1 Peter #12 1 Peter 3:18-22 Payday: First Easter Sunday Resurrection
1 Peter #12 1 Peter 3:18-22 Payday: First Easter Sunday Resurrection
A
Christ follower; is a person who has acknowledged their need for a savior to
deliver them from the messes in their life, one who has believed that the
savior they need is Jesus with forgiveness, reconciliation, and a fresh start
that only He can bring. Then having acknowledged and believed this individual
committed her or himself to be Jesus’ disciple and then received God’s
permission to become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven; for such a person it
is not unusual to experience suffering as you diligently accomplish God’s
will.
We’ve
been exploring Peter’s advice for handling suffering for doing good. We made a
distinction between suffering persecution and what we called natural
suffering. In our teaching for Easter,
we added suffering because of disobedience. When we are dealing with suffering
from persecution one of the keys to enduring is taking a larger view of our
situation looking in hope of God using our pain to bring about a greater good. Peter is going to give us an example to
encourage us as we strive to live an exemplary life in the face of persecution.
Once
again let’s enter this world of persecuted Christians to whom Peter is writing.
1 Peter
3:18-22 (MSG)
That's
what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others' sins, the Righteous
One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then
made alive—to bring us to God.
19 He
went and proclaimed God's salvation to earlier generations who ended up in the
prison of judgment 20 because they wouldn't listen. You know, even though God
waited patiently all the days that Noah built his ship, only a few were saved
then, eight to be exact—saved from the water by the water. 21 The waters of
baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by
presenting you through Jesus' resurrection before God with a clear conscience.
22 Jesus has the last word on everything and everyone, from angels to armies.
He's standing right alongside God, and what he says goes.
Reading
the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the word picture is
painted of the sufferings that Jesus experienced. Jesus was misunderstood, used, doubted, threatened,
slandered, betrayed, falsely accused of sedition, and executed all for what He
understood to be God’s plan for Him.
Jesus did the will of God and was killed for it. Getting killed is not
much of a reward in the eyes of the world.
From the human under the sun perspective (Ecclesiastes), this is more of
a punishment.
The Old
Testament prophet Isaiah wrote:
Isaiah
53:3-5 (MSG)
He was
looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, and thought he
was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—our disfigurements, all
the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was
punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment…
It's
hard enough to do good, but to do good and suffer for it is that much more
difficult. When you suffer for getting
the job that God wants you to get done there is a payday coming. Consider a woman in labor, she’s in the
process of giving birth, and that process is painful. Birthing is an ordeal,
the birth a reward. Many, many times,
the pain is quickly forgotten because of the joy all that effort resulted
in. Consider the athlete, training,
training, training, finding the limit and then raising the bar, perfecting
skill sets, creating muscle memory, and all the discipline to eat right and
think right, exhaust yourself, and then get up and do it again the next
day. All to win the prize. Winning is payday. You know the saying, “No pain, no gain.” Unfortunately
for me, I have found that no pain leads to weight gain. Consider the medical doctor. To become a doctor, you must spend hours
studying, after premed, there are four more years of medical school, then there
are more years of supervised internship called a residency. There is constant learning through
experience. Then comes that day when,
because of your efforts, a sick person becomes well, that’s payday. Consider
Jesus.
Philippians
2:5-8 (MSG)
Think
of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with
God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages
of that status no matter what. Not at
all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the
status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was
an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he
lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and
the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
Peter writes
that for Jesus, the payday is leading you to the One He called Father (1 Peter
3:18) and to present you holy and blameless in His sight (Colossians 1:21-22). Every time a person bends their knee to the
Lordship of Christ and enters the Kingdom, that’s Jesus’ payday. Every soul saved is a new reward that makes
the His suffering worth the sacrifice.
You
know that Jesus’ story doesn’t end with the crucifixion. If it did, then Jesus would be just another
great philosopher with insights into human nature and how we are to overcome
our selfish desires with love. He’d be
on par with the Beatles who sang “all you need is love, luv, love is all you
need.” The story continues:
God
honors Jesus with a resurrection.
