1 Peter 2:11-17 | "Silencing Ignorance"

I invite you to take your Bible this morning or your device if that is what you use and open to the book of 1 Peter.

1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

If you are visiting with us, we welcome you.

We have been working our way slowly through 1 Peter together, interrupted by a few things here and there.

And we are in chapter 2 this morning, looking together at verses 11 through 17.

Again, that is 1 Peter chapter 2, beginning in verse 11 as we hear what our God has to say to us.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

The Word of God says, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God.

Honor everyone.

Love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor.

Amen.

If you are a Christian, you are hated.

If you are not a Christian and are contemplating whether or not to follow Christ, we encourage you to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior and be hated along with us.

The Apostle John wrote a letter near the end of his life, and in it he said, Do not be surprised that the world hates you.

We're not to be surprised, because Jesus said, If the world hates you, know that it hated me first.

In his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to the Father, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

At least in the United States of America, you cannot be a Christian holding to biblical values and consciously and good conscience sell cakes or flowers without being hated.

And even as a recent article published in The New Yorker demonstrated, you cannot even sell chicken sandwiches in New York City to the glory of God without being hated.

Now, maybe you haven't personally experienced the hatred of the world toward followers of Christ, but don't let that deceive you.

The time will come when the scriptures are proven true.

Jesus spoke the truth.

The world hates you because you are not of this world.

Each day that you walk with Jesus increases the likelihood of you experiencing the hatred this world has for Christ.

That's all part of God's work, of God's purpose, of God's plan of shaping us into the image of Jesus.

That means that when that time comes, we cannot play the part of the victim for suffering that comes as a result of following Jesus.

Because that is part of God making us like Christ.

Now we have to remember that the world's hatred is not directed at us.

It may appear as though it's directed at you.

It may feel as though it's directed at you.

But we must remember that the reality is that the world's hatred is not against us as persons, it is against Christ who lives in us.

The one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Being hated by the world is not the only reality, though, that we face as Christians.

It gets worse.

We have to live here.

We have to live here.

The other reality is that for a period of time known only to God, we must live in the place that hates us.

We're like Daniel in the midst of the lions.

We are Jeremiah imprisoned for believing and speaking the word of God.

Daniel was cast into the lion's den because he remained faithful to God.

Jeremiah was imprisoned for obediently and faithfully proclaiming God's word.

Like both of those ancient saints, our relationship to this world is directly related to our obedience to Christ.

Our obedience is established in our relationship.

As we've seen in this book, through the electing mercy of the Father, we are born again to a living hope through faith in the Son of God.

And we are made to be obedient children, and like living stones, we are assembled, we are built on top of one another, who is on top of Christ to be a spiritual house.

That's why in verse 9 we are told that we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession.

We are God's.

We are his people in verse 10.

We are his family.

And so this letter addresses us as part of God's household.

In fact, this section that we're about to begin here is what is known as the household code.

Many ancient writers had lists very similar to this, as do other New Testament books.

In fact, non-Christian Roman writers had similar lists that detailed the expectations of a Roman citizen.

The Romans believed that the conduct of a citizen was found in the conduct in the home.

So how you lived in your home would then be how you lived within the empire.

So they had lists of conduct lists for the household, because that then determined, are you going to be an obedient member of the empire?

And so hearing these kinds of statements might be kind of odd to our ears.

We don't live like that.

But they would have been very normal for a first century Christian.

And as modern Christians, then our first necessary element in reading a passage like this is understanding that we must approach it as children of God, living as members of his household.

We are his household.

And our Father has set the standard for living as a member of his household.

We are his children.

He tells us how to live.

Being members of God's household removes us from belonging to this world.

We are now citizens of heaven, making us sojourners and exiles in this world.

That's the group to whom Peter is writing.

The realities of verse 9 and verse 10 are true and will always be true of God's people.

But non-Christian people will continue to slander us.

They will continue to speak and to act against us in foolish ignorance.

That then brings up the question.

How are we to live in such a place?

Beloved, it's only going to get worse.

