The Acts of the Apostles 15

Subtitle: The Power of Prayer

Acts 4:23-31. 

This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday morning August 28, 2022.

Last week, we saw that Peter and John were severely threatened not to teach in the name of Jesus, and they were released from custody.  With the response that Peter gave them, they can’t hope too much that these men will actually stop.  However, it will buy them some time to craft a plan for dealing with them just as they did with Jesus.

We are going to see the importance of prayer today.  These men were full of the Holy Spirit, but they were not a source unto themselves.  In fact, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them during a prayer meeting.  Instead of responding to the threats of the rulers with threats themselves, they responded to the threats with more prayer to God.

May we never forget that all our doing must have a foundation of prayer underneath it, so that God is evident within it.

The believers turn to God in prayer (vs. 23-30)

Upon their release, Peter and John go to their companions to describe the actions of the rulers of Israel.

After hearing about the threats, the disciples turn to God in prayer.  Notice that we have that phrase again “in one accord.”  Remember that this means they were all singularly focused with a passion for reaching God in prayer. 

It is hard enough to get ourself singularly focused with passion on one thing, much less a whole group of people.  This really is a miraculous move of God that is happening among these early Christians.  O, that believers today would be moved upon by the Lord to be in one accord about reaching God through prayer.

Let’s take a look at how they pray and then how God responds.

They start out glorifying God by declaring that He is the One who created everything.  He created the heavens, the earth, and the seas, and then He filled each of these domains.  Salient to the moment, God is the Creator of those people giving them threats.  Essentially, they are appealing to the higher authority.  The men who have threatened them are accountable to a higher power, just as the disciples are.

Prayer is never about telling God something that He doesn’t know.  It is more about demonstrating that we know who He is.  Prayer is not getting God to the place where He will do what you want, it is about getting ourselves to a place where we can truly serve Him.

To glorify God is to lift our own spirits up out of the squalor of this world, and the clouds of confusion.  It is to come out of ourselves and into the presence of One who is greater than us.  It is to focus our heart and mind upon the only One who can sustain us and enable us.  Prayer gives us God’s perspective about our life and the things that bother us.  If we spent more time in prayer, then we would have a better perspective on life when we get up off of our knees and go about our day.

God is not only the One who created these men threatening them, but He has also spoken things through the prophets about just such men.  Through the prophet David, God said this very thing would happen.

Psalm 2 is a powerful psalm that clearly depicts God making His Anointed One (Messiah, Christ) to be king over the nations at the protest of their rulers.  Those rulers will attempt to throw off his rule, but God in heaven will laugh at their attempts to reject His decision.  “I have set My King upon My Holy Hill!”  The rulers are then warned that if they do not turn to the Anointed One in fealty, then they will perish when his wrath is kindled just a little. 

It ends declaring, “Blessed are those who put their trust in Him.”  This is similar to the message Jesus sends back to John the Baptist, “Blessed is he who does not fall away because of me.”  Really these are flip sides of the same coin, one positive and one negative.  To trust in Jesus is not to fall away.  Not to fall away because of Jesus is to put your faith in him.

These disciples of Jesus are actually seeing Psalm 2 happening in real time.  In fact, we are seeing the same thing today in our world.  The rulers of the world are set on casting off the “bonds” of God and His Christ.  This is what it looks like.

The question today is, “Whom do you fear, God and His Messiah, or the powerful rulers of the earth?  Our response will set the position that we will be in in the day of His wrath.

Verse 28 holds a nugget of powerful understanding that we must get ahold of and never let go.  No matter what the enemies of Christ may do, they can only accomplish what God has purposed ahead of time.  This does not mean that they are doing a good thing.  They have the power to choose wickedness, but they don’t also have the power to choose where that path will take them.  God is truth and reality.  You can’t fight reality without paying a price of your decision. 

Thus, all beings in the universe will do the will of God.  Some will accomplish His will by choosing to cooperate with His purposes and being transformed into His righteousness.  Others, will accomplish His will by refusing to cooperate with His purposes.  They become something far worse than they ever imagined, but in so doing, also accomplish the will of God.

