A New Life and A New Day

If you will take your copy of God’s Word and open to 1 Peter chapter 4, we will continue in your series.  If you have been a Christian for any length of time, short, long, I assume that at some point in time you have run into either some small or perhaps some large suffering for the sake of your faith.  Perhaps you have one moment in your life counted the cost of what it means to be a Christian, perhaps you have been slandered by unbelievers for your faith as we will read about tonight n God’s Word.  Perhaps you’ve been excluded from some group or opportunity, maybe you’ve had to stand for the entire pastoral prayer, whatever it might be at some point in your walk with the Lord you have or will have experienced suffering for the sake of your faith, and Peter in our epistle has continually gone back to this idea that this is normal, that doesn’t make it any easier, but it is expected and he has given us several aids in our walk, in our perseverance through suffering.  Last week Pastor Trent preached on chapter 3 and touched on the reality that suffering is a given, but not an excuse to sin.  This morning Pastor Tom touched on the reality that Christ’s substitutionary atonement and that his saving power in our lives is an encouragement and a comfort and tonight Peter will develop this idea further and suggest that suffering can actually be helpful in the Christian life, in your fight against sin.  Let’s read now chapter 4, verses 1-6.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, ² so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. ³ For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. ⁴ With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; ⁵ but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. ⁶ For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.

Let’s pray and ask for the Lord’s help to understand and apply this text.

Gracious God, your Word is good, it is given to your people in love.  We ask that your Holy Spirit would open our eyes to its weight, its worth, and its relevance for us.  Lord today you have fed us with your Word, with your praise, you have fed us from your table, and we ask that tonight you would once again empower us to feast on your Word.  Lord would your Holy Spirit preach through me and would you build up your church tonight by your truth.  We ask this all in the name of your perfect Word Jesus Christ.  Amen.

How does suffering actually help you, God’s people, to persevere in your Christian life?  Whether you are enduring some sort of physical, emotional or mental suffering right now, whether you find yourself in the midst of a struggle to resist the world, your flesh, and the devil, Peter wants to challenge his readers here and he wants to challenge you tonight church that this suffering can actually be a tool in your Christian life.  First, he wants us to see, he wants you to see that through suffering you are freed from sin.  Look back with me at the first verse in chapter 4 here, “Since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.”  This chapter begins with a challenge for you to own this truth for yourself, to take hold of it, that your savior Jesus Christ overcame sin through suffering and that you in Christ can overcome sin through suffering.  Now this command, arm yourselves, is an interesting one because it gets at the idea that you can take up, that you can grab ahold of something that is already available to you.  This is the idea of you going out to battle, going out to fight and getting to make your way through a fully stocked armory before you have to go meet whatever foes you might face.  You walk through this room, and it has all the armor that you need, all the weapons that you will need, all the ammunition you could ever need to enjoy victory in the fight against sin, against your flesh, against the schemes of the devil.  God has not left you, his people, to go into the fight ill-equipped.  He certainly has not asked you to somehow prove yourselves to be worthy of his weapons.  We see that all the time in literature and in movies.  The heroes need to somehow overcome something, they need to somehow prove themselves before the magic sword finally releases itself from the stone, or before they get their super suit.  It is not true for the Christian.  Everything that you need is already available to you.  Scripture gets at this idea in several ways, certainly arm yourselves with the same way of thinking that Christ has. 

Other familiar passages say it this way, put on the armor of God.  Again, armor that is available to you, if you will simply dress yourselves in it.  And we read in our New Testament reading earlier tonight, keep in step with the spirit.  All you must do is follow the path of blessing that God’s Holy Spirit leads you down.  If you want to endure suffering to persevere, your challenge is not to invent new ways of fighting and enduring, it’s not to discover novel methods, and it’s not to look for loopholes or tricks or shortcuts, it is to simply take hold of the way of thinking that Jesus Christ is ready and willing to share with you.  And that is our first command, but what is that way of thinking. 

