Now, if you'd open your Bibles
to First Peter, Chapter 4. First Peter, Chapter 4. The Lord willing, we'll cover
the first six verses of this chapter. Let's just begin by reading them.
Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also
with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body
is done with sin. As a result, he does not live
the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather
for the will of God. For you have spent enough time
in the past doing what pagans choose to do, living in debauchery,
lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry. They think it's strange. that
you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation. And they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give an
account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel
was preached even to those who are now dead. so that they might
be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live
according to God in regard to the spirit. Therefore. I remember, I don't know how
many times I heard it, probably as many times as you've heard
me say it. When you're reading the Bible
and you run into the word therefore, see what it's there for. What
does he mean when he says therefore here? He's saying, based on what
I have just said before, go on to this. Well, what has he said? Well, of course, we could say
it applies to everything that he's written before that point.
But the immediate context, was that so closely applies to what
he goes on to say. He says in verse 18, for Christ
died for sins. Now it's verse 18 of 1 Peter
3. For Christ died for sins once
for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body,
but made alive by the spirit through whom also he went and
preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God
waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being
built. And he goes on to speak of baptism
and how that saves us, but it saves us only in the symbolic
sense because it goes on to say it saves you by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, which is what is being symbolized in baptism. And then in verse 22, he speaks
of Christ this way. He has gone into heaven, is at
God's right hand with angels, authorities, and powers in submission
to him. Now, the apostles, any time they
would give us exhortations about how to act or what to think,
They, generally speaking, you will find that they based it
upon the doctrine of the gospel. They didn't just give us a bunch
of rules, say, okay, this is the standard, you better meet
it. They first set before us the glorious gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. In so doing, they not only fulfill
their job as those who are supposed to communicate that message,
and they not only exalt Christ by the teaching of those doctrines,
they capture our minds and fix them on what they should always
be fixed on anyway. Our minds should be fixed on
Jesus Christ. The book of Hebrews says, let
your eyes be fixed on Christ, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, despising its shame. And so you fix your eyes on him,
you fix your mind, your thoughts, your affections, everything focused
on him. And brethren, that's good preaching. That's the way anybody that preaches
ought to preach. Whatever else they do, they need
to set before the people the glories of Christ and what he
has done. Because that is the only thing
that is going to work or produce a spiritual effect in anybody. If he's preaching to those who
are as yet in unbelief, it is the message of Christ that God
will use to give them spiritual life and cause them to believe
if it is his will to do so. It will not be by any kind of
special effects. It won't be by the personality
of the preacher. It won't be by the cleverness
of his delivery or anything like that. It'll simply be the truth
of Christ plainly declared. God miraculously uses that to
produce spiritual life in his people. And then if you're speaking
to those who have already been born again by the word of truth,
they're already believers. That very same message is what
sustains that life and encourages them. And you and I need to have
our focus fixed. You know, that's why the Lord,
it got set up. We get together at least once
a week. Why? Because we lose focus. We have to have someone, and
that would have to be God, even though he may be working through
a preacher, it's God that does it. We need someone to get our
attention again and say, quit looking at that
other stuff, look at this. And so that's what the apostles
did in writing. They wrote the scriptures. And he has set before
us Christ as the sufferer, the sufferer, and yet through his
suffering, he was bearing sins, he was suffering
as a righteous person in the place of unrighteous people to
bring us to God. And though he was put to death in
the body, the Spirit of God gave him life again. And he rose from the dead. And
then he not only rose from the dead, he was taken into the heavens,
gone into the heavens. He's God's right hand, meaning
the place of favor, place of authority, place of power. With angels, authorities, and
powers, Now get that picture in your mind, that whole picture
from his birth, which is when his sufferings began, or actually
his conception you might say. When he came into this world,
the world was made flesh and made his dwelling among us. And
the moment he was made flesh and made his dwelling among us,
he started suffering. A man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, Isaiah calls him. And he suffered and his suffering
increased until finally it reached its high pitch there on the cross.
Not only because cross pain, and you realize, you know, that's
what the word excruciating means. It means out of the cross, pain
out of the cross. And so we've got this word that
comes from Latin. and the worst pain you could
think of, the best way they could think to describe it, cross pain.
