“Your
Suffering And The Forces Of Darkness” 1
Peter 3:18-22 July 24, 2011
SCRIPTURE INTRO: I almost always use an approach to preaching
called
lectio continua. That means “continuous reading.”
The
idea is that you chose a book of the Bible, and you start at the beginning,
and you read to a natural breaking point,
and then you preach on that.
Then
the next Sunday, you pick up where you left off, and preach on next part.
You keep doing that until you’re done. Then you pick another book.
That’s
not the only way to preach.
Charles
Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the 19th century,
the man who was called the Prince of
Preachers did not preach that way.
In
fact, he was opposed to it. He thought
every Sunday the preacher should be open
to choosing any passage from anywhere in the
Bible.
And
he had good reasons. I’ve read his
arguments and they are compelling.
But
one of the arguments for continuous reading is that is forces the preacher
to teach his congregation the whole word of
God.
He
can’t stick to passages he likes.
And
he can’t skip uncomfortable passages.
If
you are preaching through Genesis and come to story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
you can’t skip it. You have to preach about homosexuality.
If
preaching through Matthew and come to chapter 19, you can’t skip it.
You have to preach about divorce. And that’s good.
Today
you are going to experience one of the downsides of continuous reading.
The
preacher sometimes encounters a passage that is hard,
not because it’s an uncomfortable subject,
but because he doesn’t understand it.
It’s
too much for his intellectual ability.
I
would never choose to preach on the verses we are about to read
because they are very hard to understand and
trying to explain them
will make for an awkward sermon. I’m warning you.
If
you want to slip out now, and come back at 10:45 for Ken Allen’s sermon
I would understand. But here I am, preaching through 1 Peter and
I can’t skip it.
So let’s dig in.
INTRO: I’m on a committee of our Presbytery called
Candidates and Credentials.
One
of our jobs is to exam men who want to become ministers in our denomination.
One exam we give them is Bible content.
We
had a meeting this past week and I was looking over a copy of a Bible content
exam that is used by another
Presbytery.
We
were trying to decide whether or not to revise some of our exams.
So
I was glancing through this ordination exam and I saw a question:
See if you know the answer to this Bible
content question.
Which New Testament epistle deals with the
subject of Christian suffering?
Doesn’t
that make you feel good? You are so
smart!
You know the answer to a question on a
ministerial exam!
Peter
never forgets his main point, how to suffer as a Christian.
How through Christ the troubles of life can
refine you like gold.
And
at this point in the letter he’s teaching Christians that you suffer right
by learning to counterbalance and outweigh
your suffering with great
spiritual realities.
I’m
going to repeat myself from last week.
Suffering
is experienced as a weight. That’s the
very language people use.
They say:
I feel weighed down. This is
heavy on my mind.
Suffering is a weight that you carry. Can sometimes even see in countenance.
It
can become all-consuming, even for Christians.
It can become your identity, not the fact
Jesus loves you.
It
can overshadow all the facts and evidences of God’s grace and goodness in life.
So that you become fatalistic, dark, and
bleak.
At
its worst, when you are suffering, you can give yourself an excuse to sin.
I’m hurting.
I’m struggling. So I give myself
permission to sin.
I
have an excuse to be bitter. I have an
excuse to be rude.
I have an excuse to numb my pain in ungodly
ways.
Remember
the Latin phrase Augustine and Luther used to describe sin?
Incurvatus
in se. Sin is me turned in on
me.
The
way Peter addresses this is that he doesn’t say—Buck up and get over it.
If you had enough faith, if you loved God
more, this wouldn’t be heavy.
You wouldn’t feel weighed down by this, you
would have a spring in step.
No,
he says that when Christians suffer it’s real, it’s weighty.
He
doesn’t deal with suffering by disregarding it or discrediting it.
Instead, he says that Christians have to
learn to outweigh it with heavier things.
Imagine
an old timey scale.
Your
suffering on one side weighing it down.
Then you start to add wonderful
things to the other side of the scale. What happens?
The
suffering doesn’t disappear. It’s still
sitting there for all to see—
but at some point, the scale tips, and the
heaviest thing in your life is no longer
your suffering—instead you feel the weight
of glorious realities.
Last
Sunday we looked at four of those counterweights. Do you remember them?
Christian fellowship, Christ’s cross, God’s
love, Your witness.
Well
guess what? There are actually
five. There is one more.
