Be Light – Without Fear

As I told you before having no notes can make things dangerous or helpful. We continue talking about Being Light. So, turn with me to 1 Peter 3:8-16. We’ll skip a little ahead from what we said last week. As already mentioned, it’s promised to us that in this life we’re going to have trouble. But in the end, we serve a Savior, that holds it all in His hands.
As I read this passage to you today, I want you to remember this, you already know this, but I want you to remember that this was a letter. You remember letters, I remember writing letters. Put them in an envelope and mail them away. And if it was something that people needed to respond to, you’d wait 2-3 weeks, maybe more. If it was between Greece and the USA, you always waited more. In fact, Leto will tell you I just got some Christmas cards. In Greece, it truly is Christmas all year long.
But you’d wait and they’d respond. Then came the fax machine. Oh, such fast communication. Send your letter through the telephone. It prints out on the other side. You remember that nasty little paper that all the printing disappeared after a few days. Great for business, wasn’t it Lars? Plausible deniability – I never said that! But you’d send a fax, and Lars if you’re doing business and you sent a fax, how many days would you wait before you got a response without getting worried? 3-4 days, maybe a week. Then came e-Mail. What a beautiful creation. What a horrible creation! Now, we communicate instantly. But still, it was, you know in the computer, now so, you send an e-Mail and wait a day or 2. If you didn’t get an answer, you’d send another e-Mail, this time all in Capital Letters!
Then came text, and now we communicate instantly. I was joking with a friend a couple of days ago, I mean, as soon as you see those 2 check marks, in that message, that means not just you got it, it means you read it. You may not have, by the way because you may have accidently opened it and gone to the next, lots of things happen. But we expect everything to happen immediately now. Some of us expect that with our food. But we’ve become a society, especially in the west, where everything is rapid response. And I think we take that mentality and apply it to our spiritual lives as well. We read the promises of the Word of God, and we think they all suppose to apply to today, when the Bible is clear that some things we’re going to wait for.
It’s always amazing to me, there’s a chapter in the Bible in the book of Hebrews that we call the heroes of faith or the hall of faith. But when you read all the names in that passage, people like Abraham, who was the father of faith, you read through all the names, and not one of them saw their promise completed in their lifetime. But we think that everything is supposed to apply now. So, when I read this letter to you, I want you to hear it, number 1 as personal correspondence, it’s a personal letter. Peter wrote it so that people just like us would hear these words personally.
The Holy Spirit ensured that this letter would be in the Bible, so that Christians for all time would read this as a personal letter. So, let’s read together beginning at verse 8 of Chapter 3. “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. 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 as 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.
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.”
What fatherly advice Peter gives to us here. He’s talking about what our character is in Christ. Now there are things in there that are sometimes hard for me to deal with. I don’t think I often repay evil with evil, I hope, but sometimes it’s hard for me to think of repaying evil with good. Can anybody else relate? Sometimes it’s difficult for me to absorb the slander of other people. Look how I said sometimes. It’s pretty much almost always for me to tolerate the slander of other people. Just me?
Ther’s a lot in here that challenges us in our own personal characters, but I said just a moment ago, I don’t know if you caught it, you already have the character of Christ in you. That means that at any moment you choose, you can plug into that. That whatever the immediate response is, there is an ability through the Holy Spirit of God, for me to cast that stuff down inside of me out of me and to choose to reflect the character of Christ. And that character, does what it does in gentleness, the Scripture says, and with respect.
Now, I’m going to give you a few points out of this. I apologize to the Greeks in the room, because we do not have the Greek translation, because I sent the wrong slides, and I know that she will either watch now or will watch later, Natasha, I apologize for all your good work and I will post these slides online with the sermon there, so that the people can see them all. She was so good to translate all of this last night for me. She sent it back to me, and I thought I forwarded it to the Church account, instead I sent the one I sent her, without the translation. My Oh, Oh.
