A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.”

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” Humble Leadership, 3 Characteristics of Under-Shepherds, 2 Responses for the Church

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.”

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” 4 Ways to Respond to other Christians in Light of Christ’s Return

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.”

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” Focus on 3 Aspects of Jesus’ Victorious Death

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” Transcript:

We live in a hostile world. Just ask the Israelis and the Palestinians. Families on each side of the border are terrified for their lives as we enter the 20th day of conflict; I just saw that there was a cease-fire, or at least a momentary cease-fire. Just ask the Ukrainians, the Sudanese, the Nigerians fighting Boko Haram, the Iraqis, and the Syrians and we will find out that we live in a world that is hostile; a world full of hostilities, hostilities against human flourishing, hostilities against governments, against education. The Bible definitely knows this to be true. You can listen to a couple of passages – Isaiah, chapter 8, verse 22 (Isaiah 8:22) says this: “And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness.” Job describes this earth in this life like this in Job 14:1: he says, “Man, who is born of woman, is few of days and full of trouble. Comes out like a flower and withers, he flees like a shadow and continues not.” Solomon even said that life was meaningless. He said, in fact, that he hated life in Ecclesiastes 2:17. He says, “So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. For all is vanity and striving after the wind.” Here Solomon is the richest man who lived at the time and he said, “I hated life.” And so it becomes quickly evident that we live in a world that is hostile, not just today but has been for centuries and centuries and centuries.
But we also live in a world that is not only hostile to one another, but a world that is hostile to God. We live in the suburbs here and we face little of what we traditionally would call hostilities, but the hostilities of our own hearts against God are constantly on display. Since birth we are by nature selfish, by nature prone to do what we most want to do at any given moment, what makes us feel good, prone to ignore what God tells us to in His Word and instead insist that we know what is better. We are prone to lie, we are prone to gossip, we are prone to outburst of anger, and prone to pursue perverted sexual lust. Just look at the systemic struggle with pornography we see in this generation. And all of that: that’s just within our own hearts. But then you look around and you begin to realize that these inward personal struggles that we have struggled with for our whole lives really, if we’re honest, are increasingly being celebrated by the culture. Just look, for example, at the rise and fall of the Hollywood Production Code. It was adopted in the 1930’s after some film producers pushed the envelope, including nudity and some of those debased things in their films in the 1920’s and the Code essentially created an across the board standard that ensured no movie could be produced in Hollywood above what we would now have as a PG rating. There was no explicit sexuality, no vulgar language, and very, very little violence, but that was all abolished in the 1960’s – due in part to some of the racist elements contained in the code, which was a good thing to abolish it, but also because of the willingness of many at that time to celebrate and to depict what had previously been constrained to the private struggles of our own hearts. You fast forward today and some PG-13 movies and many rated R movies contain pornographic scenes. Revenge and violence; those are just normal. And all sorts of sinful lifestyles are celebrated at the cinema. We see even in our culture, what we see is we’re experiencing a moral revolution and they’re calling the normalization of homosexuality, the legalization of marijuana, and the growing acceptance of polyamory – that’s kind of the new version of polygamy – is a great moral and wonderful revolution. It’s to be celebrated. It’s no wonder then that parents worry. Parents worry about what type of world will are kids grow up in. What type of world will they live in and become adults in? Will they be persecuted for their faith? Will they be swayed to reject God’s ways and follow their own or the cultures? How can I protect them from these things? Some couples even wonder, “Should I even have kids?” It’s such a hostile world. And yes, there are some legitimate concerns, as Christians are seen as increasingly ‘out of step’ with the culture around us, and many who stand up for what we believe are mocked, belittled, and ostracized by our society. But what we fail to realize is the biggest threat to our kids isn’t the hostile world around us. It isn’t war, it isn’t global warming; it’s in our own sinful hearts. You can shield your children from the world for a time, but you cannot shield them from their own hearts. That’s why gospel transformation is central to our goals as parents, as we just talked about earlier, is the only way we can have lasting hope, that we can have lasting peace, and lasting joy. The gospel message is the only hope for a world full of hostilities.
We’ve already established that all of man is hostile to God within our own hearts. And we know this be true because God is absolutely holy, He’s absolutely perfect, He’s absolutely all powerful and knowing as well, and so you combine all those attributes and you realize that if He has an absolute perfect standard, we all fail and there’s nothing that we can hide from Him because He knows everything. And so, He very much knows that we are far, far from perfect. He knows our own hostilities against Him – as the psalmist says in Psalm 14:2-3, “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, any who seek after God. No, they’ve all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.” That is God’s evaluation of humanity. There’s none who does good. So God rightly promises punishment for those who are hostile to Him. That’s why the one certainty of life is what? – Death. Every one of us will die. And after death comes judgment, comes judgment and hell for those who reject God and continue in their hostilities. But for Christians, that’s where we have the hope. Because at the point of death comes eternal life. And yet, God loved us in spite of our hostilities. That’s the good news. He gave us some wonderful news. See, He sent His Son, Jesus, to the earth to live the perfect life that we couldn’t live. Every single one of us is guilty, condemned, in God’s eyes and we cannot live that perfect life and that’s why Jesus need to come. He came as a substitute to live in our place. Well, He also died the death in our place as well. You see, the punishment for our sins, of course, is death and eternal punishment, but God laid upon Jesus all of our sins. God said, “You know what? I want each and every one of my precious human beings that I have created to be in a right relationship with me and to come to know me and spend eternity with me, and so I’m going to send my Son and I’m going to put all of their sins onto Him so that they can have forgiveness of sins.” That is good news, brothers and sisters. That is wonderful news that we have to celebrate in the midst of a hostile world. And so what’s our response? What’s our response to this good news? It’s very simple; believe and trust that Jesus is the only way to be right with a perfect God. Stop trying to do it on what you can do. Stop trying to be the good enough person and turn from living in open hostility to the Creator of our universe and turn towards honoring Him in every area of your life. Give up thinking your way is better and pursue His ways. Those who put their faith, their trust in Jesus as their King, as their Lord, as their Savior, Peter described as those who are not citizens of this world. We are a new nation, a new people group – you should be open to 1 Peter, you can just look at 1 Peter 2 across the page verses 9 and 10 (1 Peter 2:9-10). Peter says this: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” We were aliens, we were hostile towards God, but now as a result of this gospel message, in result of those of who put our faith and trust in Him, we are God’s family. We are God’s people. We see also that we are His children and that we have a promised inheritance for us waiting for all eternity. 1 Peter 1:3-4 says that. Peter says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” And so we are those who have hope. We are those who, even in the midst of a chaotic world, we are those who know that God is in control. [It’s] like we read this morning in the Joseph narrative and have been reading for weeks and weeks now; when all seems to be chaotic, when Joseph is imprisoned, God has a plan. God has a reason why He’s doing everything that He’s doing – working to save and preserve and to work everything out for our good, as we know according to Romans 8:28. And even in the midst of suffering, even in the most brutal of hostilities, Christians have hope.
So how do you live in a hostile world? It’s a question we need to answer. Well first, you need to turn from living for yourself and believe the good news that Jesus saves. Then, and only then, can we return to the main point of our passage, and that’s to see suffering as a blessing. You see suffering as a blessing. That’s the phrase and the concept that is repeated twice in our passage and so anytime you see it repeated in a passage you’re studying, you know that it is probably important and you better pay attention. And so we see that same thought in verse 14 and verse 17, but again we can only see suffering as a blessing if we know Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
Well let’s look at what Peter says in verse 14. He says, “But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed.” And then he says again in verse 17, “For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will then for doing evil.” So we know that suffering and hostility are realities in this life. Sometimes it comes of our own sin, as verse 17 implies, suffering for doing evil – that’s not a good thing. Our sin often makes a mess of our life, and we know from the Proverbs that the “way of the sinner is indeed hard,” from Proverbs 13. But sometimes suffering comes simply from a result of having Christian convictions, or just being alive, based on nothing that we’ve done. And that’s why he says, “You can suffer for righteousness’ sake,” in verse 14, and verse 17, “You can suffer for doing good.” Well, we can understand this idea that we can suffer for doing good and suffer for righteousness’ sake. Be honest, your gut reaction when someone points out sin in your life is what? Or when someone says, “Hey, you’re wrong,” “No, actually I’m not.” That’s what our gut reaction is. And our reaction is to say, “Well, it’s okay that I did that because you should’ve seen what the other guy did.” That’s our gut reaction. And so, simply by holding Christian convictions, we are condemning what many believe to be perfectly acceptable and perfectly normal if we simply follow what the Bible says. And some in our culture may shrug that off and say, “Oh, well that’s just that religious lunatic over there,” and go on with their day, but others, our convictions can result in serious persecution. It did for the early church. It did for the recipients of this letter. But instead of seeing that suffering is, “Woe is me. This is so terrible. I can’t believe this is happening to me,” Christians are called to see this suffering as a blessing. There’s one thing that goes against every fiber of my being; it’s this very truth – to see suffering as a blessing. Suffering is always hard, especially unjust suffering, suffering that you don’t deserve. And seeing suffering as a blessing doesn’t mean we downplay the significance of suffering where we tell people just to get on with the program and be happy in the midst of a trail. Put on a happy face? That’s not how we respond to suffering. And we can still cry in the midst of suffering, but we must view suffering as a gift from God nonetheless.
Verse 14 says this again: “But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed.” Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is a promise. And ‘blessed’ here is the giving of God’s favor. God wants to give you a gift, a wonderful favor, a wonderful blessing, and it takes in the form of suffering sometimes. 1 Peter 2:19 says it this way: “For this is a gracious thing, when mindful of God one endures sorrows when suffering unjustly.” So when you suffer unjustly, it’s a gracious thing. You realize what he’s saying there? It’s a grace gift. A gracious thing is a gift that you don’t deserve. Now when is the last time you said, “Suffering – hmm, that’s a gift that I don’t deserve. I’m sure glad I got it!” Verse 21 goes on to say that our right response to suffering is how we become more like Jesus. [1 Peter 2:21] goes on to say it this way: “For to this you have been called (suffering), because Christ also suffered for you leaving you an example that you might follow in His steps.” You see, suffering can be a blessing because it’s what God uses to build your character. It’s what God uses to make you more like Jesus. It’s what God uses to cement our faith and trust in Him, and to grow us into He’s called us to be. The only way that this provides hope for the Christian is that we know that God is always, always in control. Isaiah 46 says it like this: Isaiah 46:9-11, “For I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning,” in other words, God knows what’s going to happen at the end right away from the beginning, “And from ancient times, things not yet done.” You see that plenty of times in the Bible. Saying, “My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all My purposes.” Nothing can go against what God’s purposes are. And He says in verse 11, “I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass. I have purpose, and I will do it.” Brothers and sisters, that is the only reason why we have hope, because we serve a God who is absolutely in control and who promises for those who know Him and who serve Him and who love Him to work all things out for our good (Romans 8:28). That is why suffering can be a blessing, and why we are called to honor Christ in our response to suffering. The main point, of course, is ‘suffering can be a blessing,’ and the main command is found in verse 15 of our passage. The main command is this: “But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy.” It’s not just the main command; it’s the only command in our text. Honor Christ as holy in the midst of suffering – Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. You are first to honor Christ as holy by becoming a Christian, and after you do, you need to learn to see that suffering, suffering is a blessing. And the rest of the verses now give us support for our primary command. It fleshes out how specifically the Christian honors Christ as we suffer and so we’re going to see three ways to honor Christ as you suffer in this hostile world.

