1 Peter 3:14-7
1 PETER 3:14-17
It was said that if you pricked the skin of John Bunyan, Scripture would flow out. I'd like to apply that the Apostle Peter, if you pricked his skin out would flow the Old Testament. I don't know of any portion of the NT which is quite so full of the OT Scriptures as 1 Peter. So, in our approach to 1 Peter 3 today I'd like to ask you to turn to ISAIAH 8. In the first 8 verses of this chapter the prophet foretells the fall of Samaria, the Northern kingdom, at the hands of Assyria. Then sometime after that the southern kingdom of Judea would also be overwhelmed. The poetic language is vigorous and quite scary - cf verse 8.
See the reason for the calamity in verse 6. Idolatry is going to lead to judgement. It's a bleak picture. But from verse 9 onwards we're told that despite all this ungodliness and judgement there is a remnant of godly people who remain true to the living God and who bear witness to Him.
Imagine what it must have been like for those believers in the days of this prophesy. Almost everyone around them was turning to a new philosophy - the pagan religious beliefs were becoming popular in Israel. They were days of a new pluralism. All sorts of different gods were becoming popular. But they were hard days for those who wanted to remain true to the one, true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's always the case that when society turns away from the God of the Bible it becomes more tolerant and permissive about all kinds of religion and philosophy. The only thing which is NOT tolerated at such times is a religion which claims to be exclusively true.
Tolerant communities are nearly always intolerant of Biblical Christianity. Various forms of persecution break out ranging from the savage trial and execution of believers, to the arrogant rubbishing of evangelicalism in the national literature. Isaiah himself was subjected to ridicule and persecution because of his refusal to abandon the God of Israel, and because he insisted on preaching the God of the Bible as the only hope of Israel.
What you have in chapter 8 in part is an encouragement to those men and women who refuse to follow the crowd, and who are determined to remain true to the God of the Bible. The encouragement starts with verse 11. They're not to submit to the pressure to think and live as these other people do. They're not to give in to troublesome thoughts, they're not to crack under the pressure of the people who oppose them ... verse 12. Rather they should continue to fear the Lord; they must not fear what these other people fear - verse 13. Then verses 14,15 give them a mighty assurance that the hope of these true Israelites, the true God, will not disappoint them or fail them. False religion will eventually fall upon the rock of true religion and be smashed. It may not look like this at first, but the true God and His people will survive all that the pressure of false religion will try to do.
Then in verses 16-18 you have a shout of faith from Isaiah which is important as well as courageous. It's a shout which looks forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus and His work in saving the church. The true children of Israel. And the NT takes that phrase in verse 18 and applies it to the Lord Jesus and His people.
So, you see the picture. A time of distress and difficulty for the people of God who are believers in the God of the Bible and in the Bible of God. They are under pressure from an idolatrous society to become less narrow minded and more theologically flexible. Why be so narrow minded? Why not accept that there are many ways to God, and that your Jesus is but one amongst many? If you don't bend a little then you will find that life will become increasingly hard for you fundamentalist bigots.
What I especially want you to see in this great chapter is that the prophet calls the remnant, the true believers to two particular duties in their day and generation. Verse 16 says that they are to bind up the testimony and seal up the law amongst themselves. It's as though they are to take the documents of revealed religion, take the heart and soul of Biblical faith and seal it up in a safe place. Don't let the truth be destroyed, keep it safe, keep it from contamination, don't let anyone tamper with the truth.
THEN verse 17 says that they are to wait for the Lord. They aren't to panic, they aren't to give in to the pressure to conform. They're to trust in God and in His power, that in due course He will stretch out His arm of power and turn the tide.
I've told you all that because it's the background to our passage from 1 Peter 3. These Christians to whom Peter wrote were passing through very painful times because of their faith. They had put their trust in Christ and were now suffering for it from a very religious but very intolerant society. The very behaviour which God Almighty told them was excellent was getting them into appalling trouble. They were being abused. False accusations were being made against them. In other words what had been happening to Isaiah and to the godly remnant was happening to these Christians who were living out their faith in a Roman culture which insisted on emperor worship as a test of loyal citizenship. The pressure was on these Christian believers to conform to the mind set of the world around them. Adopt the standards of society, place them alongside your Christian standards, and life will be a lot easier for you. Maybe you're feeling the pressure of one kind or another.
You're a young person at school and you're being taught things which are not true according to the Bible, and you want to say, NO it isn't true, but you're a bit scared. Maybe you're friends at school give you a hard time because you belong to a Christian church and a young people's group. People of your age at school are wanting you to behave like they do, speak as they speak.