Only God is the Sovereign over all that happens, and it is His Providence that is before us.  Christians must never think that becoming so grants us sovereignty over our own life.  The best that we can do in this life is to cooperate with the will of God and thereby to be transformed into the image of Jesus.  Yes, some of the path ahead is revealed to us through prophecy, but all of us must learn to trust God with our today.  If God had allowed Jesus to die in order to do something greater, then God may choose to do the same thing with Peter and John.  They have no guarantee exactly what following Jesus will look like, only that Christ will be with them all the way.  What matters in life is doing the will of God regardless of what the future may hold, and that will take a lot of time in prayer tuning our hearts to the heart of God.

Though they have been glorifying God, they are also building a case, asking God for His help.   They first ask that God would grant them to speak His word with all boldness.  A “grant” is in keeping with coming to a great King, but this is more than getting a title to some land.  They are asking for God’s help in doing what they know must be done.  God, whatever you have to do in me in order to do this thing that must be done, then please do it!

The content of our speech to this world and to one another needs to be the Word of God.  Yet, the boldness cannot come from a place of our flesh.  The Sadducees and the Pharisees had a boldness that came from much study, and the accolades of an intellectual system.  In fact, it takes a lot of boldness to put the Lord Jesus Christ to death even though it didn’t square with the Law of God.  Fleshly boldness will not work to lead us in what God is doing.  It only made things worse. 

At each point along the way, God in His mercy gave them opportunity to jump off this confidence in their own righteousness.  Nicodemus jumped off.  Even the Apostle Paul saw the light and turn around to the point that he later says that he considered all that previous boasting as rubbish, garbage, in the face of knowing Jesus.  The problem is not that God is wanting us to get rid of everything.  The problem is in my heart.  I so easily try to hold onto fleshly things that give me confidence instead of only holding on to the Lord.  Eventually, you will have to choose.  If something is getting in between you and Jesus, just know this.  There will come a day when it will be to hard to hold onto both.  Like a man trying to hold two horses together going in opposite directions, you will either let go or be destroyed.

The boldness they wanted could only come from the Holy Spirit within them and speaking in the moment.  This is only granted as we daily come to God in prayer, seeking Him, and seeking His will.

They also ask that God would stretch forth His hand to heal and give signs and wonders in the name of Jesus.  We see this again that they are fully aware that any miracles would be by the hand of God.  They would simply be faithful servants whom God worked through.

We are called to be a blessing to the sick and the hurting.  These things will then be signs pointing people back to Psalm 2.  We must make our peace with Jesus today because the day is coming when his complete rule will be established.

It is clear from history that God has granted seasons of healings, and signs and wonders.  It is not our job to know either way, but to pray for God to move and to work.  No number of miracles can save a person’s life.  People need Jesus, not miracles.  Perhaps the greatest miracle they will ever see is a man or woman of God coming out of the wilderness and speaking the word of God to them by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

They were not praying for miracles because they wanted to be wowed again.  No, it is a wicked and adulterous generation that seeks for signs and miracles.  No, they are praying for God to confirm that they are from Him through these miracles.  Only God can help us to make it to that pure place where we are praying for Him to move in our time, but we are not seeking things rather than Him.  They are not asking miracles for themselves, but to be done among the people in order to draw them to Jesus.

God’s response to their prayer (vs 31)

Verse 31 tells us that there was a response from heaven.  They would get up off of their knees that day knowing that God had heard them because the place was shaken with an earthquake.  We do not know how widespread it was.  It seems to be more for them than Jerusalem.  Of course, the skeptic will say it is only a coincidence.  However, such a person was not there to see the lame man dancing in the temple, nor the ministry of Jesus before.

So why did God shake the place that they were at?  In Psalm 18:6,7 it says, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, and my cry came before Him, even to His ears.  Then, the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, because He was angry.”

This is David recognizing that his victories over Saul, and the nations surrounding Israel, were not about his great ability.  It was always about God answering his cry.  This imagery is used throughout the Psalms and the prophetic literature.  When God is stirred up to judgment, the natural order is practically unable to stand it (Hills melting like wax, etc.).  It is a sign that God is angry and is not to be messed with.