But
the reason we didn’t include it last week is because it’s in these verses.
And we need a whole sermon by itself on
these verses.
Because these verses probably the most
difficult to interpret in the whole Bible.
Martin
Luther said this about these verses.
“(This is) a more obscure passage perhaps
than any other in the New Testament,
so that I do not know for a certainty just
what Peter means.”
And
I don’t know for a certainty either. But
I think that Peter is adding a fifth
counterweight to our suffering, a final
glorious reality that we are to
believe and pile on the scale of minds—to
outweigh our suffering.
Christian
fellowship, Christ’s cross, God’s love, your witness—
and in these verses, the cosmic war. There’s a war on. You’re in it.
Knowing that dramatically changes the way
you view your suffering.
Let’s
work our way through this passage with just two steps, two points.
First,
interpret the passage. Second, apply the
passage.
First,
we’re going to look at these verses carefully.
I’m going to give you the rules for
interpreting difficult passages.
I’m going to tell you the main ways this has
been interpreted.
And finally, I’m going to give you my
opinion.
Second,
we’re going to apply this passage to our suffering.
See how it helps to outweigh our suffering.
And hopefully you’ll leave this morning
encouraged.
Credit
where credit is due: A sermon on this
passage by Dr. Robert Rayburn
was a huge help to me. I’ll be sharing many of his word and
insights.
MP#1 Interpreting the passage
Let’s
start with some basic rules for interpreting Scripture.
All
Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable.
It’s all the word of God
But,
all Scripture is not equally clear.
Everything
necessary for salvation clear.
Anybody
can read the Bible and understand enough for salvation.
But there are other parts that that are hard
to understand.
In
Peter’s second letter he says: “Paul’s letters contain some things that are
hard to
understand.”
And, of course, the joke that has been made for centuries by New
Testament scholars is: If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle
black!
There
are very hard parts. So we need to
approach with humility.
Most
important rule: The hard to understand
passages of Scripture are to be
interpreted in light of the plain passages
and the overall teaching of Scripture.
You
can’t interpret the hard passages in a way that contradicts the clear passages.
All the cults ignore this rule. They take the hard parts,
give them a weird interpretation, and build
a doctrine out of them.
So
with those rules in mind, let’s look at
this passage.
I’m
going to give you the three major interpretations of these verses—
and I’ll tell you the strengths and weakness
of each.
And
remember that there are literally dozens of variations of these three.
There’s
a very old view that this passage teaches that Jesus’ soul went to hell
during the three days he was in the grave,
and that he did some preaching there.
Some
say he preached to the souls of the people who died during Noah’s flood.
Either to condemn them for their unbelief or
give them a second chance.
Some
say it was not actually hell but a kind of prison where all the Old Testament
saints have been waiting and watching for
the Messiah to release them.
So
he declared to David and Isaiah and all the saints his finished work,
and then took their souls out of this prison
and into heaven.
Some
say he actually suffered in hell, finishing his work of salvation.
And while he was suffering he was preaching
the Gospel.
Some
say he was in hell, preaching his victory over the demons.
I
was friends with a Pentecostal minster in Florida. He invited me to a men’s
breakfast at his church on the Saturday
after Good Friday, before Easter.
A
man came out with an electric guitar and said:
Do you know what Jesus was doing this
Saturday 2,000 years ago?
He
was in hell, kicking the Devil’s butt!
Then he gave a riff on his electric guitar.
And everybody clapped and cheered. And I clapped too.
Because I’m all for Jesus kicking the
Devil’s butt.
But
what’s the problem with this interpretation?
Some variations worse than others.
All
the clear passages of Scripture make it plain that Jesus didn’t go to hell.
He said:
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
He said to thief: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Paradise
and hell are two very different zip codes!
What
about the Apostles Creed: He descended
into hell?
There’s a long, complicated history to that
phrase, and it’s meant different things
to different people, but we say it as a
simple affirmation that Christ suffered the
pains of hell for us on the cross.
Crucified,
dead and buried is our affirmation of his physical, historical suffering.
He
descended into hell is our affirmation that of his spiritual suffering.
But that didn’t happen after he died, it
happened while he was dying.
In the darkness when he cried: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
There’s
another big problem with this interpretation in the text itself.
It’s not about the time when Jesus was in
the grave, it’s about his resurrection.
“He
was put to death in the body, but made alive by Spirit, through whom went and
preached.”