Three Ways to Honor Christ as you Suffer in this Hostile World

It is easy to become fearful, to become anxious, to become irritated, even angry in the midst of hostilities, and so we need to be reminded of how we honor Christ as we approach suffering and learn to approach it as He approached it. Well, the first way we can honor Christ as we suffer in this hostile world is to be zealous for what is good.

I) Be Zealous for What is Good (v. 13)
We see that in verse 13: “Be zealous for what is good.” Verse 13 says this: “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?” A very simple, rhetorical question, it presents a proverbial truth, something that is axiomatic, something that is self-evident, something that we know to be true, right? It’s generally true. If you are doing a good thing, someone doesn’t like to hurt you for that. If you’re always pursuing what is right, people don’t like to hurt the nice guy. They’re going to be nice in return. That is generally true, not always as we’ll see, but that’s a general, axiomatic truth. Now notice we are also to be ‘zealous’ for what is good, right? We are to be zealous for what is good. To put the word ‘zeal’ in mind, I think it’s helpful to look at a historical example; the zealots of Jesus’ day, the Jewish zealots, were those who were passionate for liberation from Rome. You see, they would put their lives in danger as they sought to kill, often at random, Roman soldiers with their Sicarii. That’s the little curved dagger that they would carry, and they would carry this and they would disperse themselves in the midst of a crowd and they would seek out where the Romans were, maybe officials, maybe just Roman centurions – Roman soldiers – and they would take that Sicarii, that dagger, and kill them and stab them and then run away and try to meld back into the crowd. Their zeal resulted in now what we call terrorism, and a complete disregard for even their own well-being, because many of these zealots – many of them were caught and crucified. And instead, the Jewish zealots, the Jewish zealots were consumed with the furtherance of their cause. So much that they didn’t care what happened to them. It is with this absolute outright abandonment that we are called to pursue what is good. We are to be zealous for what is good at all times, putting all of our energy, all of our mental capacity behind pursuing what is good and what is honoring to God. So Christian, disregard what you think you want to do or what is best for you and instead pick up the banner of what God says is good, what God says is loving and what God says is kind, and put on that type of behavior.
When you are zealous for pursuing good as you are as you are at pursuing your hobbies or as zealous as you are at pursuing your career or your cause, you will both live a life honoring to Christ, and generally speaking, people will have a more difficult time doing evil against you, even if they disagree with you. But of course that was not always the case for these early Christians. Many faced intense persecution in spite of their zeal for what is good, and Peter knew this would happen and so he gives us another way to honor Christ as you suffer. First, be zealous for what is good and people won’t persecute you, but even if you do do good, you need to make sure you don’t fear in the midst of suffering.

II) Do Not Fear (v. 14)
Don’t fear – that’s our second way we can honor Christ as you suffer. Suffering is most definitely a reality in the Christian life, and to deny it or minimize the pain that comes from suffering is unhelpful, it’s un-sympathic, or if you simple act as if suffering is not a big deal is a recipe for strife in any relationship, and especially in the church. We see 1 Peter 3:8 that we are commanded, all of us together in church, brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to have unity of mind, sympathy (or empathy), brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Remember what that means is to feel deeply for one another, we hurt for one another as if we were hurt, we cry with those who are crying, and we love each other enough to recognize the serious difficulty that a trial might bring. So naturally if you have the same sympathy, the same empathy, for your friend or your brother in Christ, there is going to be a closeness and an unbreakable bond that will develop. But that sympathy doesn’t mean that we simply let people respond however they’re going to respond in the midst of suffering. You see, many who go through suffering think that they’re suffering, or their trial, gives them freedom to respond however they want to respond. You might believe every emotional response is entirely justified, especially given your unjust suffering. And one of those sinful responses that often we have in the midst of a trial, in the midst of suffering, is fear. It’s anxiety. It’s worry. And so Peter says in verse 14, “But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.” Have no fear of them. Literally it would say, “Have no fear of those who provoke fear.” So those who are trying to make you afraid, those who are trying to persecute you, don’t be afraid of them. It refers to those who are intentionally persecuting the Christians here. So don’t fear specific individuals, and it also says, “Don’t be troubled… Nor be troubled.” This idea of ‘troubled’ here is ‘anxious,’ is worry; don’t be filled with worry or terror about what is to happen. See, this is the fear that mothers have for their children as they think about the uncertainties about the future of the world we talked about earlier. This is the fear we all have when we aren’t quite sure how long you will be able to hold down you job, when your boss clearly has it out for you. Regardless of the exact situation, the command is rather simple: don’t be afraid and don’t worry.
You guys might remember the movie Back to the Future – classic 80’s movie – you also will remember if you remember the movie that George McFly was rather spineless in his approach to Biff, the town bully. And it wasn’t until he stopped being afraid of Biff that he was able to stick up for what was right with his bride-to-be. He ended up finding the courage within and his future son, Marty McFly, inspired him not to fear what was fearful. Now, if just have to think positively and build up our own self-esteem to fight fear, that might work for high school bullies, but that’s hardly good enough when faced with much more substantial and systemic fears and anxieties. As Christians, we have something so much greater than ourselves to place our hope and trust in, and that of course is what we’ve already talked about, our sovereign God. We can often lose sight of God and His control in the midst of great storms of life and simply get wrapped up in our anxieties. So many of us need this gentle reminder at times; even though you might be suffering, even though life is terrible, you can’t lose sight of suffering as a blessing. You cannot lose sight that God has made plans for you since before you were born, He always wants what’s best for you and He has the power to bring about His good purposes. So even though your suffering is terrible, don’t be afraid of this hostile world.
Now this is one of the more difficult things to tell people who are suffering, isn’t it? But, it’s one thing that we, who are suffering, need to here. Here’s how our conversations with those who are suffering often go: We find out there’s a trial, there’s a struggle in their life and we say, “Well, what’s going on?” And you here their story, and you begin to realize that they’ve gone through something absolutely, utterly horrifying and terrible – that they’ve been raped, maybe they lost their dad and mom in the same car accident, maybe they lost their job, maybe they got cancer immediately after they lost their job with no way to get another job or pay for the treatment, all of which I’ve heard. And you see them respond in fear and you just don’t know what to say because their situation’s terrible. And so we sit in silence, maybe we shed a tear, give them a hug, and those things are appropriate, maybe we cook a meal and then we go, but the most loving thing to do is gently, graciously help this brother and sister suffering a terrible tragedy to not fear and to see fear as something that is to be ran from and to point them to a sovereign God.
Well, another common sinful response we have when we suffer is be completely and utterly self-absorbed, isn’t it? You’re going through a terrible time and all you can think about is you; the pain, the emotions of it all is crippling almost. It’s so easy when this pain is unbearable and when you are so desperately trying to stay afloat in the water that you simply keep your focus and your eyes only on you and your problems. Well, Peter addresses that wrong response next.

