Yesterday my mother and father in law, Rod and Marj Almstrom celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. One of the things my mother in law kept saying when asked how she felt about being married for half a century was, “Wow, it doesn’t seem like fifty years, the time has flown by”.

I thought that was interesting observation and one that must have been on Peter’s mind too, possibly considering his own martyrdom that he most likely sensed was coming soon. I say that because one of the key thoughts of Peter in the opening few verses of chapter 4 is TIME.

You can learn a lot about people by looking at what’s on their refrigerator. Yes, you heard me right. I said what’s on their refrigerator, not just wants in their refrigerator. How many of you have pictures and sayings attached to your refrigerator? Drawings your children or grandchildren made. Pictures of people, vacations you took, missionaries you support. I love those little magnets you can get from places to remind you where you have been. I especially like when you see scripture or quotes that you post to remind yourself of something you don’t want to forget.

What do you do when being good isn’t good enough? That's the question Peter deals with here in chapter 3. Peter you recall was writing a general epistle to the church at large at a time in the world when the church was suffering tremendous persecution for something it didn’t do. The church had become the “fall guy” for Caesar Nero who wanted to rebuild Rome and decided to light the city on fire and when the citizens of Rome rose up against him in revolt he blamed the fires on a small yet growing group of Christians in the city who were already under suspicion for their strange practices of worshipping without idols and practiced what they preached by loving and caring for one another when they met.

How many of you like charts? I don’t. In 1 Peter 3
we have a chart of sorts so that we can check our
progress as a child of God.

It’s important to note right off that this isn’t a list that
we use to check if we are saved or not. We use lists
like this to check our growth because we are saved
to get a pulse of where we are at and to be
encouraged knowing as we draw close to God this
is the work that He has begun and is faithful to
complete in you!

But hear me on this. No two people are alike. Plant
two trees side by side and water them the same
and one will still grow taller than the other.

Last week we looked at the word
submission from the wife’s perspective. We looked
at what Peter and Paul had to say. In 1 Peter 3:1-6
Peter addressed the women more at length than he
does men for the simple fact women had no rights
other than the ones their husbands afforded them in
the Roman Empire. It was much more difficult for
women in those days than it is today and Peter
explains out how a wife can in fact have a happy
life. Peter laid it out in two words, “duty and beauty”

As promised we are looking at what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of submission. The word “submission” conjures up all kinds of thoughts and emotions in both men and women. I recall years and years ago now a guy in the church who bought his wife for her birthday one year a book. She loved to read and he gave her a book by P.B. Wilson titled, “Liberated Through Submission”. For the record, they are no longer married.

Have you ever really thought about what makes the Christian life so hard to live? There is a constant battle raging in us. The battle of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white, my will and God’s will. Of all the teachings in the Bible, living in submission to God is by far and a way the most difficult to do for it means dying to myself and my ways and wants and trusting God, looking to God and obeying God.

A few weeks ago when we began our study in 1 Peter I felt the Lord pointing me to this book to study because there are many parallels between the time in around 64 A.D. when Peter penned the books of 1 and 2 Peter and today, 2020 and the world we are now living in.

We name our children after the apostles, Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John and we name our dogs,
Cesars, Nero, Julis, Hercules, Apollo, and Atlas.