
God says, I'm going to send the Chaldeans against Israel.
And Habakkuk says, wait a minute, the Chaldeans are worse than the Israelites.
How can you use a nation that is so heinous as the Chaldeans to punish your own people?
And then, Habakkuk in chapter two, verses one and two says, but I know I'm wrong, so I'm going to stand back and listen until I'm proven to be wrong.
He's like, I don't understand how that could be done.
But if God's going to do it, He's just and He's right.
So I'm gonna stand here and be patient until God shows me how I'm ignorant.
Well guess what?
The answer that comes from the Lord is the just shall live by faith.
He establishes that it is the evildoers and not the righteous people.
It is those who are doing evil and not those who are doing good that are going to fall prey to the more evil nation.
And in turn, God then is going to judge the Chaldeans.
God's not going to use them and then allow them to flourish and never deal with them.
If they're evil, He's going to deal with them too.
So when we look at a situation where good people are being harmed by those who hate good people,
It's really interesting when you watch down the stretch of time that the evil people who were harming good people end up getting taken out by other evil people.
God knows how to deal with evil people.
God knows how to deal with those who will harm him and who will harm his people.
And the book of Revelation is replete with this idea that God was going to bring judgment after judgment after judgment, sometimes partial judgments, sometimes full and complete
judgments on Rome.
Why?
Because they were persecuting his people.
God knows how to protect and how to judge, and He does so.
But then consider verse 15.
Now, this is one of those passages that people memorize, and they should, and preachers quote, and they should, but usually they don't know anything about its context.
They just...
memorized the passage of scripture that sounded really good, taught a really good principle.
And they quoted a principle that's important in scripture and said, this is something you ought to do.
It's appropriate, but you really ought to read its context every once in a while.
Peter writes, but sanctify the Lord God in your heart.
And always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
Have you ever heard that passage quoted?
Have you ever seen written on a wall, be ready always to give an answer?
Does that mean answer every question in every Bible study?
No!
because it's not talking about that kind of question.
What context is Peter dealing with?
false accusations, those who were being harmed for doing good, and the lifestyle of one who chooses to follow after good.
Peter, in this passage, is not instructing every Christian to be able to answer every Bible question, nor to be able to defend against every false doctrine or every apostate
idea.
That is not the context of this discussion.
Rather, he is saying, as you pattern your life, as you live out the commandments of God, as you abstain from evil and abstain from deceit and abstain from doing that which is
wrong, and rather pursue peace and pursue righteousness when someone questions you about your life.
you be ready to give them an answer.
Someone questions why in the world would you live the way you live?
Why would you avoid all the evil?
They won't call it evil, they'll say all the fun.
Why won't you participate in all the fun?
Why won't you go out and do what the rest of us go out and do on Friday night?
Why won't you just accept that anybody can marry whoever they want?
Why won't you do that?
Peter says, you be ready to give an answer.
You live your life not based upon your own whims, your own fancies, your own desires, your own volition.
You base it upon God's Word.
So when someone asks you why...
you're able to give an answer with meekness and fear.
Mm-hmm.
to other to identify the same test.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and to feed off of that, you know, as Peter is telling them, you're going to suffer persecution.
You're going to go through hardships.
You're going to suffer for doing good.
He's not telling them or not.
He's reiterating they will.
But what do you do if you've already determined that it's going to happen?
You've already determined that it can happen.
You've already determined what you're going to do when it does happen.
And you've already determined what you're going to do when someone draws you up and puts you before a court and says, you've got to pay for what you've done.
When you've already thought through all of those things, when you've already understood the potential for all of that to happen, you don't question whether or not you still
believe what you believe anymore.
quit.
The prime example of this, by the way.
If you want to see this passage lived out in scripture.
Paul goes into the temple as he's arrived back in Jerusalem.
At the request and behest of James and others from the Church of Jerusalem, he goes in and he consecrates himself together with two other Jews for the feast.
He goes through the process that a Jew would do if, especially if they had been traveling into Gentile land.
to prepare for the feast because he had come back for the feast.
And so Paul does that.
And as he's there...
uproar occurs and liars come and say he's got Gentiles in the temple
and a riot begins and they're going to kill him until the Roman centurions come down out of the fortress and stop them and as they're about to take him away what does he do?
He stands on the stairs leading up to the fortress and declares why he's done everything he's done.
He not only doesn't give in to their threats, He not only does not acquiesce to their willingness to kill Him if He doesn't change and declare that Jesus isn't the Messiah, He
stands up and preaches a sermon!
to make it clear that he's done everything he's done in good conscience before God.
that he's been obedient to God, not disobedient.
Peter is saying, you sanctify, now the word sanctify means to set apart.
Okay?
It's the same root word from which we get holy.
It is to make separate, because that's what holiness is.
It is to be separated.
He says, you sanctify, you set God apart in your heart.
You put your understanding and relationship of God in a position where there is nothing that can happen to you in this physical world that will touch that.
that will destroy that.