III) Make a Defense of your Hope in Christ (vv. 15-16)
The third way we can honor Christ as you suffer is: you need to make a defense of your hope in Christ. His response to that self-absorbed way that we suffer: focus on others, specifically sharing the gospel with them. The surest way to honor Christ in suffering is to see your suffering as an evangelistic tool. You see, this of course is impossible when you are self-absorbed, when you’re only thinking of yourself, and Peter actually assumes here that the Christians are responding rightly to suffering, that they see their suffering as a blessing and he assumes that they are zealously pursuing what is good. He also assumes that these Christians are not anxious, troubled, or fearful, and in fact that they have great and visible hope. Look at verse 15: “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Peter’s assuming here that Christians have a visible hope. Something’s different about your suffering and you’re not distraught. Clearly, Peter expected non-Christians to see the terrible plight of Christians and their terrible suffering and the trials the Christians were going through and to be amazed at the hope that they still exhibited, in spite of these trials. Christian, do people look at you and see hope when you’re suffering? Do they look at you and see peace? Do they look at you and see a settled trust in God no matter what situation you’re in? Or do you freak out when things don’t go the way you expect them to? I pray that there is some semblance of hope that you’re able to exhibit, even in the midst of suffering. And God wants to encourage you in the midst of this suffering and in the midst of your right response to suffering to be able to make a defense for that hope that is in you, not to be self-absorbed. Now the rest of the verses in our passage in 15-17 tell us how we are going to make a defense of the hope that is in us.
[The] first way that we can make a defense for the hope that is in us is that we can prepare. We prepare. 15 says, “You’re always being prepare to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Always being prepared – our motto should be like the boy scouts, “Be Prepared.” Always be ready to defend what you believe, why you believe it, and how you can have a right relationship with God. In other words, always be prepared to share the Gospel. Now the Greek word here for defense is apologia, and it’s from what we get the English term ‘apologetics,’ and if you’ve been a Christian for a while you may be familiar with that term. It simply means ‘the defense of the faith.’ It’s not akin to make an apology, “I’m so sorry I’m a Christian. I’m so sorry I believe something that’s irrational. I just can’t help it. It’s what I believe. It’s what I was born into.” That’s not what apologetics is. Apologetics is simple ‘defending the faith,’ rationally, logically, and reasonably. It’s the ability to do that. No matter what the situation, no matter what comes up, it’s defend the faith.
Now, many today see religion as ‘speaking to the soul.’ That’s what the psychologist especially talks about and so the religion, well that’s good to influence how we feel and it’s completely subjective and it’s good to get your soul in line, but that’s not truth. Religion is all about the God who made us and the God who made us created us with the ability to reason and He created us and He chose to reveal Himself clearly in a written form which takes intelligence to read, to study, to understand in a logical manner. He has created the sciences, He has created order, He’s created logic itself, so it stands to reason that the God who created reason would be able to rationally be known and understood. And so this verse has created a whole subset of Christian theology, which is known as Apologetics; the rational defense of the faith. But as much as people use as a proof text for being prepared to defend your faith in every situation, the context says that Christians are to be able to defend their faith specifically in times of suffering.
So before you even suffer, prepare your mind to use suffering for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of others, and not to be focused on yourself. Prepare to get your eyes off of you and onto others as your platform for the gospel increases exponentially when you are going through suffering. And when you give a defense for your faith, be prepared to clearly and logically explain why you have a hope in a hopeless situation. Be ready to clearly and explain the gospel.
Well, when we suffer we must fight the temptation to be anxious, to fear, and so Peter encourages not to fear in verse 14. We also have the tendency to be self-absorbed, so he encourages us to be others focused, as we are encouraged to pursue evangelism. Another sin that so easily ensnares us when we suffer; what is it? – Bitterness, anger, resentment. That’s why Peter says to be prepared to give a defense, but to do it with gentleness and respect.
See, it’s so easy to be angry at the world. It’s so easy to be angry with those who disagree with you, angry with those who wronged you, bitter with life, even bitter with God. That’s easy. That’s our natural response to suffering, and so when we defend our faith, we can often come across as angry, as bitter, as strident people who say, “You all got it wrong. You’re hurting me and I’m good. Listen to me and you will be saved.” That’s angry [and] bitter. No one’s going to listen to you. We are to be gentle and respectful. That’s why he says at the end of verse 15: “Yet do it with gentleness and respect.” If you remember from a couple of weeks ago when we looked at the word ‘gentleness’ was an attribute that women are to pursue as they interact with their husbands, you remember that gentleness means ‘not insisting on your own rights,’ not insisting that you are above reproach in every way. You’re not pushy, you’re not selfish, you’re not assertive, demanding that people treat you the way that you need to be treated. And so if you are defending the faith with gentleness, you are doing so without regard to defending yourself as much as you are making sure that this other person hears the truth of the gospel. You don’t want to make sure that you get what you want, you want to make sure that they get what they need. No, even in your suffering you’re to be focused on others, gently encouraging them to see the truth of the gospel.
The second word that is used is ‘respect.’ So your goal is not to win an argument, but to win a person. And as we show a deep respect for others our love, or care, our concern for them should be vividly on display. We often can see this with street evangelists. Some are wonderful examples of this and some are terrible examples of this. I’ve seen some street evangelists who are incredibly winsome; sweet, kind, loving, and they tell jokes to get people in and they start talking to them and they do a wonderful job of explaining the gospel message. And God can most use street evangelists and even door to door ministry, but the majority of your conversions to Christianity happen through established relationships that you have with others, through your friends, through your coworkers, your neighbors, your family. Where gentleness and love can be expressed in actions and words maybe for a couple minutes, when you have that relationship with someone for months and years and years, your gentleness, your respect for them is on display over a long, long period of time. So is your suffering. They’ll see you go through suffering. They’ll see you go through trial and they’ll see how you respond. If you respond in a way which makes them wonder why you have so much hope, are you able to make a defense for why you have that hope? Well, the final way that we can make a defense for our hope is: return love for slander.
We see this in verse 16. We are to be having a good conscience, “so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” This echoes what we saw in verse 9 as well of chapter 3: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for revile, but on the contrary bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. This is the same example that we saw in Christ in chapter 2, verse 23: “When He was reviled He didn’t revile in return. When He suffered He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.” So brothers and sisters, even if someone slanders you, spreads false lies against you, against your love ones, and then stirs the pot some more and aggressively persecute you, even those people we are tempted to hate the most, we’re called to love them, to be willing to selfless care more for them than even yourself. This type of love ultimately puts them to shame, doesn’t it? Even if the world doesn’t recognize your love as lovely, God does and His enemies will be brought to shame in the end. Your responsibility isn’t to worry about that, it’s to be like Christ and retune love for slander, even as you’re suffering.
Look at verse 17 in conclusion: “For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will. See, suffering is indeed God’s will. When you’re going through that trial, when you have that very, very difficult relationship with an individual – that’s God’s will for you. He has allowed you to go through that to grow you into the person you need to be. He says in chapter 2, verse 21 that it’s what we’ve been called for. Suffering you have been called to do because Christ also suffered for you. Do you see suffering like that as God’s will, as what you’ve been called to endure? The whole world faces hostility. That is simply a fact of life in a fallen world, but isn’t it comforting to know that if you put your trust in God to be your Savior, that your suffering isn’t meaningless. It isn’t just a precursor to eternal suffering and torment. I beg you, if you have not put your faith and trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that you might do so today. Come and see me after the service, come and see one of the pastors so that you too can learn to live life in this hostile world.
Let’s pray: God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the encouragement that it gives us in the midst of suffering and in the midst of trials. You so clearly have outlined a way for us to respond that blesses us, that allows us to honor you and that allows us to be conformed into your image, and so we want to be mindful of that and to respond to suffering in these ways so that we can honor you, the great God who has saved our souls from sin. And Lord, I want to pray specifically for those who do not know you as their Lord and Savior. I pray that this morning will be the day that they turn from following their own ways of dealing with this hostile world and instead pursue your ways. I pray that they would see you as good and that you as the loving God that has graciously given a way of escape from eternal punishment and that way is only through Jesus Christ. And so I pray that you would help us as Christians to remember these truths to be mindful of the fact that we are those who are turn from living for ourselves and want to follow Jesus with all our soul. And for the unbeliever, I pray that would happen today. I pray all of these things in your Son’s holy and precious Name. Amen.

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” Transcript:

Our passage today, it’s in 1 Peter, chapter 3, verses 8-12 and it’s on page 1295 in your pew Bible. 1 Peter, chapter 3, verses 8-12 – I want to say, welcome and thank you so much for coming to all our visitors and others. I know there are a number of people here supporting those who were baptized and even if you are here and came in just with friends, thank you so much for coming. It’s a pleasure to have you today. Well, 1 Peter 3:8-12 says this: “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 were called that you may obtain a blessing, for whoever desires to love life and seek 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 on the righteous and His ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who are evil.”
Now, verse 10 about sums up the whole world, doesn’t it? “Whoever desires to love life and see good days,” of course no one would long for a bad life filled with terrible days, right? Many people assume though that you get the good life when you pursue what makes you most happy. What makes you most satisfied and so they simple follow the whims and the passions of their heart which change with age and with the times. When we look at the foundation of the gospel message, the message of the Bible, the message that saves, the message that we heard testified from the waters of baptism this morning, we get to the point where we understand that God, God is living the ultimate good life. God is living the perfect life. He is all good and all holy and He says that you too can have the good life. You just have to be perfect. In Matthew 5:48 Jesus says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and when that begins to sink in, you begin to understand that if being perfect brings about the good life you’re doomed – we all are – damned to be more precise. And yet, we continue to try and find the good life on our own, don’t we? The classic teenage drama, Grease, we see the good life and some lessons about what the world teaches about the good life from that movie or play. And the good life, according to Grease, is falling in love, right? – Meeting your high school sweetheart. Some women actually never get past this – just look at the romance novels on their bookshelves, their iPads, their Kindles. We’re not just talking about young women – women of all ages – they’re obsessed with this. And men too, many men can be hopeless romantics thinking that they’re just going to find satisfaction in the woman of their dreams. From Grease, we also see the good life is getting a sweet ride, right? Finding that thing, that hobby, that object that you just long to have, that you just long to hold and to see and to use, and once you get it you know you’re going to be living the good life – until it rots, breaks, or something new comes about. Well, also from Grease we realize that the good life is equated with close friends, friends that are loyal, always looking out for your best, the Pink Ladies, right? – Friends that look like you, dress like you, think like you, and even talk like you, but as we know from years of experience, friends can come and go and just because someone affirms everything you do doesn’t mean that they’re even really a good friend. Good friends often have to tell you you’re acting like a fool, don’t they? So we’re those who are perpetually trying to find the good life.
This is an age old problem, a problem with all of humanity. We look for the good life in all the wrong places. It’s exactly what King Solomon did as well. Solomon was incredibly wise and incredibly wealthy and yet he still fought to find the good life in countless areas other than in God. You see, he had hundreds of wives and concubines, and all they did was turn his heart after idols. The good life was not in passionate lust. Solomon tried to fill his life with stuff, but was unable to find the good life there. Just listen to what he says in Ecclesiastes 2. Ecclesiastes 2:4-6 says this: “I made great works. I’ve built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted them in all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest and the growing trees,” and then he says in verse 8, “I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasures of the kings and the provinces. So I became great and surpassed who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Solomon even tried to find hope and happiness and the good life in alcohol. He says in the beginning of verse 3 of chapter 2, “I search with my heart to cheer my body with wine…” As many do today, using substances to alter their mind, to get them to feel things they’ve never felt, to see things they’ve never seen, thinking these experiences bring about the good life. Well, his conclusion is found in Ecclesiastes 12. Ecclesiastes 12:1 says this: “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Before the evil days come and the years draw near, of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’” If you seek the good life on your own, you’re never going to get there. You’re eventually going to say, like Solomon did at the end of his life as he wrote Ecclesiastes, “That was terrible. That was pointless. I wish I would of sought the Lord from the days of my youth.” Sure, there’s the hope of temporary happiness and satisfaction as you pursue the things in this world, but very often that fades quickly as the evil days come and the years pass with no pleasure. The secret then to lasting pleasure in this life is to seek after the Lord. Seek after Him while you are still young. That’s where the good news of the gospel comes in.
See, Christians are those who realize that God, and God alone, holds the keys to understanding the good life, and the good life that we try and pursue only results in pain and strained relationships, and if that doesn’t happen, at least eternal punishment. That key to the good life, of course, is our Savior, Jesus Christ. He came as a perfect Man, He lived a truly good life, the life that we could never live, that perfect life that God’s commands of us to live, and there’s a sense in which Jesus Christ lived in our place. He lived the life that we could never live. And not only did He live in our place, He suffered and died in our place. You see, the consequences of our sin and our vain pursuits is eternal death. Since God is absolutely fair, is absolutely just, the punishment for our sin had to go somewhere and it couldn’t go unpunished and so that is why Jesus took all of God’s wrath for your sin. He bore the brunt of God’s anger against your sin on the cross. That’s why Jesus died and was buried, but He didn’t stay dead, did he? He rose again on the third day, showing that death, the ultimate evil, no longer reigns supreme in this life, but that good life, that good life will last for eternity.
So, what does God require? Be perfect or trust in Jesus. Trust that He died for you. Trust that He died for you as a substitute. Follow His call. He says, “Stop trying to pursue the good life on your own. Turn from your skewed view of joy, your skewed view of pleasure, what you think is going to bring you satisfaction and follow instead God’s rules for the good life.” Learn to hate the sin that seems to promise pleasure and pursue what is right and truly does promise pleasure. Giving God all the honor and all the respect for doing a mighty work of transformation and change in your life – Paul says it this way in Galatians 2: “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I now live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” So what does God require of us? – Simple give up living for ourselves and say, “God, I can’t do this on my own. I need to turn from living for myself and I’m going to follow you because you alone hold the keys to the good life.”
When you’re living for God, then and only then, will you have the good life both now and forever. The good life now may include suffering, it may include trials and hardships, hardly what the world describes the good life, but the way we can respond to those trials, those sufferings, will be sweet, be joy filled and indeed be good. This is exactly the fruit I see the Jan Kitzman updates that Dwayne and Joe Bedard so faithfully send our church. Jan, if you don’t know, is a dear saint who’s diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago now, and I love hearing how she is doing. Not because the cancer cell counts are up or she’s received bad news yet again that a treatment didn’t work, but because she continues to give it all to the Lord. She continues to seek to be a witness to her doctors, to her nurses, to her family, she patiently trusts, never cursing God, remembering God and His promises when the hope in this life begins to fade. And yet, this infectious joy and this settled peace has truly made her life now good. I know she would testify to that.
So before we even get to our text, I must be clear: your good life is only realized after you stopped looking for what you think will make you happy, and trust in Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior. It is He alone who has promised a good life for all eternity. And after you have turned to Christ, then and only then, do you have the hope of that good life. God helps us to know how to pursue the good life in the here and now in the Word of God. And in our passage specifically, there’s going to be two basic principles that we need to live in order to be at peace with the world and unity within the church and in our families. And those two principles are peace and unity that we need to be pursuing in this life. These verses come on the heels of a lengthy section encouraging Christians to submit to all human authorities. Look in your text of 1 Peter 2:13. 1 Peter 2:13 is the heading of the section that this is a conclusion of and this verse says, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution,” and then Peter goes on to say, “You should be subject to the government as supreme. You should be subject to those who have authority over you in your workplace, even if they’re difficult. Wives are to submit to their husbands, even if they’re unbelieving husbands, even if their husbands aren’t the greatest to them.” Why? Because we see in chapter 2, verse 15 that submission is the will of God. It’s what Christ modeled in chapter 2, verses 22-25. It is how the world will see that God is at work with you – your humility, your submission. And so now after you understand that submission in your relationships are God’s designed part of relationships to make them sweet, to make them blessed. Peter wants to make sure that your relationships continue to model a settled piece and a settled unity for everyone to see. So our verses today are like a conclusion to this submission section, and we’ll see four ways to pursue unity and peace in your relationships, four ways to pursue unity and peace in your relationships that will ensure that you are pursuing the good life, both here and for all eternity.

