We're going to continue with our series Identity Check. I tell you, I don't know what part it is. I think it's part nine. We have a long way to go still, but if you have your Bible, I want you to open with me, and I want you to go with me to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 3. I want to pick back up from where we left off last week at verse 17. We begin reading, and it says:
"For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."
Can I get an, "Amen," to the reading of God's Word?
When I was living in California… Both of Amy and my children were born out there in California. All of our family is from North Carolina, of course, so you can imagine being out there 13 and a half years that we didn't get to see family as often as we would like. Being back in North Carolina is a privilege. It's a joy. We can kind of run over to my mom and dad's house. We can go over to my in-laws' home. We can spend time with them.
For them to come out there was a long way. It was a 3,000-mile journey, or you had to jump on a plane, and it took several hours to get there. It was always a joy, and it was always time well spent when they would come out. I remember when my children were small, when Madison and Noah were little guys. Teresa had come out, and Randy had come out (my mother-in-law and my father-in-law).
We got together, and we decided we needed to get ourselves a swing set. We went and got a swing set. We picked it out. It had the slide and the swings on it, and it had the cool little ladder you climbed up, and it had a little playhouse on it. The kids were excited, and of course the task fell to Randy and me to put it together. Can somebody say, "Amen," or, "Oh me"?
Now, we guys have a real problem with instructions. I was out there with my father-in-law, and I think even Jason was out there, my brother-in-law who is sitting back there running the projector. We three grown men began to put together a swing set. We started, and we pulled everything out of the box. The first thing we pulled out of the box and threw away was the instructions. Come on. Are you with me? Who needs instructions, right?
I'll never forget. We were looking at this, and we said, "This is a no-brainer. There is no big deal. All we have to do is put everything together. They're large pieces. We understand the washers, bolts, and all this different stuff." We began to put it together. Sure enough, it began to come together pretty well. Everything started clicking in place. Everything was done. We spent several hours out there, and we got everything about it complete.
Everything was done, but there were just a few pieces in the box left over. That's not bad, not a big deal. You throw those away. Right? Well, it wasn't a big deal on a couple of little pieces, but then I got to looking, and I told Jason and my father-in-law, Randy… I turned to them, and there was this big bag of lock washers, the washers that when you put all the bolts on, it's one of those washers that keeps everything tight. We didn't put any of those on. We completely left the washers out.
Everything was done. It was tight. We had cranked down on it with the wrenches. Everything was done, and it felt sturdy, so we just said, "Well we have two choices. We can move on, or we can take this bad boy completely apart and put the washers in." How many of you know we voted on leaving the washers out?
Everything worked well for several months. The in-laws had already gone back home, but the kids would come in, and they would start complaining. They would be like, "You know, dad, we don't understand why it's starting to move and creak and do things it's not supposed to do." I'm like, "The reason it's moving and creaking is because…" I knew the secret. I had looked over something. I had left out the lock washers, which were very vital and important.
Here's the deal. When you looked at the swing set, and you took a picture of it, everything looked good. I could have put it in a magazine, and they would have said, "Good job, Steve." The bottom line is, there was something that didn't seem like it was all that important, and you just want to pass over it, but because we passed over it, it became very vital and very critical.
A lot of times, that's what we do with our Christian lives, if we're not careful. In the book of 1 Peter, chapter 3, what we're seeing is Peter, up to this point, has talked about spiritual suffering. He has already led us down this path of knowing that in this world, you will go through suffering. You will go through affliction. You will go through pain. Amen?
I want you to know this morning that your suffering doesn't dictate to you what your identity is. Your identity is found in Christ Jesus. Amen? Your suffering can't speak into your life, "This is who you are," because God has already spoken into your life who you are, and Peter has already led us down a path that talks about this physical suffering.
Every single one of us understands what it's like to physically suffer in this life, whether it is an actual physical pain, or a financial pain, or a family falling apart, or something not going right. There is stuff going on at work, and you're just about to lose your ever-loving mind, and you want to give your boss a backslap across the face. Yeah. It's physical stuff. We know what it's like.
Here's what we can't forget. The washers that cannot be left out of the box are this. There is a spiritual power behind all those physical things. There is a real evil in this world. Do you hear me? There is a real evil in this world we don't really understand. There is a real goodness in this world. His name is Jesus. There is the sovereignty of God in the middle of it that holds it all together.
Peter comes along, and what he does is he begins to throw some things in the text that don't seem to make sense. He's talking about suffering, and then all of a sudden, he starts talking about Noah and the flood and preaching to spirits and all this stuff. If I was writing the text, I would probably just go, "I've already covered a lot about suffering. I've already been down this road. Why do I need to go back behind the curtain?"
