When Christians Suffer

An open doors USA article described the following I read recently.

A woman in India watches as her sister is dragged off by Hindu nationalists.

A man in a North Korean prison camp is beaten unconscious.

A group of children laughing and talking as they walk to church one Easter Sunday morning are suddenly killed by a bomb blast in Sri Lanka.

These people don't live in the same region.

They don't even live on the same continent, but they all share one important characteristic that they're Christians and they suffer because of their faith.

While Christian persecution takes many forms, it could be defined as any hostility experienced as a result of identification with Jesus Christ.

So from Sudan to Russia, from Nigeria to North Korea, from Colombia to India, followers of Christianity are targeted for their faith.

They're attacked, discriminated against at work and at school.

They risk sexual violence, torture, arrest, and much more.

End quote.

The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter chapter 3, he wrote to embattled Christians that he actually addressed in chapter 1 and verse 1 as elect members of the diaspora or the dispersion, those who had been scattered because of persecution for their faith, especially Jewish Christians living in pagan hostile environments.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

But Peter knew as he approached this topic, as we it began last week with our brother Chris so well going through that passage earlier in chapter 3 of suffering for righteousness' sake.

Peter continues on with that theme, and he knew that it's our temptation, the people he was writing to and us today, to respond to hostility for our faith on account of our faith poorly.

Either responding with a fight reflex, wanting to strike back, or a flight reflex, wanting to shrink back.

Or we could say it like this, to respond to hostility with fury or with fear.

And so in the text we're going to look at this morning in 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 18 through 22, the apostle sets out to soften our hearts on one hand, and to stiffen our spines on the other hand, when we suffer on account of our faith.

1 Peter 3:18–22

So that we can overcome this temptation to respond with fury or with fear, and to replace those those more natural inclinations with gospel-motivated compassion and courage.

I want to title the remarks that we're going to share this morning, When Christians Suffer for Their Faith.

Consider Jesus and his inspiring example of suffering with great compassion.

And then secondly, to look at Noah.

Interestingly, to look at Noah, go all the way back, almost 3,000 years before Jesus, and look at a guy named Noah who endured great affliction in the midst of a hostile generation, to look at his inspiring example of courage in the face of hostility.

And then finally, we'll look at Peter's encouragement for us as Christians to boldly and compassionately go public with our faith, regardless of any hostility, no matter the cost, and as he ties that to the gospel we confess today.

So look first in verse 18, where the Apostle Peter writes this 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 this verse, Peter wants us to see first that Christ's example of suffering inspires Christians to respond to persecution with compassion instead of fury.

Christ's example of suffering inspires us to respond with compassion instead of fury.

We realize that no man was ever so innocent of wrongdoing as was Jesus Christ.

And no man ever suffered as much as Jesus Christ did.

And yet no man ever responded with as much compassion and love as did Jesus Christ towards his enemies.

And so Peter says, look to Jesus, look at Jesus, consider Christ.

Notice that he says, for Christ also suffer for sins.

With this word for, he's calling our attention to the preceding verses where he had given the exhortation to suffer well, to willingly and even joyfully suffer for righteousness' sake.

And now he's going to provide us much-needed perspective and motivation.

So just imagine Jesus' situation.

This is the one whom the angels praised.

There's the hymn I grew up singing as a kid.

It says, He looks and ten thousands of angels rejoice.

Love that line.

That is the power that Jesus wielded throughout, ever since he created anything besides everything, every time, ever since there was anything existent besides himself, ever since he created angels, he looked and ten thousands of angels rejoiced that he had looked at that in their direction.

This Christ came down in the person of a little baby.

So poor was his family that he was born in a stable.

No room for him in the inn.

But even shortly after his birth, far from being welcomed by society, we find a man named Herod the Great, King of Judea, sending soldiers to massacre all the little boys, two years and younger, in the village of Bethlehem to snuff out the threat of this one who is called the king.

Years later in Jesus' ministry, when Jesus, when crowds would amass to see Jesus perform miracles, rather than being on his side and being rejoicing with Jesus that demons were made subject to Christ's power, religious leaders of his day accused him of actually being in league with Satan.

He was casting out demons with the power of Satan himself.

