Adversity Testing, Glory, and Grace
1 Peter 1:10–11

Opening Prayer

“Father, we’re thankful for the opportunity to come together this evening to focus on You, to focus upon Your plan for us as believers, and to focus upon Your Word which is without error in the original languages and has been translated for us into our language that we may come to understand all these principles of doctrine.

Father, we’re thankful that we have this church and this congregation for those who desire to know Your Word to grow, to mature, and to press forward. We’re thankful for this nation. We have the freedom still to meet and proclaim Your Word. Even though there are many organizations and powers that are constantly working to erode our freedom to worship and proclaim the truth of Your Word, we still have that.

Father, we pray that we would continue to have that and that You would raise up solid leaders, and that even though this is an extremely messy and strange election cycle, that You would still work in this cycle to bring forward someone who will bring us back toward biblical principles.

Father we continue to pray for those in the congregation that don’t have jobs that they would soon find one. That You would open up doors and in the process also provide for them, encourage them, and strengthen them.

We also pray for Camp Arete and their personnel needs this summer. We pray that You would provide those for them.

Now, Father, we pray as we study Your Word tonight that we will be challenged, encouraged, strengthened, and encouraged by God the Holy Spirit. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”

Open your Bibles with me to 1 Peter 1. We’re back in our passage. We have gotten as far as verse 12. You may not realize it but the last time I was actually in 1 Peter teaching verse-by-verse was on November 19. That was the Thursday before Thanksgiving.

Thursday night has been particularly hit hard because we had Thanksgiving. Then we had Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. I was teaching a Christmas special. Then I was gone for three Thursday nights when I went to Kiev. That has meant that these nine lessons that we did on inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture fell in between, developing that out from these three verses, this topic, from those three verses in 1 Peter.

So it’s been almost four months since we had any time in Peter. Not only that but next Thursday night we’re not going to be back in Peter because we’re going to be here for the Chafer Conference. As I was working through the passage and it had been some time since I had looked at this passage, I thought it was a good time to review and to bring our thinking back into the context of 1 Peter so we can understand what is going on.

As is our custom when I teach through a book we hit important topics and important doctrines that have to be explored in more depth than what we find in the book. That’s what we’ve done the last four months. As we come back to 1 Peter we need to talk a little about the context.

Context is so very important and what we see here is that the major theme in Peter is adversity testing, glory, and grace. These terms are interconnected and we find them again and again.

When we talk about understanding context, context is what defines meaning. The more I do Bible study, the more I read, the more I study the Word, the more I realize that context, which is understanding the structure and argument of a book, is many times as important as being able to understand the original languages.

Unlike the way some people may have formed an opinion about language, the Greek or Hebrew, a Greek word can have a range of meaning. It’s not precise. Some Greek words may have more precision than English word. We often hear the example that Greek has four different words for love, two of which are found in the Scripture. One in sort of a compound word and that that’s more precise than just the English word for love.

There are other times in the Scripture where you have words such as knowledge. You have two or three different Greek words that can express knowledge. They’re a little more precise than what you have in English. But you also have times when English has a wide arrange of synonyms.

English is such a rich language, much richer than Greek. Much more vocabulary than Greek. Not only that, but unlike Greek, English has been profoundly influenced by both theology and the Bible.

All you have to do is go outside of this country to a country that doesn’t have the English language heritage of theology that we have. You go to Ukraine. You go to Russia. You try to teach doctrines with precision with words like justification and imputation and propitiation and redemption and expiation. All these different terms. You just don’t have the developed theological terminology in those languages. That’s a country that has been impacted to some degree by Christianity.

German doesn’t have the precision. It’s more precise than Russian. It’s closer to English because there’s a rich theological tradition in German, as well.

Then you go to places like Asian countries and African countries. They just don’t have the developed language to be able to communicate with the kind of precision that English has. It’s a misnomer to think that just because you know Greek or Hebrew that that solves your problems. Usually it just creates the same number of problems only one step removed. You’re in Greek or Hebrew rather than in English.

When you’ve got a word that has a range of meaning, the thing that informs it more than its usage in say 5^th century B.C. or even in the Septuagint is going to be the immediate context of how it’s used. So just like in real estate where you have the three laws of real estate are location, location, and location, location is just context.

