Our Proper Attitude In Suffering - Part 2
1 Peter 4:1-6 · Andrew Molloy · Jul 26, 2020
1 & 2 Peter (2020-21), No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261919403268

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, 1 Peter, chapter four, verses one through six, part two of two is where we're at. Let me read the six verses we're studying. Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose or the same mind, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For the time has already passed, or that for the time already passed is sufficient for you to have carried out the will, the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. Verse four, in all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you, but they will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. Verse six, for the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.

And those are our verses. And I was trying to be quiet because I wasn't wanting to read too loudly about sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties for fear someone in the hall out here at the office might hear me. They may be wondering what's going on in here. Okay, Andrew.

So, a brief review of that verse 1 and 2 that we covered last week. verse 1 and 2, 1 Peter chapter 4, therefore since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because those who have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. And I found this from None but the hungry heart that addresses, especially verse two, verse one and two, by way of review, I think it's good to read through. And this is Charles Andrew Coates, C-A Coates.

And he says, let the same disposition be in you which was in Christ Jesus. For as much then as Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves, a heavy armament that is, Likewise, with the same mind or the same intent. I like Merriman's word for that, the same intent.

For he that has suffered in flesh is at rest from sin. And he says, too late, too late. If we seek to deal with sin by reckoning at the moment, it becomes an issue. Our stand and attitude from the beginning of each day is to be a subtle matter as we rest in our risen Lord Jesus Christ. The death of the cross separates me from the enslavement of sin and self, and I continually abide in my new life, Christ Jesus. My life is hid. with Christ in God, Colossians 3. The reckoning believer is to meet every proposal of self-gratification, and we talked about that last week, that self-gratification of those lusts, meet every proposal of those armed with the same intent to suffer in the flesh as Christ did. Sin is the gratification of self, but he hath But he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from the domination of sin.

If you allow yourself to entertain a suggestion of self-gratification, if you consider it and give it place in your mind, you are defeated. You have laid aside your armor. And again, that's heavy armament. And you will fall easy prey to foe. but there will be no response to the suggestion or temptation if you stand armed with the mind or the intent to suffer in the flesh. That which is proposed to you is exactly opposite to what you are set for. It is suggested that you should be pleased and gratified in the very thing in which you are fully minded to suffer. You are now in conflict with sin, not going along with it. You suffer in the flesh, and you have ceased from the practice of sin.

So that's a lot of what we talked about last week. He takes a different approach, a bit more of a, a positional approach to it than I was taking last week, but it's a good entry in None But the Hungry Heart from Miles Stanford. And that amplified, chapter four, verse two is, so that he can no longer spend the rest of his natural life living by his or her human appetites and desires, but he or she lives for what God wills. And that's all in the verses that we covered last week. Big, big verses.

I go now to my chart, which I produced last week, which is helpful for me because it's a visual thing, and it just puts in a lot of the elements or a lot of the characteristics of 1 Peter chapter one and two. of chapter four, chapter four verses one and two, into these two categories. The upper one is being in the will of God and being in his good pleasure. The lower sphere down below in the gray is being out of the will of God, out of favor. And you'll see from the, I call them, Oh, conversation boxes down there, or thought boxes. The characteristics that a believer would be in. They're a slave to sin when they're out of the will of God. They're dead in their trespasses and sins. They're living for the lusts of men there, in blue.

That's from verse two of chapter four. They're actually shirking suffering, which means, you know, putting it away. And when you do that, you get to avoid suffering, but then that's being dissipated. You're falling from grace. It's the prodigal son mired in the pig pen, which we'll get to later.

And you'll know why I have the prodigal son there as one of these characteristics, one of these thought boxes. So at the top is being in the will of God. And I divided it up in the will of God and out of the will of God, because as you see on the right from verse two, you're living in the flesh down below to the will of man. But if you're up top, you're, what it says in the last part of verse two, you're living for the will of God. So all the boxes above are characteristics which which characterize a person abiding in Christ, right? So you're dead to sin, alive to God, you're being conformed to his image, you're obedient, you're a righteous son, you're remaining in grace, not falling from grace. You're no longer slave to sin.

And a lot of that up there is from Romans chapter six. Peter, it's amazing how he takes one verse, two verses, one and two of chapter four. And he, in that little tiny space, he kind of describes the whole of Romans six. It's really amazing. He's very, Peter is very, his, the economy of his words and his writing is so precise. It's amazing what he, all that he says in so few words. So that's why I wanted to put this all in a picture because it's dealing with so much.