But that wasn't the height of his sufferings. The height of
his sufferings, he made his soul an offering for sin. And it's
mysterious to me, I'm not gonna explain it, I'm just gonna say
so, that the Lord's sufferings were not just in his body, meaning
the flesh, it was throughout his whole person, and he suffered
Divine wrath, something you and I never have suffered. And if
we are in Christ Jesus, we never will suffer it. And he suffered it, and he suffered
it to the full. He said, it is finished. He died,
but he was raised. And now he's in glory at the
right hand of his father. waiting till his enemies are
made a footstool for his feet, guiding all things, ruling over
all things and all people, all beings of whatever sort there
may be, ruling over them to bring to pass the divine purpose of
God in saving his people. With that picture in mind, since Christ suffered in his
body, says Peter. Keeping that in mind now, the
pattern is set before us, his suffering and the result of it. Since Christ suffered in his
body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he
who has suffered in his body is done with sin. Now, says Christ
suffered in his body, and then he says arm yourselves with the
same attitude. What attitude is that? Paul says in Philippians chapter
two, he says, let this mind be in you, in other words, have
this attitude, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in
very nature God, and for whom it would not have been an act
of robbery, theft, to declare equality with God, But instead, he emptied himself. He emptied himself in the sense
that he gave up the right to his divine privileges. He remained
God, but he never once used his divine power and authority in
his own behalf. He came into this world, emptied
himself. Charles Wesley wrote in that
book, And Can It Be That I Should Gain, he left his father's throne
above. So free, so infinite, so matchless,
his grace. Emptied himself of all but love. Emptied himself. That's submission. Why did he do that? Well, not
only because he loved us and therefore was willing to give
himself for us, he did it because that was the Father's will to
do. He says, it's written about me
in the scroll, I have come to do your will, oh God. He submitted. And it goes on to say, in being
in the very form of God, or excuse me, in being found in the form
of man and in the likeness of sinful flesh, he obeyed. He submitted himself even unto death. It is even to
the point of death. And even, you might say, put
it this way, that he became the servant subject to death itself. Now I want you to think of the
condescension of our Lord, what he did in our behalf now. There
he was in everlasting bliss, the eternal word of God, in perfect
fellowship with the Father, and he gave that up to come here. We have the philanthropists of
our day, and I'm glad for the things they do, but they'll go
over to some foreign country where there's poverty and they'll
walk around and they'll look at it. And they'll be moved by it. I
don't think they're necessarily being hypocritical when they
help. you know, give some money to
try to help or start a foundation or something. I think, you know,
they're human and God in common grace gives them the same things
He's given you and me in days of our unbelief. We could still
feel sorry for people for the condition they were in. And so
they'll do something to help them out. But here's one thing
you won't see them do. You won't see them leave their
Beverly Hills mansion or whatever it is Go over there, throw away all their nice clothes,
put on the clothes of the poor, eat the food of the poor, live
with the poor, as the poor. You won't find them do that.
And you know what? You're not gonna find me doing that either.
But you'll find the Lord Jesus Christ, that's exactly what he
did. He didn't descend from heaven
with glory shining around Him in attendance and act like some
distant and above it all do-gooder coming into the world and saying,
okay, you know, build him a house, get him a car, you know, and
all this. And yet he himself never enters into the suffering
that he came to relieve. Our Lord Jesus Christ relieved
us of our suffering by taking it on himself. Do you know anybody
else has done that? I don't. That submission, he submitted to the will of his
father, even if it meant dying under God's wrath to do so. And Peter and Paul and our Lord
Jesus Christ himself said, you must have the same attitude. Now, that sounds like a big task,
and the truth is we'll never have it the way the Lord had
it. But that attitude is where true
freedom is found. That attitude is where peace
and joy and fulfillment is found. That's why it is written in the
book of Hebrews concerning our Lord, it says, fix your eyes
on him, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. Our Lord saw the cross. He knew
how horrible it was going to be, but he was looking past the
cross. and what lay beyond it. And for that reason, he could
submit to his father's will in that. And while it says there,
who for the joy set before him, and it would be reasonable to
interpret that meaning because of the glory which he would later
possess and enjoy, he endured the cross. But actually the word
that's translated for is the Greek preposition anti, we get
our word anti, or prefix anti from it, and it means instead
of. And this one commentator I was
reading, and I pass it on to you, it's kind of interesting,
and I think it has a valuable lesson. Our Lord, and he said
this, he could have skipped the cross. He said, I could pray
to my father, and he'd send legions of angels, and he'd take me right
back to heaven. That was set before him. Instead
of that, he endured the cross, despising its shame. And you
know, if we undergo persecution, or we undergo temptation, there
