Unbelieving & Understanding, 1 Peter, 3:1-7

Now, let's take a look. We've got 1 Peter 3. This is actually what we're here to study here this morning, believe it or not. So, let's turn to it. One of the things that's neat, it is obviously a detour from the Ephesians-Colossians series that we've been looking at, but it's a very purposeful detour. You see, one of the things you may have noticed going through the Ephesians 5 passage, verses 21 through 33, is that most of it is focused upon the husband.

And at the beginning and at the end, the minority part is addressed to the wife. Well, Peter in 1 Peter 3, 1 through 7, does a wonderful complement. And I don't mean saying, gee, that's a nice letter, Paul. But a wonderful complement to Paul's letter. And what he does is he has six verses to the wife and then one to the husband. So very interesting. There's a kind of a counterbalance there.

And not only that, we're going to see that in that combination, we're going to skip out a couple of verses in the middle, not that those aren't inspired as well, but for the sake of time and what we have to cover, we'll do verses 1 through 4 and then verse 7. So we'll slice it this way, okay? Now, we'll also divide it up, verses 1 and 2, then 3 and 4, and then 7. So take a look at it in that progression. And also just to keep us in perspective here, this is our sixth and final week on God's design for marriage. We'll be proceeding on to Ephesians chapter 6, beginning next Sunday. I thought I'd introduce you to something a little bit different. Some of the folks in our ACTS elective, I've already seen a few of these, but I thought you'd find it of interest.

When we think about, you know, Peter writing to households, to husbands and wives, and one of the things to look at, Paul has been writing to Ephesus and Colossae in the letters we've been looking at here and kind of addressing things in this part of this large peninsula. What's Peter doing? He's addressing the other part of that same peninsula and more of the Northern and the Eastern part. And I'd like us to take a few interesting glimpses of this area of Cappadocia.

I think you'll find it fascinating. It's got a different kind of terrain than perhaps we're accustomed to. It looks a lot like this. Isn't that something? Now the rocks are coned. I don't think the people's heads are, but anyway, Here, for example, is Cappadocian lava bed houses. What they would have is this soft lava, and so the people took to carving out things in these houses.

And so you see these little openings on the side here, those were places where they would live. And I don't mean just a few of them. Notice something else, the snow dusting that's on there. So they would live in this in sometimes cold weather. Here's a couple of camel jockeys, and they're in an area that also has some of these same houses.

And it's interesting, you see lots of view windows up here, okay? And here's another one, and then openings are a little smaller, and you notice there's fairly regular kinds of houses here, and then up here, see those? So they've got a lot of houses up into the hills.

Here's some additional places. where he's ready to move in. And interestingly enough, this area also had underground as much as 18 stories down into the ground. And here's another kind of example of the way they would carve and they'd have these houses that would be built into the rocks with hallways and stairs and all kinds of rooms. And so anyway, lots of fun. So this is some of the homes that Peter is writing to, people living in these lava houses. First we need to get a background, and it starts like this.

In this Greco-Roman culture, again not gecko-Roman, Greco, it was expected that the wife and the rest of the household, including slaves, would follow the religion of the husband and father. That was the cultural expectation. Whatever the father was, that's what everybody else is going to do. That would be the norm.

Anybody who said, I'm going to do something different, it was like shocking. Like, I'm going to run the rest of my life walking on my hands or something. It's like, what? It wouldn't make any sense to them. Since a person, you know, might be, and a wife in this instance, might be presented with the gospel, which required you to place your trust in Christ and no longer in any of these other pagan gods or goddesses, or any of the magic or anything, the other things that they would rely upon, a wife might make a decision and the husband not. to put trust in Christ, and so the wife would be left in a position that socially was just unacceptable. Really shocking thing to do. So what's Peter doing? He's providing guidance to these wives. Here's my advice to you, he says, on how to handle it. And it's more than just human-level wisdom.

It's God's inspired wisdom given to these people here. So here's a Christian wife, perhaps having a non-Christian husband, It might be more common because frequently the husband, if he would become a believer in Christ, the cultural pattern was for the wife, of course, to follow along with everyone else. And so a Christian wife and an unbelieving husband would be a more usual exception. If a Christian wife was vocal about her faith in Christ, where the husband did not believe the same, it would be quite likely seen as just an insurrection, just a household revolution and rebellion.

