Sermon: Be Realistic... and Sing!

Julius: The second reading, which will serve as the basis for the message this morning from First Peter chapter three. Finally, all of you live in harmony with one another. Show sympathy, brotherly love, compassion, and humility. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. Instead speak a blessing, because you were called for the purpose of inheriting a blessing. Indeed. Let the one who wants to love life and to see good days keep his tongue from evil and his lips from saying anything deceitful. Let him turn from evil and do what is 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 requests, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you should happen to suffer because of righteousness, you are blessed. Do not be afraid of what they fear, and do not be troubled, but regard Lord, the Christ, as holy in your hearts. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you, but speak with gentleness and respect, while maintaining a clear conscience, so that those who attack your good way of life in Christ may be put to shame, because they slandered you as evildoers. The word of the Lord Thanks be to God. Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. In the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted, a princess named Giselle, who loves to sing in her musical Colorful World, falls through a magic well and winds up in the real world, in the cold, harsh reality of New York City. And in this place, her optimistic singing attitude doesn't seem to fit in. While she's there, she meets this man named Robert, who's having relationship problems with his girlfriend. And he knows that real relationships in the real world take real work and need real solutions, while she thinks, this is no problem, you can fix it all with a song. And so she starts singing. How does share? He says, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not gonna start singing. But she keeps going. How does she know she's yours? And he's cringing. He says, People are looking. So he starts walking her through the park, trying to escape this musical scenario. But then other people start joining in. How does she know that you love her? And he looks at that guy and he says, How does he know the song? This isn't realistic. And of course, the more they start walking through the park, the more people start joining in, and all of a sudden they are in this big musical number with flowers and laughing and dancing and singing. So what do you think? Who are you more like? Are you the singing optimist? Or are you the realist who knows that real problems in the real world need realistic solutions? I think the Christians in Peter's day were hoping that Peter would be a little more realistic. He had given them all sorts of instructions that were making their lives difficult in the real world. He told them, follow all these things, and they were very counter-cultural instructions. And when they did those things, then they started having relationship problems. Not necessarily with their girlfriends, but with the world. As they tried to live like Christians, people in the world were starting. To mock them, insult them, be evil to them, even though the Christians were trying to do good. And in that kind of scenario, do you really feel like breaking out into song and will that fix the problem? You have to be real about it. You'll experience similar things if you try to follow some of the instructions that Peter puts in this letter. They're very countercultural, and people might not be impressed. A little bit before this, Peter says to women, he says, Let your beauty not be the outward appearance, but let your beauty be the lasting beauty, he calls it, of a quiet and gentle spirit. And women might hear that and think, okay, that sounds nice, a quiet and gentle spirit, a humble spirit. But if I live like that, people are gonna take advantage of me and walk all over me. Peter also gives the counter-cultural biblical instructions about marriage. He says, Wives, respect your husbands. Husbands, treasure your wives. But how is this gonna work in the real world? When every wife is bashing her husband? And you could too because you know all of his flaws, but instead you say, Hey guys, let's not talk about our husbands like that. Are they gonna praise you? Or are they gonna say, Aw, you're no fun? Or husbands. Peter tells you to treat your wives like a precious and priceless vase. To care more about your wife's schedule than you do about the sports schedule. Are the guys really gonna pat you on the back and compliment you when they say, Let's do this? And you say, Wait a minute, let me check with my wife. Or are they gonna say, you're whipped? Workers, if you try to take Peter's instructions to slaves in that day and import it today into your workplace, that is to work hard no matter what, even if your boss doesn't deserve it, even if your boss is harsh and doesn't recognize your hard work, is that gonna make your life better? If you work really hard, is that gonna make your coworkers like you or wanna stay away from you for trying so hard? When you follow Peter's instructions, just like back then, it might bring you to face the cold, harsh reality of the world that living for God doesn't seem to make your life better. So is that an appropriate time to burst out into song? I think life is less like that scene where Giselle is singing, and more like the scene a little bit earlier in the movie where she's come into this world and everything's going poorly, and she's in