Text: 1 Peter 3:18-22, Title: Hope in Suffering, Date/Place: LSCC, 2/5/06, AM
A. Opening illustration: tell the story of the girl that I met in OT Survey in seminary who had a small scar on her right thumb. But don’t tell the end of it.
B. Background to passage: Peter uses Christ as his first example that even in suffering believers can have hope. Coming off a paragraph about suffering for doing good, and exhorting suffering believers to stay the course, come what may, Peter demonstrates that suffering serves a great purpose, and that the God of glory is far greater than any pain, heartache, or loss that suffering brings. There are several interpretations of this passage and the side notes that it brings. There are godly competent scholars that view things differently; I will do my best, because I have a responsibility to God to get it right! John MacArthur illustration.
C. Main thought: Peter gives us four reasons that we can be hopeful in suffering.
II. BODY
A. Suffering accomplishes the will of God (v. 18)
1. Peter uses the textbook case in the Word of God (although there are many others) of an instance where evil seemingly prevailed, yet God in his infinite sovereignty and wisdom accomplished every purpose planned from eternity past. The evil intentions of Jews were manifest and carried out, but the results were the plan of God. Christ suffering death, and still accomplished the will of God. First “for” should be translated “because.” We see the gospel in a nutshell in this verse. Explain. The last two clauses are intended to be parallel, and should be translated “in the realm of” the flesh and the little “s” spirit.
2. Acts 2:23, 3:18, 4:28, Luke 24:46,
3. Illustration: To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not—Oswald Chambers, MacArthur’s story about speaking at a large college in LA with a prominent Jewish student body about a philosophical basis for Christianity, and the persecution and salvation that followed, p. 49-51 of Found: God’s Will, reading a book on Depression by Edward Welch from Westminster Sem, and he says that pointless suffering is the worst suffering.
4. We should always view suffering in our lives with the cross in the background. Remember that even when suffering in your life comes from another person; God is allowing it for a purpose. We may not always know the purpose, but we can trust that it is there. Sometimes simply just knowing that there is a purpose, that God is doing something through this is enough to get us through. We should be willing to give our lives to further the purposes of God, knowing the God is working.
B. Vindication will come from God (v. 19-20a)
1. Continuing from v 18, Peter gives us probably the most obscure passage in the NT. He says that in the spiritual realm, after the body was killed, and yet before the resurrection, Jesus went to preach to some spirits in prison. Who and where are the spirits and what and when did Jesus preach. The word used here for spirit, is typically used for non-human spirits. Therefore these angelic or demonic spirits who were disobedient long ago while Noah was building the ark (Gen 6:1-4). They are imprisoned in a special part of hell, called Tarturus in the NT (2 Pet 2:4, Jude 6-7), reserved for the worst of sinning beings. Jesus in the spirit, between the crucifixion and resurrection, literally “went on a journey” to them, and made proclamation or announced something. This was not the gospel, as scripture never teaches a second chance at salvation after death. So, it must have been a triumphal announcement of victory over sin, Satan, death, Hell, and the grave.
2. Ecc 11:3, Heb 9:27, 2 Cor 2:14, Rom 8:36-38, Deut 32:35, 43, Nahum 1:2-3, Psa 94:1-3.
3. Illustration: There are no victories at discount prices. - General Dwight Eisenhower, I placed cinder blocks, rocks, and chunks of concrete in the base of my castles. Then I built the sand kingdoms on top of the rocks. When the local toughs appeared (and I disappeared), their bare feet suddenly met their match, Like a victorious locker room, church is a place to exult, to give thanks, to celebrate the great news that all is forgiven, that God is love, that victory is certain.
4. We must be careful that we not get so caught up in the obscurity and controversy that we miss the point of the passage—Vindication. Christ’s patient suffering unto death was later rewarded with a victory sermon to even the imprisoned forces of darkness. This also reminds us of the constant cosmic battle that rages around us between forces of evil/darkness and the kingdom of God. Remember also that vengeance belongs to God, not to us. However we may pray for vengeance to be taken. And trust that whether we see it or not, the guilty will not go unpunished. And your suffering will not go unavenged.