You know, up there at top, if you're within the will of God, you've got release from sin from verse one, you're suffering in your flesh by refusing to sin. From verse 13 that we'll get to in the next few weeks, you're sharing in Christ's suffering and rejoicing when you're in the will of God and abiding in him. So that's, I just wanted to bring back that chart because I think it's, or that picture, I think it's helpful. It's helpful to me, all the characteristics. Okay, here we are, verse three. This is the new material that we're getting to today.

For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. I call this verse, I came up with this yesterday, the Sinner's Hall of Fame, verse three is. because it's the opposite of Hebrews chapter 11, right? The Saints Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame of Saints that Hebrews chapter 11 talks about. Well, this is the Sinners Hall of Fame because this is everything. Note how Note in the King James there, the other words, how the King James puts it, lasciviousness, less excesses of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries. That's the King James version.

But Peter says the time has passed. the previous life of believer, even if it's as bad as all these sins that are delineated in verse three. And I say most believers don't live that kind of excessive life. Most are good people, but I think Peter here is being a little hyperbolic and just throwing in everything. And even though you could commit all these sins, you are still saved, right? You still have a new life after you've accepted Christ. But he says that the time has passed, and that's, it's closed and done, the time for you to have carried out these sins. It's a closed matter, Wiest says. We, along with these believers, Peter's are writing to, have died with Christ, right?

Romans 6, 8, are freed from the desire to sin, Romans 6, 7. or the purpose or the will to sin. The Greek is bolema, and we're freed from continuing to live in sin, all because of the items of Romans chapter six. And we have newness of life in verse four of Romans chapter six.

And old things have passed away, behold, all things are become new. And that, if my memory serves me correctly, is 2 Corinthians 5, 17. I think I'm quoting there. Old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. More on this word for the time has passed, or the time is sufficient, the time has already passed. It's perokamai in the Greek.

And it's a very strong phrase to mean the end of a thing. So strong that Christ used the same word to describe heavens and earth when they pass away. What he says in Matthew chapter five, verse 18, therefore truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass, same word again, from the law until all is accomplished. And so that, when heaven and earth passes away, It's done, heaven and earth. You can't go back and get heaven and earth back. They have vanished. They are in history, and you can't redo them. So severe is that passing away.

So Peter uses the same word, already past, for you to have lived in sin, lived in the desire or the will of mankind with all these sins. So is Peter saying, if you haven't lived it up back then when you were a sinner, is it too late now? It kind of sounds like he's saying that, doesn't it? And a couple of people, Wiest and Macaulay here seem to think that it's slightly a humorous statement that he makes, a humorous dig at the will of the sin nature that Peter is using, slightly ironic. It's like saying, hey, if you haven't done all this, you're out of luck.

So if you haven't lived it up, you can't live it up like this again, because now you're in Christ. Andrew, how about the thought that maybe, since you're now a believer, your desire, your whole new desire has changed now. You have a desire to please God, so it's not as attractive as it was before. It may still be, at some level, attractive, It's much more attractive to walk with the Lord and please Him. Yeah, yeah, and that's exactly right.

And my dad used to say, I like that, what he used to say, we know all these things, we know that they're comforting to us, because we, it's, what did he, how did he say it? If you, You know sort of the comfort of sin because it's easy. We're familiar with that. But abiding in Christ and shirking sinning and suffering, we're not as familiar with that comfort. or we don't know the joys and the real comfort, the real soul and spirit comfort we can get.

Somehow he said it much better than I just did, but it's a good way to say it, and it's kind of along the lines of what you're saying, Roger. Also, what Christ said, you know, before going to the cross, you know, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

Right. So there's that mixture of realizing that it's gonna be, there's gonna be suffering and pain, but there's also joy. It's valuing the joy over the suffering. Yeah, mm-hmm. And later on in Peter chapter four, I think it's around verse 12 or 13, it's that too. It brings in your suffering, but you're rejoicing. So it comes up, yeah. Did I say something?

I think, too, part of it is seeing the bigger picture. A lot of people who do these kind of things, it's to get you through the evening, or get you through the day, or the week, or whatever, but as Christians, we see a bigger picture. We have different motivations, and we see, like Christ, he saw the joy before him. He was able to see a bigger picture.

So I think yeah, right and we'll get to that hold that thought for a minute We'll we'll get to that if I can remember to come back to that your thought here Yeah, yeah just a brief thought Steven when he was dying and being stoned and Yes. Lord, what a comfort that must have been to his heart, dying in the flesh, looking at Jesus Christ. Yeah, yep. That's certainly true.