So what matters in Scripture is context, context, context. It’s really important to understand the importance of context. There are three different areas of context that we need to talk about. We’re not just talking about what’s in that verse we’re studying and the verse in front of it and the verse before it.

There are three different contexts that you need to be aware of when you’re studying Scripture. The first is the literary context. The literary context for any verse of the Bible, for example we’re looking at 1 Peter 1:12, the context is a paragraph that began in verse 3.

That’s the immediate context. It may be a part of a sentence or a part of a subset of sentences that make up part of that paragraph. For example, 1 Peter 1:10–12 are closely related. That’s part of the broader context of verses 3–12. That’s part of the introduction to this epistle.

That’s part of the Petrine literature, 1 Peter and 2 Peter. That is part of Peter’s statements, which would also include his statements in Acts and his statements in the gospels. It’s part of the epistolary literature of the New Testament and that’s part of the New Testament and that’s in the context of the whole Bible.

That’s just one of the aspects.

Often time you can look at a piece and it may be that you look at a sentence like “of this salvation” in the beginning of verse 10 “the prophets have inquired and searched carefully.” If you just stop there that word salvation may be and it usually is taken to refer to justification and the word of the Messiah on the cross.

As we saw in our previous study that’s not what that describes at all. “This salvation” of verse 10 refers back to the “salvation of your souls which is the end result of your faith” so that would be glorification. That would be part of the context. Something that looks right in one context is often transferred over to another context because it’s the same word.

There’s a technical term for that called illegitimate totality transfer. How’s that for a mouthful? I want everyone to learn that by next week. Illegitimate totality transfer. That’s where you see a word like salvation and you automatically think Phase 1, so what you’ve done is you’ve transferred to that word the meaning that you’re most familiar with. That’s illegitimate.

A little bit of that is seen in this diagram here where we have on the left a piece of pizza. Context matters. That’s what it says at the bottom. So you have a piece of pizza that’s on a plate. You have a bottle of wine and a glass of wine to the right. That’s something that looks very appetizing.

On the right hand side you take that same piece of pizza and you put it in another context where it’s sitting on top of a manhole cover in the middle of the street, it doesn’t look quite so appetizing anymore. That’s become a different piece of pizza now. The context matters. It’s no longer looking at something that’s desirable. Okay? All of these things are important.

We’re going to look at the first kind of context and that’s literary context. As I’ve talked about it, it’s the context of the whole Bible, then down to whether it’s Old or New Testament, then whether it’s an epistle, gospel, or where it is in terms of the section, the subsection, the paragraph, or the verse. It’s that immediate context that gives meaning to the word.

Take a word like tall, a word which we use in a lot of different contexts. If someone is short, if you have someone who is 5 feet tall or 5’3”, then look at someone who is 5’10” or 11” and you say, “That’s a tall person.”

If you’re 6 foot or 6’2”, tall doesn’t describe someone who’s 5’8”, or 5’9”, or 5’10”. For that person tall may describe someone who is 6’7”, 6’8”, or 7’ tall. I was over here at Costco one time and I was just astounded. There was a Chinese couple in there and the woman was at least 6’7”. The man was well over 7’. I’ve never seen a couple that tall. There’s a section of China where everyone is tall like that.

Tall can mean different things. We talk about a child and say, “Oh, he’s gotten so tall.” Now he’s 3’ tall and the last time you saw him he was 2’ tall. Tall changes according to context.

Then we talk about a tall tale. A tall tale is again a totally different meaning from talking about someone being tall. Or you can go down to a coffee shop and order a tall coffee, which sounds like it might be large, but it’s not as large as a grande or a venti. Okay? It’s all relative. Context determines the meaning of the word.

Literary context is asking how a word is used in the sentence, and paragraph, and section, and epistle. That’s going to be defined by asking what we’re talking about and what surrounds it.

The second context is historical context. We often hear the phrase “the Bible needs to be interpreted in light of the times in which it was written”. That statement is often misused by people who say, “See they were a pre-scientific mindset. They didn’t understand science. They had a mythological view so we have to understand that that’s how they’re speaking in terms of this mythological language.” That’s just garbage.

In historical, cultural context first of all you have to understand who the author is. That’s why we take time at the beginning of a study to ask, “Who was Peter? Who was Paul? Who was Matthew? Who was Samuel?” We want to understand who they were, what their background was as far as we’ve come to understand and what would inform their language and their use of language.