When he taught the truth about God and revealed the Father, his enemies sent scholars to entrap him in his word so that they could then justify stoning him to death for blasphemy.

Of course, probably the most famous example of rejection and sorrow in Jesus' life, except for the cross, was the night before his crucifixion when one of his best friends, presumably, Judas Iscariot, one of his closest companions, at least from the outside it would seem, someone who'd been with Jesus his entire ministry, betrays Jesus with a kiss to identify him to his, those who would arrest him as the one they wanted.

And then in all this, did Jesus furiously strike down his enemies, as he justly could have done?

No.

Rather, when Peter, the one who wrote our very text, drew his sword there in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he lops off the ear of the servant of the high priest, Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 26 Put your sword back in its place, Peter.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Do you think that I can't appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

All this has taken place that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

Twelve legions.

Supposedly there were around 6,000 soldiers in a Roman legion.

So 12 legions would be 72,000 angels, Jesus said.

They'd be filling, let's say, a stadium, like the Bengal stadium, filled with angelic warriors, more powerful than all of us put together.

And Jesus could have done that in a moment.

But Jesus, like a lamb led to the slaughter, opened not his mouth.

He instead submitted himself to God's wise purpose and humbly even surrendered himself to judgment by wicked men, so that wicked men could be spared God's judgment.

Become converted followers of Jesus and eventually become part of his family.

That's compassion.

And let's not forget that when Roman soldiers nailed Jesus' hands and feet to the cross, he prayed, not, Father, destroy these evildoers, but Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

So we see obviously why Peter would present Christ as the ultimate example of the kind of compassion that we as Christians should have towards those who mistreat us, particularly mistreat us on account of our faith.

Now, at this point, I can imagine maybe two responses in your own mind.

And if so, I want to address both of these.

On one hand, you may have already mentally checked out of this sermon.

Because you're thinking, as soon as I said Christian persecution, you're thinking, well, this doesn't relate to me.

I mean, I've got it pretty easy, never really had any issues with that, and so has nothing to do with my life.

And so you started thinking about as soon as I said Bengals, you started reminiscing about the glory days.

That one season we got above 500?

No.

You say this has nothing to do with me.

Well, let me ask you if Christian persecution has nothing to do with you, why is that the case?

What does that say about our faith if no one has ever given us a crossword about our faith, if no one has ever mistreated us, no one has ever discriminated against us because of our faith?

What does that actually say about the way we live our faith out?

I don't want to be too rude about this, but how is it that Jesus was crucified, his apostles were slaughtered, and millions of followers of Christ have been martyred throughout church history, and yet in our lifetimes, many of us don't have a scratch to show for our faith.

On the other hand, maybe some of us are responding to the other extreme and saying, Oh, brother, preach it.

Christian persecution, I deal with that every day.

Anytime someone looks crosswinds at you, you know, chalk it up to Christian persecution.

When someone doesn't invite your child to the birthday party, Christian persecution, Lord, send down fire from heaven.

Take them out.

So we need to be very careful about what we actually call Christian persecution.

I want to I don't want to be up here inciting hostility in our own hearts, towards the people.

In fact, that's sort of the opposite of what Peter is doing here.

By just thinking that anytime, any difficulty you've had in your life, anytime you've been passed over for a promotion at work, it wasn't because someone else was more deserved, it's because you're a Christian.

I don't want to go there and create that misperception.

Um I think this is a real danger for some Christians to slip into this sort of hyper paranoid perception of persecution in their lives.

A few weeks ago, I uh traveled through Georgia with with Brandy and Eden, and uh I uh stopped to get a haircut in Georgia.

And the lady that was that was uh she I took my mask in there and we were talking about the requirement of Georgia law to wear a mask for providers and people getting their haircuts, and she said a guy had come in earlier that week um and had complained that he had to wear a mask, and then he really loudly said, I can't believe I'm forced to wear a mask in a state that allows abortions of innocent babies.

And then he storms and walks out.

And then she said he forgot his hat and he had to come back in.

She said it was really awkward when he had to come back in.

But you know, if that man were to walk out of that establishment and people were to give him dirty looks, let's say, wouldn't it be foolish if he were to think, you know, just suffering for my faith?