And my last point here is, isn't this an excellent verse to share with people? There's some people, some new believers, or even old believers who are racked over guilt with what they've done in the past. And they just, they focus on their past life. And there's a lot of guilt wrapped up in that. But it's, this is a good verse to share with them because of that word, pererekomai. It's already passed and it's sufficient for you carrying out those things and you're done. And right, yeah, the joy, there's joy in your new life and you have this new nature that seeks new things. So that's good.

Andrew, also that word that the Lord used there would indicate that in God's plans of eternity, there's not gonna be heaven and earth. Right. There'll be a different environment in eternity. Yeah. And there'll be a new heavens, a new Earth, won't there? Well, only for a while. Only for a thousand generations. Okay. And then that will pass away. Wow. So yeah, when they're passed, they're passed.

That's for sure. So I want to wrap those sins up that you see. In one, there's one word that you can summarize all those things, and that is, it's called college. You know how college students seem to really go, do all these things to the hilt, if you kind of follow the news.

They're just doing stupid juvenile things, unfortunately, but- It's a lot of laughter here. Yeah, that's, you know, if you, I mean, they drink till they can die. When I was in college, there was a girl who drank too much and she fell off a bridge and died. It was awful.

And these, there's a word in here for these, and we're covering these sins, but I guess since it's in the verse, we should cover them, but we should move on. It's a riotous living, you know, R-I-O-T, riotous living. And what Peter's saying here is that it's so bad that even the Roman authorities would kind of step in and say, hey, this, even under Roman law, which was pretty, which was pretty live and let live, right, with the, The communities that they were in charge of, as long as they didn't challenge Roman authority, they were okay with letting everything go, as long as there was some order. But there's some criminality here involved that even the Romans were surprised at.

So that's how bad it is. So, The summation or the adjectives for all these sins I have there in the middle, and I just wrote them all down or copied them all down. Unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence, desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, Lust, overfill of wine, surplus of wine. Merriman said it's guzzlings is the word. Village merrymaking, parading, slough or slough. Wild, furious, ecstatic religious ceremonies to false gods is what describes the Sinner's Hall of Fame here.

Here's the case study of the prodigal son. So, you know, he was the second son, and he took his, he asked his father for his inheritance, and then he went and squandered it with loose living, and that word is riotous living. He was engaged in proligacy, profligacy, that word in the left-hand corner, if you can read it, and I can't. Wasteful, amoral, reckless, extravagant behavior.

So you see the connection to 1 Peter chapter four, verse three, with the parable of the prodigal son. But I reread that parable and it's so beautiful Even after all those things, that son, he came to a senses and he said, Mama, I'm gonna confess to my father. I've sinned against you in heaven.

Just take me back. But before he even got on the estate, he was met by his father and then given a purple robe and then a ring and then he was taken back. And all he wanted to do was come back and Work is a hired hand, right? So on his father's estate, just so he could eat and get a meal every day. But no, he was brought right back to where he was previously. And it's a picture of the forgiveness of sins in 1 John 1, 9, and confessing your sins. being brought back into fellowship. So that's the case study of the Prodigal Son in relation to verse three there.

Here we are again with the same, my same favorite chart. And I just, Nothing's changed, I just added down below 1 Peter 4 3, down at the bottom in blue, all the Hall of Fame sins there. And that's what sinners do before they're saved, that's where they live, and believers who are either carnal or out of fellowship live down. And I have the prodigal son mired in the pig pen down there. And yeah, and I've quoted verse three there on the right of the chart. And I think it fits into that picture really well. Okay, verse four of chapter four, 1 Peter.

In all this, they, the people that you were running with, your crowd, and doing all those sins, they are surprised that you do not run with them to the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you, is what it says in verse four. King James Version has, they think it's strange now that the saved individual does not run with them. Not thinking, not that it's odd or unusual, but the word is from weast.

They think it's foreign or unnatural. And I think that comes back to what we were talking about before, what Carolyn was saying. It's against, it's against their sinful nature, but we, the believer now has a new nature that has new joys and new habits and is looking at Christ, a totally new nature. So it's true that the two natures, the old nature and the new nature, are totally different creatures, and that, I say in the next point, that These sinners, their sin nature recognized that a foreign antibody, meaning the believer, to all their revelings and carousing is there, and hey, he's a drag on their fun.

They recognize something different going on with the believer, and they will malign or falsely accuse this believer. of being motivated by some unknown evil. And case in point for that is what Hamilton Smith says. He says, the devil, incapable of appreciating goodness, suggested to God that the piety of Job, in the book of Job, was not real. so that he refrained from evil, not because he hated evil or loved God, but simply because he found it paid to refrain from excesses, or he found it was beneficial for him to refrain from cursing God and these excesses, meaning that if God would take away the blessing that Job had, then Job would curse God, right? So they sort of, God let him curse God. persecute Job and it ended up not being the case. Job's heart was really true and he hated evil and he did end up, loving God was his motivation. So that's sort of that describes how these unbelievers can malign you.

