Worst Problem, Best News
Your biggest problem in life is not your sinus infection. It’s not your back pain or your tooth ache. Your biggest problem is not that your A/C went out. It’s not your demanding schedule or your weight gain or your marital stress. It’s not the fact that every time you turn on your stove top it trips your oven off and Whirlpool can’t seem to figure out why.
Your biggest problem is not the failing transmission of your car or your children’s bad decisions or your own bad decisions. It’s not your misery at work. It’s not your insomnia or your alcohol abuse or your loneliness that nothing seems to cure. Your biggest problem is not the crack on your iPhone screen. It’s not the dead-end of your career or the trauma of tragedy or the heartbreak of betrayal. It’s not your debilitating illness or the sins of your spouse; it’s not the legislation of your government or the malice of your neighbor; it’s not the guy two cars ahead who waits ten seconds before he turns left on green.
Your biggest problem is not your aging body, or your experiences of disappointment. It’s not your addiction, not your pathologies, not your brokenness. Your biggest problem is not the fact that one day you will die, just like everyone else. Your biggest problem is none of these things.
Your biggest problem is that you as a sinner are cut off and separated from God.
That is your worst problem, so here is the best news:
Christ suffered once for sins, he, the righteous, for us, the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God.
Jesus did not come to solve all of our problems yet, but he came to solve our biggest problem first. And I want to start here this morning because this is the most important thing I have to say and for those of you who have not trusted in Jesus, this is an invitation for you: right now, turn from your sins and trust him. Put your faith in Jesus and be saved, which means to be reconciled to God. It means that by faith in Jesus you are brought back into a relationship with God himself.
And for many of us in here, by God’s grace we know this grace, and so for the rest of this sermon I just want to talk to you about it. That’s what the apostle Peter is doing here. He’s writing to Christians, and in Chapter 3, verse 18 to Chapter 4, verse 6, he has two big ideas:
Remember the gospel event. (3:18–22)
Live like Jesus is real. (4:1–6)
Those are the two points of the sermon. Let’s pray and get started.
Father in heaven, we need your Holy Spirit. Overcome us this morning by his power, and please speak to us through your Word, in Jesus’s name, amen.
Remember the gospel event (3:18–22)
Here, in Chapter 3, verses 18–22, Peter is focusing on the death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s what Peter has in mind when he mentions the suffering of Christ at the beginning of verse 18, and that’s confirmed at the end of verse 18 when Peter says that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
The word for flesh in verse 18 could also be “body” and the spirit here is the Holy Spirit. Peter is talking about the event when Jesus physically died and then was physically raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. He’s talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus — his bloody cross and empty tomb. It’s what we call the gospel event. That’s Peter focus.
That’s what he wants us to remember, and in more detail now he highlights three accomplishments of the gospel event. The first is this:
The death and resurrection of Jesus — the gospel event!
1. Fulfilled God’s purpose for us (v. 18).
Look at verse 18 and notice first that the death of Jesus is described as substitution. “Christ suffered (or died) once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.” This means that Jesus who is righteous, perfect and blameless and faithful, he died in the place of the unrighteous, the broken and guilty and rebellious — which is us. Jesus died for us. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, Jesus, the Righteous One, for us the unrighteous ones.
Now look closer here at these words. Jesus did this “that” or “so that he might bring us to God.” That’s purpose language. Peter is saying that the purpose of the cross was to bring us to God — and of course that wasn’t the only purpose of the cross, but it was the main purpose. It was the ultimate purpose. Every other purpose, every other accomplishment of the cross serves this one—forgiveness, being declared righteous, our sins removed, God’s wrath against us absorbed, the securing of our future inheritance — all of these amazing gifts of the cross are for the ultimate gift of us being brought to God.
We are forgiven so that our guilt doesn’t keep us from God.
We are declared righteous so that our condemnation doesn’t keep us from God.
We are cleansed so that our shame doesn’t keep us from God.
The wrath we deserve was taken by Jesus so that future judgment doesn’t keep us from God.
We will be given glorified, new creation bodies so that our corruptible bodies don’t keep us from God.