This can be seen at Sinai as well.  The powerful demonstration of quaking, thundering, lightening, fire and smoke demonstrates that God is legislating the righteousness that they should be doing.  The law is a scary thing without the mercy and grace of God.  Thankfully, it was not without mercy and grace.

The Bible says that the righteous are a people who cannot be shaken, and consequently destroyed.  Here, God shakes the place to show that He is rising up, just as David spoke of it, to stand on their behalf before these rulers.  He is not happy with their actions, though He will use them for His purposes.  When we are in right relationship with God, we need not fear His judgments around us.

This is shown in Hebrews 12, where God promises to shake the heavens and the earth.  This great day of shaking no wicked person will survive.  The only way to survive it is to become an unshakeable person.  Only God can make us an unshakeable person by the power of His Holy Spirit.

Perhaps, we should remind ourselves that Satan tries to shake us as well.  In this mortal flesh, we will be tested.  As long as we hang on to faith in Jesus, we cannot be destroyed.  In fact, the devil will only succeed in making you stronger.  Yet, if we let go of faith in Christ, then we can be destroyed.  Let us receive an unshakeable faith by the help of the Holy Spirit.

They were then all filled with the Holy Spirit.  As we have mentioned before, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event.  There is a fresh pouring out of the Holy Spirit in response to their prayer.  We must see this and pay attention to it.  God wants to fill you, but He does so in the relationship of prayer. 

Public prayer times with other believers has its place, but the foundation of our walk with Christ is our private prayer time.  We cannot skip these private times of prayer and expect that the Holy Spirit will just always be there to back our fleshly minds up.  God help us to desire to be a people of prayer because it was God’s desire first, and it is His Holy Spirit even now stirring you up to want to pray.  You won’t be able to run the marathon tomorrow, but if you get up and start a little at a time, each day, over time you will develop a strong foundation of prayer that your flesh resisted at first.  Prayer is hard.  There is no lime-light, no accolades.  Our flesh shrinks back from it, but we must master ourselves and turn to God in prayer, if we want to know Him and the power of His resurrection.

It ends by saying, “and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”  I believe this is simply saying that God answered their prayer and this was the hallmark of their activity moving forward. 

O friend, we need to speak the word of God boldly.  It is the only hope that people have, whether they know it or not.  However, that kind of power is only found in a place of prayer seeking God’s help.  Let’s get to it!

Power of Prayer audio

Where Are We Headed? Part 1

Subtitle: When Intervention Goes Too Far 

2 Kings 20:1-7 (Also, Isaiah 38/39).  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 13, 2022.

We are going to start a new series that asks a question about this world and humanity as a whole.  Just where are we headed as a world and as humanity?  Of course, there is what the Bible says about this.  However, I want to focus first on the things that the world is saying, so that we can then turn to the Bible and see what it says.

This approach is important because it pulls back the curtain on some big issues and prepares us for the debates that are happening now and looming on the horizon.  It also helps to protect us form becoming a lemming that blindly follows the herd.  Though it is now known that they do not commit mass suicide by running off of cliffs, lemmings will migrate outside of their proper habitat and die off in large numbers due to social stresses.  Of course, we have a lot of stresses on our world today, both real and made-up, which makes this question more important than ever.

Let’s get into our passage.

King Hezekiah is told God’s will

In this chapter, we find King Hezekiah who was the king of Judah, reigning roughly 716 BC to 687 BC.  He becomes king right after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria in 722 BC, just six years prior.  Though the timing is a bit unclear, our passage today is related directly after a siege against Jerusalem by the Assyrian leader Sennacherib.

Before we look at that siege, let me remind us of 2 Kings 18:5-7.  It tells us Hezekiah’s character and faithfulness to God. 

“5 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses. 7 The Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.”

Hezekiah had lived a faithful life that was comparable to David.  Then, the Assyrians surround Jerusalem (see 2 Kings 19) and threaten it.  In short, God protected Jerusalem when one angel in one night destroyed 185,000 Assyrian troops, ruining Assyria’s plans of extending their dominion.  On the heels of this great victory, tragedy strikes when Hezekiah become deathly sick.