In terms of historical context, the first one is the context of the author. Who is he? Where is he from? What is his background? The second context is the context of the recipients. Who were they? Where were they from? What’s their background? Is their background Egyptian? Is their background Babylonian? Is their background Assyrian? Is their background Jewish? Is their background Roman, Greco-Roman, pagan? What’s the background of the recipients? What do they know? What is their thinking?

That is mostly inferred from the reading itself. That means you have to read the information again and again. Some of that information we can glean from other epistles to a small degree. Or from the book of Acts which gives us an introduction to the main characters, Peter, Paul, and a few others. Some of it we can glean from extra-biblical history.

We can read good historical works that talk about the culture of the Romans, the culture of the Greeks, the culture of the Mesopotamians, the culture of the Babylonians, etc. We have to understand those cultures and we also have to understand how language is used in those cultures.

We need to understand the use of idioms within that particular culture. So we look at the literary context. We look at the historical context.

The third context is the context of the modern reader. Often today we have people who are influenced because of the world system. They’re influenced by all kinds of modern philosophical frameworks. They could be someone who is very influenced to think only in terms of gender identification and gender politics.

They may be thinking in terms of feminism. They may be thinking in terms of same-sex issues or whatever it is. Just today a friend of mine who is taking an Old Testament intro class at a school here in Houston mentioned this. He’s a little older than everyone else in the class, maybe by ten years.

I’ve been working with him a while. I have him reading the Bible. He’s read all the way through the Old Testament and he’s into the New Testament. He’s just astounded at the level of biblical ignorance that exists in the classrooms.

One of their assignments is something the professor does who I think is doing a good job. He breaks them up into groups and gives them a few minutes to read through a section of Scripture. Then they have to give a summary report of what they’ve read.

It’s an Old Testament intro class so they’re going through the book of Judges. He would assign the different judges to two or three different people. Then they give a little report. He was telling that last week in class there were two girls, about 19 or 20 years old, who were given the assignment to read through the story about Samson and then report on what Samson was all about.

Their context as a millennial is that it’s all about them. This one girl gives her report and her whole report centers on the fact that poor old Samson’s mother didn’t like the girl he married. See, she’s just reading this within her very own, limited subjective emotional framework. She had no idea of anything about the Scripture or the objective meaning of the author or the fact that Samson is raised up by God to deliver the Philistines. He fails and he’s a great womanizer. None of this. Just that his mother didn’t like the girl he married because he married a Philistine.

I remember stories that I would hear from students at Dallas back into the 80s and into the 90s and for all I know it still goes on there where when they first opened up ThM classes to women. Lots of time you hear people say, “Isn’t that good?” Well, it changed the whole dynamic, especially when you get women who have been fed a line of feminism and psychology and subjectivism their whole life.

I remember one guy telling me that they were going through the exegesis in Hebrew of Abraham in Genesis. This one girl wanted to dominate the conversation because all she wants to talk about is how Hagar and Sarai felt about this. See, it changes the way you interact with Scripture.

You have to understand that each person who reads Scripture has to understand what their mental context is. We all bring a framework to the text. If we’re objective we’re going to let the text change our framework. But a lot of people throughout history want to force the text to mean whatever they want it to mean.

The Marxist reads every story which has anything to do about money or any parable with landowners in terms of some kind of anti-capitalistic framework. A Calvinist will come and he will see something about the sovereignty of God and determinism in every passage. The Baptist will come and he’ll see water baptism or evangelism or justification in every single passage that he reads.

There are others today within a reformed camp which I’ve just become aware of that have a new idea in hermeneutics. They believe that every passage of Scripture somehow has to talk directly about Jesus. You can just think of a number of verses where that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. That’s becoming a hermeneutic principle primarily within the reformed camp, the Calvinist camp. Every passage has to be talking about Jesus.

So you’re reading a lot of stuff into a passage instead of letting the passage speak for itself. One of the things I’m pointing out with all these examples is that you have to think outside of yourself in an objective framework to understand meaning in any sort of written text or any sort of verbal utterance.

If you don’t get the context right, then the results can be tragic or quite humorous. Comedy shows, like “Seinfeld”, are really popular for this kind of thing. People think they’re talking about one thing and they’re actually talking about something else so it becomes quite humorous.