Made alive by the Spirit is a reference to
his resurrection body.
Then verse 22 is clearly about his ascension
to the right hand of God.
And
what does this have to do with Noah and ark?
What’s the logical connection?
A
second school of interpretation is that Peter is saying that the Spirit of
Jesus
preached through Noah when while he was
building the ark.
Noah
is called in another passage a preacher of righteousness.
So Noah preached a message of faith and grace. Believe God.
Flee from wrath.
Come into the ark. The ark is a foreshadowing of Christ.
This
was John Calvin’s view. And it’s very
appealing.
Because it fits so well with Peter’s theme
of suffering.
Noah
suffered. He and his family were the
only believers.
They were mocked and ridiculed. But through their faithfulness Christ
was preached, and then they were saved
through the flood.
I
could almost go with that, but for one thing.
I’m convinced that there is no
way to interpret the spirits in prison who
disobeyed long ago as spirits of people.
I think this is a reference to fallen
angels, to demonic spirits.
Two
reasons, first is that everywhere in the New Testament where the word
“spirits” is used without qualification, it
refers to angels or demons.
And
that is confirmed in this passage itself.
In verse 22 is says that after Jesus
was raised, he ascended into heaven and is
at God’s right hand with
“angels, authorities, and powers in
submission to him.”
Those
words, angels, authorities, and powers are a NT way of referring to the
angelic world and specifically, to the
forces of the kingdom of darkness.
That
leads to the third view. This is my
view—for now.
This
passage is about Jesus resurrection and ascension into heaven,
where he rules at God’s right hand over all
creation.
And
it’s about a particular thing Jesus did in his ascension—
He declared the beginning of the last battle
in the great war,
and he declared a message of triumph over all
the forces of evil.
He
announced his certain victory.
There
are two problems with this view.
First,
this word “preached” is not one ordinarily used to announce doom.
Usually it’s an announcement of grace. But it is a possible use.
The
other problem is: What does this have to
do with the days of Noah?
What were the sins committed by fallen
angels during that time,
and how does that relate to Christ’s
ascension into heaven.
This
gets very complicated, and we just don’t have enough time to go deep.
But
basically, there are a number of passages that indicate there was a demonic
attempt to corrupt the human race before the
time of Noah that almost worked.
Everyone
in the whole world, except eight people, Noah and family,
were under the control and influence of
demons.
Why
would the Devil want to corrupt and destroy the human race?
Because of the promise given to Eve that she
would give birth to a Son
who would crush Satan’s head.
As
I said, it almost worked. It was the
high mark of demonic evil in human history.
The
world was so wicked, that God sent the Flood to wipe out the human race and
start over with Noah. He delivered through the flood and the ark.
Peter
says that those are symbols of baptism and Christ.
And
furthermore, God in some way from that point on, confined the demonic realm.
He restricted demons in some way that was to
them like a prison.
So
Jesus Christ, in his ascension, passed through this realm of angels and demons
and spiritual warfare, and triumphantly
announced his present and future victory
over all the forces of darkness.
I
think that what Peter is doing in these verses is giving just a hint about
the unseen world and this cosmic war. It’s not an idea he develops,
he doesn’t make too much of it. Doesn’t give many details.
That’s
typical of the whole Bible. It never
tells us much about these things.
Just hints and rumors.
But
Peter wants you to know that your suffering happens in a bigger context
than your little life. It’s part of a war. Your hurts are war wounds.
And
that leads us to the hard part.
MP#2 Applying the passage
What
difference does it make? How does this
help you in your suffering?
How
does knowing just a little bit about a great war in the unseen spiritual realm
of angels and demons and Christ’s role in
that war help you today in Cullman,
Alabama and the struggles you are having?
Well,
you have to think about war and suffering in war.
When
we were in NC on vacation a few weeks ago, found a used book at yard sale
called In
Flanders Fields. About the Third
Battle of Ypres in Belgium in WWI.
The
battle lasted four months. Half a
million casualties.
And when it was over, British and French
only advanced a few miles.
It
was the very worst of trench warfare.
Troops
suffered from artillery, and poisonous gas, and rain, and mud.
The
region where this battle was fought is a plain and the ground is gray
clay.
The mud was so deep and sticky from being
ploughed up by artillery,
that the only way to get around was on
wooden pathways, called duckboards.
If
a man was wounded, and fell into mud, would be smothered.