Four Ways to Pursue Unity and Peace in your Relationships

I) Pursue Character Traits of Unity (v. 8)
Well, in verse 8 we see our first way to pursue unity and peace and it’s pursue character traits of unity – Pursue character traits of unity. Of course we understand that submission is a prerequisite to pursuing unity in the church, but there are certain character traits that must be pursued as well. If you’re the family that comes and goes from the church as you please – hardly here, hardly there – and when you are, you slip in and slip out, you don’t talk to anybody, you especially need to understand these points. You have to be present and engage, to view church as a family, don’t you? And that’s really at the center of verse 8 this morning. You see, verse 8 is a poetic – he uses a poetic device called a chiasmus. He uses parallel concepts. The first commanded character trait is to have unity of mind. Well, that’s in parallel with the very last character trait. You look in verse 8 – a humble mind, right? Well, the second one is in parallel with the second to last – you are to have sympathy, well you’re also to have a tender heart. And then at the center is brotherly love and the poetic device of a chiasmus points to brotherly love as the uniting attribute, the uniting characteristic that bonds all of these other traits together. And the word ‘brotherly love’ is a word that you all know – Philadelphia. That’s right, ‘the city of brotherly love.’ I don’t know how brotherly loving it is now, but at least it was originally named that. And it connotes the idea of love within a family. This concept of brotherly love, it’s because of your deep family love that aging parents come to live with their kids, right? –Even if it’s inconvenient. On the other end of life, it’s because of deep family love that allows a mother to wake multiple times in a night and feed and soothe that newborn. It is because of brotherly love that causes siblings to stick up for each other on the playground when you were kids. And the New Testament commandeers this term and applies it to the church.
See, the church is to be like a family, a close knit group that cares for each-other’s needs, that knows each other’s needs, that longs to spend time together, that feels deeply for one another. Why? – Because we’re a family. We all love God. There’s no limit to this brotherly love, not just your friends, not just your literal family in the pews next to you. We are to get out of comfort zones and pursue everyone in the church. We are to have that close relationship with them. Sure, some will be like your immediate family and some that sit on the other side of the family will literally be like your second cousins, but regardless, we’re all family here. That’s the idea. And in order to pursue the character traits of brotherly love within this church, we have to first be committed to one another, committed to being with one another, not forsaking the gathering together, prioritizing our meetings together over and above other activities, even over and above other Christian activities that you might do. The more we have fellowship with one another in this church, the deeper of course, then, the deeper we feel towards one another, the more easy it is to feel when you hear of someone who comes down with cancer like that person is in your own family.
That goes on to the second character trait and that’s the two parallel traits of sympathy and the tender heart. These words are closely related and both require us to feel another’s pain, or joy as if it were our own. The second word, ‘tender heart,’ literally means ‘tender bowels,’ because in the Greek and the Hebrew mind, the word for ‘emotions’ was literally ‘your bowels.’ We have some carry overs in English when we say, “We have butterflies in our stomach,” right? – Or the upset stomach that occurs when you’re nervous – the psychosomatic symptoms that occur. The point is, because we are family we feel as family. We feel the gut-wrenching loss of a child who dies as if we were the father, we were the brother, the sister, the aunt, the uncle. We feel the pure joy of God healing a sick loved one, as we did when Amy has been so miraculously healed. Or, the sweet satisfaction of a dear brother or sister finally finds a job after months and months of searching. Our emotions are united as if we were family. We have sympathy and we have a tender heart.
Well, another character trait that we are to pursue unity in the church is unity of mind and humble mind. It is the first and the last character trait that he mentions in verse 8. Literally here, we are to be one minded. That is what unity of mind is, an attitude that would make separation or division absolutely unthinkable. Not that every individual thinks exactly the same, but there is a unity of purpose in the church – a unity in our love for our Savior. And separation over secondary issues is just out of the question. So yeah, as important as the color of the carpet is, it isn’t worth leaving the church over. There’s grace and charity extended when others don’t think the same, and great humility as we are called to submit to various authorities that God puts in our lives, even within the church. That’s why humility is also key for unity – having a humble heart.
Well the opposite of humility is of course, pride. And at the center of disunity in a home or in a church, very often, is pride. I remember back to one of the first arguments of my marriage were, “Where do you keep the dish gloves?” I mean come on, why is that important? I don’t really know, but we both thought it was and pride would dictate that you would know better and that you knew exactly where those dish gloves needed to go and so you’re going to argue to that and you are going to explain to your wife, or she was going to explain to me, why this is so important. That’s pride. Prides says that my reasons are always better, even if it’s silly. And if left unchecked, this simple, inconsequential instances of pride, can rip even the closest relationships apart – within your family or in a church. You also notice that in both of these character traits, have unity of mind and a humble mind, ‘mind’ is in both of them. This is something you have to be aware of, that you have to think about. You see, if you just simply let your bowels, your emotions, or your feelings rule whether or not you stay unified in a relationship you’re sunk, because your emotions go way high and way low. Someone does something against you and you’re the most bitter, angry person you could ever be, and someone is sweet and kind to you, you think, “Oh, I love that person.” We can’t have our emotions rule these relationships, we have to be committed and that’s why ‘mind’ is used here – unity of mind, a humble mind – it’s a stoic understanding of, “Look, I got to be committed no matter what.” It’s a mindset that you have to have, even if your emotions don’t line up. Whether it’s a marriage or church family, it requires us not to listen to our feelings but intellectually stay committed no matter what.
Now it’s interesting that this is immediately following 7 verses that revealed keys to a good marriage, if you’ve been here the last two weeks. You’ve understand that we talked about keys to a good marriage and all of a sudden it says, “Finally all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” You think this applies to our marriage as well? – I’d say so. Want you marriage to last? – Be committed to having it last, to feeling deeply for one another, and to loving one another as family. Pursue this unity in all of your relationships, marriage, in your families, in your church, even faithful Christians outside of the church. We should be at peace with every brother in Christ. But that’s not where Peter stops, is it? He continues that we are to have peace even with our enemies. And so we see in verse 9 that we are to run from revenge.