So how are we to live in that kind of place?

Well, the answer is simple, but it has complex applications.

We are to live as sojourners and exiles in this world by obeying Christ.

You know, there's a very, very simple way to stop the hatred and the slander against the church and to eliminate any hatred against you and against me as individual followers of Christ.

There's a very simple way to just be done with it.

Stop obeying Christ and live like the world.

And that will do away with the hatred.

That is the way to gain the approval of the world, but that is not the way of God's children.

God's household codes are vastly different from the ways of the world.

And it begins with us as individuals.

God tells us here that our greatest enemy is not communism or socialism.

It's not Islam or atheism.

It's not Russia or North Korea or undocumented immigrants.

It's not foreign philosophies or strange worldviews or other governments or rulers.

One of the greatest enemies God's people face is themselves.

You are one of the greatest enemies you will ever face.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.

You are in a war.

Whether you like it or not.

And it's not a war that we expect to fight.

In fact, the current culture of this world teaches us to indulge in our passions.

That's the way to truly be you.

Go out and enjoy yourself.

Don't let anyone hold you back.

Whatever you are given to, indulge it.

That's what we are taught, and that's what our world teaches us.

But God says the passions of our flesh are sin, and as sin, they seek to destroy us.

Giving in to our passions is self-destruction.

If you are a Christian, you are in a war.

And the enemy that you battle is yourself.

Specifically, your sinful self.

See, living in this sinful body with all the remaining trappings of sin is a problem.

By God's grace, we are now his children, his people, but we are not yet removed from the curse of sin.

And whether you realize it or not, the sin that remains in you is warring against the new you, that spirit that has been given new life in Christ.

And so there is that battle going on that is constant seeking to destroy you.

The war is a war of temptation.

Sin wars against our souls by drawing us into sin, by convincing us that it's good to give in to our desires.

Whatever our passions are, give, do it, fulfill it.

It's good.

The problem is it's been that way from the very beginning.

That's the same lie that Satan told Adam and Eve.

And so we fight back by abstaining, by not giving in to sin.

John Owen, the theological giant of the 17th century, wrote that we must always be killing sin, or it will be killing us.

Owen was simply expressing the truth of Romans chapter 8, verses 12 and 13, where Paul wrote, So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

Romans 8:12

Because if we live according to the flesh, we will die.

But if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live.

Our sin seeks to kill us, so kill it.

Battle it, fight it, abstain from it.

To survive the war against our souls, we must fight ourselves.

And it's hard.

And it hurts.

How do we fight?

We fight by abstaining from the sinful desires that seek to rule over us.

That's what Peter says in verse 11.

My father always told me over and over again not to do something for my own good.

You know, you tell me when we went backpacking in the mountains, don't walk on the wet logs because they're slippery.

Well, I always thought that the slipperiness was fun.

But you know what?

You can break a leg.

My father had wisdom that I did not have at the time.

Our Father, our heavenly father, has wisdom that we do not have now.

And so we need to listen to him and see that what he says is true, is right, is good for us, and so abstain from the passions of our flesh.

Peter, however, had more than just our survival against sin in mind here.

His thoughts were not primarily on the sins that we commit, but rather how we live in public.

Abstaining from the passions of your flesh is connected to keeping your conduct among the Gentiles honorable in verse 12.

As members of God's house, the Father expects us to fight sin in our lives, but there's a purpose.

The purpose is so that we don't die to sin, because of sin.

There's a secondary purpose, and that is so that the lives we live in a pagan world are honorable and righteous rather than sinful.

And to put it another way, do the non-Christian and anti-Christian people of our world, think of your life, the people that you interact with on a daily or a weekly or a monthly basis, those who don't know Christ, those who speak against Christ, those who are questioning Christianity as to whether it's a good thing or not, do they see you giving in to the sinful desires of humanity, or do they see Christ in you?

Do they see the righteousness and the holiness of Christ in you, or do they see you indulging the passions of your flesh?

Which do they see?

See, the problem is that we are not only in a war against ourselves, we are also the favorite punching bag of a sinful world.