the middle of the cold, dark, rainy night, and she comes up to this homeless man and she says, Please, I'm tired and I'm scared. If anybody could just show me a little bit of kindness, it would mean the world. Even just a smile. And the homeless guy smiles a toothless smile and grabs her tiara and runs away, cackling evilly. No, wait! That's the real world, Giselle. When you try to run around in a dress and make life a musical and sing happy songs, people will take advantage of you. Life will get worse. That's the real world, Christians. Husbands, wives, you try to do good to the other person and they don't recognize it and they don't appreciate it. See this is why. This is why, Peter, you can't just live life in a fairy tale tale world. So did Peter just not get it? Because as he's describing this situation, he bursts into song. And you can tell if you have one of those Bibles with the special formatting, when it comes to a poem, the words are set apart a little differently. There you can tell. This is a song that Peter is singing or quoting, and it's an oldie. It's Psalm 34, written by the Old Testament King David. So does Peter not get it? Or maybe if we can. Leave Peter alone, does David not get it? Because it's really David's song that Peter is singing, and if you could summarize it in maybe musical form, David is basically saying, if you want to love your life, just do what God says. And you're thinking, David? You gotta be a little more real than this. But maybe that is David's life. Maybe he does have a musical charmed life. After all, I just heard about some people who saw. The David musical at the Sight and Sound Theater in Branson. So maybe David could sing like this. His life was easy. He's just walking down the street, slinging pebbles, slaying Goliath easily. That's not what life is like for me. But I think it helps to know when David was singing this song and what the situation was in his life when he wrote Psalm 34. David wrote Psalm 34, after he killed Goliath, but before he became king. And during that time he was a servant, a faithful servant of the guy who was king at the time, named King Saul. All David did was serve him well. And Saul was jealous because of it. Because David was such a good servant, Saul tried to kill him. He started hurling spears at him. And David had to run for his life. Flee from the king, flee from the promised land, and f flee into enemy territory, the territory of the Philistines. And he was hoping he could hide out there, but they recognized him. And the enemies then start breaking out into song in their musical. They say, Isn't this the general of the Israelites? Isn't this the guy about whom they sing? Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands. And David realizes he's in trouble. And so he does what people sometimes do when they know they're facing the death penalty. He feigns insanity. David decides to let Spit start dribbling down his beard. He starts running around town like a crazy person with unkempt hair. He starts scratching and scribbling the doorposts of the city. And it works. Instead of capturing him or killing him, the enemies kick him out. They say, Get this guy out of here, he's crazy, we got enough crazy people on our own. And so David escapes. That's the scene. Can you picture it? This scraggly, disheveled man with spit dribbling down his beard, flees to safety with bloody fingernails, and the spotlight zooms in, and David sings a song you know, Psalm 34. taste and see that the Lord is good. David, is that the time to sing that? All you did was do good. All you did was follow God's commands and look at you. Maybe you are a little crazy. This is the song he sings, Psalm 34, which Peter quoted. He says, Let the one who wants to love life and to see good days keep his tongue from evil and his lips from saying anything deceitful. Let him turn 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 requests, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. If anybody could be realistic about how much you have to suffer for doing good, it was David. And yet he sings. And you can see how he can do that in the second half of his song, as he focuses on the eyes, the ears, and the face of the Lord. God's eyes, ears, and face. First, God's eyes. What does David sing? He sings, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. The Lord was watching and watching over David. And that's true for you too. Even if everybody else around you is looking at you like a crazy person, even if when you follow God's commands, everybody looks at you and they do not approve and they get upset at you, you have the approval of the only person who matters. Through faith in Jesus, the Lord is looking on you, and everything you are doing is pleasing to Him. So, yes, David says: be realistic. You're never going to have the approval of everybody around you, but also sing. Because the eyes of the Lord are on you, and He approves what you're doing. God's eyes. And God's ears. David sings, his ears are open to their requests. When you suffer, especially for doing good, you sometimes do feel the need to vent, need to call someone, say, Can you believe that this happened to me? David says, I get to vent to the Lord. I get to pray to him, to present my request to him, and he's listening and he's helping. And you get to do that too. The Lord is listening. David's realistic. He knows how hard this can be, and you know how hard this can be. We still have that sinful nature inside of us, that selfish part of us that says, I don't want