1 Peter 3
Notes
Transcript
Why are we doing 1 Peter
Why are we doing 1 Peter
1. 1 Peter speaks to Christians who are living in a culture clash, every day, and instructs us with what we’re supposed to do.
1. 1 Peter speaks to Christians who are living in a culture clash, every day, and instructs us with what we’re supposed to do.
I think 1 Peter, while always relevant as its the word of God, can especially help Christians today who resonate with the sense of moral and cultural decay around us. A brilliant scholar I know wrote a brief historical survey called “Whatever happened to Christian Canada?” aptly identifying what so many Christians today are asking. And you’re right in your observations, we are living in a post-Christian nation almost anyway you look at it. So then, what are Christians to do about that? 1 Peter speaks to Christians who are living in a culture clash, every day, and instructs us with what we’re supposed to do.
2. 1 Peter also instructs us on how to think about, and what to do, when bad things happen to us as Christians
2. 1 Peter also instructs us on how to think about, and what to do, when bad things happen to us as Christians
1 Peter is also relevant as it instructs us on what to do when bad things are happening to good people...and by good people, I mean us...Christians. People who believe Jesus has saved them from their sins, and defeated the power of the devil, and yet, we not only encounter various struggles but also suffering and grief. I thought Jesus was the Prince of peace, God’s gift of Grace. I thought God wants to bless me? To give me an abundant life? That he has a plan and a purpose for me and my life!
The opening verses in 1 Peter seem to support these ideas, too. The book starts with:
1 Peter 1:1–2 NIV
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
IMAGINE the Supreme Being giving you that abundance of grace and peace, the whole Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—working to bless you, in exactly the situation that is optimal for it—what beach are you on? What all inclusive resort or hideaway mountain retreat are you enjoying?
Our instinct is one that an abundance of grace, peace, and blessing looks like splendid leisure, and in one sense, that instinct is not completely wrong.
The World to Come
The World to Come
The last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 & 22, show us the beautiful garden city to come down from heaven to earth as the capital of God’s new creation. It’s going to be truly wonderful.
God, clearly wants these things for us. Jesus even says himself in John 14 that he is preparing a place for us in this new creation, in this new city. So what needs to be explained is why Jesus didn’t just set us all up there right away. Isn’t that what Messiah is supposed to do—make everything right, right now?
After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples asked him about this too. We read in the first chapter of Acts
Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Acts 1:6 NIV
Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus replied to them though:
Acts 1:7–8 NIV
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
If Jesus is preparing a place for us, and we are his disciples, perhaps, in this time, we too are suppose to be preparing.
So, we will look at 1 Peter over the coming weeks to see how Peter, as the apostle of Jesus and the leader of Jesus’ first followers, tells us Christ-followers how to be witnesses of Christ, how we are to partake in God’s mission for the world, and how we are to do it in a culture that sometimes clashes with ours or is even outright hostile to ours.
Before We Dive in:
Before We Dive in:
JUST TELL THE STORY
A decade or so ago, I was asking God for answers about a number of issues or concerns in my life, and repeatedly felt like he wasn’t giving me any answers. I grew up up with a strong sense of God’s presence and of God speaking, to me and others. This was normal Christianity to me. It’s like having a sixth sense, it’s almost like intuition, but its also distinctly different, and as a young adult this became my primary mode and expectation of how God would communicate with me. So now that it wasn’t happening as often, I was getting frustrated and discouraged, “God, why won’t you just show me?!”
One day as I was frustratingly petitioning God for insight, answers, and direction. “I’m trying to be a good Christian here! I’m not asking you for the secrets to unlocking wealth or for that difficult client to get hit buy a bus! I’m trying to seek your will in my life and I feel like you’re silent.” And this word-picture came back to you, “yup, I feel like you’re the Silent God… that doesn’t sound like the kind of title you would want does it?” Ahem.
And then I heard, with the Holy Spirit inner voicexx, “You know... I wrote a whole book. You should read it.”
I have read the Bible! I used to read it all the time...
Then the Holy Spirit was not so silent, “Girl, you know what you’re like with me? It’s like we’re on a first date, and you are coming in crazy. You’re asking, do you want to get married, do you want to have kids, whats your financail situation like? What are your unresolved childhood traumas that may come up later to and make the relationship difficult for me? Where do you see yourself in ten years, geographically?”
You want answers to all these deep, intimate, personal questions, and yet, you haven’t even asked, “how’s your food?” In fact, you haven’t done anything really to get to know me, and yet you want me to spill my guts out to you, so that you can have a sense of control over your life?
Girl, it doesn’t work like that. I have boundaries. You ain’t no baby Christian anymore. You want more? You want deeper? You want different? Do more. Go Deeper. Do your spiritual life differently.”