The first point I want us to see in this, is that Peter gives us a question. I’m not sure what the tone of the question is, in his mind. Because he asks the question. “Who will harm you, if you are eager to do good?” I mean, if you are doing good things, who’s going to bother you? This is a good question, but I’m not sure of the tone, because of what he says next. “But even if you do suffer, it’s better that you suffer for the purposes of Christ, who ultimately suffered for you.” You can count it as not a bad thing, if you suffer these troubles. So, I wander if Peter wasn’t being a little sarcastic. Maybe it sounded like, who’s going to harm you if you do good, because the answer is – People will. And sometimes you’ll be the people towards someone else. These are things we have to capture in the mind and in the spirit. There’s an acknowledgement in this question that Christians may very well experience trouble, for the sake of righteousness. This is one of those points, where I used to say, ‘Everybody say Amen.’ The problem with that is that ‘Amen means so be it.’ And I don’t want to be so be having to have trouble. I may prefer, ‘May it not be so.’ Amen? That’s a good Amen.
The second point, and this is the hope of it. Christians have a secure and abundant future, with the Father in eternity. We have a secure future and we have an abundant future, with the Father, here on earth, yes, but imperfect and incomplete, and the perfect and the complete comes when? I eternity. That means, you cannot take your problems and put them in a microwave, to make them good, real fast. You might have to put them in the oven and cook slow, and you might have to open up the oven and discover that it’s not fully cooked. Now, it might be, maybe some of you saw on my social media yesterday, I made a wonderful taco casserole. I was worried because I forgot to check the temperature. I know in Fahrenheit (US) and I was guessing what it was in Celsius, which is pretty stupid, because all I have to do is Google it on my cell phone, but that meant that I had to go from upstairs in pastor Gail’s house, downstairs to my house to get my phone and that was too far. So, Serie got the afternoon off. But I guessed, I checked it a few times, got to doing some work, Oh, Oh. I thought I left something in the oven. I opened it up – perfect. Do you know how good it feels when it turns out perfect? In the moment, and I really wanted that taco casserole. So, what was my sensation going to be, if I opened the oven and it didn’t cook, or I opened it and it had overcooked, that thing I wanted that tastes so good, taken from me, robbed of my life. And we feel like that about stuff sometimes. How many times haven’t you heard someone saying, ‘I’ve been praying for this so long.’ How long? Too long? Long enough? Does the answer really matter? I was thinking about this, Friday I guess it was when I was preparing, and I thought about that question, Billy, ‘I’ve been praying for this so long’ and it came to my mind, too long? A long as Jesus has been in heaven praying for you? Because He’s been active with that from before you were born, and has never stopped, one day of your life. We want it! But sometimes it has to bake. But we have a secure and abundant future. Just keep looking up ahead, it looks good up there.
Number 3. Christians are called to live differently from the world. We are to lead good lives, do good things, with words like peaceful and patient and respectful. Not for the sake only of ourselves. But the Scripture says, ‘For the sake of Jesus.’ Because as we keep reminding ourselves, we are not the light, He is The Light, but you’ve been created to reflect Him and be light. And when you do that, that doesn’t stop for Him, the Son glorifies the Father, and the Bible tells us that when we lift Him up, He will lift us! You know, God enjoys His life. Do you believe that? God has a good time, in His Trinitarian person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – they have a good time with each other. One of my favorite icons I’ve ever seen and I can’t find it, I saw a copy of it in a book, and it was an ancient Russian icon, of the 3 persons of the Trinity in a dance. Now, I have some different pictures that represent that; I just love that idea. Now, I don’t dance. It’s not a good thing if I dance. I get down on one knee and clap. But when you see a beautiful dance, isn’t it wonderful? The enjoyment of that. Both for the people dancing and the people watching. That’s how I’m trying to teach myself of God. The 3 in a single dance. Enjoying each other. Enjoying the things around them. Trying to make it happy. And the people around that are blessed by that. I like that image of God. And He wants that to be reflected in us. How did this passage start out in verse 8, “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.”
Now, number 4, this is my last point. “As Christians we are called to refuse our natural instinct to be afraid of those who might hurt us for our faith in Christ.” We are called to refuse it, reject our fear or our anxiety. This is a very pointed application. When I’m in those instances, where I feel pressured because of my faith, I am to reject that anxiety. Not by having to press back at other people or other things, but by being able to say, ‘No, that is not my character. Satan get out of my way, Brian, get out of your way, and let the character of Christ be reflected.’ Which is a bold character, it is a strong character, but it is not an obnoxious character. Just say all the bad things you can think of for the word ‘Obnoxious.’ Disrespectful, aggressive; that’s not us, it doesn’t mean we don’t share, it means share gently, with respect. Isn’t it hard sometimes to respect people who don’t respect you? And this doesn’t mean, be a doormat fro everybody. You know what angers angry people even more? It’s when you refuse to get angry with them. But when in strength you can say, ‘No, I’m not accepting that, that’s not who I am; I’m not taking that on myself. But I love you, because He loves you.’ Now that ought to get somebody worked up. But it will do something as well.