Directed by God, the prophet Isaiah comes to Hezekiah and gives him a Word from God.  He tells him that he will not recover from the sickness, and he should get his affairs in order.  Let us recognize that this is not a doctor telling Hezekiah that he has no hope.  This is God telling him that his time is up.  There is a big difference between turning to God in prayer when the doctor says that you are going to die and turning to prayer when God directly tells you that it is your time to die.  This would hit anybody quite hard, especially coming from a prophet like Isaiah.  This is no crackpot who is guessing.  He has proven himself to be a true prophet of God.

Next, we are told that Hezekiah weeps before God in prayer, asking Him to remember his life of faithfulness and grant a reprieve.  One good thing about Hezekiah is that this is the second time in Scripture that we see him on his face before God weeping in prayer.  He did this when the Assyrians surrounded the city and now when he is told his life on earth is ending.  Would that we had much more of this in our churches, people on their face weeping over the condition of our communities, States, and The Republic.  Hezekiah was a righteous man who knew that God was his main hope.

At this point, God relents and listens to Hezekiah’s appeal.  Even as Isaiah is leaving through the courtyard, God tells him to go back to Hezekiah with a message.  God would grant him to recover and live for 15 more years.  Of course, this comes true and Hezekiah goes on to reign 29 years instead of 14.

On the surface, this appears to be another witness to the miraculous power of God and the power of prayer to turn the heart of God.  However, this event becomes a turning point in the way that the Bible describes Hezekiah and begs this question.  Were those extra 15 years a blessing or not?  Even the phrase “wept bitterly,” used to describe Hezekiah’s praying, seems to speak of one who is struggling with accepting God’s will.  He clearly had not reached the point that the apostle Paul had reached when he said, “I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”  (Philippians 1:23 NKJV).  However, the apostle Paul had dealt with tortures and much grief, whereas Hezekiah has had a comparably comfortable life.

The Bible gives us a glimpse of what happened in those 15 years. 2 Chronicles 32:25 says of Hezekiah, “But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up; therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and Jerusalem.”  Following a miraculous destruction of the Assyrian army and a miraculous recovery from a deathly sickness, Hezekiah’s “heart was lifted up.”  This is a Hebrew expression meaning that he had become proud.  Is it possible that the blessing of God can make us proud?  Oh yes, it is not only possible, but it is also the true test of blessing.  Will I become proud and arrogant in the face of God and my fellow man, or will I humble myself and recognize that it is His undeserved grace?  God was not please with Hezekiah’s heart, which demonstrated its pride in all manner of small and large incidents.

2 Kings 20:12-19 describes such an incident.  Having heard of his “good fortune,” Babylon sends some ambassadors to congratulate King Hezekiah on his recovery with a gift.  Hezekiah’s pride leads him to show them all the treasure, goods, and the armory that he had “in all his dominion.”  His pride set him up for a great fall.  Babylon would remember the great treasures in the nation of Judea.  Such a prize would later come to be too desirous to resist.

Hezekiah will die and 2 Kings 21 opens with Hezekiah’s son Manasseh beginning to reign at 12 years old.  If we do the math, we come to realize that Manasseh was born during those 15 extra-years in Hezekiah’s life.  This is how the Bible describes Manasseh in that chapter.  He, “seduced Israel to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.”  It goes on to describe him raising up the high places and worship of Baal.  He raised altars to all the host of heaven within the Temple courtyard, and built an altar to Molech where caused his son to “pass through the fire,” a reference to child sacrifice.

This casts a shadow over Hezekiah’s recovery and grant of 15 years.  Manasseh holds the title of the most wicked king that Judah ever had.  This brings us back to the difference between being told by a doctor that you are going to die, and being told by a proven prophet.  We are told to pray for recovery when we are sick.  However, Hezekiah becomes a cautionary tale that reminds us that we don’t always know what is best for us, and others around us.

Can we create a world that erases all tragedies, and should we try?