When really it was his nasty behavior, him haranguing employees that were just following the laws of the land and asking to wear a mask, it would be foolish for him to think that that any repercussions from his behavior and what he said would have been owing to his faith.

And yet, sometimes we as Christians, we can just be kind of nasty about things, and then when people don't like us as much or they treat us a little differently, we say it's Christian persecution.

So at the same time, I don't want to, I want us to be able to categorize uh certain events in our lives and to actually see them for what they are that you can be discriminated against based on your faith.

I don't want us to go to the other extreme and see all of our problems is because we're suffering for our faith.

Jesus is our example of suffering wrongfully, and yet suffering with compassion.

Now let's look back at our text in 1 Peter 3 in verse 20, where Peter has, uh he sets forth another example of suffering, this time suffering with great courage.

In verse 20, we read.

Peter means to say, secondly, that Noah also is an example of suffering that can inspire us to respond to persecution with courage instead of fear.

Courage instead of fear.

Peter thought really highly of Noah.

Uh he gave Noah a shout-out in uh 2 Peter chapter 2 and verse 5, where he said this about Noah.

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

He said that God preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven other people when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.

So why does Peter mention Noah here in this context of Christian persecution?

Well, God had commanded Noah, who again lived maybe 3,000 years or so before Jesus, to build this massive boat.

A boat that was around one and a half football fields in length and over four stories high in an age where they had yet to witness rain or flooding of any size.

You can imagine how ridiculed Noah would have been, how foolish he would have been.

The Bible says it took him 120 years to build this massive boat.

And he was heralding righteousness the entire time.

Can you imagine the kind of intimidation, the kind of mockery he would have experienced in the midst of a generation with unprecedented evil, so evil that God would wipe them all out with a flood?

That is a tall order.

And yet, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 7 says, In reverent fear, Noah constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

Hebrews 11:7

What was motivating Noah?

Reverent fear for God.

If it had been fear of man, he would have stopped, he would have left off building that boat at any time.

But he endured all manner of hardship and really delivered his family and the rest of humanity from a watery grave.

So what's Peter's point?

Well, it's this when the faithful suffer for their faith, they should not fear man, but with the greater fear of God, hold fast to what God has told them to do, because God will make things right in the end.

Now that had to have been some consolation to Noah, wouldn't you think?

God promises, in 120 years I'm gonna send a flood, get to building a boat.

And all that while, after 30 years, 50 years, 70 years, 115 years, and all the hostility of Noah's wicked neighbors, so wicked that God would have to destroy them, realizing I'm only five years away and God's gonna make everything right.

I hope they change their mind and join me on this ship, but if they don't, I know that I can endure all the things they're calling me, the ways maybe they've been sabotaging.

Maybe that's why it took 120 years, because every time he would, you know, he would uh bring some lumber up, they would carry it on.

You never know, right?

120 years.

That's a long time to build a boat.

But you know that in his mind that had to have been an encouragement and to give him courage, knowing that just in a short while God was going to keep his word and bring about justice on his behalf.

Of course, Jesus and Noah aren't the only examples of Christian courage in the face of mockery and threat.

The second century church father Tertullian famously said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

Martyr simply means to witness by blood, to be a witness to the truth by your own blood.

Interestingly, the same year, around 155 A.D.

that Tertullian was born, one of the most famous martyrs in church history, by the name of Polycarp, was put to death and burned at the stake.

Perhaps that was part of the reason Tertullian made this statement.

Polycarp was an aged pastor in Smyrna.

He had been a personal disciple of John the Apostle.

John the Apostle lived around 100 A.D.

So here we are.

Someone whose life overlapped the apostles themselves, Polycarp.

He was arrested and he appeared before the Roman proconsul.

His name was Stadius Quadratus.

When I read Quadratus, I just broke out in a cold sweat, thinking about quadratic equations, but I don't think that's what it means.

Threatened with death, Polycarp told Quadratus that while the proconsul's fires last but a little while, the fires of God's judgment cannot be quenched.

Then he famously concluded, Eighty-four years have I served Christ, and he was, and he has never done me injury.

How then can I now blaspheme my King and Savior?

And they lit the fire at the stake to which he was bound.

