1/31/2021
Human Passions
1 Peter 4:1-6
Key Thought: If you are willing to suffer like Jesus, you will find great freedom to do the will of God.
In the 1950’s there was a preacher named David Wilkerson who went to preach the gospel in a gang controlled neighborhood in New York. It’s a famous story in which one of the gang leaders, Nicky Cruz, tells Wilkerson “You come near me and I’ll kill you”. Wilkerson’s response was “yeah, you could do that. You could cut me into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.”
What Wilkerson is revealing here is that because he is willing to suffer, he has taken away any and all power that Nicky Cruz has over him. Wilkerson looks at this gang leader pointing a switch-blade in his direction and is able to speak love into his life because he has already thought through the possible scenarios of being stabbed or killed.
Fortunately the story has an amazing ending. When Nicky Cruz realizes that his threats had no power over Wilkerson, he realizes “he is different – no one responds this way”. The end of the story is one of the most famous Christian books of all times, ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’, in which we learn that this violent gang leader, Nicky Cruz, became a believer in Jesus and went on to be a preacher.
There is a really simple lesson here in this story – because Wilkerson was willing to suffer, he removed all of the power that Cruz had over him. Because he had already thought about the possible consequences and considered the cost, he was able to be a free agent with Cruz instead of running away.
As we look at 1 Peter 4 this morning, we are going to hear Peter say ‘If you are willing to suffer like Jesus, you will find great freedom to do the will of God’. Peter was talking to a group of people who had suffered greatly – they were dealing with the greatest persecution the church had ever faced – they had been removed from homes, families, churches, many of them had been killed – they had been the recipients of slanderous accusations from the Roman Emperor and had the entire Roman nation.
Peter has been telling them that even though they are under tremendous persecution, they would submit to the government – even honoring them, and submit to all authorities, and submit to one-another. As they submit, those who are persecuting will say ‘wait a second…these people are different…they are not what Nero has been saying about them…when we are unkind to them they respond with kindness…when we are unjust to them, they respond with justice…when we hurt them they respond by bringing restoration…these people are different. And as they respond, the Christians will ‘silence the ignorant talk of foolish men’ – the slanderous accusations that they had been facing would be silenced.
Last week we saw that while this strategy is what God calls us to, sometimes the strategy doesn’t go so well – as Christians we respond in kindness, and things get worse. We say that in the moments when it gets worse, that God is not abandoning us, but he is setting up a greater situation for people to see him and bring him glory.
But Peter is realistic here – he knows that he is calling the church to something that is really hard. Continue to submit when things get worse? Continue to have a humble and kind response when people are walking all over you? This makes no logical sense, in fact it seems foolish, and if we are going to be capable of doing this, we will have to decide ahead of time that we are willing to suffer. This is where we get our key thought: If you are willing to suffer like Jesus, you will find great freedom to do the will of God.
As we look at our text this morning, we are going to ask three questions:
1. What does it mean to be willing to suffer?
2. What is gained by a willingness to suffer? (2-3 – A life of sin/A life for God)
3. What enables us to be willing to suffer? (God’s over it all - 4-6)
Read the text.
First, what does it mean to be willing to suffer. Peter tells us ‘since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had and be ready to suffer, too”. What sort of physical suffering did just undergo? We are told in the gospels the numerous suffering that Jesus underwent from the accusations and allegations of the religious leaders, to the rejection of people who were afraid of him, to the torture that he faced on his journey to being crucified (the beatings, the whipping, the crown of thorns), and then his actual crucifixion.
We are told in the Luke 22 that Jesus sweat blood in the garden before he was taken into captivity, a rare condition called hematohidrosis. Jesus knew the pain that was about to be inflicted on him and asked the Father if there was any other way to accomplish his plan to let that happen. In that moment Jesus knew the pain that was coming – both physically and mentally, and he made a decision to face it head on.
While we may not be facing the same type of suffering that Jesus faced, we know that everyone in the world faces suffering – mental, physical, spiritual, social. Everyone suffers. What Peter is saying here is that you can actually try and avoid suffering, or you can face it head on. He is encouraging the believers who are facing all types of suffering acknowledge suffering and willingly go through it.
In the case of the believers Peter is writing to, their suffering is extensive – a sort of genocide by Nero, and those who didn’t get killed have been scattered all over Asia – leaving businesses, friends, families, churches, entire ways of life. And he is telling them that they have a choice to willingly embrace the suffering or to try and run away from it.