The ultimate purpose of the cross and everything it accomplished was in order to bring us to God. It’s that we get him! God is the gift! And this is where God’s purpose for the cross and his purpose for humanity align. We shouldn’t be surprised it happens this way. ... The cross is the definitive, most vivid display of God’s love; it’s the clearest symbol of God’s heart; and his purpose in that is the same as his purpose for us humans — which goes all the back to Adam and Eve. It’s that men and women — created in God’s image and likeness, resembling and reflecting his glory — it’s that we would enjoy the display of his glory forever. That’s why God made us. It’s to share with us the joy of his glory.
And — just so you know, this is where we get into the highest mountain peaks of truth — because here is not only where God’s purpose for the cross and his purpose for us align, but here is where God’s purpose for us and his end for himself align.
It’s the eternal enjoyment of his majesty. It’s the perfections of his holiness, the radiance of his glory, that is beheld and esteemed and hallowed and loved and rejoiced in and shared.
This is the fellowship that the Trinity has always known and that we as redeemed creatures get welcomed into, forever. And that’s it. There’s nothing higher than this. Nothing higher!
And when Jesus died for us, he died for that! He died that he might bring us to God!
That’s the most ultimate accomplishment, and here’s the second accomplishment that Peter highlights:
The death and resurrection of Jesus — the gospel event!
2. Marked the defeat of our enemies.
Jesus was put to death in his body, raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit, verse 19 —
in which [or whom, speaking of the Holy Spirit] he [Jesus] went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
Okay, so what does this mean? There are at least four questions on these two verses:
Who are these spirits in prison?
What did Jesus preach to them?
When did he do this preaching?
Why is Noah even mentioned here?
There are several different interpretations to these questions, and I’m not going to get bogged down into the details, but here’s what I think Peter is saying: the spirits are fallen angels, evil angels, who are imprisoned currently for their evil and disobedience in the days of Noah. Jesus, in his resurrection and exaltation “preached to them” as in he made proclamation of his triumph. This same idea is repeated in verse 22: that Jesus has gone into heaven — the verb “to go” in verse 22 is the exact same as “went” in verse 19. Jesus… “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”
Included among these evil spiritual beings mentioned in verse 22 are the spirits mentioned in verse 19. They’re not in heaven with Jesus, but from heaven Jesus’s victory over them is declared and made known. The defeat of his enemies is clear. Jesus has disarmed them and put them to open shame, as Paul tells us in Colossians 2:15.
So why bring in Noah here? Why does Peter mention these fallen angels of Genesis 6, who were in the days of Noah?
Well it’s because of our shared connection to Noah.
Remember back to Genesis 6: Noah and his family were a righteous minority in the midst of a hostile unbelieving world, and he suffered for that. Noah suffered while doing good. He was maligned for his obedience to God — remember?
And his persecutors, literally all of them, ended up being destroyed by the flood, but Noah and his family, eight persons, were brought safely through that judgment.
Which, Peter says, by the way, there’s a parallel here to baptism. Since we’re talking about our connection to Noah, just like Noah was brought safely through water, through judgment, so are we in baptism — that’s what the symbol is about.
In baptism, we identify with Jesus in his death and resurrection. As a symbol, we are buried with Jesus in his death, the old is gone, and then we are raised to walk in newness of life, and the baptismal waters represent the grave. The water is not cleansing water, it’s judgment water that we are raised out of, symbolically, as new creations.
So it makes sense to me that when I was a kid, growing up in church, baptisms always stood out. It was big deal when they happened. I still remember them.
Anytime our church would have a baptism, our baptismal, was back behind the pulpit, under a big mural of the Jordan River — and in the mural, the river comes from a distance and gets wider to make it look like the baptismal is part of it. And right before the baptisms would happen, the entire sanctuary would go dark and silent. They’d turn off all the lights, and in the mural there was a black light outline of Jesus with hands out, and that image would appear in the dark, and my pastor would step into water, in the dark, and he’d say, “I’m standing in a watery grave.” And I’m six years old and completely freaked out.
But that’s what it is. The baptismal water is a symbol of a grave, a symbol of judgment, that by our union with Jesus, we are saved from, through the resurrection of Jesus. Baptism does not accomplish a literal saving — but it’s a symbol, conveyed in faith, that we belong to Jesus and share in his resurrected life, including his victory of evil. That’s where verse 22 takes us again. Look at verse 22.
We’ve seen the tangent on Noah and baptism, but the point is that the gospel event marked the defeat of our enemies. Our enemies — currently, right now — the oppressors of your soul, the evil spiritual realm including Satan, is subjected to Jesus. Evil is still active in the world, but it’s bound and restrained. The death and resurrection of Jesus marked its defeat.