In 1536, the English reformer and scholar William Tyndale also died at the hands of wicked men who did so for religious reasons because he had translated the Latin Bible into English.

Man, we've got English Bibles in our laps right now.

People literally were martyred, not just him, others, many others, to get that into English.

Can you believe this?

The people who've gone before us.

He translated the Latin Bible into English against the order of King Henry VIII, and before his execution, he cried, Lord, open the King of England's eyes.

But the stories of Christian martyrdom are not mostly old ones.

According to the 2020 World Watch list and annual report on the global persecution of Christians, in the last year, we're talking the 2020 report, so this is presumably the calendar year preceding 2020.

In the last year, almost 3,000 Christians were killed for their faith.

2,983 people were killed because they were Christians throughout the world.

That's on average eight per day last year.

9,488 churches and other Christian buildings were attacked.

I mean, some of those filtered into our news cycles.

We hear about Egyptian Christians buildings being blown up and that sort of thing while they were meeting.

There were 9,488 of those church-based attacks.

3,711 believers were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned for their faith.

This is an ongoing thing.

This is something in our day.

We realize too that not only are Christians in other parts of the world subject to retaliation against their faith, but even sometimes in our own nation, to a much less degree, of course, Christians are retaliated against based on their faith.

Some of us have experienced anecdotally what that looks like, but in a very concrete way, in recent memory, cake baker Jack Phillips of Colorado was sued and found guilty by the state of Colorado for, quote, unlawfully discriminating against a same-sex couple for declining to bake them a wedding cake.

Jack explained that he would be happy to design a cake for them for another type of celebration, but that he did not believe that in creating a cake to celebrate messages or events that conflict with his deeply held religious beliefs.

They took him to court in the Supreme Court of the United States when the case was kicked up to the Supreme Court.

They picked up the case and ruled in favor of Mr.

Phillips, but disappointingly, they ruled not really in favor of religious liberty, but they ruled in his favor based on a technicality in the case in Colorado, which left future lawsuits inevitable for others in similar situations.

In fact, the last seven years, Jack Phelps has been, Phillips rather, has been uh enduring numerous harassing lawsuits over and over again.

Even to this day, their case is open against him, even after the Supreme Court settled his case.

That's obviously sort of a watershed uh case in recent history, but lots of those situations are going on.

And Christians, cake bakers, people who um uh are self employed in certain businesses are faced.

Every day with uh with the social pressures.

Can they act according to conscience or do we have to uh acquiesce to cultural demands?

That's not something that's happening in other countries, but in our country.

Now I realize as we talk about Christian persecution, I don't want to say that other religious faiths don't suffer persecution, that it's limited to Christians.

Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and others are often targeted on account of their faith in various countries and in various ways, either by other people of other faiths or by atheistic regimes.

This is tragic and unacceptable, and we grieve violations of religious liberty no matter who the victim is.

We don't believe in religious liberty just for us.

We believe that we should have free exercise of religion, no matter what one's religion is.

And we it's it's tragic when someone is treated, killed, disenfranchised simply because of the creed they profess.

But as we unpack this text this morning, we need to realize that our understanding of discrimination against Christians, starting with the time, starting with Jesus.

And if you go before that, starting with the prophets who preceded our own faith, they suffered on account of the profession of faith.

That it was more than a sociological phenomenon.

It's more than competing religions in the confined space, turf wars, it's more than that.

When we put on these goggles, I think, to be able to see into the spirit realm as Peter would have us do later in this text, we realize that as it was with Christ, with Noah, with the prophets that preceded them, and with our suffering brothers and sisters in our world, we know that ultimately the enemy of our faith is not some other religion.

The enemy of our faith is not other people, other adherents of other religions, not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, rulers of darkness in high places, fallen angels and the prince of darkness himself.

That set people ablaze with a settled hatred for God and God's people throughout history.

And so we can then also be encouraged to know that no injustice against God's people in any era of time escapes the fixed gaze of God.

That we can rest assured and we can even risk our lives and our livelihoods, knowing that vengeance is God's and he will repay.

For this reason, like Noah, no matter our plight, we can overcome our fear of man and live with courage, even if we are opposed.

Having called our attention to Christ and to Noah, Peter does something curious in verses 21 through 22.