is a joy set before us. In temptation, there is the pleasures
of sin set before us. In persecution, there is set
before us the joy of not being persecuted because that's how
persecutors are. They're going to persecute you until you submit
to them. And so that's a joy to no longer
be persecuted. Wouldn't that be nice? Instead of that, we endure. the hatred of the world, whatever
persecution it gives to us, as much as we can, we resist the
pleasures of sin for a season. Instead of that joy, we are willing
to suffer whatever happens in this life, and we are willing
to do so gladly for the sake of Christ and in honor of our father who
loved us and sent his son for us, for our savior who loved
us and gave himself for us, and for the blessed spirit of God
who loved us and told us all about what God had done. Paul said another place our light
and momentary affliction. Now I know that all of us have
gone through some troubles that we might think weren't light
and weren't momentary. Paul had been through worse than
any of us had been through, but I know some of you have suffered
deeply. And to hear someone call that
light and momentary, this doesn't seem right. Why would the sufferings
of the saints in this world be called light and momentary affliction
compared to what we deserve? It's light and momentary. We
deserve an everlasting hell of indescribable torment. What we put up with, what we
get, Compared to that, it's light. And compared to eternity, it's
short. Light and momentary. And Paul
goes on to say, he said, for I reckon that the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory that will be revealed in us. And there he's using that same
principle, you know, there in the Hebrews, if you take those
words where it says, who for the joy set before him endured
the cross, that would be the sense in which Paul is saying,
these sufferings we go through, they're nothing compared to the
glory that will be revealed. Now, if someone said to you, I'll give you a million dollars
if you'll hit your thumb with a hammer. Well, let me hit your
thumb with a hammer. Boy, that hurt, wouldn't it?
But I might let him do it for a million dollars. You know,
for the million dollars, I'd be willing to endure that. Now,
I realize that our suffering does not merit us. the blessings
we shall receive. But the Lord Jesus Christ assured
us, and the Apostles repeated it, it is through much suffering
that we will enter the kingdom of God. What's a life of suffering, a
natural life of suffering, compared to the eternal blessedness of
being with God and like Christ? Arm yourselves with that attitude
of submission to God. And then he says something, and
I'll tell you, this kind of threw me for a loop, you know? There's
things in the scriptures, I look at them, and it's hard for me
to To understand, he said, because he who has suffered in his body
is done with sin. Well, is Peter saying then that
if we suffer, that we'll no longer sin? No, because all of us have suffered
some and none of us are done with sin in terms of we don't
do it anymore. I know that can't be what he
means. You know, sometimes when you're studying the Bible and
you come on a statement like this that you kind of scratch
it, well, what does that mean? You might not be able to come
with what it does mean, but you'll get closer if you start with
this. Well, what do I know it doesn't mean? I know that it
doesn't mean that our suffering causes us to be finished with
sin, done with sin. What does it mean? You and I have had our personal
sufferings to endure. But when Jesus suffered, he suffered
the righteous one in place of the righteous one. And Paul says,
when he died, When he suffered death, we died with him. We have suffered and died in
Christ. Now, when our Lord suffered under
sin and was about to die, what were some of his last words?
It is finished. Now the word translated here,
done, is not the same Greek word that's translated finished. But
it can carry the same sense. We're done. Our connection to sin has been
severed. Paul put it this way. English
translations say, he that is dead is freed from sin. And I
don't know why they use the word freed. because the word is actually
justified from sin. Now, justified means to be declared
righteous. And the righteous man, he's done
with sin. I mean, you are not declared
righteous by God unless the connection between you and sin has been
broken. And you say, well, wait a minute.
I seem in my experience to be awfully connected to sin. I'm justified, but sin still
has a lot of power with me, a lot of sway. Yeah, but we're talking
here about how heaven sees things, not how we see them. He who has
suffered and all of us who are in Christ suffered in him, done
with sin. Paul said, sin shall not have
dominion over you and have authority over you. because you're under grace and
not under the law. Anybody who's under the law,
still connected to sin. Anybody under grace, the connection's
been broken. And therefore, with this same
attitude of submission of our Lord Jesus Christ, believing
him, submitting ourselves to him, We are therefore rendered done
with sin. Now in the article I wrote in
the bulletin regarding the two kinds of guilt that people experience, we recognize that we still commit
sins. And that makes us feel bad as
it should. We should never be uncaring,
complacent, about our sin. But when it comes to the condemnation
of sin, we're done. We have, you and I, who believe,
we never have a reason to fear that we shall be cut off from
God, deprived from all those spiritual blessings in Christ
Jesus. Satan will try to get us to do
that, because that's how he holds people in bondage. He said, oh,
you're going to sin, and you're going to die and go to hell.