Now here’s the third highlight. The death and resurrection of Jesus — the gospel event!
3. Proved that suffering does not have the final say.
It’s easy to get a little sidetracked by verses 19–21, but look at the bookends here, verse 19 and verse 22.
Verse 19: “Christ suffered once for sins” ... Verse 22: “Christ has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God.”
Those again, are the two realities of the gospel event:
Jesus died on the cross.
Jesus was raised from the grave, exalted.
And it’s the combination of these two things that Peter really wants to stick with us because imagine how encouraging this is for suffering Christians!
Hey, don’t be intimidated by your suffering. Don’t think that suffering is some abnormality in God’s plan, for Christ also suffered — and Christian, just as suffering was the pathway to his exaltation, suffering is the prelude to our glory. Don’t you see?
Remember the gospel event. Isn’t that what it is?
The death and resurrection of Jesus is victory through defeat. And it
proves to us that suffering does not have the final say... but suffering actually becomes the means to greater blessing:
Victory through defeat.
Greater gain through loss.
Greater glory through shame.
Greater life through death.
Because of the gospel event, we know the worst thing is never the last thing. Remember that! Peter wants us to know what the death and resurrection of Jesus has accomplished. He wants us to remember the gospel event. And he want us to live like Jesus is real.
Live like Jesus is real. (4:1–6)
And I’m saying it that way because I think that’s the essence of all the ethical commands in the New Testament. When we get down to the main reason we’re told to conduct our lives in a certain way, it’s because Jesus is real and all this is true.
And when we live in that light, it means two things, in particular:
We fight to live in that higher plane of reality.
We expect to be ridiculed by the world.
Look at Chapter 4, verse 1:
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
So see this is an ethical command rooted in the gospel event. Because Jesus died and was raised, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. Which is a combat image. Strap on the same mental outlook that Jesus had about obedience and suffering — that you obey even if it means suffering because suffering does not have the final say.
And then Peter explains more what this looks like.
It’s that whoever has suffered in the flesh [or body] — whoever has resolved to suffer in their physical existence now — that person has ceased from sin. Which means that person, in their resolve to suffer while doing good, they have broken it off with a life of sin. This doesn’t mean that now they are sinless and perfect. But this is about their decision, their resolve, their break when they have said NO MORE to sin, in order to, so that, now, for the rest of their physical existence on this earth, they no longer live for human passions but they live for the will of God.
And this is where we get to that higher plane of reality.
Fight to live in that higher plane of reality.
There are two choices here:
There are human passions, what the Gentiles want to do (in verse 3)
There is the will of God.
It’s the will of sinful man OR the will of a holy God.
Well, in Christ, because he has died for us, because we’ve armed ourselves with his way of thinking, we no longer live for the will of sinful man. Which verse 3 says includes:
Sensuality. Passions. Drunkenness. Orgies. Drinking parties. Lawless idolatry.
That time is behind us. We’ve spent enough of our lives doing that. That’s over now.
Now — we choose the will of God. But wait minute. What do you think the will of God means?
Do you think that an alternative to a life of sin is a life of ease? Do you think that by breaking it off with sin, by turning away from the will of sinful man, does that mean you always have now this metaphorical blue bird on your shoulder, that you can see clearly now the rain is gone, that all of the bad feelings have disappeared — is that what it means to turn away from sin? Is that the will of God that we now live for?
No.
At least not here, not yet.
The will of God, that higher, truer plane of reality to which we are saved, and to which we are called to live in this world, that is a fight. That’s why you arm yourself with the mind of Christ.
Your resistance to sin will mean your suffering. If it were easy, more would do it.
And Peter is going to focus on one kind of suffering in verse 4, but for a minute, I want to talk about the existential struggle that’s in the air of this text. Remember that Peter is writing to Gentile Christians. Which means, these were Greco-Roman pagans, who before they believed the gospel, they actively participated in the sins that Peter mentions in verse 3. He doesn’t give us here a theoretical list of sins, but these are things that these Christians once did and they’re still happening all around them. And so you can imagine the pressure, right? These Christians are thinking:
Hey, I used to go to my neighbor’s slosh fest where all kinds of debauchery would take place, things too shameful to speak about, I used to go there and do those things, but Jesus saved me, and I don’t do those things anymore, now I live for the will of God, which means now my life is harder. Is it worth it?