I share this story about Hezekiah because there is an impetus in our modern world to try and erase all tragedies, as if we could get to the number zero.  Imagine a world where nothing bad ever happens.  Shouldn’t we try to create it?  Wouldn’t it be our moral duty?

Even Christian groups have come to promote the idea that, when God prophesies that an evil will occur, He tells us so that we can work to avoid it.  The story of Jonah and Nineveh would be a perfect illustration.  Yet, I would caution us that repentance can never be primarily about avoiding an evil.  Ultimately, repentance has to be about the recognition that I have chosen a wrong path, and turn back to God regardless of how He will respond.  I do it because it is the right thing and I see the error of my way.  God is not required to relent when we repent, and we are not told in Scripture that all prophecies can be overturned.  Yes, in general, God warns of evil so that we will repent and be spared that evil.  However, some things cannot be overturned.  Can the judgment of the nations that happens at the Second Coming of Christ become merely a great earthly welcoming of heaven when Christ breaks the clouds?  I do not believe we can actually avoid the prophecy.  We can only kick it down the road.  The people of Nineveh repented and avoided judgment, but most generations do not repent.  Eventually, judgment fell on Nineveh, just like God said it would.

How about America?  How is our repenting going?  Of all the generations that have been born since 1776, what is our percentage of repenting generations to the total?  I believe it is abysmally low, and that we are in grave danger.  Repentance may grant us a reprieve, but that is not why we should repent.  We should repent because our sin is dragging us to hell, and only God can save us.

Is it our job as Christians to create Utopia?  It is interesting that Christ never told us to focus on fixing the world, but rather, to make disciples of those who respond to our sharing of the Good News.

One of the problems in this area is the law of diminishing returns.  Society has been on a trend of making laws to keep bad things from happening: seat-belts, bicycle helmets, social security, insurance, life-support systems, etc.  However, this has not removed all tragedies.  We are now at a stage where it is becoming vogue to take the right of choice from individuals and put it in the hands of wise, “all-knowing” elite in our society.  Now, the first laws we pass and the first things that we do can make a large difference.  Kid’s wearing a bicycle helmet will drastically impact the numbers of head injuries and deaths.  However, to get that next percentage will take far more drastic laws.  It will take more and more drastic changes in order to get less and less of a difference.

Picture global warming.  The weather and temperature of the earth is a highly complex system.  It is questionable whether humans can actually effectively change the temperature of the planet.  However, cleaning up the emissions of our vehicles and factories has made a huge difference in smog around highly-populated areas.  It will take more and more drastic measures, in dollars and freedom, to make less and less of a difference.  In fact, our attempts to make good things happen in one area of a complex system often have negative effects somewhere else in the system.  You can picture the proverbial plate spinner trying to keep millions of plates spinning at the proper rate all the time.  Humans can’t do this, and so we turn to artificial intelligence, AI.

Part of the problem is the physical frailty of humans.  Think of all the safety engineering that goes into the modern car.  We have lane assist computers with smart cruise control, so you don’t drive into the back of someone when you get distracted.  The car is designed with crumple zones and air bags so that you have a good chance of surviving accidents.  As amazing as all of this technology is, humans are just too frail to get the number of deaths, and even accidents, to zero.  Sure, we could ban all transportation of people, but do you want to live in such a world?  And, are there not other tragedies we should want to avoid, not all of them about mortality alone?  Trying to get tragedies to zero is a no-win game.  Yes, we can make a big difference, but there is a point at which we say that it isn’t worth it to keep beating the dead horse.

We will talk more about this in a later sermon, but we keep bumping up against this reality that we are simply too frail.  Our attempts to counteract the frailty with technology has brought us to the point of desiring to use the technology in order to change ourselves as a species.  As long as we are mortal humans, tragedies will occur and will never be zero.

At this point, we should see that there is an even greater problem that humanity keeps running from.  It is the problem of our moral frailty.  Our penchant for choosing sin is at the heart of this tragic world.  Sin is the source of all tragedy as seen in Genesis chapter three.  No matter how perfect a system we create, humans are always the weak link in it.  We amass great power to help humanity, and then certain humans use that great power to enrich themselves and make slaves of the rest.