The last part of verse four there. Now there's two verses that are very similar to this verse four, and one's from the previous chapter in chapter three, verse 16. And it says, and keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, kind of same as maligning, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. And then Peter even carries this to chapter four in verse 14. He says, if you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests on you. So he's making, he's saying, what I like about Peter is he says the same thing several different times in this letter he's writing. verse chapter 3 into chapter 4, and he says it a different way, and he weaves it in a different way of saying it, but it's the same thing. He's very good at keeping these overarching themes, which is kind of neat.

Oh, here's another picture chart to help us out with verse 5. But the unbelievers, they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead, is verse five of chapter four. And I added this, copied this chart over from another lesson I did back in the past, simply because I wanted to, the top part of this picture chart is the judgments. So if we pay attention to the upper part, there's three judgments that I'm focusing on. The lower part is a timeline, and we're in the church age right now. Tribulation age is coming. It's seven years. The chart is not to scale. And then the millennial age, the millennium is coming. And the arrows down on the timeline are just the resurrections that occur.

Well, first is the rapture, the alive in Christ will be raptured at the end of the church age. The dead in Christ will be resurrected. That's resurrection number two, Christ being the first resurrection. There's a third resurrection of tribulation saints at the end of the tribulation age. And so that bottom part is just the resurrections, but it's good to kind of just put that in your head, because you can see when these resurrections are. There's several, and it's good to see them in the timeline. But the top part of this chart is our judgments.

In the future, he's gonna judge the living, which is right there in the middle in blue. Judgment two, it's the judgment of the living nations. It's the sheep and the goats judgment of Matthew 25, verse 31 through 46, where Christ puts the goats on his left and the sheep on his right. and the sheep get to enter into the kingdom, the goats are sent away to eternal damnation. But these are living people at the end of the tribulation age. That's when that judgment takes place. Judgment of the living. The judgment of the dead takes place at the end of the millennium. at the Great White Throne Judgment, that's when the dead are judged.

So that's, I just wanted to illustrate in picture form the phrase to judge the living and the dead. Because everybody who is an unbeliever will have to face one of these judgments if they live through the tribulation, or if they die, they're brought up again as dead at the great white throne judgment. And a corresponding verse to this is James 5, 9. Brethren, do not complain against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged.

Behold, the judge is standing right at the door. So this can happen at any second. That rapture can happen at any second. And then the judgment of the living nations, the sheeps and the goats, that will happen 1,000 years later. The great white throne judgment is going to happen. And Christ is sitting on his throne, but ready to get up and do this at a moment's notice. is what James says here.

Interesting that there's one more judgment up there to the left, and that's the Bema Seat Judgment, exactly what Roger has been teaching on in the 1030 hour, the main service. And that's a judgment for us or our works, right? the separating our works into gold and silver and precious stones, or wood, hay, and stubble, and what comes through that fire remains. What is burned up is loss, right? But the Bema Seat Judgment up there is not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with those two other judgments. Okay, verse six. This is a jivey kind of verse.

It's a little difficult to get a grasp on, but it says, for the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God. Now in verse five, we just talked about the judgments that Christ does, judgment of the living nations and the judgment of the dead at the great white throne judgment.

However, Peter, because he's so, he, he'll switch subjects sort of on a hair, a dime, you know. Paul will lead you through the way he writes and the Greek way is to lead you down the path, down and then up, up the path and up the mountain. Then you get to the mountaintop of the doctrine he's trying to present. And you're with him the whole way and you understand it. Peter just sort of jumps from peak to peak, you know, very quickly. and he doesn't really walk you down the path.

So part of the main subject of this verse is that gospel has been preached to all people of all ages before God will bring judgment upon them. So in the time of Noah, Christ talked about people were eating and drinking and getting married, and then the flood took them away, they were judged.

So Christ talks about Noah. Luke, that's Christ again, describing the judgment of Noah's, the people of Noah's time in Luke chapter 17. Then Peter, what Bob covered the other week, is again, time of Noah and the judgment that those people during the time that he was building the ark were preached to, and none of them accepted the gospel. And then in 2 Peter, Peter will bring it up again in chapter two, verse five. It's the time of Noah.

And the gospel was also preached by various prophets. Peter, again, in chapter one, verse 10 through 12, talks about the prophets preaching the gospel. It was preached by Christ during his time. And then in the church age, right now, It's being preached, and then in the tribulation, yet future, it'll be preached again, so that no one is without excuse.