He uses Noah's story in that famous story of the flood as a springboard to bring up baptism.

Read with me, verses 21 through 22.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, namely the flood, 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.

Here Peter wraps up our text, thirdly, by drawing a parallel between Noah's faithful witness and Christian's faithful witness.

Noah's faithful witness in his wicked generation and our faithful witness in ours.

If we were to turn back to the book of Acts and were to just do a survey of Peter's sermons, because the Apostle Peter, who wrote 1 and 2 Peter, also preached a number of sermons.

In fact, the first ten chapters of Acts really focus on Peter as the main uh the main character in that unfolding of events in the early church.

And if we were to look at his sermons, he ends almost all of them with the call to believe in Christ, to repent of your sins, and to be baptized in Jesus' name.

So when Peter brings up baptism here, this is very Peter-like.

Something that was close to his heart.

He ties here baptism to Noah's faithful witness of suffering.

And by this, he means for his weary and embattled believers, and for us today, to realize that suffering well, and part of suffering well, is going public with our faith in Jesus.

That's what baptism is: publicly identifying with the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In his book Going Public, Pastor Bobby Jameson with Nine Marks writes this.

After trusting Christ, baptism is the first thing faith does.

It's how faith shows itself before God, the church, and the world.

Baptism is where faith goes public.

If you're a Christian but you've never been baptized, you haven't even really taken the first step in following Jesus in any kind of public way.

Jesus said, Take up your cross and follow me.

And when he commissioned the church in Matthew chapter 28 to go into all the nations and make disciples of mine, he said, Teach them everything I've taught you to observe and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

Baptism is where faith goes public.

And here Peter says baptism is an integral part of being a follower of Jesus, a public disciple of Christ.

It's a symbol of a great saving reality.

Rather, baptism, symbolically, is an expression of a washed conscience, of a conscience that has been plunged beneath the blood of Jesus Christ and resurrected with Jesus Christ by his resurrection, verse 21 says.

It's the joyful answer of a conscience that has been washed in Jesus' blood and raised with Christ in his resurrection.

And Peter, in a beautiful way, likens Christian baptism to Noah's flood.

Noah, though persecuted for his testimony, was safe in the ark, as the waters of judgment destroy the corruption around him.

And for Christians, baptism hints at this in a way, as we are plunged beneath the waters, though hidden in Christ, we too are spared the deluge of God's just punishment against our sins.

So baptism saves us in the sense that it corresponds symbolically with the profession of our faith in Christ by which we are justified.

Now, some of you are listening to this, and you've never been baptized.

Maybe you've never confessed Christ.

Especially on our live stream, perhaps.

You go to church, perhaps, but you've never really taken the plunge, literally speaking.

You think, you know, baptism is sort of one of those things that, you know, maybe people that are especially geeked out about Jesus do, or maybe it's something I'll get around to doing.

No, this is fundamental to going public with Jesus.

Jesus was baptized, and then he would, and then later in his life, uh, when he died, he was laid in the tomb and he rose again three days later.

By baptism, we say, identify with that death of Christ, that burial of Christ, that resurrection of Christ.

I'm one of his disciples.

And until we're willing to do that, we're no better than the apostles in the garden.

Whenever things started getting hot, they forsook Jesus and fled.

Would you take that first step with Christ by faith?

Say, Jesus, I want to publicly identify with you.

It's not enough to privately identify with Jesus.

Jesus says, if you're going to come after me, you must take up your cross.

You need to die to yourself.

You need to die to your fear of man.

You need to die to whatever may be holding you back and join Jesus in this basic identification with Christ in baptism.

But then, of course, many of us, the rest of us, have been baptized maybe long ago.

And yet at some point in our lives, as we matured, as we spent more time at work, as we just drifted a little bit, we may have found ourselves hunkering back down.

Where we used to be pretty public about our faith, and now really we're quite private about our faith.

But Peter would have us know that our faith is not meant to be lived out in the privacy of our own heads, the privacy of our own homes, and the privacy of our own church, and separated from the rest of society, separated, compartmentalized from your work, from your play.

Our faith is to be lived out publicly.

God is calling us to go public once again with our faith.