II) Run from Revenge (v. 9)
Run from revenge. It’s a second way that we are to pursue unity and peace. Run from revenge. Verse 9 says this: “Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For this you were called that you may obtain a blessing.” So this first command here is, “Do not repay evil for evil.” ‘Evil’ is just the most general term for sin. It’s all encompassing. Someone that does something bad to you – it could be anything – could be at work, could be an action, don’t do it back. ‘Reviling for reviling’ is a little bit more nuance of a term. This is specifically speaking of verbal insults – slander, spreading lies, or half-truths – it is speech that is designed to cut, to hurt, to break someone down, and frankly that is going to happen in your life. You are going to be reviled and we are commanded here specifically to not revile in return.
Some people are actually pretty good at this, aren’t they? We may have learned it from a young age as parents constantly berate and belittle children. Let me tell you as a parent of a three year old, it is actually rather easy to do this, as you almost expect your child to act mature all the time. I know my son knows not to pick up his food and [raise it up and drop it in his mouth] at the dinner table. And yet he always seems to do that every couple of days, and of course I remind him and say, “Eli, you can’t do that. That’s not how we eat. You need to eat like a polite boy.” But it’s also easy to berate him for not remembering; “What are you thinking? How could you do that again, I told you 20 times!” He’s 3. I’m going to need to do it 20 more times or more. And as they get older, this temptation to berate your children doesn’t go away, does it? As a teacher, I’ve seen parents berate their kids for simple accidents – dropping a drink, dropping their lunch. I’ve seen parents berate their kids for getting bad grades. See, we need to be those who do not exasperate our children and demonstrate much grace, much love, and patience to God’s most precious gifts that He’s given to us.
We also are those who recognize that we all have the tendency to bite back. We all have a tendency to bite back when we’ve been wronged on purpose, or simply inconvenience, not just with your children, but this can be especially difficult when another adult insults you or does something terrible against you. How easy it is to plot against them, or simply lash back, or stew in the hot mess of your own anger, your own self-pity and the putrid and vile hate that wells within because you think someone has wronged you. That’s what we do. So listen, too often we use our own personal suffering as an excuse for a sinful response, and what does Peter tell us? “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling.” We need to recognize this tendency and slay your own sinful heart within. Being sinned against is terrible, yes, but it’s never a license to further respond in sin. Yet, we are those who naturally seek revenge. May it never be.
He continues, “But on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called.” You see, we are to be like Christ. 1 Peter 2:23 says this – you can look across the column: “When He was reviled,” speaking of Jesus, “He did not revile in return. When He suffered He did not threaten, but continued to entrust Himself to Him who judges justly.” We are those who need to continue to trust that God is in control of our lives. We need to be those who do not take vengeance into our own hands. This is also what Jesus taught in Luke, chapter 6, verse 28. Luke 6:28-29, Jesus says this: “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.” That’s exactly what Paul taught. In Romans 12:17 he says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:15 Paul wrote, “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong.” And so this forsaking of revenge and actually seeking to bless your enemies is a common, very common, Biblical teaching. That’s why Peter says, “To this you were called” ‘This,’ of course, is this righteous living, specifically brotherly love, unity, and the rejection of revenge. This is what you, Christian, have been called to live. God calls us to live according to His ways. This is what proves that you are truly saved, that you want to actually live the good life. If you do want that good life, then you must respond to the gospel the way God tells you to respond to the gospel, and that means giving up revenge, giving up selfishness, and instead pursuing Christ-likeness, blessing those who persecute you.
Well, how can we bless? How practically do we bless those who persecute us? Well, the first way that we can do that is we can love our enemies. Remember Luke, chapter 6? We read verse 27 (Luke 6:27) says this, “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” And then he says again in (Luke 6:32-33) 32 and 33, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them and if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” And then in verse 35, “But love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you’ll be sons of the most High.” Regardless of what is done to you, do not harbor anger. Instead, try and visible express love to those who have wronged you in some way. Do everything you can to seek and desire their wellbeing. Love your enemies. Well, another practical way that we can bless those who persecute us is that we can pray for their salvation if they’re unbelievers. Luke 6:28 again says, “Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you.” What greater love is there that you can show then to plead with God for your own worst enemies, that He might make them in a right relationship with Himself – that He might forgive their sins. Now, if a believing brother offends you or is the one who is reviling you or committing evil against you, you need to pray for God to convict that believing brother of sin, and in some cases, when you have observed very clear sin, even pray for courage to gently, lovingly, and graciously confront that believer in sin. Point it out to them. Say, “What you did was terrible. That’s not what Christians would normally do.” But do so in a gentle and loving way. It’s an incredibly loving thing to do to confront someone to point out sin in a gentle way, and when you do, the Word of God says you win your brother.
Another way that we can practically bless is to be thankful for our enemies. Be thankful for them. There is inherent in the concept of blessing – thanksgiving. What do you do when you bow your heads to bless the food? – You’re thanking God for the food that He’s given you. So remember, trials, even persecution, are God’s instruments for your good and your growth as a Christian and so you want to bless your enemies. Thank God for them, even though – and can be – very painful.
Well, another practical way that we can bless our enemies is we can speak well of them. Obviously if you love, you pray for them and you are thankful for your enemies, you are not going to be talking about their sin. You’re not going to be grumbling about their sin. How easy is it for you to complain about sin that’s been sinned against you, especially to your spouse, especially to your loved ones, right? Because [in your] family unit, you know, you understand it stays within the family and you talk about that, you talk about how terrible this person was to you and you complain, you grumble, and you talk about their sin. No, don’t divulge that. Speak well of them. Don’t advertise how you’ve been hurt. Learn to forgive. That really is how we can summarize all of these application points – forgive. Forgive your enemies. Forgive those who persecute you. Colossians 3:13 says it this way: “We should bear with one another and if one has a complaint against another, we should be forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you,” so you must also forgive. So when we live, constantly forsaking revenge, even trying to bless our enemies, look at the result at the end of verse 9 – “That you may obtain a blessing.”
This is that eternal, never fading good life that we talk so much about. This eternal blessing here, your right response to those who slander, persecute you, prove that you will receive this eternal blessing. But the context also emphasizes that there will be blessings right now as well. Look at verse 12, it says, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are open to their prayers.” That, of course, happens right now. [It] doesn’t mean that all of life will be free of trials, that you will get a blessing in this life that means you will get lots of money, that everything that you ever, ever thought that you wanted; no, it means that you might have suffering, you may have trials; those things are promised. It simply means that God will allow your life to be blessed, even in the midst of suffering and trials and persecution.
Well, Grudem paraphrased the argument in these verses in this way and I thought it was very helpful: he says, as a Christian, “you have been called to live a righteous life… including not returning evil for evil… in order that by this righteous living you may obtain God’s blessing on your life. For in the Psalms God also promises blessings to those who live righteously,” because that’s exactly where Peter goes next. He quotes in verses 10-12, Psalm 34:12-16, an almost exact quote of the Septuagint of the Greek translation of the Old Testament here. It’s very important for us to recognize too that Peter uses Scripture to interpret Scripture. It’s really an important concept that we use, even as we study the Word of God on our own. Well, as we look at verses 10 and 11, we’ll see another way to pursue unity and peace, and that’s to tame the tongue.

III) Tame the Tongue (vv. 10-11)
Tame the tongue. He says, “For whoever desires to love life and see good days,” we already understand that this is really every human’s desire, to love life and to see good days, and we’ve already discussed that ultimately this means that you must understand and respond to the gospel message. Once you’re a Christian though, the Psalmist focuses on the need to tame the tongue. He says, “If you desire to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” We know from many passages from the Word of God that the tongue is essentially a doorway into the heart. It reveals what’s within. And so the man that is able to tame the tongue, never utter any evil nor let one untrue word one out of his mouth – that man is a perfect man. That’s what James 3:2-5 says. And then it also says that – it’s one book back, if you want to look with me you can, one book to your left; James 3:2-5. James writes this: “For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horse so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: Though they are so large and driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.” Such a small part of the body can be so instrumental in revealing sin and even directing the rest of our lives – like a ships rudder. And yet, it is unnatural for the tongue to be involved in so much evil and the consequences are indeed painful when we do not tame our tongue. The more lies we say to cover up sin, the more slander, the more anxieties that we talk about, the harder life becomes, doesn’t it?
When you tell a lie, what generally happens? You get more anxious, you hope no one finds out, begin apt to tell more lies to cover up that one lie, and you begin worrying, you begin to build yourself, if it’s a big lie, on a whole scheme of lies and you have to scheme and plan and think all night long – just hope that the truth doesn’t get out. And so life is always so much easier, so much better when you aren’t speaking lies and when you aren’t speaking evil. You see, “whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” There he reiterates the same truth in the beginning of verse 11 as well, as the psalmist writes, “Let him turn away from and do good.” Stop speaking lies and speak the truth. As you orient your life towards Christ, you turn away from all sorts of evil and especially evils of the tongue and as you do you seek peace and pursue it. That’s exactly what he says in the end of verse 11: “Let him speak peace and let him pursue it.” You not only have to be aware that you need to change, that you need to be the one who needs to tame your tongue, that you need to keep a guard on your tongue, you aren’t the one who just simply is aware that you should be at peace with other brothers; no, you need to be aware of it and pursue it. That’s why he gives two commands there: seek it and pursue peace. Once you see how to be at peace, you got to pursue peace. The Christian life isn’t simply a ‘sit back and let god;’ no, it’s hard work. It’s a vigorous pursuit of what is glorifying to God. Naturally if you want to be at peace in your relationships, you’ve got to first learn to tame your tongue.
David wrote Psalm 34 after he had been anointed king, yet was on the run from Saul who was trying to kill him. If you know David’s life, you’re very familiar with his story and in spite of Saul trying to kill David, David with his tongue constantly pursued peace with Saul. He constantly said, “I would never lay a hand on the Lord’s anointed.” Even if Saul slandered David and sought his life, David continued to seek peace. He pursued it. There were even moments when David’s pursuit of peace and taming of tongue paid dividends as Saul recognized David’s righteousness and actually gave up trying to kill him. There were two opportunities David had to kill Saul, if you remember, and on the second time he took Saul’s spear and water pitcher from where he slept, indicating that he had been right over Saul and could of killed him, and he goes away. And here’s what Saul’s response to David is, in 1 Samuel 26:21: “Then Saul said, ‘I have sinned. Return, my son David, for I will no more do you harm because my life was precious in your eyes this day. Behold, I have acted foolishly and have made a great mistake.” And we see the principle that the Lord rewards every man for his righteousness. And then Saul says again to David, “Blessed be you, my son David. You will do many things and succeed in them.” You see here, David’s pursuit of peace, even when Saul was trying to kill him, resulted in a peaceful relationship there. Saul gave up trying to kill him. He even praised David for his righteousness. Again, it started all with his tongue. David refused to even to speak evil against Saul, yet as you know, he had ample reason to speak evil against Saul; the man was insane. You want a peaceful relationship and a good life? Tame the tongue.

IV) Remember the Lord Blesses and Disciplines (v. 12)
Well, fourth we also will see that we need to remember that the Lord blesses and disciplines. We see this in verse 12. The Lord blesses and the Lord disciplines. The psalmist writes (David writes), “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their praise.” This phrase that is speaking of God’s eyes being on the righteous, it was used frequently in the Old Testament, not to scare us to death thinking that God watches everything, but to remember us that God is omniscient, that He is omnipresent, and for those in a right relationship with God, that is extremely comforting. It’s like knowing a team of police officers are escorting you through the roughest part of Detroit. It’s comforting to know that God is with us as we walk through this difficult life. Look at the blessing then. What does God promise? His ears are open to their prayers. ‘Prayers’ here is specifically petitions or requests for help, strength to resist temptations, the words to say to a dying friend, the words to say to an unsaved co-worker. See, God promises to have an ear bent towards those that are His own. Conversely, God never promises to answer prayers, nor the requests, nor the petitions of those who are not His children. Those who think they are finding the good life on their own, pursuing the passions of their hearts, God does not have His ear toward them. In fact, in the end of verse 12 we see this: “But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” The ‘Face of the Lord’ in the Old Testament was often used to describe ‘coming before God as a judge’ who’s wrath is about to pour out against those who reject Him. So practically speaking, this means that God often lets people wallow in their sin. If you’re going to seek the good life on how you want to seek the good life, He’s going to let you do it. He’s going to let you drown in the tumultuous ways of like as the effects of seeking the good life catch up to you in the end.
The band Weezer wrote a song, “The Good Life,” in 1996. And they describe the good life as the party life; a life of drunkenness and debauchery. And as they write the song, they are looking back wistfully at the good life they once had lived compared to the hard life they now face. And here’s what they wrote: “When I look in the mirror, I can’t believe what I see. Tell me, who’s that funky dude staring back at me? Broken, beaten down, can’t even get around without an old man cane – I fall and hit the ground, shivering in the cold, I’m bitter and alone.” But instead of recognizing the folly of living a life of sin, instead of recognizing the hand of God’s judgment upon them, they confess that they just want to do it more. This of course brings out, “I don’t want to be an old man anymore. It’s time to go back to the good life.”
Brothers and sisters, this is not what God wants for our lives, but He will let you live your life and let you continue to allow it spiral out of control all the way to hell if you don’t wake up, if you don’t see the good life His way. And so to those here who may not be Christians, do not let another day pass where you seek the pitiful life, thinking somehow your pleasure in this life will last for eternity. No, you need to recognize who God is, His perfect standard that we fall short of, and His way of escape that He has given you in Jesus, and turn to follow Him, serving Him as your Lord and your God, rejecting the good life according to your passions and following the good life as God instructs. To the believer, you and I are far from perfect and we will still need to pursue this good life and the resulting peace and unity that God brings to our relationships. Let us pursue this peace and unity as we endeavor to tame the tongue, as we endeavor to run from revenge, and remember that God bless us when we do and follow Him. Let us remember these things this morning.