One thing I was reminded of was an episode in the old ‘60s sitcom, “The Addam’s Family”. The Addams family is sitting around and they’re trying to find dear old Uncle Fester a bride. He needs a wife. They’ve been advertising for a bride. This young bride-to-be hopeful is coming to interview in the afternoon.

The doorbell rings and they’re just all excited because this girl is going to come to an interview and they’re going to find a bride for Uncle Fester. Unknown to them, it’s the Avon lady. She comes in and she, of course, thinks she’s selling cosmetics and everything to them. Everything she says makes sense within her framework of selling cosmetics and she even offers a free sample.

On the other side, the Addam’s family thinks she’s applying to be his wife. You just get a lot of humor in the whole situation because people don’t understand the right context. They misinterpret everything. That’s pretty much what happens with a lot of people with the Bible. Here’s a picture of “The Addam’s Family”. I wanted to go back to the old show, rather than the new movie.

It’s important to understand context. When we understand the context what we have to do is first of all really read the whole thing. We’re all familiar with pastors. I remember a six-volume set that Donald Grey Barnhouse, a very famous pastor. He’s dispensational. A strong Calvinist but dispensational. He was pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in the middle part of the 20^th century. He was very popular and had a nationwide radio show.

He taught through Romans. It took him ten years, basically he taught the whole Bible. He wasn’t teaching Romans. He was teaching the Bible through the lens of Romans. You never saw the context because you’re spending all your time analyzing every cell, every electron, every proton, every neutron, everything that was there. You never came up for breath and looked at the whole forest to understand how the trees fit into the overall pattern.

That often opens the door to a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication about the text. Of course, one of the great illustrations of this is a word which we’re studying in 1 Peter. It’s the word “salvation”.

Salvation refers to these three phases or stages of salvation. We’ve gone over this and you know this quite well. In Phase One it’s talking about being saved from the penalty of sin.

Then the word can refer to Phase Two which is talking about being saved from the power of sin or it could be talking about being saved from the presence of sin which is glorification when we’re absent from the body, face-to-face with the Lord either through physical death or at the Rapture sometime in the future.

What we see in 1 Peter and what we have seen is that Peter is emphasizing this issue of adversity and fiery trials that come upon them and the suffering they’ll go through and the difficulties they’ll go through, is that the context is talking about salvation in the sense of deliverance through and from the trials in their spiritual life.

It’s talking about that Phase Two concept of salvation or as I’ve pointed out already in verses 9 and 10 talking about the end result of our spiritual growth which is the deliverance of our lives ultimately into Heaven.

So it can refer to the end of our faith or as I pointed out when I taught this the end of our faith in that trial which is the deliverance of our life in that trial. It’s not Phase Three. It’s deliverance of our soul in and through that particular trial.

We look at the word “glory” and how many times it appears in that previous section and it appears throughout this book. Verse 8 talks about rejoicing with joy inexpressible and full of glory. Again and again it’s talking about the concept of glory.

So as we back up and look at the whole context we need to sit down and read through 1 Peter, which is what I do when I’m studying a book. I’ll read through it over and over and over again. Sometimes I try to memorize it or memorize large chunks of it.

Sometimes when I get through studying a book I almost have it memorized in the Greek because I’ve read through it so many different times. But that’s critical.

Think back when you were just pushing puberty and just after puberty when you were discovering boys, or boys were discovering girls, or something like that, and of course, we’ll modernize this a little bit and you get a text message or an e-mail or a note. You might read it and say, “Oh, that’s really great. She said this about me. That’s great.”

Then the more you read it the more you think about it the more you think, “Did I really understand that right? Why didn’t she say this? What did she mean by that? What did she mean by this? Why did she leave this out?” You begin to ask all of those questions.

Some people might call that overthinking but it’s just truly analyzing what is being said in terms of the whole context. That’s what we do when we read through the Bible. We try to understand the context. Often, as you noted, we’ve seen examples of this as I’ve gone through Matthew just recently, as I’ve studied through Matthew 18, 19, and now in 20 and 21, we see all of these passages. The more we’ve gone into this, the more I’ve had to refine and tighten the focus of my understanding of what’s happening in that particular context.