Me: Ok.. you’re right, I’m sorry for calling you names. You’re not the Silent God. I’m going to muse on all those things you said about me being a crazy date.
Learning how to read the Bible
Learning how to read the Bible
So, I began to start reading, again. Seriously. But I found, so often the words and concepts being used were strange, from ancient Israelite ceremonial laws, like not burning any yeast or honey in offerings to God (Leviticus 2:11) (also what about all those weird rituals and offerings?) to Jesus’ own Sermon on the Mount (“turn the other cheek”).
For me, I believe if the Bible is the word of God, it has to be relevant and it has to speak to me today. However, It is written in another language, in another time, and in another culture.
I had heard so many times growing up as a Christian, “this is what this passage means and this is how we apply it today”, but for how I experienced God, and how I saw other people experieincing God, that interpretation and application didn’t make sense.
For me also beliveing the Bible is True and Trustworthy, I also thought, well the Bible can’t contradict what we’ve learned about history, science, pyschology, sociology, biology. There has to be a way to understand the Bible in a way that is congruent and relevant to our lives and knowledge today.
So, for the last ten plus years, I have spent considerable time, effort and money learning how to read the Bible and apply it today. So, along the way, I’m going to try and teach you some of what I’ve learned and recommend accessible resources and tips to help you get the most out of reading your Bible too.
As we have been talking about hearing God’s voice and co-labouring with the Holy Spirit, we need to rooted in the Word of God. We all need to be in the word, regularily. If you’re not, you are putting a cap on the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life.
Get the most out of reading the Bible
Get the most out of reading the Bible
We all know it’s important to read the Bible as Christians, but so often it can be difficult to understand because
(2) They seem actually quite literal, but we cannot figure out how we are supposed to apply it today:
In online marketing, a phrase that has been kicking around for years now is “content is king”, well when it comes to another from of communication, the Bible, I’d say, “context is king!...obviously Jesus is king, and then context...
But not just one type of context, there are four we should consider when we read any scripture and want to apply it to our lives today.
1. The Narrative Context
2. The Cultural Context
3. The Situational Context
4. The Literary Context
For today, we will be focusing mostly on the Narrative Context and throughout the rest of the series we will look at the other contexts to help us understand different passages as they come up.
So for now, I’ll just say briefly about culture, situation, and literary for 1 Peter.
Cultural Context:
Cultural Context:
There are two cultural contexts to the New Testament books that help us understand what the author is talking about and why:
Greco-Roman culture
2. Jewish culture
These play a signficant role in chapters 2-4 of 1 Peter and knowing what they are will help these chapters come alive for you.
Situational Context:
Situational Context:
Nearly every one of the NT letters was prompted by an occasion, circumstance, or series of events in the author and audience’s shared past. This context should inform our interpretation of every part of the letter.” -The Bible Project, How to Read the New Testament Letters, 24.
Top tip for discovering the situational context: Read the letters as a whole unit
A lot of the letters are only a few chapters, so before you want to look at one or two passages , read the whole letter first. While reading, look for any explicit statements about the purpose of the letter or the situation that motivated the author to write. AND THEN CONSULT A COMMENTARY OR OTHER RESOURCE: GET HELP FROM THE TEACHERS GOD HAS GIVEN THE CHURCH!
In 1 Peter:
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
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. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 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 you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
Peter is writing to Christians who are surprised that bad things are happening to them. Sometimes its because of prejiduce against them for being a Christian, but other times it is not, they are struggling with all kinds of different problems. Peter is writing to help them make sense of this, and what they can and should do about it.
Literary Context: A Letter
Literary Context: A Letter
Letter writing in Antiquity, espeically the letters we find in the Bible are in some ways similar to letters we write today, and in other ways quite different, and we will look at those dynamics more closely in the coming weeks. But what’s important to know for today is that They had very limited means of communication besides when they were in person. They didn’t have email. They didn’t have phones. They didn’t have cars to make seeing each other in person accessible.
So when a letter was written it was written very carefully and strategically. and may have taken weeks or months to complete with multiple people working on it.
UNLIKE OUR LETTERS, THESE LETTERS WERE ALSO WRITTEN TO GROUPS: CONGREGATIONS AND SOMETIMES (AS HERE) WHOLE REGIONS OF CHRISTIANS. SO THEY ARE MEANT TO BE PERFORMED BY READERS AND THEN DISCUSSED BY THE CHURCH.
The Narrative Context:
The Narrative Context:
Biblical Themes We Must Keep In Mind When Reading the Bible
Biblical Themes We Must Keep In Mind When Reading the Bible
Three main themes of Old Testament Narrative
Theme 1: Humans as the Image of God
Theme 2: The Family of Abraham Bringing Blessing to the Nations
Theme 3: The Messianic Servant
Two Main Themes of the New Testament Narrative:
Theme 1: Jesus is the True Human Image of God & Messianic Servant Over the Nations
Theme 2: As followers of Jesus, we are now to continue his mission of reconciling the world to him as his witnesses.