You've sinned. That's why he's called the accuser
of the brethren. But how do we handle that kind of guilt, that
condemning, fear-inducing guilt? How do we handle it? Well, in
the book of Revelation, it speaks of Satan as the accuser of the
brethren. And that's what he does. He accuses
us of sin before God. And it says, they overcame him
by the word of their testimony and by the blood of the Lamb.
And that's what we do with whenever we get a sense of condemning
guilt. We can be sure it didn't come from God because God says
there's sins and iniquities. I'll remember no more, which
means he's not going to bring them up again. So it's not him
that brought him up so that you feel as though you're under condemnation
again. That's the devil working in your conscience, trying to
bring you back into bondage through the fear of death. How do we
handle that? I mean, his voice has power with
us, doesn't it? He can set death before us and
we take notice, oh no, I'm gonna die. We say no. What's the word
of our testimony? It's the gospel of Christ. And
what's the gospel of Christ? That the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses us from all sin. And we say to him, no, no, I
will not perish. For Christ my Savior has died. Martin Luther says, the devil
comes to me and says, Luther, you are a sinner and you will
be damned. And I respond, you're right,
I'm a sinner though you have no right to tell me so. But I
shall not be damned because my Savior bore my sin in his body
on a tree. and it shall never appear in
the sight of God again. We're done. Sin no longer has authority over
us, and therefore we can reject its power to bring us into that
bondage of fear. And because of this, verse two,
as a result, Because by God's grace, we have been disconnected
from our sin. It shall never bring us into
condemnation again. Paul said, there is therefore
now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Not going
to happen because of that. We don't live the rest of our
lives, our earthly lives, our natural lives, for evil human
desires. Now, the mere religionist, the
man who is still under a sense of condemnation, he may quit
doing these things that are later here mentioned. He may give up
the expression of his sinfulness, but he's doing it in order to
obtain eternal life. He's doing it because he's afraid
if he doesn't quit doing these things, he's going to go to hell.
And that's the only reason he quits doing them. Otherwise,
he gladly indulge in all of them. But he is performing these exhortations
that Peter gives us in hopes of obtaining eternal life, Peter
says, because you already know or because you know that you
already have eternal life. Leave off these things that belong
to your natural, mortal life. You've got a better life, so
don't waste this life pursuing things that are temporary and by which the judgment of
God comes upon the world. He said, just leave that off.
And he mentions it. He says here in verse 3, for
you've spent enough time living that way. You ever think of that? Haven't we spent long enough
living a worthless, fleshly life? I mean, in all the time that
you've been alive, have you ever indulged your flesh and discovered
it to be a benefit. Oh, it's enjoyable. But you always pay back more
than you got out of it. Paul spoke of some of the lusts and actions of the flesh,
and he says, which war against the soul. People so much think of sin as
outside of them. But when we give in to our natural
fleshly desires, it begins to eat away at who we are and what
we are. He talks about debauchery, lust,
drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry. You and I have the benefit of
2,000 years of the full gospel being taught, argued, and its
significance being learned. And we look at this and we say,
do you have to tell Christians not to live a life of debauchery? Wouldn't they already know that
naturally? and lust and drunkenness and orgies and carousing. Do
you have to tell believers that? Yeah, you do. The Apostle Peter wouldn't have
said that we are not to live the rest of our lives like this
if it wasn't that a believer could do that. God has given life to us spiritually,
but he has not yet done anything to our flesh, and it is still
the same rotten, worthless mess that it has always been. Now, I've said that to myself thousands
and thousands of times, but it still bowls me over when I see
how easily I can be distracted from the glorious things that
are set before me. and find some kind of enjoyment
in the pollutions of the flesh. And he says in verse four, they
think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the
same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. Now,
you know I like looking these things up in the original language,
because sometimes you get a little more out of it I looked up all those words,
and I'm thinking I'm remembering this right, but this dissipation
refers to where the word actually is the word meaning to save. And it's the word for by grace
are you saved. So you take that word, and they just put an A
in front of it, meaning not. And basically what he's saying
is their conduct, there's nothing in it worth saving. You know, we realize that there's
sin in everything we do, but looking at it from a human standpoint,
we say, well, you know, I can't agree with all of that and they
didn't do it perfectly, but there's some good will come out of that.