Once you understand what the context is, that provides meaning. When we look at 1 Peter we realize this epistle talks about a lot of different things and a lot of different doctrines and ideas but everything it talks about is wrapped around the concept of surviving adversity with joy.

This is very similar to what we find in James and very similar vocabulary to the vocabulary in James. We realize it’s not just the closing section from 1 Peter 3:13 to 4:17 that emphasizes suffering. That is sort of the climax of a whole progression of instruction all related to facing and handling and surmounting adversity and difficulty in this life.

We can just look at these verses in 1 Peter 1:6–9. We notice it talks about joy in the first verse. “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while …” It talks about being grieved by trials. We are tested by fire in verse 7. We are delivered through the deliverance of our souls when we get down to verse 9.

We also see an emphasis on glory at the end of verse 7. We are “tested by fire, that it may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

At the end of verse 8, talking about joy inexpressible and full of glory. So the emphasis is on the fact that trials grieve us. They’re serious. They’re difficult. Some people get the idea that they don’t really suffer. Some people have a skewed idea of suffering. Suffering means you’re going through difficulties in life.

You’re going through opposition. It may be because of doctrine. You may not feel that some things are that difficult but there can be other things that are difficult. The focal point in the broad context is on what God provides for us. In 1 Peter 1:3 it talks about being blessed or being happy because of the work of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ at salvation, justification or Phase One, where we’re born again to a living hope.

Hope is a very positive word. If we don’t have hope, why do we hold on to the Christian life? The Christian life gives us hope. It gives us meaning. It defines purpose, that even if things are really bad, there’s an end game. It may not be in this life. It may be in the next life when there’s vindication.

Before all, our trust in God is vindicated before all of mankind and the angels. We’re promised an incorruptible, undefiled inheritance in 1 Peter 1:4 and that we’re kept by the power of God for this goal of salvation in verse 5. “Through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

That would be Phase Three. As we look at this we need to just think our way through Peter a little bit. The first major division goes through 1 Peter 1:13 [which is what we’re about to start]. The introduction covers the first twelve verses, laying down the major themes which are going to be developed throughout the epistle. That’s a lot like James, except the introduction is a little longer in James.

That first major division goes from 1 Peter 1:13 to 1 Peter 2:10. Then there’s a little bit of a shift in focus. This first section doesn’t even mention suffering. Once you get out of that introduction you don’t have another mention of suffering until you get to the next section.

It focuses though on key elements of the Christian way of life and key elements of spiritual growth because we have to master the fundamentals of the Christian walk before we get to the point of applying them and talking about how they apply to facing and surmounting suffering and adversity and difficulty.

The focus begins with this initial command in 1 Peter 1:13. It starts off with the word “therefore” which means we have to see what it’s there for. [Maybe you’ll remember that someday]. We have to see what it’s there for and it’s drawing a conclusion from the introduction.

It’s saying that in light of those things that have been said in the introduction, we need to do certain things. So we have these mandates. We’re to gird up the loins of our mind. We’re to be sober and we’re to rest our hope fully on grace. Those are three things that happen.

It starts off with a very strange idiom for our day. “Girding up the loins of your mind.” That’s the New King James Version. What does it mean to gird something? How many times have you used that verb in the last six months? Okay, what does it mean to gird up something? We have a pretty good idea of what loins are but what are the loins of our mind? The loins of our thinking?

What does this have to do with? We have to understand that idiom. What it basically describes is that in the ancient world where they didn’t wear blue jeans and they didn’t wear yoga pants and they didn’t wear things that would get in the way when they were moving or exercising or trying to do anything. If they were going to work, these flowing robes and tunics would get in the way, especially if you were a soldier.

What you needed to do was pull up your robe and tie it and belt it with your belt so it would not get in the way and you would be free of any hindrances, anything that would distract you in combat, and anything that would get in your way while you were working in the field.

Girding up your loins is, number one, getting rid of anything that prevents you from accomplishing the task. That’s part of the idea. Anything that would hinder you or distract you from accomplishing a task.

When it talks about the loins of your mind it means to clean up your thinking so you’re not distracted through daydreaming, not distracted by other kinds of thoughts or images that keep you from focusing on God’s task, God’s mission for you.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be thinking about evangelism all day, but if you’re at work, if you’re girding up the loins of your mind, part of your job is to work as unto the Lord, then you’re going to get rid of things in your thinking that keep you from being a good worker. You’re not going to let extra-curricular personal things get in the way of your performing the job for the employer that has hired you to work for him.