1 Peter 1:1-2
1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
We’re going to do a quick breakdown of the verses, then, with these contexts and narrative themes in mind.
The verses are:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Peter, A Commissioned Agent (a “sent one”) of Jesus, the Anointed One
Peter, A Commissioned Agent (a “sent one”) of Jesus, the Anointed One
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
The author of this letter is Peter, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples who rose to preeminence both among the disciples during Jesus’ ministry and among the apostles afterwards. He was one of those in Jesus inner circle having many experiences the other disciples did not have. He was the first to recognize that Jesus was the Anointed One, or the Messiah. He was probably the oldest of the disciples and often appears to be their leader, and Jesus said Peter would be instrumental in the building of his church.
Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Chosen Resident Aliens
Chosen Resident Aliens
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia
The provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia are in Asia Minor (“Little Asia” = modern eastern Turkey), and they were all Roman colonies. There has been a lot of research looking at Peter’s connection to these churches, as he later suggests in his letter that he was not the one who evangelized them. Peter feels a pastoral need to write to them encouragement and instruction.
Elect Exiles of the Dispersion = Chosen Resident Aliens
Elect Exiles of the Dispersion = Chosen Resident Aliens
English Standard Version 1 Peter 1:1
who are
Chosen here is connected to God’s chosen people, the ones whom he is in Covenant with, first the Israelites, then Christians, as we are brought into a covenant with God through Christ’s sacirfice.
English Standard Version 1 Peter 1:1
exiles
Exiles of the Dispersion is a description of God’s people living outside the Promised Land, often referring to God’s people when they were living in Babyalon.
In 1 Peter, Peter connects OT Theme 2: The Family of Abraham Bringing Blessing to the Nations, to NT Theme 2: Jesus’s mission on earth with the identity of Christians being “Chosen Resident Aliens”
Peter points to what he means by this here in verse 1 and 2:
(1) According to his plan as Abba, Father
(2) To be transformed by the Holy Spirit
(2) Being Sanctified by the Holy Spirit
(3) So we can obey Jesus, the Anointed one
(3) to be obedient of Christ
(4) and be set apart, as dedicated to God, as he has set us apart with his blood.
He unpacks what that then looks like for Christians and why throughout the rest of the letter. For today, as we wrap things up we are going to
According to his plan as Abba, Father
According to his plan as Abba, Father
who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
God knows right where you need to be, and he can move you if and when he needs to. And his plan is the plan of a good father, who wants what’s best for his children to grow up to be all that they can be.
Yes, there is warfare, but God’s bigger. “What others intended for harm, God will use for good.” But instead of focusing on, or thinking about the devil, we need to focus on God and coming into line with his plan.
The bible talks about both the demons and the devil, less than 100 times. The bible uses the words sanctify and purify more.
The Bible talks about money 140 times. The Bible uses the word wisdom over 200x and the word fool over 300x. It talks about sin over 650x. And it talks about the heart 700x.
Peter will talk about the devil in this letter. But he reflects the general balance of the Bible: There’s a much higher chance that what’s going on in your life has more to do with your mental and emotional health, the sin of yours or others, or stupidity—also yours or others—than it’s the devil. Satan is just not that powerful. You are, though, in the Holy Spirit. The world, life, and people—especially people— are complicated, it can be so complicated it can feel overwhelming and even scary. As Christians though, we can acknowledge and even accept the complications because we know that God knows exactly what is going on, and he has a plan.
Being transformed by the Holy Spirit
Being transformed by the Holy Spirit
1 Peter 1:1-2
through the sanctifying work of the Spirit
It is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in us and in our lives that causes us to be obedient to Jesus.
We have been given new life and now we have to make it our way of life.
Through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit:
We become children of God, not just in title but in our behaviour
We become disciples, both learning from and becoming like the teacher we follow
We become co-labourers, participating in God’s reconciliation plan for the world
The Spirit is not just a great Coach—reminding us what to do and how we’re doing—but he is actual Power: he empowers us do what Jesus commands us to do.
So we can obey Jesus, the Anointed one, who has set us apart, consecrated us, by his sprinkled blood
So we can obey Jesus, the Anointed one, who has set us apart, consecrated us, by his sprinkled blood
The rest of this letter is about what that means!
In Conclusion
In Conclusion
The Big Idea: The Daniel Call
The Big Idea: The Daniel Call
The big idea that’s communicated in these two verses, in the next five chapters of the books and indeed in the whole Bible is this: Christians are called to live as chosen resident aliens, rooted in our identity in Christ, participating with God in his redemptive plan of reconciling the whole world to himself, and headed for a glorious world to come.
