Be A Blessing (FCM Version)

Scripture Reading/Prayer

English Standard Version Chapter 3

8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For

“Whoever desires to love life

and see good days,

let him keep his tongue from evil

and his lips from speaking deceit;

11  let him turn away from evil and do good;

let him seek peace and pursue it.

12  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.

English Standard Version Chapter 3

8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For

“Whoever desires to love life

and see good days,

let him keep his tongue from evil

and his lips from speaking deceit;

11  let him turn away from evil and do good;

let him seek peace and pursue it.

12  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Almighty Heavenly Father, as we look

Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us Jesus Christ, your only begotten Son, to be the savior of our sins. We thank you for the Holy Spirit, who helps us understand the Word and secures us in this life until our faith becomes sight. As we examine this section of 1st Peter, I ask that the Holy Spirit open our hearts and ears to receive what your Word has to say, and that our hearts would warm towards Christ, and we would respond in worship. I ask this in the name of Christ, Amen.

Intro

Since is the first time that I’ve ever preached here at Faith City Mission, I figured I’d tell you a little bit about myself before we dive into our text today. My name is Austin, I’m 27 years old, and I’ve lived in the Panhandle now for nearly 10 years. I work part time as a pest control technician and part time as a social media manager for Redeemer Christian Church - if you’ve ever been here when Mack Buchanan has spoken here, he’s one of my best friends, and if you know David May, he’s one of my favorite people. I’m married to a beautiful, wonderful woman named Melissa, who had a crush on me for several years and all of our friends knew about it and tried to set us up together, but I, being a guy, was 100% clueless about it - until she told me. We got married in December 2017 and look forward to when we are able to start a family of our own.

I chose this passage today for several reasons. I love the book of 1 Peter - it’s easily one of my favorite books in the New Testament, and this particular section is one of my favorite sections in the whole book. In this section Peter speaks to a wide variety of issues that all ultimately touch on something that we all care about: living the good life. But I also love this passage because Peter turns the idea of “the good life” on its head and shows that for Christians, the way towards this good life is through suffering for Jesus Christ and displaying to the watching world the hope we have in Christ. But before we can talk about any of that, we need to start on the foundation that Peter starts on - the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel Foundation

Now normally, if you’ve ever heard a sermon before, you know that the end of the sermon tends to be the part where preachers begin talking about the good news of Jesus Christ - maybe not all of the time, but most of the time. The reason I want us to start here with the Gospel, before we go any further, is because one of my fears about preaching on this passage is that we’d hear what Peter says and then reduce it to something that amounts to little more than “just be a nice person”, or “haters are gonna hate, but you gotta shake it off.” I don’t want us to disconnect what Peter is saying here from the Gospel because everything he speaks of here in this section has the Gospel as its foundation and cannot be found or achieved outside of the Gospel. We might be tempted to try to live this out in our own strength, but we can’t, and Peter is revealing to us an immense treasure directly linked to Jesus Christ that goes beyond generic worldly platitudes. The Gospel is Peter’s foundation in this passage, and it should be ours as well.

So what is the Gospel? What is the Good News of Jesus Christ? One of the simplest ways I’ve heard the Gospel described is that the Gospel is not about what you can do to get to God, it is an announcement of what God has done to get to you. At the very beginning of 1st Peter we read that:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Right off the bat Peter is praising God who, in his great mercy, sent Jesus Christ to secure for us our salvation, which gives us a living hope and a secure inheritance in heaven, and God did this by sending His Son to live the perfect, sinless life that we have failed to live. We cannot perfectly keep God’s holy requirements - Jesus kept every one without exception. Because we have failed to keep God’s commandments, we deserved death as a just punishment for our sins, but Jesus took that death in our place and took upon himself the righteous wrath of God that we deserved. But Jesus didn’t stay dead - three days later, he arose from the grave showing that he has defeated the sin and death that separates us from God, and because Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, He will one day return to be with his people forever in a world free from evil and sin. Our sin separates us from God, and sinners cannot stand in his holy presence. When we place our faith in Jesus for our salvation, we are acknowledging that we cannot make ourselves holy enough to be with God - that we cannot save ourselves. When we place our faith in Christ, His righteousness becomes our own. His death becomes our death. His resurrection becomes ours, and we are united to him forever. Everything that Peter says in this book flows from the reality of the risen Lord, so let’s dive in and see what the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the salvation he has secured for us means for how we live as Christians.