You're in a place of work where the ethics are pretty poor, and you're being expected to lower your Christian standards for the sake of the firm, and if you don't you might lose your job. You're under pressure.
You're a student home from university this week. The people who see you in this church think you're the same young person who went up to University a few months ago, but no, you've begun to conform to the mind set and behaviour of the student world. You've been under pressure to compromise your faithfulness to the evangelical gospel. It may be a moral compromise. Everybody's sleeping around and all that stuff. Or it may be an intellectual compromise -how can you continue to believe in a creator when everyone else has a different philosophy.
Someone else has begun to be attracted to a non-Christian partner. Pressure to compromise.
Two important duties.
a. shun the pressure to conform
What has Peter got to say to you? Well, the same thing actually that Isaiah said to the believing Israelites. Notice how 1 Peter 3:14 is a quotation from Isaiah 8:12. And remember that in OT language your fear is your God. Jehovah was called the Fear of Abraham. Don't fear the gods they fear, fear instead the true God, the fear of Abraham. That's the pressure on you - fear the gods of materialism, of pleasure, of evolutionary philosophy. Don't be different, don't stand out, don't live a radically different Christian lifestyle. Let the mind set of a pagan society become the dominant factor in your thinking. FOR INSTANCE - Some of the biggest problems facing Christians in our society are to do with debt.
You've got to have a house which is to the maximum limit of your income; you're got to have a certain standard of car; a certain collection of possessions; you've got to have a certain standard of holiday; etc. etc. and before you know where you are professing Christians who say that Jesus is Lord of their money and their lifestyle and in such debt that they can hardly afford to support the needs of mission and the life of the church. There's a Christian charity which is doing a huge amount of work with Christians in debt. The god of materialism says, Don't wait, have it now, even if you have to borrow beyond your means - and the pressure is great. You have come to fear what they fear. Their god at that point has become your god. You gave in to the pressure of materialism.
Don't fear what they fear. Don't allow your mind to be pressurised into thinking that you must have what they have; they you must conform to their standards. Identify when the gods of this society are putting the squeeze on you and dare to be different. Dare to be unfashionable. Dare to have priorities in business, in spending, in sport, in relationships which are those of the Word of God.
b. safeguard the precious testimony
Do you remember Isaiah's powerful advice, seal up the testimony, well, here is Peter's version - verse 15,16. Do you see it in its context. It's not a nice devotional text, it's the solemn obligation of each Christian when the world wants to squeeze Christians into an ungodly mould. Preserve the testimony. Don't let the glory of the Lord Jesus as the world's hope of salvation be contaminated in your life. Let your relationship to Jesus Christ be such that anyone can come and make enquiry about this Saviour and receive an uncontaminated answer, an uncompromised answer.
If people are going to have to say anything negative about you, let it be for your Christian behaviour and not for unchristian behaviour. Let Christ in your heart be the controlling principle of your whole life. Let the way you play soccer, the way you prioritise your spending, the way you drive your car, the way you engage in relationships, do business, be determined by the fact that Christ and His truth are sealed in your heart.
Safeguard your testimony, even if it's inconvenient, if it's painful, if it causes you to lose friends, or a steady job. Think about your Lord Jesus. What did He suffer in order to do you good?
Think about Noah and his family. Remember how he preserved the testimony of the Lord. The society around him was corrupt and ungodly. Noah was laughed at and scorned as he maintained the testimony of building an ark on dry land for 120 years. Apart from 7 other souls he was alone in his faith in the Word of God. But He sealed up God's promise in his heart and refused to compromise with the world's philosophy. He found it hard, he found it painful; he was probably accused of being incredibly narrow-minded. How could anyone be stupid enough to believe in God who made His converts build an enormous vessel on dry land? Come on, Noah, live as we live. Enjoy yourself a bit more. Why put all your money and time into building that nonsense.
Noah safeguarded the testimony, and he was saved in the day of judgement.
Your solemn obligation and privilege in this day of pluralism, and materialism, and so many other -isms, is to safeguard the testimony of Jesus Christ. To enthrone Him in your heart, and cause all that flows out of your heart to be sanctified by that reality. Live in such a way that you can defend your lifestyle to an unbelieving world in Christ-centred terms. Live so that you can say - the way I live is consistent with my testimony that Christ lives in my heart.
It may be painful and uncomfortable at times to be a consistent Christian in an ungodly society. But Noah found that his choice to preserve God's testimony was wonderfully right, vindicated at the day of judgement. And you will find the same. The world may accuse you of being a fundamentalist fool, they may say that you're spending your life in a daft cause, but in the day of salvation and judgement, you will be eternally vindicated.