And so Peter's giving some counsel here. Here's how you need to address that. Here's how you need to deal with this. And so he tells these women who are in that position, in the same way you wives be submissive, and of course he's talking to all of them, but now he gives, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word, by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. So he uses the same basic instruction that Paul did, didn't he, to start off. Wives, be submissive to your husbands.

And this is, interestingly enough, a present passive participle. It has this idea. Being made subject to. writing it like a command. As a matter of fact, he's less inclined to use imperatives. You've got to do this, you've got to do that. He is more inclined, as he writes, to describe, this is what it looks like. This is what it looks like in action. This is how it's lived out.

And he's more descriptive than he is imperative in the way he writes. The next phrase that pops up here is disobedient to the Word. Peter uses this word five times in the one letter, and this is kind of in the middle of the section. So what is he doing? Peter, in the middle of this section here, is trying to describe, look, you are living in the midst of people who don't believe.

Here's how you live in the midst of those who don't believe, including the wife with the unbelieving husband. which was a major issue if the wife had no instruction. How do I handle this? I am suddenly of a different belief than my husband. Now, so here's these unbelieving husbands and his instructions that they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives. You see, they may not be able to hear it, but they can see it. And that's Peter's perspective here. He says, go ahead and let them see it. Let them see it all the time. Just don't say anything. Let the behavior preach loudly.

So, interestingly here, the word translated win is cardinal. It's often used, but not in the New Testament as much, for financial gain. Isn't that interesting? That the husband may be gained as a great gain. The husband may be gained. Alright, and I think something else to apply, let's look at outside of just the husband and wife relationship.

Have you ever been in a situation where it simply is not appropriate or maybe even not allowed for you to talk about your faith in Christ? It may even be you've got a noisy job or a job that isolates you. You may not be in a position where you can always speak out about your faith in Christ.

And in this sense, He's given us some guidance, isn't He? And it doesn't matter, we're talking whether you're married or not. He's given us some guidance here. He says, if you're in that kind of a circumstance, continue preaching all the time. Just keep your mouth shut about it. Live it out. Make sure that they can see it because they can't hear it. So that's His instruction here.

Sometimes people can only see that we're cross-eyed when they can't hear it. Notice something else that's a pattern here as well. This 1 Peter 3 follows 1 Peter 3.12 when Peter is given a more general introduction that said very much the same thing. And this word observed is common between those passages, and it's the only two places in the whole New Testament where the word is used.

And so what does he tell them in preparation? He says, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God on the day of visitation. So what is he doing?

He's narrowing that down for the sake of the unbelieving wife. Make sure that everybody sees the Gospel. Make sure that everybody sees the Gospel. And if you're in the situation like the wife with the unbelieving husband, that people can see the Gospel all the time, even if they can't hear it.

He uses a couple of words. What are they going to observe? They're going to observe this chaste and respectful behavior. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking. There's a number of young mothers who are going to say, at the end of the day, I feel chaste every day, okay? And that's understandable. If you've got young kids, you know, you'll feel that way. But that's not what he's talking about here, is it?

This is a word that is part of the family of words that means saint or holy. That it's referring to a kind of behavior that has to do with your position in Christ. You've already been sanctified in your position in Christ. You're already made holy in your position in Christ. It is a matter of living in your daily condition as you already are in your eternal position.

The next word respectful here is the same word that Paul used twice in Ephesians 5, fabas, referring to respect. A respectful character is what he's spelling out. A respectful character. Okay, go on to verses 3 and 4 here. Peter kind of changes the story somewhat here, not in terms of saying anything conflicting, but he's changing the focus. What's he doing here? He's talking about, here's how we dress. And one of the things I want to assure you about, no, we're not going to Christian burkas.

But what he is saying here is he's saying, look, For the people of the time, and we have certainly something in common, those and the higher in economic status they had, those who were kind of in the upper echelons of the economy, the wives would frequently spend incredible amounts of time, effort, energy, and sometimes huge expense in order to be what we would term in our modern culture a trophy wife. they would do incredible things with hair and jewelry and dresses and things of that sort. I remember reading of one account where there was a high-level Roman official who spent the equivalent, if we were to convert it to modern terms, of something like a half million dollars on his wife's dress. Amazing.

