So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin.
Back to suffering again. I’ve never preached so much on suffering in all my life, but this was an important topic for Peter and his people. Peter uses a really interesting word here. “Arm yourselves.” This is a battle. Life is a battle. The Christian life is a participating in a great, global warfare. “Arm yourselves.” Prepare yourselves for the battle. Don’t go into battle without a weapon.
But what is this weapon that is so important? “Arm yourselves with the same attitude that [Jesus] had.” Our weapon in this battle of life is the attitude of Christ. Remember this is the same Christ who “suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring [us] safely home to God” (1 Peter 3:18). This is a battle, and get ready to fight, but here is your weapon: innocent, suffering, love.
And once you suffer with Christ, that changes things. It seem that the more we suffer for Christ, the stronger we grow at resisting sin.
Then: 2 You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God.
There are some really important phrases here. First, “the rest of your life.” Most of us have a total of 60, 70, 80 years to live. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?
The second important phrase here is: “chasing your own desires.” I love that phrase. It really catches something important about life - we usually can’t “catch” our desires. We just go on chasing them but never catching them.
A few years ago we went to COEX with the Willey family. There was this machine that shined a spot of light on the floor. It would move around in a random pattern. If you tried to step on it, it would sense your foot coming and move away just before you got there. I think Ian would have played there for an hour if we would have let him. He was always chasing the light but never catching it.
So much of our life is like that. Most of what we think we want is only a poor reflection of our true desires. Most of us don’t even know what we really want. I’m thinking of Paul’s words in Romans 12:2, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” We can chase our own desires and never catch them, or we can surrender to God’s will for us, which is better and more satisfying anyway.
Next Peter starts to get personal. 3 You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.
In the Roman world in the 1st century, there were lots of business groups or trade unions - called “guilds.” There might be the silversmiths guild, the carpenters guild, the import/export guild, etc. And all the people in these guilds would get together from time to time for these huge feasts, where there would be lots of alcohol and lots of women. Usually, the feast was kind of a religious celebration asking the gods to bless their business efforts. The feasts formed the bonds of friendship between the members, and everyone in the guild was expected to participate if they wanted to stay in the guild.
This was a natural problem for Christians. They wanted to keep working as silversmiths or brick layers or whatever, but they didn’t want to get drunk and fool around with prostitutes. So, they either left the parties early or skipped altogether. Naturally, this didn’t go over so well.
Peter says: 4 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you.
You can imagine the comments they got: “What - are you too good for us? You prude! Don’t you care about us? Don’t you care about the business? You’re so selfish. You’re too uptight.”
This all sounds uncomfortably familiar. I’ve heard lots of Korean business men complain about work parties (회식). Everyone in the office goes out for dinner and drinks. The dinner is no problem, but the drinks just keep coming and coming and coming. If you try to say no, people think you don’t like them or say that you’re being unsocial. If you leave early or skip the party, people think you don’t care about the team. On the other hand, if you keep drinking with them, you’re likely to ruin your health.
A few years ago, I went out to a “business bar” with some Korean business men. They invited a cute young waitresses in a short skirt to sit at our table in our private room. After she had been sitting next to me for a little while, and I still hadn’t snuggled up to her, one of the guys said, “Are you a man or what?!” I said - somewhat awkwardly, “Yes, I’m a married man.”
Making good choices is not always popular. What will your friends say if you decide you can’t, in good conscience, watch the movie they want to see? What will they say when you have a coke at the pub or stop after one beer? What will people say when you go home alone again? One of my friends said she has decided to go home at midnight because that’s when all the crazy stuff starts. “Nothing good happens after midnight,” she says. Peter’s answer is simple: “I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of that way of life.”
And Peter has a simple solution when we are experiencing this kind of negative peer pressure: 5 But remember that they will have to face God, who will judge everyone, both the living and the dead.
In the end, they’ll have to face God with how they spent their life, and so will we. People might disapprove and call us names, but God is our judge not people.
Peter continues with the same point: 6 That is why the Good News was preached to those who are now dead—so although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the Spirit. 7 The end of the world is coming soon.
This is another one of those passages that we could debate for the next five hours, but I don’t want to get into what “the end of the world” means. End times theology an important topic, but not so much for this text.
The important part for this text is that our end is coming soon. We are going to die, and it will probably be sooner than we expect. We all say, “Time flies.” How many of you said, “Is it 2011 already? ... Is it April already? ... Am I 30 already? Am I really 40? 50? 60?” It’s like in the old Fiddler on the Roof song, when the adults are talking about their kids who are about to get married:
Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
Someday, you will wake up and say, “Where did the time go? What happened to my kids? What happened to my life? It all went so fast.”
Or even worse, someday you might not wake up. I heard last week about a pastor who was 50 years old, who had a heart attack and died. Many of us have loved ones who died suddenly, unexpectedly, too soon.
Peter’s message here is simple. The end is coming soon. Don’t waste your life. Stay away from stuff that destroys your life, and cling to the stuff that gives meaning and significance to your life. Don’t just avoid evil, but, because the end is coming, Peter says we should actively do four good things.
7 The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers.
The first good thing is to PRAY. If you translate this literally it’s “Therefore, be sane and sober in your prayers.” I like that. Be sane. Don’t go crazy with all the stuff this world goes crazy about. Keep your head on straight. Stay sober.