Notice carefully what Peter says.

Verse 12 keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God.

Not if.

Now that's a strange statement.

Christians are not supposed to be evildoers, are they?

But the world is going to speak against us as evildoers, and that was quite literal in Peter's time.

We have writings of Roman authors describing Christians as evil people.

Now, in that time, evil was because they didn't do what the rest of the world did.

Because you didn't follow the Roman gods, because you didn't worship Caesar, because you didn't offer sacrifices to Caesar and offer sacrifices to the Roman gods, because you didn't indulge in the passions of the flesh just like the Romans did, you are evil.

When they do that.

And that is all coming out of ignorance.

People didn't understand what Christians were all about.

But that ignorance is pervasive, and it's fueled by none other than God's enemy, Satan.

And if you are God's child, then he is your enemy as well, and he will do everything he can to cast you as an evildoer.

A major news outlet published an article a couple of weeks ago that was written by a former White House and Pentagon official.

In it, the author wrote, and I quote, How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?

That was the deeply dismaying question posed to me by a friend.

With each passing month, that shocking question becomes more relevant and even more disturbing.

To say that Christians and Christianity are under a withering and brutal attack in certain areas of the world would be an understatement.

In various parts of the Middle East, there is genocidal cleansing of Christians being carried out.

Women, men, and their young children are being slaughtered because of their faith, and world leaders and most of the media turn their backs in bored indifference.

Here in the United States, Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared, and attacked by some on a daily basis.

This is a bigoted practice that is not only increasing exponentially, but is being encouraged and sanctioned.

Too many of those who worship at the altar of political correctedness have deemed that Christianity should no longer be respected.

Rather, they assail it on a regular basis in a coordinated campaign to weaken the faith.

This was a surprise to me.

In college, he wrote, they now teach about the evils of Christian privilege.

On Broadway and in theaters around the world, mocking Christians has become a massively profitable money-making venture.

In movies, on television, and online, Christians are portrayed in the most dishonest, prejudiced, and insulting of ways.

Across the country, Christian colleges are under constant assault from social justice warriors seeking to strip their accreditation and put them out of business.

Christian groups on campus are at times being persecuted, their offices and handouts vandalized with members even being physically assaulted.

Do you want to stay true to your Christian faith in the most innocuous and giving of ways?

Well, to do so, he writes, is becoming more perilous by the minute when you stop to ponder just a sampling of the negative consequences.

For example, a high school football coach is fired for taking a knee in prayer.

A teacher is fired for giving a Bible to a student who requested it.

A Marine is cursed at and then court-martialed for not removing a Bible verse from her computer.

Another Bible verse posted by sailors in a military hospital is marked as extremism.

End quotation.

How are we to react to being the world's punching bag?

Keep your conduct honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Fight yourself and seek the glory of God.

The day will come, either in this life or when all who stand before God, when those who speak against you, will acknowledge once and for all that they were wrong and God is right.

But we may have to endure much before that comes.

But when that time comes, God will be glorified in you, and that time will prove that Jesus is right, but until then, you will be hated by a world that hates Jesus.

That's why your relationship with the non-Christian, unsaved pagan world is directly related to your obedience to Christ.

Do everything you can to be like the world if you want to be loved by the world.

That's the easy way.

Do everything you can to fight sin in your life and bring glory to God, and you will be loved by Jesus and hated by the world.

Now, what does that look like?

What does that look like when we put feet to it?

Well, that's what the rest of the book of Peter, 1 Peter, addresses.

Here he covers people within the household of God.

He begins after this section to talk to servants and wives and husbands and all the church together.

But here, in these verses before that, he wants us to think about living in a world where those in authority are not necessarily supporters of Christianity.

Now keep in mind that when Peter wrote these details, he was writing to people who did not.

Have the voting privileges that we in the United States of America possess.

They could not go to the polls and oust the emperor or the governor or the local city ruler.

As sojourners and exiles, they had to accept whatever rulers existed at the time.