So, what would happen is many of these wives would get lost in this, you know, just pursuing constant, boy, I got to look great, you know. And those who are of lower status would then be envious, jealous, feel left out because they couldn't pursue the same things.

Now, I have this picture of a garden trellis because I'm using that to illustrate what I don't have a picture for otherwise. And that is one of the ways that they would try to look really fancy was the gals would have a whole lot more hair than I do. But anyway. They would have a trellis that they would put like on the back of their head and they would weave the hair up into this trellis. And so the ladies would go about not only with fancy dress and jewelry, but this great big trellis going up here with this hair up on the trellis. That was just one of the ways that they would have it. They'd also go backwards. We have a number of diagrams of the trellis going backwards and sticking out the back and lots of structure to hold this thing up. Can you imagine that?

So anyway, there would be all sorts of great investment of times and even sums of money, special plating and braiding around these trellises and things of that sort. Lots of effort and energy and time going into the outward appearance. Here are some examples of jewelry of the era, nothing short of incredible. And we find actually quite a bit of it as the archeologists go through things. Now, in our own culture, we've got all sorts of things that people pursue in the name of good looks.

And it ends up, you know, endless plastic surgeries. We've got TV shows, you know. Last week, we talked about this word extreme. And so they ended up having, you know, endless plastic surgeries today. People have jewelry all over, sometimes punctured through their face. Eating disorders, all sorts of things can be easily out of whack in our culture. So, you know, you might laugh at these huge trellises that they used to wear, but in truth, we've got all sorts of similar obsessions. A great, you know, a pouring of effort and energy and emotional investment in how do I look. Some people even being addicted to these endless plastic surgeries, just can't wait till the next one.

What Peter is saying here is that a believer's sense of self-worth is not stuck in this mode of how do I look on the outside. It doesn't mean that we can't take some attention to how we appear, but our sense of self-worth is not tied up in that, because we understand instead it really matters far more what does God think, what does God say.

What would the Lord have us do? You think about it, even what we're doing here this morning. We're looking at God's Word. Why? Because it tells us how God thinks. It tells me what God thinks of me. It tells me how does God look at the world? What matters to Him? That's one of the great values in looking at God's Word. It tells us how God views things.

We have a message here that Paul wrote about elsewhere in a more general term. We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be from God and not from ourselves. That's where the treasure is, right? It's the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That's the treasure.

If you look back at the passage we looked at from Paul, it says, Husbands, love your wives, And did he say, love your wives because they have great hair trellises? No. Love your wives because after all they've got a quarter million dollar dress on? No. Love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. That's the value.

The value is at a spiritual level, not at a physical level. And, what did he do? This tells you, as Peter did, what does the Lord value? What's he looking for? You see, there will come a day when the Lord will look at His church and He will say, ah, that's exactly what I was looking for, okay? But it will be on a spiritual level, not what we're wearing. I'm not sure what we'll be wearing. Anyway, okay.

1 Peter 3, 3 and 4 comes across this way. It says, it describes what's precious in God's sight. And you know, that's worth taking a look at, isn't it? That's worth taking a look at. Let's take a look at that. He says, "...the hidden person of the heart and the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit." That's good. Let's take a look at each one of those.

The hidden person of the heart, that's something that doesn't matter what you put on the outside. I can have plastic surgeries and all kinds of things put on my body, put on the outside, inject it in, insert it in, surgically remove anything you want. No, what the Lord's looking on, is the inside, that hidden part, the part that people don't see. That's what the Lord says.

That is what I look at. That's what's of value. The believing husband is then told, along with the wife, put your focus there. That's where the value lies. It's easy for us at some time or another, and it's funny as the years go by it's even easier, to look at our bodies and say, that's not what I want. But what's amazing is the Lord looks at it and He says, I'm conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ. That's exactly what I want.

So the Lord's looking on the inside. We so easily look on the outside. We get up in the morning and if we can clear our eyes, we can look in the mirror and see ourselves on the outside. What we're doing this morning is we're looking at the mirror of His Word and saying, this is what God sees on the inside. This is how God views things.

And then he says, the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit. Here Peter is giving an important time perspective. You see, all these things, the jewelry, the plastic surgeries, everything else we do on the outside, there's going to be a time when those things are definitely passed, right? These are things that are imperishable. These are things that don't fade with time. He's saying, that's what God values. So while I look in the mirror and say, that's not what I want, God's asking us to look at this mirror, and then we know what God wants. We know what God considers of value, because it's timeless. It's not subject to the decay of time. It's not subject to change, at least not downwardly.