This too presents another pressure for humans to take a path of becoming not human.  There is no path back from some decisions and the repercussions cannot be known in advance, though they can be suspected.  Only God can help humanity back from the decision to listen to that ancient serpent, the devil.  We are even now attempting to take hold of our evolution inside of labs all across this world.  Will we survive?

Christians should not be fatalistic and refrain from making the world a better place.  Yet, notice that it is not our goal, but a side-effect of discipling people to be like Jesus.  This will never make the world a zero-tragedy place, and it is not even our focus.  However, the lepers of India are sure thankful that Christians came to the shores of India and were moved by Christ to have compassion upon them.  In this, we must have all our hope in God and not in the technology of man taking His place.  Such interventions can go too far and open Pandora’s box.

Where are we headed audio

What Does God Really Want from Me? Part 4

1 Peter 4:1-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, February 6, 2022.

What does God really want from Me?  We continue today on part 4 of God’s desire for us.

Last week, we talked about the analogy for spiritual growth given in John 15, the vine of Christ.  We want to connect into the vine of Christ and draw life from him, instead of drawing death from the vine of this world.

Today, we are going to look at some very practical ways in which we can focus ourselves and ensure that we grow spiritually.  Yet, we must remember that all spiritual growth is measured by Jesus Christ.  He is the goal, and the means by which we attain it.

Spiritual growth takes intentionality from God and from us.  God is always faithful to do His part, so the only question is me.  What is my focus on?

Let’s look at our passage in 1 Peter 4.

Live for the will of God, not lusts

In Philippians 2:5, Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  In verse 1 Peter is basically saying the same thing.  “Arm yourselves also with the same mind.”  Peter’s version gives a distinct reminder that spiritual growth is also spiritual battle.  Christians need to get themselves ready to think like Jesus did, and Jesus thought about doing the will of God, not satisfying his earthly lusts, and fleshly desires.

Jesus physically suffered for us in order to do the will of God, and we need to do the same.  His life was first filled with slanders, which is emotional suffering.  However, he was also physically abused to the point of death for the will of God.

If Jesus had been living for the lusts of his natural self, then he would not have suffered a death on a cross.  He was put to death because he was following his Father in heaven. 

Do you remember that vine imagery in John 15?  Later, in verses 18-19, Jesus said,

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love its own.  Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

To choose to live for God instead of living for your flesh is a hard choice that only those who are connected to Christ can follow through because it requires suffering that is emotional and physical.

In verse three, Peter reminds us that we spent “enough” of our past life living for the lusts of our flesh.  He goes on to list the various things that people pursue in such a life.

Lewdness is a life that is lived without any restraint.  Lusts are those strong desires that our flesh has for the pleasures of this life.  Next, we have three partying terms that often go together.  Drunkenness is drinking too much wine, but often can become a way of life.  Revelries represent the activities of those who get drunk with others and are caught up in all manner of public nuisance afterwards.  Drinking parties is a word connected to drunkenness.  It is seen as a worse stage than the previous word.  Lastly, we have abominable idolatries.  The worship of idols and the things connected to them is a constant challenge in this life.

For the Christian, we know that it is high time that we leave this stuff behind, and begin to follow Christ, to learn from him a new way of life that is truly life.

Peter then recognizes that people in this world will be annoyed that you don’t live like they do.  This judgment can be as simple as speaking evil of you, but can also go to the point, as it did with Christ, that they put you to death.

Being judged by people in the flesh has to do with this life and what we experience from sinners.  Their judgment of us is “thumbs down,” but it is a judgment of fleshly people who can only see our outer man.  Their judgments can only touch our bodies, as Jesus reminded us. 

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”  Matthew 10:28 (NKJV). 

Don’t let the fleshly judgment of sinners bother you because there is One who is your judge, and it is only his judgment that matters.  In fact, he is also the judge of those who are judging you.  Verses 5 and 6 remind us that those judging us are about to be judged themselves by Jesus.  So, don’t pay a lot of attention to their antics and statements.  Focus on Jesus who is the judge.