Scientifically impossible for dead people, 3 days dead people, to come
back to life. Yet eyewitnesses reported
that this is exactly what happened (1 Corinthians 15:3-5, 17). Not only was there a resurrection there was
an exaltation:
Philippians
2:9-11 (MSG)
Because
of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or
anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those
long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call
out in praise that He is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the
Father.
When
you are persecuted for your faith, and suffering because you have bent your
knee to Jesus, take a larger perspective.
God can use your pain to bring about a greater good. One day you will receive a payday for your
loving service (Matthew 16:27, 1 Corinthians 3:12-15, Ephesians 6:8, Colossians 3:23, James 1:12, Revelation
22:12). Trust God to empower you to
endure.
Hebrews
12:2 (MSG)
Keep
your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how
he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating
finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross,
shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside
God.
What
Peter writes in verses 19 through 21 is difficult to grasp. If we take into
consideration that the only written scripture that believers have at this time
is the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, the reference to Noah may
be the key. “The congregation, much like
Noah and his family, found themselves as a minority surrounded by hostile
unbelievers. In a world full of wickedness, Noah was deemed righteous, and
Peter urges his readers to also strive for righteousness amidst the wickedness
of unbelievers. Noah fearlessly proclaimed his beliefs to those around him, the
ark was built, and similarly, Peter encourages his readers to boldly witness
their faith. Noah knew that judgment was imminent, and Peter reminds his
readers that God's judgment will indeed come, perhaps sooner rather than later.
Despite being saved with only a select few, Noah remained faithful, and Peter
seeks to bolster the faith of his readers by assuring them that despite being a
small group, they too will ultimately be saved” (Powers p. 124. Rewritten by ChatGPT 02/24/23).
With
that understanding, the earlier generations would be the descendants of Adam
and Eve up to Noah’s contemporaries. To
these, God’s salvation message is delivered by Jesus Himself. This is in keeping with 2 Peter 3:9—"God
isn't late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself
on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn't want anyone lost.
He's giving everyone space and time to change” (MSG).
Then
Peter writes about baptism. We should
stick with the Noah parallels to make sense of verse 21—"The waters of
baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by
presenting you through Jesus' resurrection before God with a clear conscience”
(MSG). The deluge, the flood waters,
saved Noah from being included in God’s judgment of a wicked world. Peter is drawing an analogy, water saved
Noah, so the baptismal waters saves you.
Now we know that a ritual doesn’t save, it is only when we bend the knee
to the Lordship of Christ that we are saved.
Christian baptism is the outward testimony of God’s justifying grace in
our lives. The ritual of baptism is your
telling the world of the salvation that God has already worked into your life.
The ritual is an identification with the resurrection of Jesus. You enter the water, symbolizing leaving your
old life behind, you are immersed in the water, symbolizing your death to that
old way of doing life, you rise from the water, symbolizing your resurrection,
and then you leave the water, symbolizing your new life in Christ. The ritual
is about recognizing your sin, judging your sin, and entering a new life with a
clear conscience (2 Corinthians 5:17). You can think of baptism as your public
pledge to stay loyal to God, steadfast even when you are persecuted for your
faith.
Peter reminds
us that Jesus has the last word, not the haters, not the persecutors, not the
circumstance. His teaching comes to mind:
“The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And
everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all” (John
11:25-26 (MSG). “Suffering and struggle
are always temporary. ALWAYS! Most of the time God leads us out of them in this
life, but they never come with us into the next life” (Rollie Miller, The Bond
of Love, Volume 25 No. 9 March 2023). We
transcend our suffering with a vision of final salvation.
Peter
continues his instruction to do life like Jesus in chapter 4 which we will pick
up next time.
Take
this encouragement from today’s teaching home with you. Expect that you will be persecuted for doing
good, but take heart, when the going seems impossible hard, remember Jesus has
the last word. Remaining steadfast and
loyal those last words will be “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have
been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come
and share your master's happiness!” (Matt 25:21 (NIV).
Let
these words of the Apostle Paul be your benediction:
Philippians
2:12-13 (MSG)
12 What
I'm getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you've
done from the beginning. … you live in responsive obedience… keep it up. Better
yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and
sensitive before God. That energy is God's energy, an energy deep within you,
God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
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