And so we might ask then, how are we, as Christians, when our governments, how are we to live like Christians when our governments may not like us?

How are we to live when our leaders, our governors, our mayors, our representatives, our president may not lead, may not make decisions in ways that encourage our Christianity, that may not support our faith, but in fact may take away our freedoms.

Be subject, Peter says.

Be subject.

Submit to them.

As long as they are not asking you to disobey Christ and God's word, submit to them.

Follow the laws and the regulations.

Now Peter was saying that when the leaders were much worse than the leaders that we have in the United States of America.

Why would he do that?

The rulers of Peter's day were clearly anti-Christian.

They were pagans who persecuted Christians, and yet they're calling on Christians to fall under the authority of those pagan rulers.

Why?

Why would that make sense?

Well, there are three reasons that we should fall under the authority of earthly governments that exist.

And the first is because it honors Christ.

Verse 13.

Be subject for the Lord's sake.

It honors Christ.

Jesus himself was subject to the governing authorities.

And so in doing that, we are honoring the person of Jesus, the action of Jesus, and the character of Jesus.

Our submission to earthly authorities brings glory to Christ.

They see our good deeds, or literally, they see our beautiful lives.

And they will bring glory to Christ.

See, Jesus is our supreme ruler, beloved.

He's our head.

He's our king, he rules over all the earth, and in his children who are in his household, he commands us to obey, to submit to our earthly rulers.

Of course, that does not go so far as to when they ask us to disobey him, but in everything else, submit to them.

The second reason is because Jesus sends rulers to control sin.

Verse 14, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good.

We don't see as much of that in our modern times, but in Roman times there would be, there would be praising for those who did good.

There would be statues made for those who did good things that benefited society.

Paul is echoing, I'm sorry, Peter is echoing Paul here again in Romans 13.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

This is a very, very difficult truth for Christians to accept when there are rulers that they despise.

To understand that God is sovereign over all rulers that exist.

And so by submitting to them in things that are appropriate, where God does not say otherwise, honors the sovereignty of God over the world.

To oppose them, to not submit to those governing authorities, is to resist God and to put oneself under the judgment of God.

So why should we submit?

Because it honors Christ, because Jesus sends rulers to control sin, and there's a third reason, and it is because it is God's will that you do so in order to silence the ignorance of foolish people in verse 15.

Do you want to know what God's will is for your life?

God's will is that you submit to governing authorities.

Yes, even to those flashing lights that pull you over on the highway.

In all things that do not oppose God, we are to line up under the authority, under the rule of those over us.

Why?

Because through our submission, God will ultimately accomplish his purpose of silencing their ignorance.

They don't know better.

They don't know that when they call us evil, that they are opposing God Himself.

They don't know that in looking at Christ and seeing him as worthless, that they are condemning themselves.

And through our obedience, through our submission, God will work to silence their ignorance.

And so we live as free slaves.

I know that sounds strange, sounds like an oxymoron in verse 16, but that's what the text says.

It says, live as people who are free.

Not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as slaves of God.

You can see in your Bible at verse 16 and verse 18 that we'll look at next time, both have the word servant, but Peter used two different words that are translated the same in our English.

The one in verse 18 refers to a household slave, but the one in verse 16 is a more broad and all-encompassing word for someone who is owned, whose property.

We are God's slaves.

And we are free to serve Him in a world that hates Him.

Every moment, every tick of the clock, this world is moving more and more to suppress you as a follower of Christ.

Every minute that goes by, they are seeking to squash your faith, to keep you from living as a Christian.

But God says, no, you are not a slave to the world, you are my slave, and as my slave, you are free to live as my children in this world that hates you.

So do that, not as a way to do bad things, but to honor Christ.

Live as free people in this world, free to live and move and submit to the authorities, because you are a slave of God.

You are free not to do as you sinfully please, but you are free to serve God in a way that glorifies him in a world that hates him.

And so Peter then concludes this section in verse 17 with a four-part, rapid-fire reminder.

Honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor.

Now catch the pattern.

Catch the pattern.