Well, the verse has two pictures for us.  In this phrase we share with Christ the idea that whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.  In what way have those who suffer in the flesh ceased from sin, well the first is this.  The old self, the old sinful self is dead.  In Christ the old sinful self has been killed.  If you’ve noticed as we’ve gone through the letter of 1 Peter, especially this morning’s text as an excellent example that Pastor Tom preached to us, Christ’s authority over the life of the believer and the world that you live in is constantly in the back of Peter’s mind.  If you just glance backwards to how the text this morning ended, it ended with this picture of Jesus Christ on the throne.  The right hand of God and the father in chapter 3:22, “With angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to Him.”  And if you were to glance down just a little bit, halfway through chapter 4 the end of the section in front of us, verse 11 says that, “To Christ belongs glory and dominion forever and ever.”  So, we are looking at this verse in the context of thinking about, meditating on the authority of Christ and Peter adds a dimension to this idea of Christ’s authority that He won this authority partially because He suffered in the flesh.  We heard that idea with morning and it repeated for us again in chapter 4, that the son of the eternal living and true God took on the flesh of a man, He took on human existence, He took willingly to himself every bit of suffering that comes from being a member of this fallen and cursed world and He dealt with pain, He was tempted by sin and by the devil, and of course He went to the cross, willingly gave up his life and endured physical torture, the standard bearer, the perfect standard bearer took on the sins of us standard breakers.  He took them up with Him to the cross and He took them down with Him into the grave and it’s the fact that you and I as believers in Jesus Christ, share in both that life and that death that you have been freed from sin.  Christ buried your sin in the grave, and he left there, when on the third day he rose again from that grave.  Of course, burying things is an excellent way to get rid of them.  Scripture gets this idea with several pictures, your sins are burned up, they are washed away, they are nailed to the cross. And so, because of Christ’s suffering, hear this church, that He is not sitting at the right hand of God still holding onto your sin.  He does not have to be repeatedly offered, he doesn’t have to go to the cross for you again and again because He dealt with it completely, He buried it in the grave and you are freed from the controlling power of sin in your life because Christ is on the throne, not sin, not the devil, but you can take up this mindset that you do not have to sin.  The old self has been killed. 

But there is another idea because if you look at just those six verses that we’re focusing on tonight, of course Peter is keeping the idea of Christ’s authority in the back of his mind.  He also wants his reader now to be thinking about more material and bodily concerns.  Just a quick scan through those six verses you will notice the priority that Peter places on this life, on these bodies, the list of sins that he goes through, almost all of them are bodily sins, and he is very focused on this time, the time that is behind you and the time that you have up until death and so he is in these verses narrowing the reader’s focus, narrowing the church’s focus to the concerns of this body because it’s not just that you are freed from sin because the old self has been killed, you are freed from sin because the new self, the new life that you have in Christ is undergoing training right now as we speak.  Christ is training the new self and one of ways that he is doing this is through suffering.  For Peter, the theological reality of Christ’s victory animates the practical phenomena that enduring suffering can empower obedience in the Christian life.  Enduring suffering empowers obedience.  What does this look like in our world, what are examples of this, well of course anyone who’s ever trained or practiced for any kind of competition, if you have run races before, 5ks to Iron Mans, if you have performed in musical competitions before you know that it takes some kind of suffering, physical, mental, emotional to perfect your craft, right, the longer you run, the more hours you commit, the faster you are willing to go, the longer you can run, the faster you can go on race day.  When you finish workouts without quitting, the heavier weight you can lift next time.  The more hours that you commit to your musical practice, the more beautiful and more technical pieces you will be able to play and to perform when you are called upon and the same is true for our Christian life, that we undergo physical suffering so that we begin to learn and take hold of, to arm ourselves with this way of thinking that you do not have to sin. 

