Right Conduct: Avoiding Evil Series

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1 Peter 3:8-17

“Right Conduct: Avoiding Evil”

(written for sermon central to fill a gap in the series))

There was a wife who was struggling with her relationship with her husband, so she went to visit a marriage counsellor to talk about it. As he was exploring the problems the counsellor said, “Maybe your problem is that you’ve been waking up grumpy in the morning.” “No,” said the wife. “I always let him sleep.”

That is the issue about living in this world isn’t it. This world would have no problems, if we would all just stay asleep! But we don’t. We wake up. And we need to get up as Christians and live in this world. Today the passage that we are focussing on from Peter is going to help us do just that. 1 Peter 3:8-16.

8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For,

“Whoever would love life

and see good days

must keep their tongue from evil

and their lips from deceitful speech.

11 They must turn from evil and do good;

they must seek peace and pursue it.

12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous

and his ears are attentive to their prayer,

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

13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

You don’t need me to tell you that there have been so many people who have been hurt by the church because the church was not functioning as it should have been.

Churches where a small group of individuals believe that they have the right to have everything their way. So, they are constantly causing division and stubbornly following their own minds.

Churches where there is obviously a difference between those who are in the inner circle, and those who are not, so not everyone is treated equally.

Churches where there has been abuse, and spiritual damage, and gossip and a lack of grace. And all they have done is left a wake of damage behind them.

Already at this stage in the life of the church, still so early and so new, Peter knows that this is a problem in the church. And he knows how much of a negative impact it can have. So, when it comes to effectively detailing with daily life Peter firstly addresses the Christian community and he says, “You need to get your house in order”.

In doing so Peter focusses on five outcomes.

The first outcome is to be like-minded.

Sometimes people think that a united like-minded church is a church where everyone has exactly the same beliefs and they think exactly the same way. That is not being like-minded – that is mind control. Like-mindedness comes when we seek to live in harmony.

The piano in our church is tuned by Roy Pires. Roy also tunes the Piano at other churches, and also at other homes. In fact I would guess that Roy tunes over 100 pianos a year.

Uprights and Grands.

Old pianos and new pianos.

All with different sounds. When you tune a piano you use a tuning fork. Roy would have one of those. All those pianos that Roy tuned, are all tuned to the same fork. Which means all those pianos are automatically tuned to each other. They would have slightly different sounds and be quite individual, but they would all play the same note. They are in harmony so they are like-minded.

When we are Christ we also are like minded when we are in harmony. This happens because each one of us individually is tuned into Christ.

Jesus is our spiritual tuning fork.

When we resonate with Him, then we will automatically resonate with each other.

That is how we become like minded.

The second outcome is to be sympathetic.

Bill Vaughan makes a very astute observation. He says,