We have to learn that reject doesn’t mean refuse; reject means, don’t let it interfere with who you are. Because, you know who you are. But more than knowing who you are, you know who He is. ‘And I know who I have believed in’, and that He is able to keep me through every circumstance until that day. Now, did you catch what I left out of that, those of you who know that Scripture. ‘I know in who I have believed in and am persuaded.’ It has been proven in my mind, it has been proven in my spirit – ‘I am persuaded, that He is able to keep everything I have committed to Him.’ And how does it end? ‘Until that day.’ Now if I have to be persuaded between now and then, it means that I may not see it until then. Most of the time in Scripture, ‘That Day’ means the Coming of the Lord, eternity. Sometimes it means ‘The Day of Visitation.’
But you’re called to walk in the strength of this, until that day. Whether that day is today, a month from now, ten years from now. God, willing you live long enough if Jesus doesn’t come back first, until your very last breath, you stand in the character of Christ. So, trouble is just trouble. This passage addresses all believers, commanding Christians to be unified, and to refuse to seek revenge when we’re wronged, and not to fear the outcome. Oh, but you don’t know what I’m going to miss if – no I don’t, but I know what ending point is, and it looks like mine. Eternity, Eternity. With nothing but God’s goodness.
I’m going to finish, I’m sorry to the Greek speakers, we won’ translate this because it will probably be difficult and long. I’m going to read the English and I’ll post the Greek translation online later. By the way, if you’re on social media and you don’t follow our Instagram, or Facebook pages for the Church, please do. A lot of information gets posted there, good encouragements, Scripture passages. Please remember on Facebook, we have a Church page, which you can go and like, but we also have a private group, that you can ask to join, and that has more private information where you can ask your questions. All of those are ‘@glyfadachristiancenter, and you can go to our webpage (Glyfadacc.org/Sermons) where all of our sermons are archived there. Actually, Chris Kehayas makes notes of each sermon as he listens to them and posts them there. You can catch up on things there and to share with others.
I want to end this message with a passage from the Passion Translation: “Always turn from what is wrong and cultivate what is good; eagerly pursue peace in every relationship, making it your prize.” (The gardeners in the room know what it means to cultivate right). “Make peace in every relationship your prize. “For the eyes of the Lord Yahweh l rest upon the godly, and his heart responds to their prayers. But he turns his back on those who practice evil. “Why would anyone harm n you if you’re passionate and devoted to pleasing God? But even if you happen to suffer for doing what is right, you will have the joyful experience of the blessing of God.” (I love the contrast there. Experience suffering, but receive joyful experience) “And don’t be intimidated or terrified by those who would terrify you. “But give reverent honor in your hearts to the Anointed One and treat him as the holy Master of your lives. And if anyone asks about the hope living within you, always be ready to explain your faith with gentleness and respect.”
So, I remind you of the title of my sermon – Oh, Ohs can be made good. Would you stand with me. I think I’m going to ask for our prayer response today like this. If you would say together with me, ‘Lord, I’m asking You and I need You today, to help me to learn to endure, with Your strength of character, and with the hope that You bring me, and that I’ll be able to do it without fear. That was the title that pastor Gail gave me for today, ‘Without Fear.’
Lord, let my life be cleansed of fear. Fear of man, fear of suffering, fear of trauma, fear of difficulty. Give me strength of character, that I can reflect You, with dignity and respect. So, Lord I’m just lifting my hands to You today, to reflect that I have this need. Lord, there are kinds of trouble that make me fearful, but Lord I want to learn to stand in Your strength, and face things with Your hope and show the respect that You showed every person when You suffered and died for the sake of us all. Lord, make me an instrument of good in the world around me, because I want people to know how good You are. And I thank You today, for this challenge in my life and I commit to You Lord, that I will continue to learn, to stop my wrong reactions, and to open up my life to be a blessing for You to everyone. And I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen