Saved by Christ's Suffering

It's a little brighter than it has been the last several Sundays that we have gathered together. I'm glad to see a good crowd here on this lovely Lord's Day evening gathered to hear the Word of God. Allow me to pray. Most gracious and loving Heavenly Father, we ask that you would use this service to build up those gathered and to glorify yourself. I ask that you keep me from error as I share your word. We thank you that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. We thank you that you are a patient God. We thank you that Jesus has gone into heaven and is at your right hand with everything having been subjected to him. We thank you for this triumphant, living, almighty Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen. Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 3. Tonight we're going to look at 1 Peter 3, verses 18-22, which is a very difficult passage. When Keith was first handing out Sunday night passages, he called this one a doozy. If you look at it, it is difficult theologically. It talks of Christ preaching to imprisoned spirits and of baptism being a saving act. Translationally, look in your ESV. There are three footnotes offering alternate approaches to various translation issues, all of which can also affect interpretation. And grammatically, this passage is two sentences. There are 11 commas in that first sentence. There are eight commas in that second sentence. This is a very difficult passage. In 2 Peter 3.16, Peter says of Paul's letters, there are some things in them that are hard to understand. I think that Peter needs to be careful about throwing stones from his particularly grandiose glass mansion. Let's read first Peter three beginning in verse eight to put our passage into context, suffering for righteousness sake. First Peter three beginning in verse eight. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. This is a citation from Psalm 34, verses 12 through 16. Peter continues. Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed, have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. Let's pause here for a moment. This is not the passage we're going to focus on, but this is pretty straightforward English and standard Christian ethics. Live a holy life so that you are above reproach, so that any suffering comes from doing good, not of doing evil. This honors God. Peter then connects his suffering for righteousness sake with Christ's suffering using the conjunction for returning to first Peter, chapter three, beginning in verse 18. 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 formally 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. Wow, that is a mouthful. So like any good preacher, I asked myself, what did Augustine have to say about this? Actually, I have to give Keith credit for being an independent man in this morning's difficult Genesis six passage about the sons of God and the daughters of men. He presented three options. Option one was voices choice, which would have made Ron Panta very happy. Option two was Augustine's choice, which would have made both Alex Jack and Keith happy, but Keith bucked the heavy hitters and went for option three. So seriously, what did Augustine have to say about this current passage? After wrestling with the many difficulties of the passage and coming to his own conclusions with which he himself was not fully satisfied, Augustine wrote to his fellow bishop Evodius. Let anyone who is displeased with this explanation of the words of Peter, or who, even if not displeased, still finds them insufficient, seek to understand them in relation to hell. If anyone can solve these problems by which, as I mentioned, I am disturbed, so that he removes all doubts about the issue, he should share the solution with me. So he struggled mightily with it. And one of the reasons I think he struggled was he went down the wrong path and he didn't know how to get out of it. So let me take my stab in the face of Augustine's failure. So what is the context of this passage? Well, the context is suffering. Peter talks about righteous suffering. He's talking to these first century Christians who suffer every day for the faith that makes him think about Christ's suffering. That makes him think about what Christ's suffering accomplished regarding judgment and salvation that makes him think of the flood, which simultaneously judged the unrighteous and saved Noah and his family. That makes him think about baptism and what it accomplishes. That makes him think of Jesus and his resurrection, and that makes him think of Jesus's power. As always, with the writers of scripture, it starts with Jesus and comes back to Jesus. Our suffering makes him think of Christ. He thinks through that process and he comes back to Christ, Christ's resurrection and Christ's power, what he is able to do. This comment in the center here about the flood and Noah and those who are judged as being unrighteous clearly looks back to the passage we saw this morning in Genesis 5 to 9 about the flood, specifically that while condemning the unrighteous, God makes a covenant with Noah and saves him and his family. And we see that in Genesis 6, 17 and 18. Genesis 6, 17. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But. I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife and your sons, wives with you. So at the same time, he's going to destroy the whole earth. He makes provision through the same flood to save these eight people. Three points of exposition before we get to the application. First, Christ preaching to the imprisoned spirits. What's going on here? There are at least three options. Some of these have their own sub-varieties, it's a very complex discussion, but there are at least three options. But ultimately the application of all of them is the same. That even though we are surrounded by a sinful world, believers are ultimately vindicated. Here, Noah was surrounded by an entire world of unrighteousness, and God is still able to save him. The first and in my best in my mind, best option for understanding this concept is that Christ preached through Noah to the unrighteous in his day. They refused to repent. They died and their spirits are now in prison. That may not be the first thought that comes to mind on reading the words I read earlier, but I think particularly when you look at 2 Peter 2, you see a similar passage, and I think it helps explain this to us. 2 Peter 2, beginning