Girding up your minds can have a number of different applications in the Christian life but the basic idea is to get rid of the things that get in the way of accomplishing what God wants you to accomplish. It has the idea of focusing your thinking on what God wants you to be thinking about.

It’s further defined as being sober. Being sober doesn’t mean just to be free of any alcohol or drug or marijuana impairment. It has to do with clear objective thinking. The only way to have clear objective thinking is to know the Word of God and to understand the objective thinking of our Creator, so we would think and live as He would have us to think and live.

We can understand the details of the issues of life because He’s the One who created things. We can reach the right understanding and the right balance as we look at different things in life. When we are girding up the loins of our mind we are focusing on and resting in the hope that comes from grace.

It’s not a mindless hope. It’s not just wishful thinking or optimism but it’s a confident expectation on what God has provided for us. What happens is starting in 1 Peter 1:13, we’re giving a list of key things that we should do in order to be able to face adversity.

We’re to focus our thinking and remove distractions in verse 13. We’re to be sober and have objective thinking, also, in verse 13. The third thing from verse 13 is that we are to rest our hope fully on the grace of God. Then this leads to verse 15 where we are told to be holy in all of our conduct. We are to live lives that are set apart to the service of God from the time we get up in the morning until we go to bed at night, we need to live a life that is consistent with being called a servant of God.

We’re to be holy in all of our conduct. We’re to conduct ourselves in fear in 1 Peter 1:17. That is not being afraid. That is not having a phobia, not being a homophobe, or whatever the popular negative phobias are, whatever it is today. It is showing respect and fear for the authority of God because one day there will be an accountability at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

We are to conduct ourselves in fear and in 1 Peter 1:22, we are to love one another. In 1 Peter 2:1, we have a list of things to lay aside. When we get there we’ll realize that laying aside the malice and deceit and hypocrisy and all evil speaking is merely a summary of different sins. The way we lay them aside is confession of sin.

It’s a grammatical structure that tells us what the prerequisite is to being able to fulfill the command of verse 2, which is to desire the milk of the Word. It’s interesting that the word for “desire” is the same word that we have back here in 1 Peter 1:10, “Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”

Oh, excuse me, “desire” is at the end of 1 Peter 1:12. It’s the desire the angels have to look into the spiritual truths that are being worked out in our lives, “Things which angels desire to look into.” That word “desire” is the same word that’s used in 1 Peter 2:2.

We are to desire to have a hunger and a thirst to know the Word of God. We are to desire to know the Word. Before we can do that, we have to strip off the sin in our life. We do that through confession of sin.

That’s the first major division, which goes down to about verse 10. The second major division, which begins, “Behold, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims refrain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.”

The fleshly lusts are set up to war against the soul. In contrast, Peter says to “have your conduct honorable among the Gentiles.” Where he develops that theme is that if you go through any kind of suffering or adversity and you have a dishonorable life, then you’re just getting what you should get. If you do wrong and you suffer, well, that’s what you should expect.

But if you do right and you suffer, he’s going to say that pleases God and that’s part of spiritual growth. So in the second major division he’s talking about standing in grace, which means humility. You can’t have grace without humility. Humility basically means subordination to an authority.

Jesus humbled Himself by being obedient. Humility is related to obedience. That means if we’re under human authority, you can count on it, you have some sinful person, man, woman, older, younger, if you’re under authority and they’re giving vent to their sin nature, you’re in trouble. It doesn’t mean to fight back. It means to submit, to go along, and to make peace with the situation and deal with it and not to be involved in a conflict.

This is what Peter is going to talk about. He talks about submitting to every ordinance of man. That doesn’t mean we submit to a law that is contrary to Scripture. We’re to submit to every law. The king or governor is supreme. All of these are established authorities by God.

Peter says, “This is the will of God.”

“You mean I have to obey Nero?” Nero was the Emperor at the time. “You mean I have to obey Nero? I have to do what Barack Obama says? This is an unfair judicial system because they’ve basically thrown out the Constitution. Why should I obey them?”

Because they’re still the constitutionally established government, even though they are doing wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because they’re wrong doesn’t give you the right to be wrong. It’s fundamental.