A message from the series “1 Peter: Standing Firm in this Shaky Life.” Transcript:

Success magazine polled its readers about what were the most important factors for success in life. In general, what [were] the most important factors for success in life and here’s the results: 89.9% said that the most important factor for success was good relationship with family. The second was a good relationship with spouse, also basically 89.6%. Very close to that was 86% was good relationship with God. And, what you think might be on the top of the list in the US – freedom to do what you want – well that got nearly 30 points less at 61%. Isn’t it amazing to see, even from a completely secular viewpoint, that the world recognizes the importance of maintaining our closest of relationships? See, it’s crucial for success in everything we do these relationships we have with our family, with our wife. We see God designed us for relationships. From the very beginning this is what God has created men and women and mankind to do. It’s to have relationships. We even see evidence in the Trinity before creation, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit all dwelt together in perfect unity and harmony and in a perfect relationship for all eternity. And so, we see interaction within the Trinity is the sweetest of relationships with zero sin and sweet fellowship, and yet even in the Trinity, there are different roles. There are headship and submission roles even within the Godhead. God the Father is the Head and God the Son submits to God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit serves the Father and the Son and yet all three are equally and eternally God.
And so, we learned last week that one of the God’s keys to marriage, this is really a second part of last week’s sermon, God’s keys to marriage last week was submission on the hand of the wife. Well, this week we’re going to be God’s key’s to marriage is loving leadership. And so we know the context also indicates that submission is not only key for honoring God in your marriages, but it’s the key for honoring God in your workplaces according to chapter 2, verses 18 and following, and then it’s also key to having a successful life with regards to your government in relation to the government in chapter 2, verse 13-17. And so we’ve seen that submission is God’s design for us to have that sort of relationship in many areas of life. Well, this week Peter addresses husbands. This is really the first authority group that he chooses to address and assured to have the largest representation in the churches because I’m sure as he’s writing to these churches there aren’t too many government officials that he’s writing to so he’s not addressing the authority part of the authority and submission in the government relationship, and there wouldn’t have been as many wealthy people who owned slaves. But, virtually anybody who had a husband and a wife relationship would have had a husband and wife headship and submission issue there and so Peter chooses to address husbands because there are many husbands to which he is writing.
As we’ll see, not only is submission key to Godly relationships, but so too is loving, servant leadership. And that’s really the theme today – loving, servant leadership. That’s what God calls husbands to have as our role in the marriage. When we learn to interact in relationships God’s way, we’ll be fast headed towards God’s blessing to sweet relationship success not only in our marriages but in every other relationship in life – at your job or with friends or co-workers. Now, we see from the very beginning God has made it clear that he designed for relationships, as I already mentioned. The evidence is in God’s regular communication with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He had a sweet relationship with them, and we also see the relationship that God established with Adam and Eve themselves. We see this in the very beginning – if you want to turn to Genesis, we’ll just look at a couple of verses. You see, God created Adam first and Adam was alone and was naming all the animals and those animals were made, of course, in pairs – a male and a female pair – and he quickly realized that there was not an adequate helper for him. And so you see, chapter 2 of Genesis, verse 18 (Genesis 2:18), God said this: “Then the Lord God said, ‘it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.’” And so He takes, of course, the rib out of Adam and fashions Eve and then He presents Eve to Adam and here’s what the man said in verse 23 of chapter 2 in Genesis (Genesis 2:23), “The man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.’” And so we see instant poetry. I don’t know about you but that’s not what first comes to my lips. Poetry is hard to compose and yet Adam immediately waxes eloquently and has a poetic response to this presentation of his wife. He says, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man,” and it sounds a lot better in Hebrew as far as the poetry is concerned. But, it was a wonderful exclamation of the blessing that God has provided for him. And so, you see back in verse 18 that God designed a helper that was ‘fit’ for Adam. Well, we see that from the beginning here that Adam was given the headship role. He was the one that named the animals; he was the one that had the authority to do that. He actually named Eve as well and so there is a sense that Adam was given this headship role, we see that in 1 Timothy 2:13 that because Adam was created first, he was called the head. We also see that Eve was a helper fit for Adam, not the other way around. And so Eve was the perfect helpmate for Adam. Well, quickly this esteemed position is vacated by Adam, as we will see in Genesis 3. See, in Genesis, chapter 3 Satan engages Eve, not Adam, even though Adam was with Eve. He twists, he maligns and he misrepresents and misquotes God’s word. He doesn’t even rebuke him, but engages him and eventually is deceived. You know the Puritan proverb, “When Adam was away, Eve fell astray.” Well, that’s not exactly how it went. You see, the Bible records that as she was arguing with Satan, as Eve was ultimately agreeing with Satan and then conspiring with Satan to disobey, dishonor, and disregard God’s commands, Adam was there all along. Look at Genesis, chapter 3, verse 6: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a light to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.” And so you see, from that point onward, this wonderful God-designed relationship turned sour with the consequences of sin. Women have pain in childbearing, try to rule and manipulate men, and men have a more difficult time working and prone to abdicate their God-given leadership responsibilities in the home. So, that’s the context that we find even our marriages in today. As men, we are supposed to lead, we’re supposed to love our wives perfectly, but our precious wives resist and we are far from perfect leaders. And as men, we tend toward two extremes. We tend toward the passive cowardice extreme like Adam, or the overbearing, chauvinistic, pig-headedness on the other side. If you’re like me, there are times and circumstances where each side rear their ugly head. The best fix is to realize when you’re wrong, to realize when you are falling into one of these extremes, and in order to realize it’s helpful to bring some of those bad examples to light. And as I was reading this week, preparing for the sermon, that’s exactly what a number of authors and preachers did that would outline a various different stereotypes of men, of chauvinists and cowards. And so, that’s what I’m going to do first for you just because I think it’s helpful for us to recognize these bad attributes in our own lives.
So first we’re going to look at the four different chauvinistic character traits. We’re going to call it “Don’t be that guy.” Don’t be that guy – the chauvinist. Well, the first guy we’re talking about is the “Whatever mom is… I’m not” guy. This is the guy who views masculinity as the opposite of femininity. [He] can never participate in a sport that you have to point your toes to begin, right? You can’t wear clothes that actually fit, you have to wear baggy clothes because that’s what women do. Real men, they ride their Harleys, they shoot guns, they hunt, they participate in sports, they pass gas the stinkiest. They can’t hug, they can’t kiss you, they can’t say, “I love you.” They can’t cook, they can’t clean, they can’t change the children’s diapers. Well, this type of man, this “Whatever mom is… I’m not” guy is terrible in marriages, because he’s the one who’s unable and unwilling to help his wife. There’s no tenderness there, there’s no affection to the kids, or wife for that matter. He often has a very, very hard time expressing himself.
Well, a second negative attitude of “Don’t be that guy,” is “Let’s get back me” guy. This is the “Let’s get back to me” guy. This is the guy who says, “Well, that’s good Bob. I hope your wife recovers from cancer. Did I tell you about my new car? I might get a promotion too.” For this guy, success is primarily about work. It’s about money and success at home is making sure everyone is wearing nice clothes, that they have fancy cars, that they have a great vacation planned, that everyone puts on a happy face when they go out. It’s a good looking, put together family. But this chauvinist is never home. His family, his wife are more a part of his image than his life. This guy lives like it’s all about him.
The third guy we aren’t to be is the “Yeah, I work out. You better watch out” guy. This is the guy who walks through doors sideways. His arms are always propped open like he just bench-pressed, even if it’s been several weeks since he’s done so. This is the guy that when you were younger he would have been known as “The Enforcer.” The guy that you don’t mess with him, you don’t mess with his friends because he’s going to lay the ‘smack down’ type of a guy. And even as this type of guy gets older and rather stereotypically larger because all of that muscle goes straight there, it still rears its head in an ugly situation. The family, sadly this type of man is quick to raise his voice, is quick to get angry, some actually hit wives and children. Many threaten; raise their hand to physically threaten their spouse. Sometimes they physically restrain their family members or give them ‘the look’ with the terrifying anger in their eyes as if to say, “You better not say what you’re about to say.” And the family lives in fear of men like this. You don’t have to be huge or some massive, ripped man to struggle with anger. See, lashing out in anger is a very common problem. It can be the smaller guys who struggle with this as well – lashing out to those who are weaker than they are. This angry and abusive man makes a terrible husband and terrible father.
Well, the fourth chauvinistic guy that we should not aim to be is the “You’ll have to kill me before I think I’m wrong” guy. Once it comes out of this guy’s mouth, there is no going back. “No, seriously 4+4 is 9 in some countries,” he might say. And when it comes to submitting to leadership in their lives, there’s absolutely no way. This is the man who has to start his own business, not because he’s some great business man but because there’s no way that he’s going to listen to anybody else in his workplace. Well, this guy exists in churches as well. They come in and they immediately volunteer to lead in ministry and they won’t serve in ministry unless they’re leading. They’re always doubting what the leadership is doing. This type of man, according to one pastor, he writes about this type of man, he “bounce around from church to church because they couldn’t find a pastor stupid enough to listen to them.” And some of these guys end up setting up “house churches” and have church at their home because they can’t find a church that, you know, fits their ideas of what church needs to look like. Being married to this man, as you can expect, could be a real trial.
Well, it’s not just the chauvinists that exist and it’s not just that chauvinistic tendencies that we can struggle with as men, well, it’s also the “passive cowards.” So here’s “Don’t be that guy: The passive coward list.” First is, “Is there something wrong with living in my mom’s basement for the rest of my life?” guy. This is the guy who never grows up; his mom does his laundry and everyone says, “He’s just a sweet kid. He’s just a nice, nice fellow. He doesn’t say anything mean. He’s just a soft spoken… Jobs? Well, I might get a job here and there. That full time work… Man, that’s just so hard. It’s draining. I need my rest.” This type of guy is the one who says, “You know what? I can’t have a job right now because I’m finishing up my college degree and I know it’s taking ten years but I really got to study hard for this next exam that’s coming up. It’s 8 months away but I really got to study for this.” This is the guy who is the grand master expert in all the latest video games. Well, some women actually fall for this guy and she’s the one who has the house and the job and he volunteers when the time comes to be a stay at home dad. “After all, you got a better job than I do, so let me just follow what I should be doing in my heart and that’s to stay at home with the kids. I love kids.” The reason why [he] loves kids is because he is one.
Well the “Passive Cowards: Don’t be that guy,” another example is the “I got the class clown award in High School” guy. This is the guy who’s always, always making a joke. He can’t to somebody without a joke coming out. And he’s completely unable to have a serious conversation, and at home, as you know it’s impossible to be funny all the time so this type of man frequently let’s his wife deal with the important matters while he tools away his time on the TV, on internet, on his hobbies, or some sort of job.
Well, another passive type of man that we may struggle with at times is the “I have the answer to all your problems” guy, and at first blush you might think that this is something that should belong on the other list because this man is that every interaction, he turns it into a personal therapy session. He thinks he has the answer to every single one of your problems. You say, “Well, I got this trouble coming up.” “Oh, well here’s what God says about this here and here’s how you should really be thinking about this here,” and he seems to answer every single problem that you have and he always thinks he has the answer. He puts on the guise of being spiritual often and can talk about theology. He might be well read Biblically and sometimes these types of guys are soft spoken, very somber, very serious. He takes himself too seriously at times, you may think he has the soundtrack of the Gladiator going through his mind as he’s walking through life. [Whispering, lightly talking to himself] “I’ve got everything under control. It’s a war, I know what to do here.” He’s quick to talk about theory, quick to solve everyone else’s problems, but in life, in marriage, in family, this type of man creates a mess. Never has truly a close relationship with wife or family because he doesn’t listen – just always talking – so he’s not leading and his wife doesn’t follow. [He] create[s] a very difficult situation. Quite frankly it’s easy for pastors to get into this particular trap.
Well, the fourth passive cowardice type of guy that we shouldn’t be is the “I’m the bread winner, period” guy. This is the guy who holds down a job, comes home every night and then checks out, is silent, sits in his Lazy-Boy, picks up the remotes, he passes the time, reads the paper, watches the news, and his interaction with the kids is limited to a kiss on the forehead before they go to bed, his wife showers them and bring them before dad. “Go in peace, my son.” And they go to bed. He doesn’t talk, he keeps to himself, he’s not leading his home. He just brings home the bacon and thinks that he’s doing enough just by working in that way. Now again, these are stereotypes and quite frankly, not many of us fall into one of these stereotypes, but if we’re honest, men, we struggle with several of these stereotypes at many different times in our lives. We can fall into one or more of these. Sometimes we’re utterly chauvinistic and really 5 minutes later, we can be completely abdicating our leadership. So men, you need to recognize your struggle in these categories if you’re going to have any hope of changing.
So with our faults clearly before us, we need to learn how to positively, lovingly lead our wives. What should we then be doing? Well, we’re going to look at one verse, like I already mentioned, in 1 Peter this morning that is quickly becoming my life verse the more I realize that this is a lifelong process of nurturing the most precious relationship that I will ever have, my marriage. And so, we’ll see in this passage 5 ways to loving lead your wives and the basic command is here: Husbands, love your wives. Husbands, love your wives.
Husbands, Love your Wives: 5 Ways to Loving Lead your Wives.
We’re going to see 5 ways in which we can lovingly lead our wives and I’m admittedly borrowing this command to love from other passages in the Bible, which we’ll get to in a little bit, Ephesians 5:25 commands husbands to love their wives, and so that’s where we’re getting this main command here. Well, the first way in which we can love our wives is to love her with understanding.