It's lesser to greater.

We give appropriate honor and respect to those around us in our world.

We honor our neighbors.

And we give honor to those in authority.

In particular here, honor the emperor.

We don't have necessarily emperors in our world today, but look at our mayors, look at our governors, look at our representatives, look at our president.

Christians are to appropriately honor those who are in those positions, whether they agree with them politically or not.

Because by doing so, they're honoring Christ.

And so that has application to how we treat those who are in authority over us.

We give appropriate honor where honor is due, but there is a special place for brothers and sisters in Christ and for God Himself.

Honor everyone, but love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Don't fear governments, but fear God.

We love believers, we fear God.

Now I want to make some particular applications for us.

Three of them in particular.

Number one, we cannot use the culture that we live in to shift blame for our sin.

We cannot blame our culture for our sin.

Our sin comes from the passions of our flesh.

It's not the fault of a sexualized culture that we struggle with sexual sin.

It's not the culture's fault that we are impatient.

It's not because we have 30-minute television shows and 30-second sound bites that we're impatient.

It's because of the passions of our flesh.

It's not the culture's fault that we have racist tendencies.

It's not the culture's fault that we struggle with envy, with anger, with jealousy, or with gossip.

We need to take responsibility for our own sin.

Resist the blame game.

Resist shifting blame to someone or something else.

Acknowledge your rebellion before God and then seek His forgiveness as you repent and ask for His Spirit's help to begin abstaining from that sin.

You are in a war whether you desire to be or not.

So start fighting.

Maybe you have been fighting, but you are worn down.

You're tired.

I understand that.

Seek God's help to be renewed.

And get on your feet and keep fighting.

You're gonna get knocked down.

Some days it's not gonna feel like you get tripped up, it feels like you get bowled over by your own sin.

Yeah, that happens.

Acknowledge your sin, confess it, repent of it, get back on your feet and fight again.

Acknowledge that God is beginning something in you and He will complete it.

He will do it.

Second point of application is live beautifully.

Live beautifully.

It's not railing against the evils of government that brings glory to God.

He has designed your faithful, obedient following of Christ in the sight of others to be the means of accomplishing his purpose.

He is working, whether you see him working or not.

So keep on presenting a beautiful life to others.

And finally, set your mind to endure slander and evil as a slave of Christ.

It's not easy.

It's not easy to have people know that you are a Christian and speak evil of you.

It's hard.

At one point in my high school career, my name was plastered across the newspapers of the state of Montana.

I had very few friends in my high school because of my faith.

That's hard.

It's hard to have people know what you stand for and to revile you.

So before that happens, beloved, set your mind to endure it.

Because you are a slave of Christ.

And you know what?

He endured it first.

We're going to see more of that next time at the end of this chapter.

Christ endured it first.

Throughout the New Testament, we are repeatedly shown that God's expectations of us were first experienced and lived out by the Lord Jesus.

So we are doing nothing but being like Jesus.

What is it that our Father wants?

He simply wants us to be like Jesus.

He wants us to speak, to think, to act, and to live like our Lord.

And that puts us at odds with our culture and our world.

We shouldn't feel at home in any culture, at least not completely.

If we feel at home here, then it means I'm not living as much like Jesus as I should.

Is it hard?

Yeah, absolutely.

We have a greater innate desire to be accepted by the world than we do to be accepted by our God, because our sin makes it hard.

So let's fight ourselves.

Let's stand together and fight the sin that so easily trips us up, and let's work to live beautiful lives that show Christ and trust our God to silence the ignorance of our world that does not know Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, help us.

That is our plea, that is our cry.

We cannot stand and fight on our own.

We cannot do this.

We cannot endure.

And yet you've called us to.

But we know and we trust that you always provide for what you've called us to do.

So fill us with your spirit.

Empower us to be your children in a world that does not like you.

Enable us to live beautiful lives that display the power of the gospel.

And give us opportunities then to speak of the gospel, to speak of the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ that rescues us from ignorance.

Do this all to the praise of your glory, Lord.

Amen.