Arm Yourself • 1 Peter 4:1-6
40:12 Teaching begins
Notes
You need a lot of fortitude to be a Christian. You need guts.
You are going to experience opposition. People are going to treat you badly.
I remember playing Christian music in a prison in the Philippines. A guy was translating for us who had been released the day before. He became a Christian in prison. He gave up smoking marijuana, that’s why he was in prison. His family all said to him, “We wish you weren’t a Christian. We would rather you were still smoking marijuana.”
You need to be strong and secure in who you are to live for Jesus and not be bothered with how people treat you.
How you become strong and secure is to put on Christ. Put on His death, put on His resurrection.
I’m reading in 1 Peter 4 from verse 1.
1. First we want to notice that as believers in Jesus we now face a conflict that was never there before.
A. There is a conflict in ourselves: are we going to continue in sin?
1. Before we were baptised into Christ there was no conflict. Sin was our natural element. Doing our own will, what we wanted to do, focusing on ourselves was automatic, spontaneous, involuntary. Never had to say, “Now Rob, think about yourself for a minute.” It’s like blinking my eyelids! Of course, I’m thinking about myself! That’s all I do!
2. But now, we continually experience conflict within ourselves. Are we going to do what is pleasing to God and costly to ourselves? Or are we going to please ourselves? The conflict is that if we say “Yes” to God we have to say “No” to ourselves. If we say “Yes” to ourselves we are saying “No” to God at the same time. There is an internal conflict.
B. There is also conflict on the outside: what others think about us.
1. What we used to do is live for the lusts of men and carry out the desires of the Gentiles. Peter means people who have nothing to do with God. They do not obey God.
2. Gentiles live for sensuality. What that means is no boundaries, no restraints. Restraints limit and restrict, and keep you under control. Restrictions confine you within bounds. This is in bounds, that is out of bounds. This is decent, this conforms to standards of taste, propriety, and equality. This is right. This is wrong. So boundaries, right, wrong, are not in the Gentile vocabulary.
3. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll are in the Gentiles vocabulary. All the things Peter mentions cross boundaries. Anything goes. It comes down to idolatry, seeking satisfaction from anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ, because Jesus is God.
4. Psalm 2:1-3 shows us an entire world wanting to throw off God’s boundaries. Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.”
C. The conflict comes out in surprise and slander.
1. They think it strange that you don’t run with them in the same flood of dissipation. That is lack of restraint, indulgence in drink or sex, moral depravity and corruption, wickedness. What’s the matter with you? What’s gotten into you?
2. Because you don’t run with them they realise you don’t agree with them, you disapprove, you criticise. Gentiles are very sensitive to the suggestion that there are boundaries, that they go over these boundaries, that they are trespassers! They take is as judgment, criticism, condemnation! You homophobe! Why do you hate me? What kind of a strait-laced bluenose do you think you are? Who are you to dictate what a person does in private? You are controlling, you are a fascist, you are repressive, you are an enemy to humanity.
3. The hostility comes out as slander, you see. You are told that you are rude, insensitive, controlling, a pest, someone who condemns and puts everyone down. We’re not wrong, YOU are!
D. Who is right? It’s the one who loves his opponent. It doesn’t take any character to slander someone. It doesn’t take any goodness, any rightness to slander. The devil slanders. Only God loves His enemies. The one who is right is the one who loves others. You can have all the arguments and authorities to back you up. Does your position make you more loving? Or do you yell, and slander, and trash those who oppose you, in the name of freedom and justice and truth?
2. We resist conflict within and conflict without by our baptism into Christ.
A. Peter mentioned that baptism now saves us in verse 21 of chapter 3. Not the washing of the flesh, but being placed into Christ. We have been taken out of the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.
B. Baptism is a symbol of becoming one with something. You take white cloth and baptise it in red dye. The cloth takes on the character of the red dye.
C. When the Holy Spirit baptises us into Christ, then we become one with Christ. What is true of Jesus becomes true of us.
1. He died to sin once for all. We died to sin, once for all. He rose from the dead, death is no longer master over Him. We rose with Jesus.
2. Romans 6:10-14 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
D. This is the command this morning: arm yourselves with this mind, this attitude from Jesus.
1. You need strength of character to do what is right in the face of disapproval and opposition. You need protection and security.