Paul uses this same image in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, if you would like to look there with me, and he puts this idea in language that I think is just a little bit easier to understand than Peter’s phrase here.  1 Corinthians 9:24, the apostle writes this, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Eery athlete exercises self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So, I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body, and I keep it under control.”  When you persevere, when you endure suffering, you are bringing to life the theological truth that you are not a slave to sin.  Because it’s your sinful flesh that begs you to do anything for comfort, for safety, for your status, for peace with this sinful world, but when you endure suffering without giving opportunity to the devil, when you resist temptation, resist sin, you are arming yourself with the freedom from sin that Christ won for you.  Now with this reminder, with this great theological truth and the practical challenge comes another charge from Peter with both positive and negative aspects.  Because you are freed from sin second charge you must flee from sin.  Enduring suffering in the flesh is not aimless, the suffering in this world is not without purpose and it’s not, as Paul says, boxing a fake opponent, we don’t have just no enemy in mind when we suffer, but it counts the Lord can use it as training for you to resist the draw of the world, the temptations of your flesh, and the schemes of the devil.

Continue to verse 2, “As to live for the rest of time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God.”  Now Peter will give more practical examples of what living for the will of God looks like in the next sermon text next week so be sure to come back.  You can read it tonight if you wish but suffice to say that the life that Peter has in mind for you church is the life of blessing, of knowing God, of worshiping Him and Him alone and of serving Him without fear.  Now he does give a longer list tonight in our text of negative examples as you continue on in chapter 3.  These are how he flushes out what is characteristic of the old sinful flesh and of the Gentiles, the Pagans, the heathens, the nonbelievers who still live in this world and you still live for their sinful flesh, but of course his charge to the Christian is that the time of living like a slave to sin is in the past.  You need to put sin in your rearview mirror, you need to put your pedal to the metal, and you need to flee it.  You need to live like you were no longer held captive by a sinful world.  Probably the most well-known and best picture of someone in scripture who could not find the powerful Lord to flee completely and totally the sinful world behind her is of course, Lot’s wife.  Look back at Genesis chapter 19 for a striking picture of what holding on to the world the time has passed for looks like.  Genesis chapter 19:15, at this time in the history of the people of God, God has marked out the wicked and rebellious cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for destruction, but because of his love for Abraham, because of His promises to Abraham He has agreed to deliver Abraham’s family and Lot’s family, but in Genesis 9:15 when the day comes that Sodom and Gomorrah are marked out to be destroyed we read this, “As the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city”, but he lingered so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city and as they brought them out one said, “Escape for your life, do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.  Escape to the hills lest you be swept away.” 

And if you scan down to verse 24 we see the tragic end of this scene, “Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven and he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground, but Lot’s wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt.”  Certainly, this is a striking as dramatic and may even come across to us as a harsh picture, but you have to ask yourself, people of God, what on earth was still around for Lot’s wife in those cities.  What could she possibly have in those places that were actively burning and stinking and look for and long for, these was nothing beautiful to be found in them.  There was nothing good or praiseworthy or honorable in those cities left for Lot’s wife.  It’s interesting, I’m just noting even now as we read too that the idea of God’s authority over sin is present in that passage, the language is very unique that he overthrew those cities, not just that he destroyed them, but that he destroyed the grasp that they had, he destroyed the power that they had and for some reason Lot’s wife thinks, ah, there must be something for me still there, but there is nothing worth longing for.  Christian there is nothing worth looking for that was characteristic of the old self, of your past life, or of the rebellious lives that the world around you currently lives. 