And I wonder if you are willing this morning to step out of the shadows at school, at work, at family reunions, at youth sports events.

Wherever you go.

And I don't mean being obnoxious and being that guy, being no one wants to be that guy who's just obnoxious about his faith, kind of wears his faith on his sleeve and wants you to know that, you know, how many good causes he gives money to, and um is constantly talking about how often he goes to church and things.

We know what that looks like.

At the same time.

We as Christians, I think, especially in America where nothing is as awkward as talking about Jesus, right?

Jim Gaffigan comedian says, you know, even if you were to talk to the Pope, say, I'd like to talk about Jesus, he'd be like, easy freak.

Gotta leave work at work.

Even the Pope would be unnerved by talking about Jesus, he suggested.

That is our culture, right?

We really haven't turned into a secular society like people thought we were gonna, you know, Europe turned really secular.

And that was the prediction that 20 years later America was gonna turn secular.

We haven't turned secular, we've turned private about our faith.

The privatization of faith.

People are very religious, even if it's irreligious, it's in a it's with religious fervor.

But it's very, very private.

In most places, it's just not socially okay to be public, to be open about our faith.

But that's what Peter's calling us to do.

To be ready in verse 15 of this passage, it says, to give a sincere public voice to the hope of our eternal life, and to do so with a gentle and respectful way.

As I thought about this and how this could be lived out in my life and yours, I simply mean as we try to apply this passage to us.

Maybe asking a coworker who tells you she has cancer or who's lost a loved one or who's lost his job, asking if you can pray with him.

Say, can I just pray to the Lord for you right now in this difficult situation?

I mean serving other people joyfully and sacrificially, and if and when they thank you or ask why you did that, to give sincere verbal credit to the Lord and say, you know, the Lord put that on my heart.

I just wanted to bless you.

He's blessed me.

In Christ, Jesus has done so much for me, I just wanted to bless you in some small way.

People don't like to do that, right?

Because anytime you mention Jesus, things get awkward.

But we as Christians, if that is our motivation and it should be, why wouldn't we be open about it?

I mean publicly voicing public gratitude to the Lord when things go the way we think they should.

When there's a beautiful day and you walk into work and someone's like, man, it's gonna be beautiful this weekend, can't wait to go golfing.

And in your heart you're like, Thank you, Jesus, this is beautiful, but you don't say thank you, Jesus.

You just say, Yeah, it's gonna be nice.

Why don't you be open about your faith?

Why don't you say, man, the Lord has blessed us with a beautiful time?

Or when things don't go the way we would like, to give public conf expressions of confidence that, you know, God's ways of providence are inscrutable, they're mysterious, but man, I trust he's gonna get us through this.

We often think that, but we don't often say that.

I mean being a Christian outside of our own heads, delighting in Jesus out loud to our kids, to our spouse, to our neighbor, to our coworker, not in some kind of preachy way, but sincerely going public.

Now, what could possibly overcome our fear of man to empower us to live this kind of way?

The answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Spirit of God who applies the truths of the gospel powerfully to us.

Now, you may have noticed that earlier in the points that I've given, I kind of skipped over a very curious phrase.

It comes at the end of verse 18 through verse 19 and in the first part of verse 20.

And maybe you were sitting there thinking, Tim chickened out.

He jumped over this passage that Martin Luther said was the most difficult passage to understand in the New Testament.

Well, I didn't chicken out, I just saved it the best for last.

After studying several plausible interpretations, and there's some really crazy ones too, but of sort of reputable evangelical interpretations of these verses, um, but one that seems to just obviously fit the context, as we've seen this morning the most, is the one I'm going to go with.

And so I'll explain it this way.

Genesis chapter 6, well, let me read it first, sorry.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

Here's the passage we're talking about.

It's a perplexing passage.

It says that Jesus was made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah.

So questions of all kinds arise.

What does it mean that Jesus was made alive in the spirit?

Was this something that happened before his bodily resurrection, sort of before between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday?

I'm not going to try to answer all these questions.

And when he goes and he proclaims to the spirits in prison, is his proclamation one of judgment or one of mercy?

Are these spirits the spirits of dead people who lived in the days of Noah?

Or is it the spirits of fallen angels who are also called spirits?