Peter knew, as did all the apostles in their letters, that the Gentile Christians they were writing to were always on the brink of potentially slipping back into a pagan, godless lifestyle. Remember, there was no Christian culture cushion back then. You are either a godless pagan or you are now following this man named Jesus who died and was raised and has the right to tell us what to do. And that can be hard. That means suffering, and in that suffering, many said, and still say, I’m going back. I’m done. It’s not worth it.
And Peter is saying, Don’t do that. Suffering is part of the plan, see. It’s part of the plan.
Fight to live in that higher plane of reality. Not the will of sinful man, but live for the will of God.
Christians in the First Century needed to hear that, and we need to hear it today. The lingering shame of our sin and the ghosts of our past are as prevalent in our experience as they were back then. Pornography addiction, sexual deviance, homosexual activity, substance abuse, distorted obsessions — these are things that we deal with, church. And if you’re here this morning and you struggle with some of these things, I want you to know you’re in the right place. Peter wrote this letter to you. And for just a minute here, I’d like to say something to you. Three things:
You are loved by God — And I know it’s hard to believe, but you are. If you are in Christ, you are loved by God, and he’s not giving up on you. And we won’t either.
Be known — Don’t suffer in isolation, but bring in your brothers or your sisters for support and accountability. Talk to me or one of the other pastors to work on a strategy for the fight.
Don’t quit — You might think it’s easier to resign the fight and go back to doing what the Gentiles want to do, but that is shortsighted. To live outside the will of God is to brutalize yourself. Don’t do it. Fight for that higher plane of reality. Get perspective. Don’t quit.
That is the calling of every Christian; it’s Peter’s exhortation here in verses 1–3; it’s what it means to live like Jesus is real. And also, secondly, if we live like Jesus is real!
2. Expect to be ridiculed by the world.
Verse 4: With respect to this [your break with your sinful past] — with respect to that, they [the Gentiles, your pagan neighbors] — they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you ...
That word means to slander. It’s to be defamed. And Peter says you can expect that from the unbelievers who surround you.
Notice that Peter mentions verbal or social persecution, not physical persecution. Now we know that physical persecution became a reality for the early church, and it was sponsored by the state. History says that Peter himself was executed by the Roman Emperor Nero, and that happened probably around five years after he wrote this letter. So we know physical persecution will happen, but it hasn’t happened yet for them.
At this point, it was just ridicule. It was verbal and social persecution. It was ridicule from Roman neighbors who took note that these Christians did not participate in what they considered normal cultural activities. These Christians did not bow to their idols, or have their yard signs, or wear their colors, or go to their parades — and so do you know what they said about these Christians? That they’re terrible Romans. They saw Christians as being opposed to the Roman way, and so they treated them like outcasts. They ostracized them.
And again, this just presented another pressure on these Christians to renounce their faith and jump back on the cultural bandwagon.
But Peter reminds us in verse 5 [clap clap clap] — he calls us back to perspective: You might think that joining up with your oppressors will get you off the social blacklist now, but don’t forget where this is all headed.
Those who malign you, “they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”
You know why? Because he is real. We’re going to see him. We will all stand before Jesus one day.
That’s why “the gospel was preached even to those who have died” — verse 6. Peter is talking about Christians who had died since they became Christians. This was probably part of the ridicule they heard, that these Christians who believed in this new life in Christ, who believed in his resurrection, they die just like everybody else! — and when they die it looks like every other death. Their bodies stop working and they’re gone. And these pagans would have used this as a way to scorn these Christians.
But Peter says, remember, death is not the end! Remember the truth about the way things are even though it may not SEEM like it. Peter wants to give us perspective and if I had to put that perspective in a phrase, it’s this: Jesus is real. Live like Jesus is real.
Remember the gospel event. In his death and resurrection:
Jesus fulfilled God’s purpose for us.
Jesus defeated our enemies.
Jesus proved that suffering does not have the final say.
And therefore, we should live like he’s real, fighting for that higher plane of reality, expecting the ridicule of the world, but knowing that it’s all worth it.
Because my worst problem has been answered by the best news.
Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. We get God, forever. And that’s what we remember at the Table.
The Table
Over the last week, there have been hard things within our church community and our extended families, but here at this Table, in this moment, is when we stop, and set our minds on what is most true. Jesus has brought us to God. We are his. We are loved. No matter what happens here, we have a future with him.