Furthermore, this word gentle, this is a loving friendliness, if you will. It isn't harsh. It isn't bad-tempered. There is a quietness, and what's the value of this quietness? Not just that you keep the mouth shut, but the quietness, it means lacking a restlessness. There's not this bucking and constantly fighting. Why? The believer who is looking to the Lord, and this includes the beauty of the wife who is looking to the Lord, has their confidence in Him, trusting in Him, resting in Him, and therefore has no reason for this restlessness, no reason for the bucking, no reason for the insubordination and the conflict and the strife. There's a quietness within, and it's a good thing.

Now, verse 7. He turns the singular focus here on the husband. After six verses, and we've gone through four of them, addressed to the wife, he turns to the husband, and just in case you say, oh good, I don't have too much to have to think about, what he gives to the husband here has a lot of weight to it. It's potent in what it says. You husbands in the same way. And it's interesting, this same way phrase, he's continuing here.

And he's been addressing the wives for six verses, and now he's saying, look, we're making a focus here on what is spiritual versus what's external. And we're looking at the Lord's perspective here. It's not driven by the culture. It's not driven by the whim or the will of the flesh. It is instead telling us this is what God has in mind.

You need to take a look at that. That's what counts. Live with your wives in an understanding way. Now, guys, I want you to listen carefully. Look carefully. See this? We showed you this several weeks ago. It's very important that you understand this.

When Peter says, live with your wives in an understanding way, he's not kidding. He's also not giving you something easy. It is a huge challenge by God's intent. This is something that the believing husband can only accomplish by faith in Christ. Pure and simple. Live with your wives in an understanding way. He's really gone and done it. It's been years that men have said, who can understand a woman? Guess what? That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Yeah, shocking, isn't it? Now, he turns around and tells the Christian husbands, yes, that's precisely what I want you to do. They are to go beyond that and be living with their wives in an understanding way. Isn't that interesting? He doesn't say just hypothetically understand her and keep it to yourself. He says, no, live with your wives in an understanding way.

So put this into action. I mean, this is really incredible. This is the spiritual equivalent of rocket science. So this is tough stuff. Alright, now, there is a lot to understand. No, that's not what I had in mind. No, that's not it either. There we go. What in heavens does Peter mean? There we go. Alright. Here we have these brief words And with that, Peter's said a whole bunch in a short set of words there.

The husband is, first of all, to see his wife with a knowledge, with an understanding that's based on knowing how God sees her. How are you going to know how God sees your wife? His word. It's the spiritual things that count, he's telling them. It means he has to understand the spiritual maturity of his wife. Scripture talks about that repeatedly. What's the spiritual maturity of the person that I'm married to? What does she need next to grow on?

It means to listen very carefully and with insight. Very carefully. Remember, in the first part here, we saw in the first verse, here's the unbelieving husband. He can't hear the gospel, but he can see it. Now, Peter addresses the husband who is believing, but may have a hard time hearing. He's saying, live with her in an understanding way. Part of that, listen real carefully. There may be a lot of listening to do, but do it. Listen real carefully.

Now, you've seen pictures like this of Superman? I'm going to tell you about Super Peter Man. About 20 years ago, I was living down in the Silicon Valley, believe it or not, with my wife and kids. And I was really busy. I mean, really busy. Here I was, you know, had kind of a vice president position of marketing and one of those Silicon Valley tech companies, and I was flying all over the world. And on top of that, I was going trying to go through a two-year full-time MBA program while I was working, you know, 60, 80, 100 hours a week. And trying to finish the MBA program in two or three years, two.

I even had Nancy go to class for me more than once, at least once anyway. In the middle of that, with kids crawling all over our shoulders, one day Nancy comes to me and she's just really struggling. And I say, I don't know what your problem is, go get some counseling, I'm too busy. And so she goes and gets some counseling and I fly off to Europe or wherever I went.