2. Armour protects you and strengthens you when you put it on. It doesn’t do any good when it’s lying at home in a pile on the floor.
3. We are to clothe ourselves with Jesus to be able to say no to ourselves and stand up against opposition by being dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus.
E. When we have the death of Christ working in us, we are no longer slaves of sin. Sin can no longer operate in a dead person. He who died is freed from sin, says Paul in Romans 6.
F. As the resurrection life of Jesus works in you, you are enabled to want the will of God and do the will of God.
3. The time to do the will of God is right now.
A. You’ve already spent enough time in your life running with the Gentiles over all the boundaries.
1. What did any of that get you? It’s all been a waste. Paul says in Romans 6:21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
2. Above all, the will of the Gentiles wastes time. Who cares about time? Don’t think about where we are going, keep drinking, keep having sex, keep ping-ponging from relationship to relationship. Let’s get everything good that we can now, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
B. When we came to Jesus we realised that the will of God is good, acceptable, and perfect. We learned to pray, not my will, but Yours be done, just like Jesus.
C. Now we are aware of time.
1. We hear the clock ticking in our own lives. We think about the future, about dying and going to be with Jesus. We pray about that time, Lord, make me ready to be with You!
2. We think about being raptured, taken quickly out of the world. We won’t all die, some of us will be raised to immortal life without dying. We think, I want to be found doing what I’m supposed to be doing when the Lord comes for me!
D. Here’s another piece of armour to protect and strengthen our hearts: we are all going to give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
1. People feel that they can mistreat believers in Jesus with no consequences. Christians die easy. We are considered as sheep for the slaughter. That’s what sheep are there for.
2. Just a little while, and God is going to judge the world in righteousness. Every man, woman, demon, angel, and even Satan will bow their knees and say that Jesus Christ is the Lord God Almighty.
3. If we know this, it strengthens our heart to persevere in doing what is right and not give in to bitterness, anger, frustration. I quit!
4. The Gospel is the only thing that enables a person to endure rejection by men to do God's will.
A. Verse six is difficult, but we can interpret it in light of what we know.
1. We know that it does not mean that we are to preach the gospel to dead people. Hebrews 9:27 it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. This means that there is no second chance for a person to receive Jesus and forgiveness after a person dies.
2. If that was true, no one would believe in Jesus in this life. Hey, just wait till the next life, then I’ll believe. No you won’t. You only have this life. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. You do not know if you have tomorrow, but you do have today.
B. The gospel was preached to men who believed when they were alive but men judged them worthy of death for believing in Jesus. This describes men like Stephen in Acts 7. Before he received Jesus, Paul was condemning Christians to death, casting his vote against them. They judged James worthy of death. Both Peter and Paul were executed for believing in Jesus. Christians today are being judged unworthy to continue living.
C. These men are dead to us, but alive to God in their spirits.
1. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5:8.
2. Jesus told the church at Smyrna in Revelation 2:10 Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.
D. We believe that Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead. Therefore we are not afraid to suffer now. Like Jesus we also will be raised and we seal our testimony with our life. We are a witness for Christ.
5. So what?
A. We are in Christ. That is true. We are dead with Christ. That is true. We are alive with Christ. That is true.
1. The world says, that is not true. The devil says that is not true. Your own body and feelings say that is not true.
2. But God says it is true, you are dead with Christ and you are raised with Christ.
3. So who is telling the truth? Your flesh, the world, the devil, or God?
4. God always tells the truth. So you have to hold on to that and keep it in you. Put on Christ like you put on armour.
B. You do it like Abraham did. You thank God for His promise.
1. God said to Abraham, I have made you a father of many nations. That’s the promise.
2. God gives life to the dead and calls those things that do not exist as though they did exist. So it did not matter that Abraham’s body was as good as dead, and that Sarah womb was dead.
3. Romans 4:20-22 Abraham did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
4. Romans 6:11-13 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
C. This is your spiritual service of worship. You offer your body, a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God. This is already doing God’s will!
D. There are no half-measures here. You can’t kind of go God’s way and your way at the same time. You can’t mix alive and dead. There isn’t “mostly dead” because that’s still a little bit alive.
E. But here’s our faith, just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so He will raise us. So we want to give ourselves to being dead with Christ and raised with Christ. That’s the only way to live this life.
Let’s pray.