to suffer for doing good. And you get bitter when you do those things and people don't repay you in kind. And so you pray, Lord, forgive me for not being perfect. Forgive my bitterness. And you pray for strength. You say, Lord, I want to do what is good, but it's really difficult, especially when they're being mean to me. Pray to the Lord. Lord, I need your help. I need your strength. So, yes, be realistic. This is not easy. But sing. I can pray to God, and He will forgive me and He will help me. God's ears. And finally, God's face. David sings the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. The face of the Lord is against that's a picture of God being angry with something. You know, when David was doing good to Saul and Saul was repaying him with evil, no one was more upset about it, humanly speaking, than God. God did not approve of that. And so David got to sing: Saul is doing all of these things to me, but the Lord is watching, and the Lord will take him to task. The Lord will take care of it. And that's what we get to sing. When we are upset at how people are treating us, the Lord is more. The Lord does not approve of evil, and he says, I'll take care of it. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't repay evil with evil. Don't get revenge. Trust me. Leave it in my hands. I will take care of it. So, yes, be realistic. When we suffer for doing good, that is evil. But also sing. I know the Lord is taking care of this. The Lord's eyes, the Lord's ears, the Lord's face. That's what we can sing about. When we suffer for doing good, and it's doing nothing else really than what Peter says just a couple verses later in verse fifteen, where he says, Regard the Lord the Christ as holy in your hearts. Christ is your Lord. I literally heard it this week at home. One kid saying to another, You're not the boss of me. You're not the boss of me. You know that. And you can actually have that attitude as a Christian. When you're going out there and doing good, and people oppose you and people repay you with evil and say, Change your behavior, you say, Mm mm mm, you're not the boss of me. Christ is my Lord, and I will keep serving him no matter what you do. Christ is our Lord. And how can we have that attitude? What motivates us to have that attitude? Well, it's what Peter says just after the text we were looking at for today, verses 17 and 18, where he says this Indeed, it is better if it is God's will to suffer for doing good than for doing evil, because Christ also suffered once for sins in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. For 33 years on earth, Christ only ever, always did good. And how was he repaid? With evil. With our evil. But he was glad to do it. He did it willingly because he wanted to repay our evil with his good. And so the Lord's eyes were closed to Jesus' suffering on the cross. The Lord's ears were closed to his prayers. The Lord's face was against Jesus so that the Lord would look on us. with approval and hear our prayers and give us the promise of an eternity without suffering ever again. Jesus' resurrection proves that his goodness always does overcome evil, even death. Jesus overcomes evil with good. We saw it already this morning with the baptism. Ezra came up here, and it seems like he brought only cuteness. Little cute guy. But you didn't see the little horns on him, did you? But like Pastor said, he was born with original sin, that evil, that corruption in his heart. That's what he brought to the font. And how did Jesus repay him? Did Jesus say, sorry, get out of here? No, Jesus overcame that evil with his good. Washing of rebirth. And that's what the Lord does for us. When you come up to communion, do you come up saying, Here's all the good things I've done this week, Jesus? No. You come up with nothing but your sins, nothing but evil to confess. And Jesus says, I will repay that with good. I will forgive you. I will overcome evil with good every time. That's what the Lord does. He does it in your life, but not just in your life. He can do it in the lives of people around you. That's why Peter says next, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you. David had that chance. David ran from Saul for a long time. And while he was running twice, the Lord put Saul in his hands. David could sneak up on Saul and kill him and finally get revenge and repay evil with evil, but he didn't. He said, I won't do it. And when Saul found out about that, this is what he said in 1 Samuel 24. David, you have treated me well, even though I have treated you badly. You have been good to me. May the Lord reward you with good for what you have done for me today. Even if only for a moment King Saul was nodding along with David's song. And that happens. You know, in that big musical scene and Enchanted. Everybody's singing the whole time, but the surprising part, right at the end of the song, they pan to the guy, the realistic guy, black suit, no nonsense. And what is he doing? He's nodding along with the song. Even he couldn't help nodding along with this beautiful song that they were singing. And that may happen in your life too. So, yes. Be realistic. If you follow these instructions of Peter, it may make your life more difficult. But Peter says it's still the only type of life worth living. If you want to love your life, this is the way to do it. Why? Because other people may hear that song. Other people may ask you about your hope. And as they hear it, they may start nodding along too. As Jesus overcomes their evil. With his good. Amen.