He says, you sanctify the Lord God in your heart and you always be ready to give an answer, to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.
as
would happen in the next 150 years human history as Christians would be taken and arrested by Rome and placed in the Coliseum and fed to the lions.
as they would stand there, not as the gladiators did with sword and shield, but simply praying to God as they were slaughtered by hungry wild animals.
They lived out their hope.
They lived out their assurance that this life wasn't all there was.
That they had a home that waited for them in heaven and this was always just a pilgrimage.
This was always just a sojourning that was looking forward
Tune in.
What is one of the things that children ask when you're traveling for many hours?
Are we there yet?
For those Christians, they could say, yes, yes we are.
but for a pagan world?
for a world like the one we live in?
People are going to look at it and they I don't understand that.
What do you mean you're ready to go?
What do you mean that you're desirous to set aside this physical world and all of this flesh and all of the things involved in it?
I don't understand.
And they want an answer about your hope.
Peter says,
when you're suffering for doing good.
And all the people around you are questioning how you can possibly suffer for doing good and not give up the doing good.
since you be ready because they're coming with questions.
They're going to ask you a reason for the hope that's in you.
And you answer them with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.
Here's the questions they're asking.
They're asking you to defend your actions.
You say, my actions speak for themselves.
When Peter and the apostles were.
taken and imprisoned and put before the council there in Acts chapter 3 after they had healed a man who was lame, who was outside the temple, and was jumping up and down through
the temple telling everybody that he had been healed and they were declaring that it was done by the power of Jesus of Nazareth.
As they're brought before the council, they're told, you don't speak anymore in his name.
What does Peter say?
Whether to obey men or God, you choose.
but we cannot speak but what we've seen and heard.
If you think that you're more powerful than God and you stand in a judgment seat higher than God, by all means, go ahead and try and convince us.
But all we're going to do is tell you what we saw.
All we're going to do is tell people what we heard.
You can't get me to change the story.
You can't get me to change the truth.
And the only thing you can do to shut me up is kill me.
Peter is telling them they're going to revile you for your good conduct.
They're going to defame you.
They're going to lie about you.
They're going to claim all manner of evil.
They're going to claim that the man who said, will tear down this temple and rebuild it in three days, speaking of the temple of his body, was making a grand threat against the
nation of Israel and its physical temple.
And therefore, you ought to die.
They'll say that because they said it about Jesus.
And yet, he says, verse 17, for it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than doing evil.
Pause there for a moment and ask yourself a question because this is one that should not be overlooked.
Is it ever the will of God that righteous people suffer?
and shake your head this way.
You say, a minute, God wants us to suffer?
Hold on now.
God wants sinners to be saved.
are there occasions throughout Scripture where unrighteous unbelievers are finally convinced about the truth of God not because of the good deeds of others and not because
of the truth being spoken but because they observed the righteous suffering and not giving in.
Absolutely.
When we suffer, as James tells us we will, Paul tells us we will, James says there's trials, Paul says all those who do good in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
All of those things have an opportunity for us to A, grow and B, reach the lost.
Was it God's will that Joseph be sold into slavery by his brothers?
What evil had Joseph done that he warranted God's will that he suffer by being sold?
None.
What did Joseph say 13 years later?
God did this to save your lives.
when Daniel hauled off into Babylonian captivity ahead of his family, ahead of his nation, and is told, you eat the food that the king gives you.
and Daniel and Hannah and I and Azariah and Michiel say you can kill us but we're not eating the food.
Rather, give us this.
when you look over and over and over and over in the Old Testament.
It is God's will that His people go through difficult times on this earth.
because it makes them just like His Son.
Was it God's will that Christ suffer and die so that we might be saved?
Yes, it was.
You see, sometimes we...
have to have to back into a question we already know the answer to, but we got to back into it in a way so as to convince ourselves that we're still part of the story.
Because we would all readily admit if it were framed that way, was it God's will that Christ suffer, that we might be saved?
We'd all say yes, in a heartbeat, not any thought about it.
And then turn around and question whether or not God still exists when we're suffering.
How dare we?
How dare we question if he still loves us, he still cares if he still exists when we're suffering, when he let his own son suffer for us?
Peter says, verse 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.
Peter says, you cannot judge circumstances by the flesh alone.
You must judge the circumstances by the flesh and the spirit.
You can't act as though this fleshly existence is all there is.
you go look at Christ, and what could they do to His body?
Hang him on a tree and kill him.
But what Jesus already told his disciples, do not fear him who can destroy the body but cannot destroy the soul.
rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.
Jesus had already said, you, when you are under threat, must remember, this life isn't all there is.
So Peter's reminding these Christians of that.
He's bringing that back to mind and saying, you go watch your example.
You go follow your example.
And for Peter, there is only one example.
There's only one pattern to follow.
There's only one person you look to as how you are to live, and it's Jesus.
All right?
Thank you for your time.
Somebody go ring the bell if you don't mind.
Tell them to let my people go.