What was I thinking? What Peter is laying out here is, listen carefully. I wasn't even taking a moment to say, alright, let's understand what she's saying. I really blew it. You don't want to do that, guys. You want to live with your wife in an understanding way, and that means being willing to take the time and slow down if necessary to listen carefully. Now, the good news, there was a point where I finally came and told Nancy, you know, I've got something seriously wrong here. And the Lord dealt with me and my heart to deal with that. And yes, I did slow down a little. So, that was a good thing. Praise the Lord. But here's something we've got to take a look at.

He says, as with someone weaker. Now, is he at the brink of insulting women? As with someone weaker? After all, since she is a woman, So what's Peter getting at here? What's he trying to say? That can be downright offensive after all. You see, one of the things I think it's important to get at, he is not making any valuation, and we'll see here shortly as to why, he's not making a statement about inferiority or superiority or anything of the sort. That's not the point. He's saying, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. They are not the same as you. They are intentionally different, made so by God. It's God's intent that they're different. Believe me. He is pointing out the vulnerabilities that naturally go along with being a woman. It's certainly clear that in probably most households, if there was an arm wrestling competition, the husband would probably win, okay?

But there are other vulnerabilities I think he's pointing out to as well. The woman goes through times of the month, time of life, and all that's involved in carrying children, both before and after they're born. There are all sorts of vulnerabilities that go along with it. And, you know, one of the things that I think may be a point of comparison here, As women go through the month, through life, all sorts of roller coasters, okay? And for the gal that's going through it, it can be a scary experience, alright?

So what you have to understand is Peter is telling the husband in the midst of this, understand her. And don't just put it up hypothetically, hey, I've got it down here in order to answer the test. He says, I want you to understand her when she goes through this, whatever it is, whether she's right at the top or screaming as they're headed down or just about to hit the bottom and about to go back up, no matter what stage she's at, I want you to understand her. I want you to live with her in an understanding way. There is not just the I do's at the beginning of the marriage ceremony, but there's other things to deal with as well, okay? At each stage, live with her in an understanding way.

And this is the point I think is key. He is not making any evaluation. This isn't inferiority, superiority, whatever. God intentionally designed the difference. How do you treat her? Show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life. Why? In spite of what's going on physically in her, in spite of what's going on emotionally, The same message He's been giving all the way along in this passage is spiritually, where is she at? She has the same position in Christ you do. She has the same blessings in Christ that you do.

Peter probably doesn't mean just make her queen for a day. So what's a guy supposed to do with his wife? Show her honor. Is that what he means? What he's talking about, honor recognizes who God has made her spiritually. Recognize her position in Christ. She may be going through the roller coaster, things up and down and sideways, but her position in Christ is the same as yours. She is blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ just like you. Show her honor.

For something else that's interesting, as I looked up this word honor, it is in more than one place coupled with this word for being sanctified. Showing her honor is also recognizing that with her as a spiritual being, it is the husband's place to show her sanctifying love. That's connected up with honor.

Same message as Paul, or at least a good complementary message, isn't it? Come back to this. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. Peter is telling the husband what to do and why here. The husband is to view his wife spiritually. That's the message we consistently see here.

So that your prayers are not hindered. Now, first thing we do when we look at that, we might think of that and say, heavens, you know, if I'm not listening to my wife, does that mean the Lord's not going to listen to me? And is this just a veiled threat? I think it goes more than that because the husband who is not looking at his wife from a spiritual perspective is also not looking to the Lord with the right spiritual perspective either. If you hold the right spiritual perspective and are beholding the Lord, you're going to be living with your wife in an understanding way and you'll be praying in such a way that the Lord is listening and you're praying in fellowship with Him. Doesn't that make sense? That our walking with the Lord is consistent with living with our wives in an understanding way. Those two go together.

I don't think Peter is sitting here holding this over us as a threat, as if ready to beat us with a stick, as much as he's urging that we have a spiritual perspective on things, God's perspective. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this here, boy, we are consistently urged to view things from the viewpoint that you've given us here, that you've spelled out. And we pray for the husbands here as they do that. We pray for the wives. We pray for any who may be in a position where they have an unbelieving spouse. And Lord, regardless of married or not, there are those of us here who have situations where we cannot look around us and see the opportunity to speak Your Word out, to speak the truth, and yet we can live it out, and we thank You for that.

And we can also look to our value that we have in You, regardless of our standing, married or not. We thank You for that marvelous, wonderful place, that irreversible, untouchable, unfathomable set of blessings that we have in you. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.