in verse 4, and you'll see that it doesn't just talk about Noah, but it does talk about Noah, and if we pull that out, we can see what's going on. Beginning of verse 4, it says, For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned it to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. And if you rescued righteous lot greatly distressed by the central conduct of the wicked, whereas that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. If we pull out the segments that talk about. Noah, it says, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness, one who's proclaiming to them righteousness with seven others, which he brought when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. And I think There's a similar thought going on here in this passage in First Peter, chapter three. The second option, the one that Augustine wanted to make, but couldn't get it to work, is that Christ descended into hell between his death and resurrection to preach to the lost souls there. And he struggled with what that would then mean theologically. And he couldn't wrap his head around it. The third option, based on the idea that the sons of God in Genesis six were angels, is that Christ was preaching to the fallen angels either before his resurrection or at the end times. And it makes it even more complicated for us to really understand what was going on there. So, again, what I think is that Christ preached through Noah to the unrighteous in his day. They refused to repent and their spirits are now imprisoned. Second, the issue of baptism saving. This sounds counter to everything that we're taught as Protestants in general, and certainly Baptists in particular, but Peter's making a very, very loose analogy here. Baptism in his mind is similar to those who were who, quote, were brought safely through the water. They were saved, and so are you, he's telling his readers. But it wasn't really the water that saved them. It was the ark, which was clear from the passage from this morning with the ark floating on the water that saved them. They were not saved by the water. And so it's a very loose analogy that he's making. And, you know, he realizes that immediately that what he has said can be misunderstood. He starts by saying baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you. But wait, he says, don't take this too literally. He immediately says not as a removal of dirt from the body. It's not a physical act that does anything. It's not getting wet that matters, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So what this is is a sign of one sincere faith in the resurrected Jesus. It's not our action of stepping in water and getting wet and coming out somewhat cleaner than we were before. That saves us. It's Christ's work in his death, resurrection that save us. Third, Jesus is once for all suffering, reverses the curse. This ties into what we've been talking about on Sunday morning. Adam fell and man was cursed through him. Since Genesis three, we've been waiting for the offspring who would reverse the curse. Last week, we learned it wasn't Cain. And this week we learned it wasn't Noah. And later in scripture, it's not David and it's not Solomon and it's not Zerubbabel. As Peter tells us here, it is Jesus who reverses the curse. The very Jesus described in Luke three as the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam, the son of God. He has been sent to reverse the curse to save those who are gods. Now, let me spend some time on some application of these ideas. I enter this with some trepidation, given the testimony that we just heard, because it said things in a clear, direct way that I plan to say here, but did it in a much better, more powerful means. And so I think I thank Nick for that testimony. First, the consequences of the fall continue. We live in a world of sin and suffering. The fall is not just a metaphor for spiritual separation from God. It is a very real, very material, very serious consequence. Suffering, violence, death, sin. And the flood didn't fix that problem. Noah fell just as Adam fell. And we are heirs to Noah and his sons. The flood wiped out the men of violence, but they came back. We heard some of that in the testimony before of the violence that surrounds us, the anger, the sinfulness. We see that nature continues in its fallen state even after the flood wiped the surface of the earth clean. We saw that most dramatically this week in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, as we suffer the consequences of an entire planet that's been altered by our sin. Peter's readers were facing suffering at the hands of the sinful world, and so do we. In fact, Peter and most of the other writers of New Testament scripture tell us that suffering should be expected. That is the regular, consistent message of the New Testament. Jesus doesn't say, well, if I'm not able to stop it, you might be persecuted, he says, when you are persecuted. Do this. We are told over and over again that even if we are good, even if we stay away from evil, we will suffer. And we need to be prepared for that. Secondly, Christ will persevere for us and preserve us through times of trial. We have suffered, but Christ suffered more. Not only that, but his suffering saved us. If Jesus saved Noah out of a world in which God only chose to save eight people. Surely, surely he can protect and save and keep us. If Jesus saved the first century Christians out of their suffering, which included imprisonment, torture and death. And surely he can protect us. out of the trials that we face. Surely, he can protect and preserve us and keep us. That's because third, ultimately, believers Though unrighteous in their own merit, will be vindicated and saved for eternity. The curse will be reversed and will enjoy perfect Eden like fellowship with God forever. Actually, it will even be better than Eden because we won't be able to sin, as Augustine told us. No matter how horrific the circumstances, God saves those who are his. He was able to save Noah and his family. He's able to save a killer and a drug user. He's able to save a drunk who ends up in jail from DUI. He's able to save me, a vile and wretched sinner whose heart is filled with murder and hate towards people and rebellion towards God. Jesus Christ came to save sinners, proclaim it to all people. and to all nations. First Peter 318, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Hallelujah. Amen.