The phrase, even to those that are dead, does not refer to those, the judgment of the great white throne judgment, or the judgment of the living, at the sheeps and the goats, in Matthew chapter 25. What that, rather it's those people that are dead are saints who are now dead. They have since died, but they were preached to by the various preachers over the course of history. So they're not the dead ones who are unbelievers that get resurrected at the end of the millennial age. They're just simply believers who have died and were preached to and accepted the gospel.

Then the other phrase, in this verse six is the ones that are judged in the flesh as men or by men. And judged in the flesh is not like Paul would use it regarding the sin nature or the old man or the old nature, the use of the word flesh, but instead it refers to simply that men back then were judged by unbelievers, other men, bodily, when they were here in body, when they had flesh and bone, when they're walking around on earth, that they were judged by the ones that were accusing them, and we covered that, of evil by not running with the crowd. That's from 1 Peter 4, verse four. They were judged because they had good behavior and they were maligned. 1 Peter 3, verse 16 is another, it's that undeserved suffering that believers who now may be dead had suffered at the hands of men.

So this is why this verse six is a little, it's difficult because in verse five he was talking about the great judgments of Christ, yet future, but then he switches in verse six to simply men judging men is the theme of this verse. So it's a totally different sort of, it's a horse of a different color. as the guy in Wizard of Oz says at the Emerald City at the end of the movie, if you've seen it. It's judgment of man on man's perverse terms. And so that judgment causes a believer to suffer under the perverse terms of judgment of men.

So that second bullet point from the top is, how I'm kind of summarizing, when living, they are judged by men as believers in Peter's time were. But responding positively to the gospel preached, they preserved and were able to live under the control and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and thus fulfill the will of God. And that's the last part of verse six there. They had an old life, and now they have a new life, living in the Spirit according to the will of God. And the believers that Peter was writing to are, of course, alive, but they're gonna experience the same thing as these now-dead believers had experienced, if you get that kind of picture.

But I'll end here. God has not and will not forget the unrighteous men who judged these saints or maligned them. And those unrighteous men or those unbelievers are now also have died, and he is ready to judge them at the great white throne judgment. Their time is coming, and we'll cover that in 1 Peter 4, verse 17. So you have all these intertwining judgments happening between verse five and six. Some are by Christ, he's ready to judge, and then some are men judging men. So that's what kind of makes it, it's a, It's a lot disperse, but that's where we're in today. If everyone's good with that. Any questions? That's good, Andrew.

It is kind of, can be kind of confusing. Yeah, yeah. Just a couple commentators mentioned that Peter Peter, his use of Greek is different than Paul's, and he phrases things differently, more in a Jewish way that is more difficult, more maybe evocative or poetic, and it's a little more, it's a little harder to sort of kind of flush out. Weiss says that too, so. I think your graph is really helpful. Oh, good, yeah, yeah.

Because it's easier At least, I mean, at least for me, it's easier to figure it out when I see the picture. Wait, this picture or the one, this guy? No, the other one. Oh, the other one, okay. Yeah. Yeah. If you, because you can see the different, you can follow through in the different areas So I think that's really helpful to me.

I always was confused about what judgment was when and what resurrection was when, because there's at least three of them, maybe four. The cross is a judgment in itself, so you could count that as a judgment. But it just gives you a picture of when all these things happen. But you have to keep in mind that this is a pre-millennial, pre-Trib, kind of chart. So a lot of Christianity today is all millennial. So they don't, they would never kind of map it out this way.

They're great that we have the Holy Spirit to teach us. Yes. Yeah. And, but when you map it out, this is what kind of the Bible says. And according to, you know, all the great men who have gone before, like Louis Bear Shaffer, and things like, and Walvoord, and Dwight Pentecost, and things like that. Guys like that, so, yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah, that's great, Andrew. That's great. Actually, it's gonna be really encouraging. I'm studying, I'm doing next week, so it's really, you gotta kind of switch gears, and really tell us, you know, about the end of all things is at hand. That's kind of interesting. But then, too, he sort of hearkens, it's all, this book is all sort of one, he ties things together from, it's amazing. So yeah, we'll revisit all these things, too, in chapter four. So when you get into it, it'll be, yeah, great. Okay. That's great. We better close here pretty soon. Yeah, I'll close here.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the study of your word pray that it'll benefit us and that we can first abide in Christ and avoid the temptations of sin and being in the sin nature and just stay in the heavenlies where we are with you in Christ. And we just pray for wisdom. We thank you for this study of Peter and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.