I) Love Her with Understanding (v. 7a)
We see that at the very beginning of verse 7: “Love her with understanding.” He says, “Likewise husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way.” Live with your wives in an understanding way. Now he begins this passage with ‘likewise’ here, because at this point he is making connection to wives what was previously said. He had just finished addressing wives in saying, “You have a role, wives, in your marriage. Likewise men, you have a role as well. And here’s what this role is: Likewise husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way.” Literally, in the Greek you could translate this, ‘live together according to knowledge.’ Now if you have the NIV or some other translations in front of you, you might see that it says, “Be considerate as you live with your wife,” and of course you need to have some knowledge of your spouse to be considerate, but the idea is actually much more broad in greek. You got to know and understand a lot about your wife. And quite frankly, this doesn’t happen overnight and it’s a lifelong process. So, I want to ask you: do you know your wife? Are you constantly studying her – her likes, her dislikes, her desires? For example, I know my wife hates pickles, and I know she loves dark chocolate. Okay, and so if I come home with a milk chocolate bar with a hamburger from Five Guys Burger and Fries loaded with extra pickles, that would be unwise of me, wouldn’t it? Because I know my wife and if I know my wife and I want to love my wife, I’m going to pay attention to what she likes and what she doesn’t like. And by the way, these things can change over time. Just remember when your wife was pregnant. Yes, those things can change in an instant. I also know that my wife enjoys surprises. You know, those well planned dates. The ones that you used to do before you were married right? Those were the ones that she enjoys. But knowledge is more than just simple knowledge of likes and dislikes. It can mean her greatest source of spiritual encouragement. What really encourages your wife? What is her greatest source of joy? What is her greatest source of satisfaction in life? What [are] her goals – personal goals? What are her weaknesses? What are her temptations? What are her emotional tipping points? We all have them and yes, ladies, you have them, I know you do. And when you, men, realize that your wife is approaching that emotional tipping point and you know and recognize that, do you stick through that and encourage her or do you just run away. “I got to get away now.” No, we got to be those who constantly are there for our wives, helping them in every situation. Do you love her enough to gently walk with her in every difficult situation? Well, notice also it says in verse 7 that you are to “live with your wives.” Live with your wives. This is an ongoing, day in and day out reality. This will most definitely involve endurance. Endurance because marriage is for a lifetime. We are those who are day in and day out living with our wives, studying our wives, trying to understand what are wives are like, how we can best serve them today, which is different than maybe we can best serve them yesterday. And even as sin complicates and sours relationships, we need to continue to seek to know your most precious wife. Living with that knowledge is not just gathering information but applying it to better serve, love, and cherish your wife.
Well as we live with our wives, we are also to be living with our wives in great humility as well. As you get to know her, it’s not just to romance her or to have her make you your favorite dish or to get something from her, but at all times we need to be those who are seeking to know our wives even if it means we get nothing in return. Do everything you can to know your wife.
Patience is another way in which we need to know our wife. We need to be those who are asking good questions, questions that get to the heart of the matter. Not just, “how do you feel?” questions but, “Why do you feel that way? What’s going on? Help me understand.” This is often difficult even for us to discern how or why we think or do what we do and the wife is no different. That’s why it’ll be a lifelong process that you and your wife will grow together, closer and closer over time. We need to be those who continue to patiently study her. This point, I think it’s good to say, women, many of you women in the audience, be grateful for some of these attributes in your husband and if you are not married, look for a man who is like this, who is putting on and pursuing these type of characteristics and if you are married, praise your husband as he is pursuing this and help him to patiently work his way through, putting off some of these difficulties or chauvinistic or passive ways. We want to be those who are encouraging our husbands. It’s also, “live with him in an understanding way.”
Well, husbands often come home and ask the standard question, “how’s your day?” ‘How’s your day’ questions, right? – Just because that’s what we do. One young mom put her response in writing. Here’s what she said: “How was my day? Well, today has been a lifetime. It was the best of times and the worst of times. There were moments when my heart was so full, I thought I might explode. And there were other moments when my senses were under such intense assaults that I was certain that I’d explode. I was both lonely and absolutely desperate to be alone. I was saturated, just bombarded with touch, and then the second I put down this baby, I yearned to smell her sweet skin again. I was simultaneously bored out of my skull and completely overwhelmed with so much to do. Today was too much and not enough. It was loud and silent. It was brutal and beautiful. I was at my very best today, and then just a moment later, at my very worst. At 3:30 today, I decided that we should adopt four more children, and then at 3:35 I decided that we should give up the kids that we already have for adoption. Husband, when your day is completely and totally dependent upon the moods and needs and schedules of tiny, messy, beautiful rug rats, your day is all of these things, and none of these things – sometimes within the same 3 minute period. But I’m not complaining. This is not a complaint, so don’t try to fix it. I wouldn’t have my day any. Other. Way. I’m just saying – it’s a hard thing to explain – an entire day with lots of babies. But I’d be too tired to say all that so I’d just cry, or yell, or smile and say “fine.”
And so husbands, we need to be those who are trying to fair it out of our wives these responses. We need to be getting to heart of the matter. “What’s wrong, honey?” So she’s yelling and assumed that there’s something else behind why she’s yelling. She’s crying, it’s hardly a simple matter. We need to ask those good questions. Ask “why are you feeling this way?” And above all – listen when your wife talks. [It’s] so easy to ask a question and go in one ear and out the other. So we need to be those who are loving her with understanding, patiently and with humility and endurance seeking to know and understand our wives in a closer and closer way every day.

II) Love Her with Honor (v. 7b)
Well, we also need to be those who love her with honor. We see this in the second part of verse 7. Husbands are to live with their wives in an understanding way “showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.” Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. The word ‘wife’ here is actually not used but the word ‘woman’ or the one who’s intrinsically feminine by nature is used and that’s because Peter wants to focus more on the common delicacies found in the fairer gender, not just your wife in particular. And that’s because wives here, and women in general, are considered the weaker vessels and this can mean several different things. Most people understand this to mean that most women are physically weaker than their husbands. That’s not always the case, I know some pretty strong women out there and some pretty weak men, but that’s a general rule – women are physically weaker than men. We also see that women are weaker in the marriage relationship. See, women have just been called to submit to their husbands and so they’re in a place of more vulnerability than men because they have just been given this command, and so there’s a sense in which they’re the weaker vessel in that regard. And some people would say that women would be weaker emotionally and some say, “Well, you can express emotions, women, and that’s a good thing. But we also know that as you express emotions that are more sensitive to them, if emotions are unchecked, they can rule your actions and that’s not a good thing either.”
So, there’s several ways, and it’s complicated in understanding how women can be weaker than men. But I’ve heard it described like this: Men are thick German steins. You know the real thick glass ones that are about a quarter inch thick? You throw them against the table and they clink and so what – a chip gets off? It’s not a big deal. Women are like a delicate French champagne flute. So, the idea is that they’re so much more delicate – we need to handle them with much care and much esteem because we’re not going to throw a champagne flute along the table, are we? It would break. It would fall. However you look at it, it’s because women are generally weaker in a variety of areas that they should be shown higher honor. Now ‘honor’ here is assumed if something is weaker, delicate, and in many ways, more precious.
Notice it also says, “Show honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.” This is an active command. This is something you are to pursue. It’s not passive. Some people think that, especially men think that, “You know, I don’t drink with the guys. I don’t go out and commit adultery. I don’t abandon my kids; therefore, I’m honoring my wife,” but that same husband maybe looking at porn, maybe completely absent in his relationship at home. See men; remember there’s always some worse lowlife than you, and an absence of doing the lowlife things in this life is not honoring your wife. It’s something active that you have to pursue. It’s something that you got to think and plan about. So yeah, that means we should be chivalrous. We should be those who let a lady go first, who open up the door. We want to be chivalrous especially to our wives. We want to be complimenting them in public, in front of the kids. Something I’m constantly working on is I try to praise Leah at mealtime in front of the kids. I say, “This meal is awesome! Thank you so much, Leah, for making this. Eli, can you say thank you to Mommy?” I’m trying to teach him to say the same thing. I don’t always do it and I fail often in that regard, but it’s something that we’re trying to work on. We should be complementing our wives in public and in front of everyone. We should be affirming God’s work in our lives. Be effusive with your praise of a God that responds to a situation that your wife might have or a God that response that your wife might have to a certain difficult individual. Be effusive with your praise. Show and point out evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in her life. Commend her character, her gifts, her accomplishments. So honor is not actively expressed is really not honor at all. Just as gratitude not expressed is not gratitude. Make your honor for your precious, sweet wife evident to everyone.

