Two antelope lock horns in battle
1 Peter 3:13-22
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 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. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.
Transcribed by AI. Please forgive any errors.
This Easter season, we've been working our way through First Peter Peters epistle to all sorts of Christians scattered throughout the Roman world at the time. It opened with a message about the inheritance that we have been given in baptism, that when you were baptized, you were united with Jesus Christ, and given an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled unfading kept in heaven for you. The next section in the first chapter was about how this inheritance makes us different from the world, that we are called to be holy in Christ, set apart from the rest of the world, to be different, to act as Christ would have us act. After that, we talked about how we are then gathered together in Christ into the holy Christian church, he used the metaphor of a building, built on the foundation of Christ, the cornerstone, that we all gathered to be one, the priesthood of all believers. Then we went on to talk about suffering for doing good, that maybe Christians should expect since we are different from the rest of the world, to suffer for being different, that when we do good, sometimes people will respond negatively. And we reframed that suffering from something we should flee from, instead to being something that shows our participation in Christ, that He suffered for us. And today, we're taking a look at this next passage. And I want to focus in on another a further response to what happens when we suffer for doing good. St. Peter says, when these things happen, and if you should suffer for righteousness sake, he says, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will than doing evil. When I read that, I thought, this is a perfect time to talk about the culture war. Because very often, the culture war in America is framed as at least amongst Christian circles, how should Christians respond to an evil world? Should we fight the culture war or not? And I think this addresses that question. So the question, Should Christians fight the culture war? To ask that question, we first need to talk about what the culture war is. It has been one said that puritanism puritanism was the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time. I think we can base a definition of the culture war as something similar. It is the haunting fear that someone somewhere may live differently than me.
When we look at the culture war, and we see signs of it everywhere, it is a battle between different people on different sides for how people should live their lives. It is not about the right level of taxation or laws like that. It is a question of what should our culture look like? And people use legal or cultural social pressure to try to force a particular worldview and way of living on someone else. And I think that is the culture war. Is that when we try to push and force people to believe or speak something and by I mean, everybody, not just we hear in this place. We see culture war battles happening about all sorts of things. There are issues about how we think about gender, or sexuality. There are problems about what how many people we think should be entering our country or not, and what they will do to our culture. There are questions about race and racism. But in the end, I think the culture war is what happens when we get really angry about something that doesn't affect us at all. Right? Isn't that the way it works? The culture war if you if you turn on the news, and there is something that is designed to generate outrage, about a decision that a school board made in Florida. And you think, Oh, I'm so mad. That's the culture war? Why would you care about what they're doing in Florida? Does that affect you? Or your children? Probably not. The culture war is designed to ramp up your anger, so that you choose a side in politics. It's designed to get you to make allies with people who don't care about Christianity in any way, who just want power. By now, you can probably guess what my answer to the question is, Should Christians fight the culture war? No. But I'm actually going to give you biblical reasons why, instead of just ranting from the pulpit. The first reason is very simple. When we fight the culture war, it shows that we don't actually trust in the hope of the victory of Jesus Christ. Why the culture war is almost always shown as an existential battle for the soul of America. We have to make sure that America is exactly the moral superior country, we want it to be. Whether you fighting for Red team, or blue team. The culture war is framed as a way that says if the bad guys win, everything is lost. And said St. Peters simply assumes that we have a hope that cannot be lost. As he says, We've been given an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled unfading, kept in heaven for you. He also describes this hope as a Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven, and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Which means Jesus is in charge of everything. Governments, culture, spiritual forces, everything in the world is under his power. And our hope is that he will come back one day, and raise us from the dead. And on that day, it doesn't matter what victories and small little things the enemy has won. It only matters that he returns and he wins. Jesus has won. Why would we be afraid about what the future has in store? Why would we worry about what might happen in politics and culture? Beyond that? When we, when we give into this kind of existential fear about the culture war, it ends up forcing us to take sides with people who don't care about us. It ends up having us turn away from the love and care that Christ gives us to anger and fighting. And it betrays the hope that we have. If we truly trust in Jesus, if we truly know that he has won the Vic Three, there is no room for fear at all. We can enter every situation confident that our victory is assured in Jesus Christ. Sure, we may run into places where we suffer. Yeah. But it's no different than any other Christian who's ever gone before us, certainly no different from the Christians in Rome, or the Christians in Iran, or North Korea. Just like them, we can have confidence that Jesus has one. Finding the culture war also gives us