All kinds of questions abound.

And of course, even why would Jesus do this?

What was the point of Jesus going and proclaiming to spirits in prison?

And of course, where is that prison?

What is that prison?

All sorts of questions can arise.

But I think there is a very plausible way to understand this based on what Peter says in 2 Peter, based upon a couple passages that Paul would write, and based on the passage at hand, the very last verse of our text.

So I think we can make a pretty good case for this.

Genesis chapter 6 and verse 4 says this.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

This is right before the flood.

So he mentions Noah, these spirits, whoever they were, were disobedient in the days of Noah.

Well, back in the days of Noah, Genesis 6.4 says this.

The Nephilim, which is a curious word, sometimes translated as giants, sometimes as fallen ones, and most of the time just not translated at all because we don't know what it means.

The Nephilim.

They were on the earth in those days, and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, sons of God, daughters of man, and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

This is the generation that every thought of their hearts was only evil continually.

The next verse says, Genesis 6.5.

The same generation that vexed Noah, the same generation God would wipe clean off the map.

And so this verse seems to say something very interesting because the sons of God and the daughters of man, why does it make that distinction?

Some have hypothesized because Job chapter 1 and verse 5 says that when the angels came to give an account before God, it calls them the sons of God.

Job 1 · chapter mention

Satan himself came with them.

The sons of God come to give an account.

And here in Genesis 6, 4.

So some would say these were actually fallen angels that in some mysterious way actually conceived children with humans.

And the result of these, this conception, this birth, was a generation of mighty, supernatural humans.

Men of great fame and of renown, giants, even, as Nephilim has sometimes been translated.

Sort of a softer view of that is to say, no, that they didn't intermarry, they didn't actually impregnate these women, they just possessed them.

That when this when there was these people that were born, they were possessed by demons, and thus they were mighty men of renown, and thus they were so evil God wiped them off the map.

So whichever way you want to run that, I'm not dogmatic on either way.

Either way, it's still rather perplexing.

But I think it's safe to say that the spirits that Jesus proclaimed his death to were demons.

And they either had impregnated women or they had filled and possessed people in that generation to the point where they needed to be cast away.

And I take that because that's what Peter sort of says in 2 Peter chapter 4.

So whether this generation was superhumans or simply demon-possessed humans, it's evident that the disobedient demonic spirits spirits were intimately involved in the day of Noah.

And thus, 2 Peter chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 say this.

2 Peter 2:4

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, and then he mentions Noah.

If he did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others when he brought the flood waters upon the world of the ungodly, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the right unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

I think that's the same point he's trying to make here with regards to Jesus.

Similar context, same author, similar terminology.

I think it sheds light on that.

And the point of this is if God did those things, if he cast out demons, reserved them in chains of darkness, delivered Noah, he's gonna deliver you.

Same context is 1 Peter chapter 3, he's gonna deliver us.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

So in our text in verse 19 of chapter 3, when he says Jesus went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison that were disobedient in Noah's day, it seems as though Jesus went and proclaimed.

And the word proclaimed here is not the typical word for, it's not teaching.

Um there's three words for preaching in the New Testament.

It's specifically the phrase that means to herald or to proclaim.

And it doesn't always mean good news.

Jesus went and proclaimed to the demon spirits that are in prison, those same demons that were around in Noah's day, that were disobedient in Noah's day.

This would be a proclamation, not of mercy, but of a triumph over the powers of darkness, over Jesus' sworn enemies.

You remember when in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus, it's actually mentioned in three of the Gospels, when Jesus goes to Gadera, gets out of the boat, crossing the Sea of Galilee, steps onto the shore, and he hears these men screaming.

One passage, two passages say was one man, the wild Gadarean.

Matthew says there were there were two of them.

If there were two, there was certainly one.

So there's no contradiction there.

But in Matthew's gospel, he mentions both of them.

And Jesus comes up to them, and they come out of the tomb so fierce that no one could pass that way.

And behold, they cried out, saying, What have you to do with this, O Son of God?

Have you come here to torment us before the time?

In some sense, demons have been assigned a future judgment, even if that means they still can have interactions with humans today, their power is much more limited.