“This is the will of God that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.” Not by rebelling against them or overthrowing their power but putting to silence the ignorance of foolish men. That doesn’t mean there’s not a place for challenging unjust authority within the structure of law. There certainly is but we don’t use our freedom for an opportunity for vice [verse 16]. The summary in 1 Peter 2:17 is “Honor all people.”

That means respect. “Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor [goes back to the same word.] the king.” Even when he is not honorable. If doesn’t say to honor the king if he is a good honorable man. Honor the king if he’s a corrupt, lowlife reprobate. It’s hard. What’s going to happen? There’s going to be suffering in those kinds of environments.

The issue is how we can do that. It just doesn’t seem right to submit to someone in authority when they’re wrong. Let’s have a little example here. Let’s talk about this for just a minute. Peter gives an example in verse 20, “What credit is it then, if you are beaten for your faults you take it patiently. But if you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, then it is commendable before God.” You’re not fighting back.

Then we get into the classic example. “Because Christ also suffered for us.” He was unjustly accused of a variety of crimes which led to Him being crucified on the Cross. He didn’t fight back. He didn’t slap back. He didn’t revile in return, but He submitted to the unjust authorities which led to Him being crucified on the Cross. That’s the example.

So we ask why we should obey a government authority or any authority that’s unjust. Peter’s response is that Christ suffered for us, “Leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.” It doesn’t get any more clear than that. Do what Jesus did. I always hated that little saying, “What would Jesus do?” That’s so subjective. The Bible says to do what Jesus did.

Know what the Bible says and do what He did. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He was threatened, He did not threaten but “committed Himself to Him [God] who judges rightly who Himself [Jesus] bore our sins in His own body on the tree that we having died to sin might live to righteousness by whose stripes you are healed.”

That’s Peter’s argument. It’s a pretty convicting argument. This argument goes down to verse 12 and it talks about other areas of authorities, such as wives being submissive to their husbands. “But the guy’s a lazy, no-good drunk.” I didn’t see that exception stated in the Scripture anywhere.

Husbands also have their responsibility. They are “To live with their wives with understanding and giving them honor and respect.” Then in verses 1 Peter 3:8–12 it talks about not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling but blessing, that you may inherit a blessing.

We play the long game, not the short game.

Then we get down into the next section, which is the command to stand in grace which will transform our thinking of how we respond to adversity. We have to understand grace. We talk about it and talk about it and talk about it but truly understanding it in the core of our souls is difficult.

Why do we do this? According to 1 Peter 3:14, “We stand in grace so that we might suffer for righteousness’ sake.” I bet when you got saved and someone asked, “Do you want to have a happy, meaningful life or do you want to know how to enjoy the plan of God?” They didn’t say, “Are you ready to sign up to suffer for righteousness sake?”

That wasn’t the tagline in the gospel presentation that got your attention. In fact, if they said it and they probably didn’t, it was probably something that didn’t register. You were already suffering for unrighteousness’ sake. You just wanted to have a reason so it might have some value, maybe.

We stand in grace so we can suffer for righteousness’ sake. When we do so we show that we have hope in adversity. We have something in our soul that gives us a focus so that even when we’re overwhelmed with adversity we can have a positive outlook because we’re not looking at the next two or three days or two or three months or two or three years. We’re looking at the long term, the long game, with eternity with the Lord.

He goes on to say that in doing this, we might be reviled, defamed. Verse 16, “Our good conduct in Christ might be reviled.”

Then Peter says, “It better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” That’s almost a repeat of when he said earlier what credit is it when you’re beaten for your faults if you take it patiently? We deserve it. But when we’re beaten for something we didn’t do, that’s when we want to react. When we take it patiently this is commendable before God. Why? Because we’re trusting in Him and His justice as Abraham said back in Genesis 18:25, “Shall not the righteous judge of all the world do what is good?”

There’s a focus in this section on glorification that comes up in 1 Peter 3:13–19. Glory is mentioned five times. Suffering and fiery trials and reproach are mentioned several times in 1 Peter 4:12–16. It’s about glorifying the Lord in the long run.

Verse 18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh being made alive by the Spirit.”

Suffering always has a purpose. This goes on down into 1 Peter 4:7–18 we have the reference to glory, especially 12 and following. All of this section is emphasizing that when we handle suffering through the Word of God, it brings glory to God. That’s our ultimate purpose and ultimate focus.