Here's the deal. Until you go back behind the curtain and realize the depth of what Jesus really did for you and me, it's hard to live as free as you can live. Amen? I want you to understand something. When Jesus died on the cross, and Jesus said, "It is finished," it was finished. Amen? When he resurrected out of that grave, the Bible teaches very plainly that the door of new creation swung wide open. All of the glory of heaven is now by the power of the Holy Spirit leaking into your life.
Yes, we live in a time where we still suffer, even though it has been defeated, right? I often say this. You've heard me say it over and over. Demons obey God, nature obeys God, but humans struggle with obeying God. Peter has called to you and me and said that in this world, you're going to suffer some persecution. You're going to go through some afflictions. You're going to go through some trials, but those sufferings and trials don't dictate your identity.
Your identity is in Christ, and he has not only beaten the physical powers of this world, but he has beaten the spiritual powers of this world, because the Bible plainly tells us we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities of the air. Right? That's what we wrestle against, but it has been defeated. Do you hear me? I don't think you hear me. I said it has been defeated. Yet we still feel the pain. We still feel things going on. It is now, but it is not quite yet. Amen?
A lot of people say, "I don't understand this. If Jesus has defeated everything, how come we still go through all this pain?" It's because we are in a redemptive story. Jesus had to go through the door of suffering in order to make it to the cross. He had to commit himself to a course of action that had no U-turn.
It was through the sufferings of Christ that he set you and me free, and we are called to walk that same path. If the world is seeing us walk through suffering, and our hearts are still on fire, and there is still a smile deep down, and there is a joy in the middle of pain, all of a sudden they begin to see, "Wait a minute. This Jesus they're following is a real God." Yes, he is, but it is a now-and-not-yet mentality.
How do we understand that? We understand it the same way we do a president. How many of you voted for the last president? How many of you went and cast your ballot when it came time? We always do that as Americans, right? Someone wins the vote, do they not? Then that person who wins the vote is called president-elect. Right?
When that person is out there campaigning, they are laying down an agenda. People are gathering around that agenda, and they say, "This agenda you are selling, we believe it is the agenda that is the right agenda, so we are with you, and we believe in this agenda, even though this agenda has not been inaugurated yet." Right?
It's the same way with the kingdom. When we elect a president, he is president-elect. Then there is a long period of time. I don't know what it is. It's like 11 weeks or something like that. Then the president is inaugurated, but we don't start following the president's policies when he is inaugurated. We start following him, believing in him long before he ever "sits the throne" so to speak. Amen?
That's the same way with Jesus. He has beaten death, hell, and the grave. You have been set free because of what he has done. Listen, weeping may come in the middle of the night, but I'm going to tell you you're going to make it through it. Do you hear me? Because he has defeated everything, we win, and we need to be walking like winners.
We can walk like winners when we're wounded. We can stand to gain when things get hard, can't we? We are the people who don't abandon ship when the world around us is cussing us out. Right? We hang in there. We're not the kind of people who come under persecution and say, "Well, I don't have to take this. I'm going to leave this job so I can hang out with a bunch of Christians." Amen? "God, would you please give me a job with a bunch of nice Christians?"
I'm the kind of guy who says, "Give me a job with a bunch of people who have lost their ever-loving minds, and I can live in the middle of that." Cuss away. Say all the dirty things. Do all the wrong things, and I'll just keep loving you, and I'll keep loving on you. Pretty soon, I'll come under persecution because of it.
Just like the saints of old, we will rise up by the power of the Holy Spirit, because I know in whom I have believed, and I know he has set me free. I know I'm suffering just for a little while, and that suffering doesn't give me my identity. My identity and your identity is found in Christ.
Go back to the text again. In the text in 1 Peter 3, it says this in verse 17. I want to read it again. It says, "For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil." Peter again, in the previous chapters and in verse 13 down until about verse 17 (that's why I put 17 in there, because it picks up on 13) has talked about physical suffering.
Now he begins to move us from the physical back behind to the spiritual to show us he has not only defeated the physical, but he has defeated the spirits behind the physical manifestation of suffering and persecution, and the power of sin in this world has been broken. Amen? That is what he is doing right here. Jesus literally has committed himself to a course that has no U-turn, and he did it in the garden.
Does everybody remember the garden? He just did…what? He had just gone up there and had a meal with his disciples. He had just washed their feet. He then goes out into the garden, and he looks at his disciples and says, "Could you wait here for a little while?" They struggle with it, and they fall asleep. Jesus is under such heavy burden, 100 percent man and 100 percent God that he calls out to the Father.
He says, "If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me." Then, out of the depths of the soul of my beloved Jesus, he cries out, "Nevertheless, let thy will be done." I have to tell you, man. If he can say, "Nevertheless," and live it, I can say, "Nevertheless," and live it. Amen? He now lives in me. That's why Paul said it plainly. "I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, it's not I who lives, but it's Christ who lives inside of me." That's the power he committed to physically, going to the cross.