Maybe that's why the flood had to happen, because their power wasn't limited before the flood.

But here in our passage, it seems that Jesus proclaims to the demonic world the power and the victory he wrought on the cross.

Because verse 18 says, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

What seemed from the outside to be a loss, to be a defeat, God's Son incarnate, dying at the hands of wicked men, was nothing of a loss.

In fact, 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 7 says, if the princes of this world had known that them killing the Prince of Glory would have been their own demise, they never would have done it.

1 Corinthians 2:7

And so Jesus, having procured this victory, goes and proclaims it to the spirit world, his victory over their designs.

By bearing our sins on the cross, Christ forever freed us, for whom he died, from God's wrath, from the clutches of our own sins, and from the demonic world that held us captive.

All through the New Testament, people who are unregenerate, who oppose God are often spoken of as people who are under the sway of Satan himself.

2 Timothy 2 25 says they are held captive.

2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 6 says they are blinded by the God of this world.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

1 John chapter 2 or 3 says that they are held under the authority of the God of this world.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

And all this agrees with Colossians chapter 2, where the Apostle Paul says in 14 and 15 that God nailed our sins to the cross and disarmed, defamed, robbed of all power, the rulers and authorities, and put them in open, put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Christ.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

That's Paul.

That's not Peter, that's Paul.

So we see an agreement here.

One other passage on this note, Ephesians 4, verses 8 through 10.

Ephesians 4:8–10

And this is glorious here.

Quoting the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul says, When Christ ascended on high, this is his ascension.

He led a host of captives and gave gifts to men.

He led a host of captives, people who had been captured by Christ, and then he gave gifts to men.

And the Apostle Paul in parentheses says, reasoning.

In saying that Jesus ascended, what does it mean but that he had first descended into the lower regions, the earth?

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things.

Although there's some differing details there, very same idea is what Peter's talking about.

Christ went in, proclaimed victory over the forces of evil that have been chained in the prison.

And as he ascends, Jesus leads captives with him.

Who are these captives?

These are his enemies.

By Jesus' victory on the cross, he led captivity captive.

The very forces that had held people captive, he now captures.

And it says this, he gives gifts unto men.

Just following this passage, he lists a bunch of gifts in the church, spiritual gifts.

Do you realize that when God gives spiritual gifts to his spirit in the church, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, all these, and then all the spiritual gifts listed that we've been mentioning in our series, that spiritual gifts are not only a part of what Jesus did on the cross, but they're the spoils of war.

He went down, proclaimed victory, took the captors captive, and then took spoils of war and give spiritual gifts to his people in the church.

That is quite the victory.

And this, by this, the Apostle Paul speaks in terms that people would understand, because when Roman legions would go forth and they would conquer lands, they would bring back captives with them, and they would march them through the streets of Rome, and the people would cheer because here were their enemies captured.

And then, of course, with the spoils of war, they would give gifts to soldiers and to citizens.

Jesus did that for us.

Finally, I think this interpretation of the passage fits with the final verse in our passage, verse 22, where it states, Jesus ascended to heaven.

Angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

I don't know if you're much of a grammar buff, but this phrase, having been subjected to him, means that it's not just a present reality.

They are subjected to him, but that it points back to a definitive point where they started to be subjected to him.

And I submit to you, that's when Jesus died on the cross, and then he went down and proclaimed that victory over these authorities, powers.

And so, what does this mean for us today?

Let me close out with this thought.

Peter wrote to Christians who were tempted to respond to a hostile world with fury or with fear.

So the Apostle Peter leverages the example of Jesus, he leverages the example of Noah, and then he just gets right to the heart of the gospel, Jesus' victory over our sins and over the demonic world, to inspire us to endure suffering for well-doing.

He calls us to neither strike back nor shrink back.

But with compassion and courage to daily go public with our faith in Jesus' name, the name of the one who suffered for our sins to bring us to God, the one who has trampled all of his enemies under his feet, the one who reserves his enemies who've been reserved for the final judgment of the world in righteousness.

So neither fury nor fear must be our impulse.

Because in Christ we are forgiven, we are free.

And since we know how this whole thing is going to end up, let us now go forward compassionately and courageously and publicly in Jesus' name.

And all the people said, Amen.