And he's talking about, he said, there's nothing good in this.
There's nothing salvageable in that kind of conduct. And they
said, they think, that is, unbelievers think it's strange that you do
not plunge with them into the same stuff, that you don't live
the same worthless, unsalvageable life that they do. And therefore, they heap abuse
on you. They try to drag you in with
them, and you're polite. Say, no, thank you, I'm not interested.
Well, you think you're better than us? I'd say, no, I think I'm just
as bad as you. That's why I'm not going to go where you're
going. Because if I go where you're going, I'll probably end
up doing what you plan on doing. But notice this, verse five,
but they will have to give an account to him who is ready to
judge the living and the dead. That's a word, a frightening
word. I've heard people say, oh, he's
gonna have to give an account for that. If we have to give God an account
for anything, we're done. Because what kind of account
can we give of anything that we have done? The Lord could
bring up anything we've done and say, now explain to me why
you did that. Justify your actions to me. Tell me why that was all right
to do. What can we say? He says, they will have to give
an account. Who's they? The ones who have
not suffered in Christ. They will have to give an account.
You won't. That's almost scary to say, because
it's so contrary to our thinking. But even if you are found guilty
of doing this, you will not give an account for it. They say,
oh, you tell people like that, they're going to go out and live
like that. People say that because they
don't understand what grace is. Paul says the grace of God that
brings salvation teaches us to deny all ungodliness. Now does he mean by that that
God saves us by his grace and all at once he gets this serious
look and says, now y'all gotta stop this and this and this and
becomes harsh? No, what he's saying is that
this grace when it comes to us, fills us. with a love for the
God who is gracious to us, fills us with a desire for better things. And that's what's teaching us
that what the world has to offer is trash compared to what God
gives. And so that restrains us. And
so I can say to you who believe, even if you did these things,
you will not give an account for them. because your account
was already given in Christ Jesus. That doesn't mean you won't suffer
for him in this life. You know, David received the
word from the prophet that God had forgiven him for his horrible
sin with Bathsheba and killing Bathsheba's husband to cover
up his sin. He was forgiven, but you know,
If you look historically speaking, that pretty much ruined his life. He never was the king afterwards
that he was before. The things we do in this life
have their consequences, but our sins shall not follow us
out of this life. They will give an account, we
will not. Verse six, for this reason, the gospel, excuse me,
was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might
be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live
according to God in regard to the spirit. Now this is another
one of those statements. It just seems, it's difficult
for me to understand. You know, Peter says that Paul
writes things that are difficult to understand. I find Paul pretty
easy to understand. But that's because Paul, being
the apostle of the Gentiles, was writing in the way that Gentiles
tend to think. Peter is an apostle of the Jews,
and he's writing after a Jewish fashion, and so sometimes it
seems strange to us. But what's he talking about here?
He's saying that the gospel was preached
to the people of God way back yonder. So that even though they were
judged by men to be foolish and wicked, and sometimes were put
to death on account of it, yet they lived by the Spirit. Men will judge, and they will judge harshly,
and they will judge you even more harshly if you claim to
be a believer of Christ. And there are those who suffer
even to the point of death because of natural man's hatred of the
gospel of Christ. But the gospel was preached.
to Abel and Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all those fellas,
so that despite the fact that in their flesh they die, just
like everybody else, in regard to the spirit, they live. And you and I, unless the Lord
returns during our natural lifetime, you and I, We'll also die. The natural results of Adam's
sin will fall upon this natural existence of ours, and we'll
breathe our last. But because the gospel was preached
to us, and God gave us faith to believe it, according to the
Spirit, we shall live. And that's why our Lord could
say to Lazarus's Sisters, I am the resurrection. He that believes
in me shall never die. He that lives and believes in
me, even though he dies, natural death, yet shall he live. You and I I feel like I'm repeating
Sunday school class, Eric. Both Paul and Peter, you're dealing
with the same things here. You and I have so much better
already than what the world has to offer. Why should we follow after what
the world follows after when we have such better stuff? Well,
may God add his blessing. We're going to observe the Lord's
table.