Verse 18 reads like this. "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit." The righteous for you, the unrighteous. If you ever wonder why Jesus died, take a look in the mirror. If you've ever questioned your value in this world, look in the mirror. That's how much God loves you. He died for you.
If none of us existed, he would have died for you. He would have paid the pain for you. He would have taken the lashes upon his back. He would have taken the crown of thorns upon his head. He would have gone through six illegal trials. He would have gone to the cross and borne it. He would have been put on that cross for you. He would have resurrected for you, because he loves you.
You know what else he would have done? He would have changed the world through you. That's what he's doing, looking to change the world through you, the righteous for the unrighteous. Every day I get up, I do my very best to remind myself of that. "The righteous for the unrighteous." You see, I know how I used to live. Amen? I know the things I used to do.
I'm not talking about a bad day and mistake, and I'd mess up and choose the sin one bad time. I'm talking about living a lifestyle that was headed in the opposite direction of everything holy and everything godly. I know what it's like to not even understand or identify with who this God is and to go, "You mean to tell me somebody in this crappy world loves me enough to die for me?"
When I heard that preacher preaching, and when he began to share the gospel on August 24, 1988, I had heard those words of life coming out of his mouth, and those words of life found that dead place in my heart, and it found a place to rest, and all of a sudden, my knuckles began to grab the back of the pew. I don't know what I was doing. I just knew I was supposed to be at an altar. I went to an altar, and I said, "God, if you're real, change me." And he changed me. That's what God does.
Now when we get messed up is when we teach people that now that you're born again, now that you're saved, you have to completely separate yourself from the world. I don't believe the Bible really teaches that. I believe the Bible says you come over here and get showered and cleansed by the blood, and you dive back into the world and go, "Hey, you can be clean like me." We can live among them.
That's why you always hear me teaching and preaching to you that we have to change Western Christianity and the view where people look at us and say, "We know what you're against, but we just don't know what you're for." We need to get back to the place where they know what we're for. We're for giving them water when they're thirsty. We're for giving them something to eat when they're hungry, right?
We're for going and visiting them when they're in prison. We're for taking care of them when they're sick. We are for picking them up with mercy when they fall. Do you hear me? When we suffer persecution, we give love back. When they tell us to give our coat away, we give them two. When they look at us and say, "I want you to go one mile," we go, "Oh, heck, I'll go two." Amen?
When they slap us, we say, "How about the other side?" When the world rises up and goes, "I hate you," we scream back, "But I love you," and we do it by our actions. Why? Because Jesus did it. We're going to suffer in all of that. Watch this. Verse 20. "…because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water."
Look what he does in verse 21. "Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Now let me stop right there, because when you read that, that is the washers we want to leave in the box, but that's an important piece we can't leave out. "What are you talking about, Peter? What's the deal? Noah and baptism…"
Here's the thing with baptism. Baptism rescues you to a good conscience. In other words, baptism is very symbolic. It is saying to the world, "I identify with Christ. I stand up with him, and I identify, and I break from a world that is falling apart, and I embrace the new world of creation that is leaking in because of the resurrection of Jesus." Do you see it?
What does he do? He takes this picture of baptism that we all know. I want to tell you something. They took it real, real, real serious in the first century. They didn't do what we do nowadays, make a big show out of baptism. Hello? We've learned to make a production out of baptism. "We'll give you baptism. We'll give away 80,000 t-shirts for baptism." Really? That's what we've done to this text, because we love to market stuff. Hello? It's the truth.
You know where he ties baptism? He ties it all the way back to Noah. Does anybody ever remember Noah? Is it okay just to get crazy on you? Is this all right? I named my son Noah Stephen Wright on purpose. You know why I did that? I like our last name, because you know what my dad used to always say. "We are Wrights, and we do things the Wright way." My son and my daughter hear that all the time. Noah.
The Bible plainly talks about Noah, and when you go back into the book of Genesis, it talks about Noah. It says God looked down, and he saw that the world was an absolute chaotic wreck, and man wanted to do what man wanted to do. The Bible says he was sorry he had created man, and he repented of it, and he wanted to destroy all of creation. Then when you keep moving on down through the text, what you'll find in Genesis… It talks about how then he found a man named Noah, and Noah found favor in the sight of God.
That's what I always tell my son. The moment I see him begin to depart from the path, I just go, "Hey, bud. Come here. What's your name? Do you know why I named you Noah?" "Yes, Dad." He'll do the proverbial… How many of you know how when you get to teenagers, they'll kind of roll their eyes, right? One day, you know what's going to happen? He's going to truly get it. It's going to get in his heart, and he won't roll his eyes.
His heart will go, "Oh my gosh. He loved me enough he placed this on me." I say, "Yeah." Because God looked down, and when everybody else was going this way, Noah went this way. That's what happened. Then the middle name, Stephen… I'll get there in a minute. On the screen, in Genesis 7:7, it reads like this. "And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood."