III) Love Her with Grace (v. 7c)
Well, the third way we should love our wives is love her with grace. We see this in verse 7 as well. Love her with grace. We are to honor our wives as the weaker vessel “since they’re heirs with you of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered.” Now, the ‘grace of life’ here may be taken as the common grace, the natural blessings of a nice walk on a warm, summer evening, the crisp, fall air in the apple orchard, or simply enjoying the sweet relational intimacy that you have with your family. We all have great times with our kids, with our husbands, with our spouses. God has blessed us with life, the enjoyment that we get from our close relationships can be a very sweet gift that He gives to us, but the grace of life can also be the grace of the gospel – the grace of the gospel, which is shown specifically to both men and women. Women are heirs with you of the grace of life. They receive the same blessings in this life that we do. They specifically receive the same blessings of salvation that each of us do as well. Women are not there to serve us, but are co-heirs in Christ.
Galatians 3:27-29 – we read it last week and it says it like this: “For as many as you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There’s neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs to the promise.” We are all joint heirs together. [It] doesn’t matter male or female, there is no hierarchy in God’s eyes with regards to all of these different relationships. We are all equal with regards to salvation. We’ve all been given the same exact promises – God has adopted each of us equally as His children. That allows then these blessed promises that we’ve seen throughout 1 Peter to be applied to both men and women, both the husband and the wife. 1 Peter 2:10 says it like this: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” And we see chapter 2, verse 5, Peter writes this: “You yourselves, like living stones, being built up to be as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.” Both men and women equally are part of being built up into this spiritual house. Men are not some superior subset of humanity just because they are called to be heads. You see, chapter 1, verses 3-5, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to His great mercy, he has caused to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in Heaven for you, who by God’s power, are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. This applies equally to both husbands and wives. So we should be seeking to honor our wives, to lovingly know and understand our wives because ultimately they are incredibly precious in God’s eyes. In fact, in many texts, the widow, the orphan, the more vulnerable in this world, many of which are women in this world, have a special place in God’s eyes. Psalm 68, verse 5 says it like this; you don’t have to turn there, you can just listen: “God is the Father of the fatherless, and protector of the widows is God in His holy habitation.” Psalm 146 says it in a similar way. And so if God has a special grace, special protection for the more vulnerable, shouldn’t we show the same honor and respect for our wives? Also remember that we are also precious in God’s eyes. All have been recipients of lavish, undeserved grace, and so if we’ve been given that wonderful grace so too ought we to show grace in our relationships. This means that we’re quick to forgive, that we don’t hold onto grudges.
I want you to turn to Ephesians 5. We’re going to look at this to get our next couple points. But, we see that we are to love her with grace in Ephesians 5, verse 25 as well. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church…” Christ loved the church. He gave Himself up for her, for us. He loved us with much grace. So we are to love our wives with the same grace. Well, in this verse we actually see another way to love our wives. We are to love her sacrificially.

IV) Love Her Sacrificially (Eph. 5:25)
We’re to love her sacrificially. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” This is gospel love. Our highest example of how we are to sacrifice everything for our wives. He continues in verse 28 of Ephesians 25 this way: “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” This means we are to willingly give up even your own body for your wife. I’m sure that many of you have heard stories of men giving up their lives to protect their families. In 2010, a man swerved so that an out of control car would hit his side rather than his pregnant wife in the passanger seat. He was killed instantly, but her and the baby were saved. In 2011, a man laid his body over his wife in their tub while their house was being torn apart by a tornado in Joplin, Missouri. He died and she survived. These are indeed inspiring stories, but by the grace of God, most of us in this room will not have the opportunity to lay down our lives for our wives. But frankly, we don’t act like we would. Are you willing to sacrifice your Saturdays for your wife? Are you willing to sacrifice what you most want to do for your wife? Are you willing to put down the remote control, to turn off the TV, to put up the golf clubs, to lock up the hunting rifle, to sell your motorcycle and boat, to close your laptop, to turn off your iPad, to put down your book and spend serious quality time with your wife and family? Are you willing to do those things? Are you willing to forgo everything precious to you to serve and honor your wife? You say, “Oh sure, I’d give up my life for my wife any day,” and yet you’re unwilling to stop sitting in front of the TV for twenty minutes to have a good conversation with her. You want to love your wife sacrificially. Start setting aside your hobbies, your desires, and pursue her, not just her desires, but her as a person. This love of course, that’s used in Ephesians 5 is agape love – it’s selfless love, it’s sacrificial love by nature. And I know loving like Christ love is indeed a tall order, but you got to begin with humbling yourself and totally devoting yourself to studying, serving, and honoring the most precious relationship that God has given to you – your wife. But even if we were to love in this way, it would all be for naught without this final way to love our wives: We are to love her with spiritual leadership.

V) Love Her with Spiritual Leadership (Eph. 5:23)
We are to love her with spiritual leadership. We see that in Ephesians 5, verse 23. Paul here writes: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” Here headship is authority and ultimate authority lays entirely with the husband. See, men are called to respectfully lead their families. We are called to be the ones who make the hard decisions and live with the consequences. We are called to shepherd, to gently guide, yet always operate on Word centered convictions – on Bible centered convictions. This includes how you operate with your children. You see, we are to be “Pastor-Dad.” Ephesians 6:4 says it this way: “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Men, we’re to be the spiritual giants of the home. We’re to be the ones who have the Scriptural knowledge to train children and to encourage our wives. Husbands, fathers, we’re to be the ones who are the primary family shepherd, the primary family pastor – “Pastor-Dad.”
Just this week as I was studying this, I was impressed upon by how earnestly I need to take advantage of the teaching opportunities I have with my children. I need to train my children to love the Bible, to have devotions, to understand the basics about God, about His sovereignty, about His power, about what Jesus did, about who Jesus is. And sometimes as you have this as your goal, you wonder if it’s getting through as your son and daughter continues to deliberately disobey and other times you see sweet fruit of your labors. As my son this week came in with his Bible and says, “Daddy, we haven’t read the Bible today. We got to read the Bible today.” Granted he does that when he doesn’t want to go down for a nap, but there are times when he does it just out of the blue; “Daddy, I want to read the Bible.” As we try to make it a daily habit, we sit down, we pray, and we read his little children’s Bible. Also actually yesterday, my son was sitting at the piano that we have in our living room and he was writing a song, you know, scribbling on different pieces of paper and had them displayed up over the music stand there, and he put on the demo music on the piano and he was playing, you know whatever the demo was going on, and he’s singing his little heart out and I said, “Eli, what are you doing?” He said, “Oh Daddy, I’m writing a song.” “Great! Well, what’s this song about?” He said, “Well, it’s about Jesus and how He died for us.” It’s times like that that just warm your soul – make you grateful that you have the privilege to shepherd your family. Men, that’s what we’ve got to do. Your role as a “Pastor-Dad” is central to being a godly husband and it’s central to love your wife. It’s amazing how much a woman will endure with an otherwise inept man if he genuinely loves and serves their children. You want to love your wife? – Love and lead your children.
Now with wives, we’re not to necessarily instruct them as much as we are to encourage them, to have theological, purposeful conversations, conversations seeking to apply messages. You don’t just go to church together and never talk about what you heard. Talk about what you heard; “Hey, how can we apply this this week?” Read a Christian book together. At a minimum, it means praying together with your wife.
Now the results of loving leadership are many faceted, but if you are not lovingly leading your wife it can be far from a joy, this relationship that you have with her. 1 Peter 3:7, the very last phrase of our text: “You are to love your wives. You are to live with them in an understanding way. You are to treat them with honor, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” Literally this means that God will turn a blind-eye to your prayers. Your spiritual life will be seriously stunted, men. Do you feel like you can never get any traction spiritually? Maybe your relationship with your wife is not what it needs to be then. Think of it this way: your wife is God’s daughter, isn’t she? If someone mistreated your daughter, your relationship with that punk would be seriously damaged, wouldn’t it? When we mistreat our wives, you’re that punk in God’s eyes. So may we endeavor to grow closer to Christ, but realize that we must concurrently grow closer to our wives.
This is a very difficult calling for us as men, but we must be those who are totally dependent on God for strength to fulfill this high calling. Gary and Betsy Ricucci in the wonderful book, Love that Lasts, it’s a book that we use for pre-marital counseling here, it’s a wonderful book if you want to go over a book with your spouse – this would be a perfect book to get. It’s called Love that Lasts. And he helps capture the idea that we are both desperate and dependent on help to fulfill this calling we have as husbands and as fathers. Here’s what he says, this is a quote that we’ll conclude this message on: “The desperation and inadequacy I feel when considering the fullness of the task before me (and I hope you feel the same way) is in fact the only response that can position me to succeed! Desperate is exactly where God wants us. Far from being a desperation devoid of hope, it is a self-despair that acknowledges absolutely no inherent adequacy, sufficiency, or competency for the task. It is a desperation that turns the eyes of faith toward the God of grace. There, and there alone, do we discover the complete and perfect adequacy, sufficiency, and competence. It comes down to this: we can love and lead our wives because, and only because, Christ first loved us. Our role originates in the gospel, is empowered by the gospel, and is perfected through the gospel. We can love and lead our wives because our Savior, Jesus Christ, loved us, gave Himself up for us, and leads us each day in mercy and grace.” May we likewise com in desperate humility to the hope-filled cross for help to loving lead as we’ve been called to do.
Let’s pray: God, we thank you for this opportunity that we’ve been blessed with to look into your Word and to study and understand what you have called men to do as those who loving lead our homes and our wives. And I pray that you would help us to be those who are convicted by many areas of our life that need to be changed, that need to be adjusted, to know I am. And I pray that you would help us to forsake the chauvinistic tendencies that we have, to forsake the passive, neglecting of our responsibilities to lead that we have and I pray that you would help us to be those who gently, graciously, lovingly, sacrificially, and in a servant-like way lead our families. I pray that you would help us to be also those who study and know our wives so that we can better serve and honor them, so we can better encourage them to know and to love you. We pray all these things in your Son’s name. Amen.