Even horses and mules who pulled the
artillery fell in and died.
At
first, the strategy of the British, French, and German generals was—
Let’s just hurl enough men against the line,
and eventually we’ll break through.
They
tried that again and again, tens of thousands cut to pieces by machine guns.
There were some offensives where as many as
50,000 men were killed, wounded
in just one or two days. I tried to imagine 50,000 men and all I could
think of
was a crowd at a college football game.
Stacks
of dead Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans.
Trainloads of mangled
men returning home missing limbs, blinded by
poisonous gas.
But
they didn’t quit. Didn’t say, that’s not
working. Need another strategy.
They
just came up with a different rationale.
If we keep throwing men against the enemy,
we won’t break through,
but hopefully we have deeper pockets and
they will run out of men
and weapons first. So it was a terrible slaughter.
I
couldn’t put it down. And I think the
thing that was so engrossing was the very
matter of fact way the author described this
battle and the suffering.
And
how, no matter how soldiers felt about what they were going through,
they were part of something bigger than
themselves,
and it had to grind its way to an end.
The
Bible has great sympathy for sorrowing and suffering Christians.
Immense sympathy. Think of our study of the Psalms a few months
ago.
How
so many painful emotions are given voice in the Psalms and treated
with such dignity and tenderness.
I
have a little book of Bible verses that somebody gave me a long time ago called
Words of Comfort. One verse after another of soothing words to
believers.
But,
there is another message in the Bible that is, in some ways,
even more encouraging and invigorating.
That
message is: You are suffering?
You are facing some sort of opposition?
You are finding your Christian life
difficult in some particular way?
Of
course you are. Why would you expect
anything else?
There is a great battle underway in this
universe and you are in the thick of it.
Every
human being is on one side or the other—even if they don’t know.
The
Devil is like those generals at Ypres.
He sends his troops to fight with no care
for their welfare.
He feeds them to the cannons and then laughs
when their souls end up in hell.
Our
Lord Jesus Christ loves every one of his soldiers—
But sometimes he still has put them through
terrible things.
Long, wearying marches. Fierce combat with powerful enemies.
Just
this week I got an email from an organization called Voice of the Martyrs.
Request to pray and send a petition to
Pakistan government for a Christian
wife and mother named Asia Bibi. Maybe you’ve followed her story.
She
had a conversation with her Muslim co-workers about faith.
She said:
Jesus Christ is alive. Accused of
blasphemy against Mohammed.
Sentenced to death. Been in prison for over a year.
Why
would Jesus send one of his soldiers to suffer like that? There’s a war.
There
are these two powerful armies colliding against each other every day.
Battling over the souls of men and women,
boys and girls.
You are living your life on a battlefield.
No
soldier in the thick of battle is surprised that his life is difficult.
When the artillery shells are exploding in
the mud,
and the air is full of terrible sounds—
no soldier sticks his head out of his
foxhole and says:
“Why
are they shooting at me? Was it
something I said?”
He
understands that his place is on the battlefield. That explains everything.
He
belongs to a particular army. His is
serving under a particular captain.
Peter
is saying the same thing to Christians.
Don’t be surprised.
You’re in a war that unbelievers have no
clue about.
Two powerful, invisible armies clashing in
the heavens, earth is the prize.
Your
suffering and how you use that suffering to glorify Christ part of the fight.
But,
Peter says—That’s not the whole story.
You have a great advantage.
You know you’re on the winning side.
Because Jesus has risen from the dead and
ascended into heaven.
He
has proclaimed his victory over the spirits in prison.
And now he reigns over angels, authorities
and powers.
Listen,
you may feel overwhelmed but you are going to see the end of this war.
You are going to survive your wounds. Did you know that?
Your wounds aren’t going to kill you. They will leave scars.
But
if you are faithful, one day you’ll be proud of those scars.
Because you are going to march in the great
victory parade.
That
victory has already been announced.
The defeat of the enemy has already been
proclaimed by the King of Kings.
I
don’t know where the battle rages now for each one of you.
I know about some of you.
I
really appreciate it as your pastor and as a brother in Christ when you tell me
so I can know your fight and pray for you.
I
like to know how your life is difficult and where your courage and your
faithfulness is being tested in this
particular season of your life.
And
in a way, I’m glad to know you are having difficulties.
Because anyone who goes through this great
war without difficulty
is running from the fight.