God came and said it was going to flood. For 100 years, this man preached that there was a way. You know what they did? They mocked him. It probably was odd. It had never rained on the earth, right? The Bible says everything was fed by a dew lifting up from the ground. Here's a guy out in the middle of a desert building a boat. The nearest body of water was hundreds of miles away. He and his family were looking like a bunch of nuts. Noah just keeps loving on them.
Then what happens? Then, finally, the flood comes. Everybody he had preached to, they don't get it. What happens? The water begins to rise, and they do…what? They get inside of the boat. Is anybody seeing the parallels? There is water coming. Do you see the water baptism Peter talked about? Water, flood, the water is going to wash what away? It's going to wash the bad away, is it not? The water is going to wash the bad away.
There is a breaking from the bad. There is an entering the ark that is Christ Jesus, you and I coming into Christ. That's what it represents. The water, the suffering, the very thing that destroyed them picked the ark up and carried them through. Do you see it? That is what it's talking about. God never promised to pull us out of all the suffering. He promised to put us in Christ and allow us to float along on top of that suffering, and that suffering would carry us.
What happens next is right here in Genesis 8:18. "So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him." Finally, they come out of the ark, and you know what happens. Everybody who didn't believe was taken away. Everybody who did believe got into the ark, i.e. Christ. They came to rest. Where did they come to rest? Right here. Where? On the earth. God came to them and said, "Come on out, guys. Come on out, ladies. Multiply. Live. Increase. Change it. Newness."
That's what's happening to us. The Bible talks about in Revelation 21, it says, "Heaven and earth will come together." The Bible says there will be no more sin that day, evilness washed away. That's what it represents. In Christ, that suffering, we are protected. Listen, we are called to suffer, but it's not the suffering that gives us our identity; it's Christ who gives us our identity. We are called to make a commitment on a road that doesn't have a U-turn. God bless you.
I don't want a U-turn. I don't even ask to be taken out of suffering. I ask to be able to represent God with the power of his glory in and through suffering, because that's what has to happen. Look at this last verse in 1 Peter 3. "…who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him." Wow! Isn't that amazing?
Jesus resurrected. He took his rightful place beside the Father from all eternity. God is praying for you. That's what cracks me up. People come to me as a pastor and go, "Will you pray for me?" I get it. "Would you lay hands on me?" I get it. "Okay, I'll do that. Here's a little bit of oil." I'll slap it on you. Okay, I get it. I'm not making fun of that, but that's what we do.
Somehow or another, people think pastors have power. You know what. We don't have any power. The only power we have is the power to serve, but that's the problem with most pastors. They don't want to serve. They want to lord over. That's not what a pastor does. A pastor feeds, equips, and he's the greatest cheerleader, right? He's the one who gets behind and says, "You can make it through this pain. You can make it through this suffering. God has a call on your life. Why? Not because I'm praying for you, but because God is praying for you."
Oh my goodness. I don't even know how to relate to the fact… I can just picture Jesus all the time, maybe even now in glory, hitting his knee and calling out my name, calling out your name. Can you imagine that, God of the universe calling out your name, Leah? I know that if you could come and listen to me pray for you, it would be, "God, I just pray for Leah right now. I pray that you would just bless her life and you would help her with all of her troubles." Can you imagine hearing God actually pray for you?
If God is praying for you, it's going to be all right. Do you hear me? That is what 1 Peter is trying to say. Don't leave the washers in the box. We've talked about suffering, saints of God, yes. We've talked about submission and what that looks like and slaves to their masters and all of these things. Behind every physical power is a spiritual power. Jesus beat it…now but not yet. Inauguration day is coming. It's called the second coming of Christ.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed. In a moment, we have a message. That message is not to escape this world. That message is to invade this world with the power of his love, of his grace, and of his mercy. Yes, I named my son Noah. Stephen… Acts 7:59. Stephen preached about this beautiful Jesus, and the world gnashed, and they ran upon him, and they threw rocks at his body. Every time a rock would hit his body, I guarantee you the soul of Stephen was crying out, "I am not for sale. I am not for sale. I am not for sale."
As he began to draw his last breath, he said…what? "Behold, I see heaven opened, and I see Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father." The cry out of the mouth of Stephen was this. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Would you stand to your feet with me this morning?
Father, we come to you this day, and we know that suffering is just for a little while. We also know our identity is not in our suffering. Our identity is in you, Jesus. We know we've been called to make a difference in this world, to love longer than the outsider, to be more graceful than the world, to be more patient than the world, to show them joy when our world is completely falling apart. May we live such a life that our words have to be few. May they see our hearts. Lord, anybody can throw out rules. Anybody can throw out Scripture, use it out of context, but can we live it? That's my prayer.