We don’t have to look too far for a picture of just how grotesque the world of rebellion is.  If we survey the sins that Peter lists in this chapter, they are not polite descriptions, they are not descriptions of acts that are generally acceptable to talk about in churches or in Christian schools or around the dinner table at Christian homes.  I’m certain that the people of the First Presbyterian Church of the Dispersion here when they read this letter a few of them kind of looked around and said like, is it okay for him to read that from the pulpit, or whatever they were standing behind in the 1^st century.  But there’s a quick application for you here.  There comes a point in your Christian maturity when you must be willing and ready to call sin what it is.  It’s not having an affair; it’s living in sensuality.  It’s not a bad habit, it’s drunkenness.  It’s not just exploring other faiths, it’s lawless idolatry.  Other places in scripture use language as strong as offering up worship to demons.  It’s much, much easier to turn and run from an enemy that is clear, an enemy that is exposed, so please when the time is right, when wisdom demands, don’t obscure sin by trying to make it more palatable to the world around you or to the circles that you are conversing with.  You’re freed from sin so you must flee from sin.  And a small part of that involves knowing it and naming it.  Now these two challenges are ones that are probably familiar to you, again, if you have spent any time as a Christian, but Peter of course anticipates a problem, and it may be the very same problem with these two charges that you have been thinking of tonight as we study this passage.  Sure, I understand, the reality of union with Christ is that I am freed from sin and that I have to flee from sin, I have to turn from it and run from it, but here is the thing Peter, this life is a long one and sin is popular, and the temptation is powerful. 

Thankfully Peter anticipates this problem and in verse 4 we note that he is well aware that you cannot win favor from the world by refusing to participate in their rebellion with them.  He says of his congregation that he does well with respect to this, “The world is surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.”  Peter is getting at this idea that most of you probably know well, lost people are surprised by one’s around them who know where they are, who know who they are, and who know where they are going.  I don’t know if you have ever been lost on a long hike, or maybe traveling in a foreign city, but if you truly have no idea where you are and where you are going, and someone comes up to you and says, “Oh trust me I know exactly what’s going on, I know where I am, I used to be a Boy Scout back when I was 6, here’s what we’re gonna do next.”  It’s not easy for you to say like, oh absolutely, let’s go.  Your thought is, are you sure?  I’m a pretty smart guy and I don’t know what’s going on around me.  We could stretch the illustration even further and use language that scripture uses as well.  Dead people are surprised to find the living among them.  If you have ever watched a zombie movie, and I know I’ve been preaching this excellent sermon and now all of the sudden I’m a bad youth pastor stereotype, but if you’ve ever tuned into a zombie movie without fail 10 out of 10 of them have this scene.  Our hero, their friends, the people they’re protecting are walking along through the woods, through an abandoned factory or something like that, and there’s a bunch of zombies around, they’re sneaking, they’re quiet, finally just before they are about to escape to safety, snap, someone steps on a branch.  Bang, someone knocks a metal table off of a metal counter onto a metal floor and every zombie in the building hisses, growls, whatever they do they whip their heads around and it’s go-time.  Our heros have to get out of them.  The dead are surprised to find the living in their midst, and when they discover them, things get violent. 

It’s the shame of our fallen and cursed world that this reality is true.  Dead people are surprised, frustrated, and often angry to find the living in their midst.  That is the reality that Peter highlights for his people here.  This is why as God’s people you don’t measure your faithfulness by the standard, is everyone around me comfortable with me, because what is the world comfortable with, they’re comfortable with sin, they’re comfortable with rebellion.  The essence of our faith is the expectation of peace, of satisfaction, of blessedness in a home that is far better and far removed from this cursed world and so you cannot expect to find comfort, to find peace or satisfaction, or blessedness from people who are living a life that you are consciously running away from.  Praise God that the Holy Spirit inspires Peter not just to leave us with the analysis of this reality, but with two comforts in our text for those of you who are conscious of living in exile. 