God did this by sending His Son to live the perfect, sinless life that we have failed to live. We cannot perfectly keep God’s holy requirements - Jesus kept every one without exception. Because we have failed to keep God’s commandments, we deserved death as a just punishment for our sins, but Jesus took that death in our place and took upon himself the righteous wrath of God that we deserved. But Jesus didn’t stay dead - three days later, he arose from the grave showing that he has defeated the sin and death that separates us from God, and because Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, He will one day return to be with his people forever in a world free from evil and sin. Our sin separates us from God, and sinners cannot stand in his holy presence. When we place our faith in Jesus for our salvation, we are acknowledging that we cannot make ourselves holy enough to be with God - that we cannot save ourselves. When we place our faith in Christ, His righteousness becomes our own. His death becomes our death. His resurrection becomes ours, and we are united to him forever.With this proclamation as our foundation, let’s dive into the text and see how everything that Peter says flows from the reality of the risen Lord.

Living The Good Life (3:8-12)

Right off the bat, Peter commands all of us to:

“have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing” ()

Because we have been eternally blessed by the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, Peter is commanding us to live out that identity by being a blessing to others. These initial behaviors that Peter lists - unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind - are not just some random morals for Christians to live by, but together they form a picture of how to live in a way that blesses others [REC]. In pursuing these virtues, you will bless others. But there’s an opposite side to this command; not only are we to pursue these virtues, we are also called to abstain from:

repay[ing] evil for evil or reviling for reviling ()

Obviously you cannot be a blessing to others if you are insulting, slandering, mocking, or taking revenge on others, even if they hurt you first. Often times we can fall into the trap of thinking that “I’ll treat so-and-so fine for now, but once they’ve done something to hurt me all they’re gonna receive whatever’s coming to them!” But here’s the thing - if there’s anyone who ought to treat us like that, it should be Jesus. We have ruined his creation. We have broken his laws. We nailed him to a cross with our sin - but Jesus doesn’t repay our evil towards him with evil. If Jesus does not treat us like this, why do we think we have the right to? These behaviors have no place among Christians, and if you feel convicted of any of these, I want you to seek forgiveness from God and repent from them without condemning yourself.

So in these two verses, we have two commandments. We are to pursue these virtues Peter talks about, and we are to abstain from responding to evil with evil of our own. Being a blessing involves more than just not being mean to someone - it involves deliberately pursuing their well being. When we do both, we will bless others We bless our spouses, bosses, and community and neighborhoods.

But why though? Why should I be a blessing to others, especially to people who aren’t a blessing to me? Peter answers this question in the second half of verse 9:

bless, for this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” ()

Now at the start of my message I talked about how Peter is speaking of “the good life”. Who in here wants to live the good life? Who in here wants to see good days? Peter isn’t telling us to bless others because he just wants us to be nice and kind people - he is telling us to bless others because when we do, we will see good days and love life - we receive blessing from the Lord! Now it may not be the blessing that you want it to be - it may not be that dream car, or house, or private jet - but we have a promise from the Lord that his eyes are on the righteous, his ears are open to their prayer, he sees those who turn away from evil and do good, and he is opposed towards those who do evil. Whatever blessing the Lord sees fit to bestow upon those of us who live as a blessing to others, we have this as a sure and steady promise: the Lord gives good gifts to his children. And not only do we have this as a promise, we have an explicit example of God making good on his word: This quote comes from Psalm 34, a Psalm that was written when David was on the run from King Saul and his life was constantly in danger. In 1 Samuel we read that David had two opportunities come his way to take Saul out and be rid of the man who is hunting him, but in both instances David recognizes that Saul is the King, and instead of repaying evil for evil, shows him brotherly love. David submitted to and blessed an unjust ruler, and the Lord blessed him for it. Peter is pointing us to David as proof for his point that the Lord blesses those who blesses others, even their enemies [PTW]!

This quote comes from , a Psalm that was written when David was on the run from King Saul and his life was constantly in danger. In 1 Samuel we read that David had two opportunities come his way to take Saul out and be rid of the man who is hunting him, but in both instances David recognizes that Saul is the King, and instead of repaying evil for evil, shows him brotherly love. David submitted to and blessed an unjust ruler, and the Lord blessed him for it. Peter is pointing us to David as proof for his point that the Lord blesses those who blesses others, even their enemies [PTW]!

Blessed in Suffering (3:13-17)

But what happens when Christians live as blessings to others and still suffer for it? If the Lord blesses those who bless others, why do Christians still suffer for following Jesus? Peter knows this is a reality many of his readers are experiencing, and acknowledges that Christians will suffer even as they bless others:

13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. ()

Peter is now giving us a greater promise - we are blessed even when we suffer for pursuing righteousness. In verse 17 he makes clear that:

it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. ()

Why is this a better outcome? Because the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus secures us from eternity - these sufferings are temporary and brief. Because of the Gospel, we can suffer for living righteously knowing that our Savior suffered for living a sinless life, and that even if we should perish in our suffering, because Jesus was raised from the dead, we have a hope that we will be raised from the dead as well. This is why Peter tells us to be prepared to explain that hope to anyone who asks us, but to be a blessing to others in doing so. We have a hope that transcends the suffering of life, a hope that the world cannot offer, and when people see Christians living as a blessing to others and suffering for it, they see something truly unique - and we get the chance to introduce them to Jesus.