Now if we think about this specifically with prayer, sanity and sobriety can tell us something important about prayer. One of the mottos of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups is, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
We often pray like this. We just keep praying in the same old boring ways, and we keep on getting the same old boring results. We say to ourselves, “This time, I’m really going to pray every day for 30 minutes.” And that works, for a few days. Then, one day we sleep in. Then, the next day, we have an early appointment. Before the week is over, we’re back to the same-old-same-old. We think it’s because we aren’t trying hard enough or aren’t disciplined enough. “It works for other people, so why doesn’t it work for me?” Maybe you need to try something new.
24-7 Prayer is a great way to try some new kinds of prayer. If you sign up for an hour, you’ll be all alone for an hour. You can sing. You can dance. You can draw, paint, sculpt, color, write, shout, cry, play a drum, read other people’s prayers, or just sit in silence in the presence of God. Be sane. Don’t expect your prayer life to be different if you don’t do something different. Sign up for an hour of prayer and see what happens.
8 Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.
Because the end is coming soon, LOVE - that’s the second good thing. Peter says, this is “most important of all ... for love covers a multitude of sins.” This is actually a paraphrase of an old proverb: “Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses” (Proverbs 10:12). Haven’t you seen that? In your work, when there’s a negative atmosphere, everyone finds something to complain about. Or, when you don’t really like someone, you’re quick to point out their faults.
On the other hand, John Wesley says that when we love each other, we turn our eye away from the other person’s faults, and as far as possible, we try to hide them from others.1 He’s not talking about a systematic cover-up. He means that love pushes us to see others in the best light possible, and we don’t point out their faults to others.
I’ve been challenged by this verse this week. I’ve been thinking about it like this: if people are going around pointing out my faults, maybe I haven’t spent enough time loving others. Maybe there isn’t enough of my love out there to cover my faults. And if I’m thinking mostly about people’s faults, maybe I need some more love. Sure, I need to work on my faults, but maybe even more, I need to work on my love.
Peter says, “continue to show a deep, intense, unfailing love for each other.” This kind of love takes time. You can’t get deep, intense love for each other by just coming on Sunday morning, so Peter’s next point really makes sense.
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
HOSPITALITY is the third good thing we do because the end is near. Hospitality is the fundamental strategy for deep and intense love. If you want to love deeply, you’ve got to spend time together. This week I was talking with someone who recently joined a Bible study, and she said with surprise: “And I like it. I didn’t think I would like it. These are people I wouldn’t normally hang out with, but I really like them.”
Love takes time, and hospitality is the breeding ground for love. Hospitality is the greenhouse for love. Spend time together. Eat together. Play together. Talk together. Pray together. Then, you will form the bonds of love that will hold us together and transform our lives. Time is running out, so open your homes and hearts to each other.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides...
Because the end is coming soon, SERVE. Don’t waste your life on yourself. God has created you to do good. Your purpose on earth is to do good. What kind of gifts has God given you? Do you have a way with words? Then, speak, write, talk, blog. Do you love kids? Then, play with ours. Do you sing or clean or paint or cook or manage money? Then “use whatever gift you have received to serve others.” Get involved. My mom would say, “Don’t just sit there like a bump on a pickle.” Do something. If you’ve been coming here for a few months, it’s time to find a job in the church. It doesn’t have to be much. It doesn’t have to kill you. It doesn’t have to drain you.
One of the amazing things about helping others is that it often gives us energy instead of taking it away. If you exercise, you can kind of understand how this works. Your alarm goes off, and you think, “Oh, man, not today. I don’t want to do anything today. I just want to sleep.” But if you go out there and walk or run or play soccer, you go home feeling refreshed and much more energized. The point is to find a job that fits you and then do it “with the strength God provides.”
So let me review. So far Peter has said, “Don’t waste your life on stuff that tears you down. The end is coming soon - before you know it - so live well. Pray. Love. Practice hospitality. Serve others.”
Now, Peter tells us what will happen if we live like this.
... so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. 12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
If we avoid evil and live well, then when people look at us, they will praise God. If we Christians live well, people will see us and say, “Wow, if they are like that, God must really be good.” If we live well, God will get all the glory. And God should get all the glory because - remember - we are doing all of this “with the strength God provides.”
As much as we want to live well, we can’t - not on our own. We can only live well as we live in the heart of the gospel. Before the creation of the world, God loved us. We turned away from God’s love, going our own way. But God brought us home through Jesus. When Jesus died, we died - to ourselves and to sin. When Jesus was raised, he brought us up out of the pit with him. Now, if we put our trust in Jesus, we can live a free life. Jesus can put his Spirit in us and give life to our dry bones and our dead places (Ezekiel 37). If we put our trust in Jesus, we can live well. If we put our trust in Jesus - even if that means suffering, then in the end, we will be able to say, “Yes, I lived well. I prayed. I loved. I opened my heart and my home. I served.”
And there’s one more amazing, mysterious thing about God’s way. If we give up finding glory for ourselves, if we admit that we can’t do it in our own power, if we always live in a way to build others up and to give God glory, then we will experience this amazing, mysterious blessing: “the Spirit and glory of God” will rest on us. Even as we try to reflect all the glory back up to God, and even as we try to live our lives to help others, God’s glory and God’s Spirit will settle in on our lives, and we will become people rich with God’s presence.
This is the great exchange. Give God everything you have - which isn’t very much - and God will give you everything God has - which is a whole lot. Give God your sinfulness, and God gives you God’s holiness. Give God your little self, and God will give you God’s great big amazing Presence. Give God whatever glory there is in our lives, and God gives makes his Great Glory settle in us and around us. This is the great exchange.
Life is short. Time is running out. What do you choose?
1 comment:
Hi Josh!
I love the great exchange! And, the four points you mentioned in this blog-message are encouraging to me. Thank you and God bless you and yours!
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