The last point of our text here, two comforts.  The first is this, that Christ will hold the world responsible for their behavior and for their attitude towards Him, and towards the will of God.  Continue on in verse 5 here.  “But they”, the world again, “Will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”  Christ’s power to save and his authority to judge is total, it is complete.  The subjects of His judgement are comprehensive.  The living and the dead.  The last I checked, I don’t have a Ph.D. in this stuff, but that is everyone.  And the timing, the inevitability of Christ’s judgement is certain, it is coming, the fact that you and I don’t know the day or the hour does not change that.  The fact that Peter’s audience didn’t know the day or the hour did not change that Christ is coming and for the people who receive and rest on Him alone for salvation, that’s a comfort, because everything that the world has ever maligned you or the believers that you care about for they will be held be responsible for their neglect of.  All the obedience to God that the world exiled you for insisting on, they will be held accountable for omitting.  The very things that rebels against the Lord maligned you for, they will be responsible for.  And it is a heavy truth, but it is nonetheless a comfort for God’s people that Christ is coming, and he is coming to judge.  Now when it comes to passages like this, heralds of Christ come in judgement, you may be in the room tonight and you do not feel comforted by that message.  If that is you I would beg you tonight, today to pray to the Lord, to beg Him for salvation, to receive Him as He is offered because He came in the flesh, he paid the penalty for your sins, he buried them in the grave and he now sits at the right hand of God ready to receive all who are willing to come to Him and the Lord himself will seal you up and protect you on that day when Christ returns to judge all and He will count you among His people and there is no better time than right now to seek Christ, to draw near to Christ for that salvation. 

Let’s close with the second comfort tonight.  Certainly, Christ is going to hold the world responsible, but we have one more comfort in this last verse, “Life with God is worth more than peace with the world.”  And of course, life with God is worth infinitely more than peace with the world.  Verse 6, perhaps a little bit odd as we read it, but let’s read it one more time.  “For this is why the Gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”  Remember Peter has been drawing our attention here to material, physical, earthly, bodily concerns, and so he reminds his congregation I remind you people of God that there are believers who lived their entire lives judged in the flesh.  They never had any validation from the world, any praise from the world, any acclaim from the world, and now their bodies are in the grave, they lived their life without validation from the world and died before they witnessed Christ’s return, but death was not their end, their spirits are alive.  They live right now in the spirit the way God does, enjoying eternal life, enjoying fellowship with the triune and the living God because the Gospel was not preached for them in vain, Christ’s work was not for them in vain, even though they now to us seem they are enjoying perfect eternal life with God and some of you may live your entire lives likewise, without validation from the world, but after death you enjoy new life in the spirit and the news of this new life, the promise that it will be yours in Christ, that is better news than that your house if paid off, that is better news then that your cancer is gone because the message is not that you have been delivered from death, the message is that you have been delivered through death.  This Gospel would be good if the idea was that death is not our end, but it’s even better than that, because the idea Peter’s getting at here is that death is only the beginning for God’s people. 

One commentator I read this week notes that this final verse here presents a clear and a sharp contrast between a life that is judged according to the standard of the world, and a life that is judged by the great judge of all the earth coming to judge the quick, the living and the dead.  A little Old English apostles creed slip up there for you guys.  The shame of our world as I have already said is this, that Pagans are short-sighted and they are blind.  They cannot imagine that they will be judged by a God who hates sin.  They cannot imagine that you will be vindicated by a God who loves obedience.  And this is a sad truth, it’s one that inspires us to take up this way of thinking, to go into these broken parts of the world where people do not know God, whether that’s in your own homes or whether that’s across the world in Peru, it’s a theological reality that animates the physical truth.  And so tonight the spirit of God poses this thought experience to you, Christ Covenant Church.  When you are dead in the flesh which eulogy will be more precious to you, the worlds evaluation that you were not successful enough, that you were not fun enough, that you were not ambitious enough, that you were not relevant enough or the living and true God’s evaluation that you were obedient, that you were reverent, that you were spiritual, that you were faithful.  One day the cries of the world will be silenced by the voice of our God singing over us.  Let’s pray now and ask the Lord to bring that day quickly.

Gracious God, we thank you for this Word, we thank you for giving it to us in love.  Lord we ask that you would arm us with a shared mind in Christ Jesus that we might have the strength, the eyesight, the wherewithal to flee from sin, Lord strengthen us to endure the suffering that comes with this world, empower us to look to eternal life with you, to look to you and to your Word for our vindication.  Lord, I ask that of everyone in this church, it would be true that one day you would look on us and say, well done good and faithful servant.  Lord thank you for the message of the gospel of grace and of Jesus Christ, thank you for the hymns that we will sing tonight, strengthen us for the week ahead.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.