Now are two of my favorite verses in the Bible. If you’ve ever done any kind of evangelism training you might’ve heard this passage before as it pertains to a field called “apologetics”, which is a big fancy word that means why you believe what you believe. If you had asked me to explain them to you four or five years ago I would have described to you the field of Christian apologetics, and how brilliant Christian thinkers help give Christians solid philosophical, historical, and scientific answers for defending their faith in a skeptical and unbelieving world. But while Christian apologetics is good and wonderful, recently I’ve come to see this passage in a whole new light, thanks to a woman named Rachael Denhollander.

Maybe you remember hearing or seeing about her on the news or social media earlier this year, but Rachael was the woman responsible for putting a man named Larry Nassar behind bars. Larry was a “doctor” for the USA Olympics Gymnastics team and, over the course of several decades, abused hundreds of children and women and used his position of power, and his influence over his peers, to hide it. This man is so evil that I don’t think it’s a stretch to call him a devil. Rachael was one of his victims but decided to use her training as a lawyer to expose Larry’s crimes and begin a long and public battle for justice for his victims. She was going up against a man entrenched in a very secure place at a very powerful institution, and she was vilified, slandered, accused of being a liar and dishonest, and as a part of the court proceedings she had to testify to what this man had done to her. Shamefully, even Christians accused her of terrible things; she even lost the support of her own church. To make a long story short, Larry pleads guilty in a plea deal to all the charges against him but, as a condition of that plea deal he has to listen to something called a “victim impact statement” from any of his victims who want to give one, and he has to sit there and listen with undivided attention. It took several full days for all the victims to be able to tell their story. Because Rachael was the one who started this fight, she was given the honor of being the last person to speak right before Larry was sentenced. With cameras rolling, she gives her statement, about 30 minutes in length, and at the climax of everything she has to say, she does not wish condemnation upon him. Instead, she gives the man who has brought so much suffering into her life and the life of others the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She points to the Bible that Larry brought to the proceedings and tells him:

The Bible you carry says it is better for a stone to be thrown around your neck and you throw into a lake than for you to make even one child stumble. And you have damaged hundreds.

The Bible you carry says a final judgment where all of God's wrath and eternal terror is poured out on men like you. Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet. Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. And it will be there for you.

I pray you experience the soul crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me -- though I extend that to you as well.

Larry was sentenced to 175 years in prison, and Rachael has recieved praise and accolade from around the world for her bravery. I don’t tell you this story because I want you to be like Rachael, but I tell you this story because when we are a blessing to others it has the power to shake the world for the Gospel. Because Jesus Christ has blessed us in the Gospel, we are called to be a blessing to others, even in suffering, and when we do this we are showing the world that there is a hope able to withstand the fiercest of trials, a hope that is not based on us, but based on a Savior who was a blessing to the whole world because he suffered for us.

Now maybe you’re here today and you’re thinking that this all sounds fine and great, but I’m not a Christian so none of this applies to me. If that’s you, I’d say that it may not apply to your right at this moment, but it certainly could. So long as your heart continues to beat, it could apply to you. There is not a single person in all the earth has disqualified themself from receiving the blessing that comes by being a blessing to others in the name of Jesus Christ, and so I plead with you today to turn away from evil - turn away from your sins - and place your trust in Jesus Christ that he alone can forgive you of your sins and that he alone can bring you salvation and eternal life, and to begin right now - this very moment - living as one who’s hope is not in anything in this world, but in Jesus Christ. I plead with you to not delay - you do not know when your time is up. Tomorrow my church buries a girl who was killed suddenly in a car accident on Sunday afternoon - she was alive one moment, and gone the next. I walked past her in church earlier that morning and thought nothing of it - little did I know it was the last time I’d see her this side of heaven. Her father is a dear friend of mine, and what was supposed to be an ordinary and normal week became the week where he must bury his daughter, and all of this happened in a moment. He certainly never thought his daughter’s life would end so suddenly like this - that happens to other people. I’m sure his daughter, when she woke up that Sunday morning, did not do knowing it would be the day she died, much less that it would be instantly in an accident. Do not delay placing your faith in Christ, putting it off to tomorrow or the next day or at Easter or Christmas - do it today, because today is all you have. This girl loved Jesus, and we know we will see her again one day, and that she is rejoicing before her Savior now having recieved the end result of the living hope she had while on this earth. Come to Christ today, so that:

you may be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.