Starting with 1 Peter 5 we get to the conclusion. It’s again talking about the suffering of Christ. In 1 Peter 4:13, “Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s suffering; that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding glory.”

When we get down to 1 Peter 5, the focus continues with the suffering of Christ. “The elders among you whom I exhort, I am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed.”

Notice how he connects suffering with glory. The suffering is for today toward the end game is the glorification of God. This is emphasized again and again as we go through this particular section.

What we see here is that the structure of 1 Peter and the main theme of 1 Peter has to do with suffering to bring about ultimate glory. This is what we see at the end of what I talked about before, “Receiving the end of our faith which is the salvation of our soul.” That is we’re getting our result of our dependence upon the Lord.

It’s the end result in time, the end result of our trusting God through the trial. It brings about the salvation of our souls, which is an idiom for the salvation of our life or the deliverance of our life in the midst of these particular trials. Then we looked at the verses which were the structure of our study of inerrancy and inspiration in 1 Peter 1:10–12. We talked about this salvation, that’s that glorification that comes from suffering.

That’s what the prophets were looking into. Notice the prophets in the Old Testament are studying what’s revealed unto them trying to grasp an understanding of why God allows suffering in this life. It’s interesting that the first book written in the Old Testament wasn’t Genesis. It was Job.

What’s the theme of Job? How to understand suffering. How to understand why God brings adversity into this life. And the prophets are inquiring, searching carefully, searching for the manner of time when Christ was in them, and indicating when this would happen. They see the principle of the suffering of Christ and the glory that would follow but they’re not the only ones that are looking.

At the end we see that the angels are looking into this. Not just the prophets are trying to understand the doctrine of adversity and suffering as it relates to glory but the angels are looking at this as well. This word that’s translated desire is the word EPITHUMEO which in some contexts is translated lust. It is a strong desire.

It can be for something right or for something wrong. When it’s for something wrong it has the idea of lust. When it’s looking at something that we should desire positively then it’s translated desire. We’re to desire the sincere milk of the Word.

So this just brings us a reminder of a particular doctrine and that is that we are observed by angels. We’re observed by angels because they are learning things about God’s grace and God’s faithfulness and they’re learning things about the relation of adversity to glory that they cannot learn through their own experience. They learn it by watching us.

The Bible talks about different ways in which we’re watched. The elect angels rejoice over the salvation of any person, any individual that trusts in Christ. We see this in Luke 15. Jesus says, “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. Likewise I say to you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” That repetition is important. Angels are watching and they throw a pep rally every time they see someone trust in Christ as Savior. They have a huge party.

This second passage is that during the time that Christ was on the earth He was watched by the angels as well. The passage itself is talking about His appearance before the angels after the resurrection but it would apply to His whole life from the angels who announced His birth in Luke 2 all the way through to the angels that were present with the apostles when Jesus ascended into Heaven.

1 Timothy 3:16, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” That’s not just casual glancing. That’s intense watching.

We also have passages that indicate in the Church Age angels are watching member of the Church, members of God’s Royal Family to see how they live out the Christian life. 1 Corinthians 4:9 Paul says, “For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” So their lives are an open book to be witnessed by the angels.

Ephesians 3:10, Paul says, “To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.” That term “principalities and powers” refers to the hierarchies among the angels.

Then in 1 Timothy 5:21 as Paul closes out his epistle to Timothy he says, “I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality.”

With that we wrap up this little reminder and rehearsal of what 1 Peter is all about. Next time we’ll come back and begin in 1 Peter 1:13 talking about the general principles that are to characterize every believer’s spiritual life.

Closing Prayer

“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to study these things this evening and to recognize that there’s a plan and a purpose for opposition and hostility and adversity, and for persecution. We live in the devil’s world and we are subject to a fallen, corrupt environment. As we want to live for You we can anticipate that there will be unjust reaction.

This gives us an opportunity to exercise grace and love and forgiveness and to focus on the qualities that characterize the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can only do that if we learn the Word of God under the ministry of the Spirit of God and walk by the Spirit. Then You use that to conform us to the image of the Son of God.

Father, we pray that You will challenge us with what we study tonight. In Christ’s name. Amen.”

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