C. Salvation will be provided (v. 20b-21)
1. Peter then uses another example that muddies the water even more—baptism. The reason that it muddies the water is that the language Peter uses has been misinterpreted to say that baptism saves. The language should be translated “saved from the water” through the ark. Peter goes to great lengths to teach that the ceremony of baptism doesn’t wash away sin, but testifies of a clear conscience because of forgiveness. But to suffering believers, who feel as if they are in the floodwaters of life, Peter reminds them that God will provide salvation for them.
2. Isa 43:1-3, 2 Cor 12:9-10, Lam 3:22-23, 1 Cor 15:54-55, John 11:26, 5:24, 1 John 3:14,
3. Illustration: John Paton was a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands. One night hostile natives surrounded the mission station, intent on burning out the Patons and killing them. Paton and his wife prayed during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came they were amazed to see their attackers leave. A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ. Remembering what had happened, Paton asked the chief what had kept him from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, “Who were all those men with you there?” Paton knew no men were present—but the chief said he was afraid to attack because he had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords circling the mission station, End of the Spear,
4. This text is not meant to teach about baptism, but about salvation, that God gives it. But since we brought it up, one does not have to be baptized to be saved. Like the thief on the cross, you can go to heaven without being baptized, but we will have to make some crosses. Peter says cling to God, His Word, and look up, deliverance is on the horizon. But how could he say this to some that he knew would be martyred. Think back to the lesson of Christ’s death, even death is not final for the Christian. Always continue to believe that God will deliver, yet be content even if He does not. Don’t allow your estimate of God’s value, worth, and faithfulness to be determined by whether or not He does what you ask for.
D. Christ will be exalted in the end (v. 22)
1. God’s ultimate purpose is always the exaltation of Christ. In this text it speaks of the time following his resurrection, where God placed him in a place of authority, preeminence, and power. He is given authority over all things as the reigning king of the Kingdom of God; and everything lines up under Him. This is the means for God to show His love for Christ and for the world. As Christ is exalted, people see His value and worth.
2. Philip 2:9-11, Eph 1:20-21, Heb 1:6, Rev 22—throne of the Lamb
3. Illustration: “God is looking for men in whose hands his glory is safe.” –Tozer, It was Napoleon who said, "Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me. His ideas and His sentiments, the truth which He announces, His manner of convincing are not explained either by human observation or the nature of things. His birth and the history of His life; the profundity of His doctrine, which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and which is of those difficulties the most admirable solution; His Gospel; His apparition; His empire; His march across the ages and the realms-everything is for me a prodigy, a mystery insoluble, which plunges me into a reverie from which I cannot escape-a mystery which is there before my eyes, a mystery which I can neither deny nor explain. Here I see nothing human. The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine. Everything is above me. Everything remains grand-of a grandeur which overpowers. His religion is a revelation from an Intelligence which certainly is not that of man."
4. In your life and mine, that is his goal. And it may look like Christ is being denounced, forgotten, overlooked, or ignored, but we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. And we may not be able to fathom how God will use the suffering in our lives to accomplish this goal, but we can know that He will. It may not be in our lifetime, but He will do it. Are people seeing the value of Christ during your time of suffering, or do they see that even your “religion” doesn’t help your temper, your countenance, your faith to believe that “all things work together for good for those that love God.”
III. CONCLUSION
A. Closing illustration: I began with a story of a girl who had been severely burned, fired, dumped, evicted, and repossessed. Once she came to realize that bitterness, doubt, anger had taken over her heart and attitude, she had a time of repentance. After repentance, recovery began, surgeries were overly successful, doctors grim predictions were far exceeded, direction shifted, she began ministry, met a man, got married, graduated, and is in ministry today, and calls it the greatest blessing of her life—and there Christ is exalted.
B. Recap
C. Invitation to commitment
