First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Morning Service

We have been working through 1 Peter together as a church on Sunday mornings and we come to one of those passages that preachers often dread, and you’ll see why in due course. Peter is engaged in a practical section of the letter. He began by outlining for us the main contours of the Christian Gospel and now he is applying those truths to a number of practical areas. First, how the Christian should relate to civil government, then secondly, what do you do if you are a slave without any way of earthly redress or deliverance from your circumstances, and now that you follow Jesus it has set you on a collision course with your pagan master and now you are suffering for Christ’s sake. And now today we’re considering the dynamics of a Christian marriage, wives and husbands. 

And I want us to think through Peter’s answer under three headings. He essentially says three things about how to live for Christ in difficult circumstances. He says first we need to learn to live under the gaze of God. We need to learn to live coram Deo, “before the face of God,” to live for His smile and His blessing and not the approval or good opinion of any earthly human being. That’s verses 18 through 20 - live under the gaze of God; verses 18 through 20. Then secondly he says we also must learn to live in imitation of Christ. The servant is not greater than the master. “If they persecuted Me,” Jesus said, “they will persecute you also, so take up your cross and follow Me.” This is the path of the ordinary Christian life - obedience in the context of suffering. And so we must learn to live in imitation of Christ, verses 21 through 23. And finally we must learn to live in light of the cross. Obedience to God in the context of suffering is not only His command, but it is His promise for which Christ died to supply us the grace we need in order to do it. And so live under the gaze of God, live in imitation of Christ, and live in light of the cross. 

But 1 Peter 4:10-11 do have something to say to us about our stewardship. We’re going to think about the teaching of the passage under five headings. First, the perspective that we need. The perspective that we need. Then, the presupposition that we doubt. Then, the purpose we must pursue. Fourthly, the pattern we must follow. And the priority we must maintain. The perspective we need. The presupposition we doubt. The purpose we must pursue. The pattern we must follow. And the priority we must maintain. 

And here in chapter 4, we join the laborers in the city on the building site as they work on the walls. And they are surrounded, as we are going to see, by enemies on every hand. And if you’ll look at the text, you’ll see the chapter divides very simply into two main sections. One through 14 talk to us about the opposition facing the people of God. Fifteen through 22 focus on the response. Our headings might be “the difficulty of the work” and “the dedication of the workers.”

Through verse 12 of chapter 2, we’ve seen Peter give us, you might say, general theological and practical principles. And now, beginning in our passage this morning, he’s going to press some of those principles into the particular areas and contexts of our Christian lives. He will speak, for example, as we’ll see in a few weeks’ time, about slaves and masters, husbands and wives. Here, in verses 13 through 17, he’s going to speak to us about how Christians should relate to the civil magistrate, to civil government. And that of course makes 1 Peter 2:13-17 immediately relevant and full of some urgent contemporary significance. 

We have a really great story from the Old Testament this morning and 2 Kings chapter 5. It’s one of the great stories of the whole Old Testament, I think, and it’s happened around 850 BC and it’s about a Syrian general named Naaman who goes to look for the prophet of Israel, Elisha, in order to be healed. And at the center of it really is what it means to be clean, to be made clean; that the only way to become truly clean is from the inside, out. That’s the message of the story that we’re going to read. So this is 2 Kings chapter 5.

Look at verses 11 and 12 with me just a moment before we begin and notice the central concern of the apostle Peter in these two verses. He wants to promote the practice of Christian holiness. That’s his burden in verses 11 and 12. He tells us first negatively, verse 11, “abstain from the passions of the flesh.” And then positively in verse 12, he wants our conduct to be “honorable among the Gentiles” and he wants us to do “good deeds.” So you see both negatively and positively his concern is for a life of Christian holiness. That’s the central concern of these two verses and as we consider it together, I want you to notice that Peter uses not quite two metaphors but two themes to structure his discussion. And so in verse 11 he’s going to tell us that the pursuit of holiness is war. The pursuit of holiness is war. Then in verse 12 he’s going to say the pursuit of holiness is also witness. It is war and it is witness.

First of all, the passage before us is going to call us to come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. Secondly, come to Jesus by faith. Third, come to Jesus continually. Fourth, come to Jesus corporately; come to Him together. Fifth, come to Jesus to be like Him. Sixth, come to Jesus to praise Him. Seventhly, we are to come to Jesus to proclaim Him. And then eighthly, come to Jesus for mercy.

And if you’ll look at verses 1 through 3, I want you to notice that Peter says essentially two things. If you’re going to live for Christ in a dark world, you need to do two things. He says you need to dress the part. You need to put on a new wardrobe. And he says you need to eat right. You need to cultivate an appetite for the right kind of food. You need a different diet. Do you see that in verses 1 through 3? First he says we need a new wardrobe. “Put away” or “Put off” - like worn out old garments, these vices that he lists; remnants of our old life. You need a new wardrobe. Then verses 2 and 3, we need a new appetite for a new diet. We are newborn infants, he says, so you need to long for the milk that will help you grow. We need a new wardrobe and a new appetite. We need to dress the part and eat right if we’re going to live for Christ in difficult days. 

So there are five stages to this journey back to the source of the river that we need to follow. First is brotherly love. Second is the question of the purification that took place in their lives. Third is obeying the truth, conversion. Fourth is the new birth. And fifth is the means God uses to effect the new birth - the ministry of God’s holy Word.