Verse 6 continues this point, but is a bit cryptic.  The key is to recognize that the main point is in the second half of the verse.  You may be judged by men through fleshly means while you live on this earth, but in Christ we will live by the judgment of God through the power of His Spirit.  Peter points out that even those righteous men and women of the past who have died had to live with the same tension that we do. 

Think of those righteous people before the flood who were living in dangerous times.  There is a Jewish tradition that Noah’s father Lamech was killed by a wicked man.  They did not have as much information as us, but they knew to live for God rather than for the flesh, regardless of the judgments of the world around you.  They died and went into the grave awaiting God to vindicate them.  As Peter detailed in the prior chapter, Jesus went into Hades, the grave, and proclaimed his victory over sin and death.  This was bad news to those on the bad side of Hades, but it was wonderful news to those in the Paradise side.  They would now be enabled to follow Jesus into heaven and dwell in the presence of God while they await the Resurrection of their bodies.  All righteous individuals of every age must live in this tension of fleshly judgments of this world, and the judgment of God that is not clear to the world yet.  That day will come, and you will shine on that day!

In verse 7, Peter reminds us that the end of all things is at hand.  Remember, in chapter 1, we are told that Peter is writing to Jewish Christians who had been dispersed throughout the region of modern-day Turkey.  They knew that the judgment of God was coming upon the nation of Israel.  It was the end of national Israel until the times of the Gentiles would come to an end.  The way things were would come to an end and not continue into the way things were going to be.

This is a kind of template, or parable, for how the righteous should always live.  The pre-flood world had been warned that a judgment loomed over the earth.  The righteous lived in such a way that recognized the judgment on this world, whether it happens in their lifetime or not.  The righteous remnant of Israel lived this way, until Christ came and things changed.  We too know that this world is under the judgment of God.  The end of all things is near, and we should not view the world with the eyes of flesh.  It will look invulnerable and powerfully persuasive with such eyes.  However, with the eyes of faith, we will see that it is near to destruction and judgment by God. 

Peter tells us that this ought to inspire us to be a person of prayer, a person who spends time talking with God about the world around them, and what is to come.  This is a person who is serious, that is of a sound mind.  They haven’t been caught up in the crazy thinking of this world.  We are to be also watchful.  This word has the idea of sobriety at its root.  Instead of getting drunk with the world, we are awake and at our post in this spiritual battle. 

There is a connection in Scripture between watching and praying.  Jesus used this with his disciples on the night he was betrayed.  He asked them to come and watch with him for a while in prayer.  Yet, they kept falling asleep.  Thus, Jesus revealed the big problem in all spiritual growth.  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Your spirit may want to be like Christ, but your flesh doesn’t!  Only a person who wrestles with their flesh in prayer and watches over their soul before the Lord in prayer can overcome in the time of temptation and trial.

Then, Peter tells them to love one another.  We need other believers around us, and we need to be there for other believers.  This world is hammering on our faith, attempting to get us to follow it into what it thinks is its glory.  Our love must be fervent.  That English word gives the idea of heated, on fire.  However, the original word is more the sense of stretching forward, or leaning forward.  Instead of holding back, we are to lean into loving one another.  It is the picture of eagerness in fulfilling the command.

Peter says that this would involve covering a multitude of sins.  This is not the idea of covering up sins, but in making a proper covering for sin.  Peter doesn’t explain, but James does in James 5:19-20.

“Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.”

Without other believers around, we would be wandering away from the truth, and that’s the truth!  Keeping ourselves in Christ is the only way to properly cover sins.  That is why Repentance, Forgiveness, and the deeds of faith in Jesus are so important.

May God help us to help each other in this spiritual battle of faith.  In so doing, we will all spiritually grow through intentionally becoming like Jesus!

Grow part 4 audio

Lessons from the Underground Church 3: Spiritual Exercises

This is a 13 week series that will not be posted on our website.  If you would like an audio of the sermon or a written article on the sermon contents then please contact the church at AbundantLifeEverett@frontier.com.  You can also leave a message at 425.438.1500.  Thank you for your interest.