Today, while we are not suffering like the persecuted church in Peter, or even like the persecuted church in China, Iran, or other parts of the world, we still have our versions of hardship that we can either choose to embrace or can try and run away from. Choosing to suffer means we are willing to embrace these hardships and choose to respond
Discussion Question: What does it mean to be willing to suffer?
Second question, what is gained by a willingness to suffer? Think about it like this: If there is a bully in your school and every morning when you arrive at school you live in fear of that bully can do to you – he can take away your lunch money, humiliate you in front of others, he can even bring you physical harm. As you think about that bully you do everything you can to avoid him – you take a different route to school – you arrive at a different time – you hide in classrooms and behind other people – you change everything about your life because of that bully.
But one day, you decide enough is enough – what’s the worst that this bully can do to you? All he can do is take away your lunch money, all he can do is make others laugh at your expense, and at the very worst he can bring you physical harm – that’s the worst of it. And as you count the cost, as you are willing to endure, to suffer, these potential consequences, you live in freedom, unwilling to hide, unwilling to avoid him. In so doing, you have taken away that bully’s power – you are now free. You might still get your lunch money taken away, you might get ridiculed or even hurt, but you were up for that, and now you live in freedom.
What we learn from Peter is that ‘if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin’. He tells us ‘you won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God’. What Peter is saying is that if God has purposed that you should suffer for his name, you either have the choice of being willing to suffer or trying to run away from it. Running away from God’s will leaves you with a giant hole in your heart that you are going to have to fill with something – you’ll end up in all sorts of immorality, lust, drunkenness, debauchery and greed (verse 3). All of these things will leave you with pain.
If you’re bent on escaping suffering, you have to go somewhere to avoid that suffering – just like hiding from the bully. You will have to live life in the way that it wasn’t intended to be lived. You see immorality, lust, drunkeneess, debauchery and greed are all explanations of normal good desires gone wrong. Sex you feel guilty about because it destroys lives; beauty that you put your hope in and end up using people; drink that felt good for a season but now you can’t control.
But when you look at suffering and say “I’m willing to endure that”, all of a sudden you face life in a different way – you don’t need to escape or hide, you don’t need to run from the bully. You get to do the will of God – live the way he created you to live. And that is what God calls abundant life – freedom.
Discussion Question: what is gained by a willingness to suffer?
So we have seen what it means to be willing to suffer, and we have talked about what is gained when we are willing to suffer, and now we want to finish by asking what enables us to be willing to suffer? Paul tells us in verse 5 ‘but remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead’. We are enabled to have a willingness to suffer by remembering that God is over it all – he is the judge who gets the final say about everything.
The hardest suffering we will ever go through is unjust suffering. Think about the suffering Jesus endured – he was perfect yet crucified. He was crucified yet sent to preach in prison (the place where God’s love doesn’t exist). It went from bad to worse. Think about the suffering that the scattered church was enduring – they were slandered by Nero and the whole Roman Empire joined in the persecution. If we suffer when we do something wrong, that is to be expected, but how hard is it when we suffer when we do something good.
But, if we remember that God is letting us suffer for a greater purpose – he is or will be glorified in a greater way, and we remember that God ultimately holds justice in his hand – then we will be willing to suffer. It all comes back to the question of trusting God. If we see God as trustworthy, if we trust that he is up to a greater purpose, if we trust that God is Holy and justice will be served, what are we do be afraid of?
If you are willing to suffer like Jesus, you will find great freedom to do the will of God, and what enables us to be willing to suffer is trusting the God who loves us.
Conclusion: As I was thinking about this sermon this week, I was telling a friend what God was laying on my heart out of this passage, and he said the Apostle Paul must have been the most frustrating man to his enemies. When Paul was threatened with prison he just said “great, I’ll get to preach the gospel there also”, and when he was threatened by the Jews for including the gentiles he just said “no problem…I’ll go to Rome”, and when he was told that he would die if he went to Jerusalem, he responded “to live is Christ to die is gain”. Because Paul was willing to suffer, he was the freest man on earth to do the will of God. How liberated Paul must have been.
What about us? Are we willing to suffer? Do we realize the freedom that a willingness to suffer brings? Do we trust God to be over all things – ultimately bringing justice in every area and glorifying himself in the process? The invitation today is to live in freedom by choosing to trust God even if that means suffering. How does this play out in a season of covid? In social unrest?
Discussion Question: What would enable you to face suffering instead of running away from it?
Communion: Trust the God who suffered for us.