ammunition to our enemies, to say, oh, yeah, you see, all of those things we said about those Christians. We were right. They are jerks. They're mean. Can you see what they say online? St. Peter tells us when we when we defend our faith, and we share the hope that is in us. He says, you do it with gentleness and respect having a good conscience. So that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. The key to that is what he's saying is, when people accuse us of being evil, they're supposed to look at us and say, they're actually really nice people. They're not evil, you're an idiot. But if they accuse us for being evil, and we actually are evil, they're not going to be slandered. They're going to be telling the truth. And when we let our fear drive us to being angry, and hostile, and fight in the world, their slander no longer becomes slander. If we go out and attack people, for living differently than we think they should we actually become the people they accuse us of being. Now, one of the things that I think is, is interesting about the way the cultural war works from a Christian perspective, that we actually expect non Christians to live like Christians. And the key part of the culture war is to say, You people who don't believe in Jesus, who don't think he was raised from the dead, who don't believe that God created the earth and order it according to His good and gracious will, should believe and live the way I say you should, because I said, so. Now, if someone came to you, and did that, how would you react? You're supposed to live the way I believe, because I said, so. I bet you'd be pretty mad. And if they then they try to make the laws force you to do it. You'd get even matter. Right? The culture war is often like that, isn't it? When Christians go out to a world and we say you should live the way Christians live, because we said so. It's not just weird. Expecting non Christians to behave like Christians. And so when we go out, and we try to use the law, when we try to fight and hurt and, and force people to live, like what we're doing, all we do is give ammunition to our enemy. What we should do as Christians instead is love the people that we run into, right?
We should take care of the people who are near us. We should expect non Christians to act like I don't know non Christians. Because they're gonna No matter how much we shout and yell. But the key then, is for us to say, no matter how crazy you are, I love you. And when you're done being crazy, we're here to welcome you into the church. Pretty simple, right? We're here to love you and take care of you. And when you need Jesus, we will give him to you so that you can be saved. Does that mean we compromise our beliefs? No. Does that mean we change who we are? No. We just teach ourselves. We make sure we stand where we stand. And we share love with those who are near us. So that when people say, look at those Christians, they are jerks. They're always shouting about what other people should do. They'll say, Wait a second, they feed the hungry. They welcome people into their church. And they give love, just like Jesus did. Because that's what Jesus did, isn't it? He loved the people who should have been rejected the people who deserved to be punished, like you, and me. And that's our job. Finally, fighting the culture war, is not sharing our hope, with gentleness, and respect. And that should be relatively clear. When we look at the way the metaphor of the culture war. See, when you fight a war, you are not trying to convert the other side to your faith, right? In a war, you launch airstrikes at the other side to totally destroy them. That doesn't sound like gentleness, and respect. The St. Peter says, in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason to hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Our job is not to destroy people, to make them humiliated or feel bad about themselves. But to love them, and tell them the faith, help them see Jesus. One of the challenges behind this is because we get upset, we often have a difficult time discussing with people who are different and believe differently than us in a calm and kind way. Our job is to help people who are struggling with things with temptation with with pain, with hurts with the all the problems that we see in our culture, and love them through it. Because if we don't, what they're going to do is they're going to see that the church hates me, and run off and find guidance somewhere else. One thing that I think is better than looking at the culture war, as a battle is actually more like a dance. In a dance, you're not trying to destroy the other person. But you work together here, one person might lead and another person might lead and then you learn from each other about each other's perspective. And you sort of walk away with a little bit changed. An example of that might be something that I did at a dinner conversation not too long ago, I eat dinner with the with the women of 2911. Every Tuesday night, so one house or the other. And most of the time, we just chat about whatever. But one night, we did, something happened. And we spent about an hour and a half, they just sort of went around the table asking me theological questions. It was pretty awesome. And most of the time, what I did was say, Lutheranism is so amazing, you should give it a shot. Like it was like, and this is why we do the sacraments because you don't have to worry about works righteousness, Jesus just gives it to you was basically the thing I said over and over and over again. And we got to a point where they said, Pastor, we expected you to be more like debating and correcting. And I said, well think about our conversation. I have just spent about an hour and a half telling you why all your churches are wrong, and why you shouldn't be a Lutheran instead. But it didn't feel like it. I listened to them. I heard what they said. And I said, Well, here's how we approach this. And instead of saying, This is why your pastor is wrong, why your way of thinking is wrong. I said, this is why what we do is beautiful. And true. St. Paul did that. In Athens. He took what they believed. And he said, I have something even better. Look, you've got all of these gods and you worship them in all of these ways. But here is a hook. Or I can say no, no. I have something even greater than what you have. more beautiful, more wonderful, more amazing. And that's how the church wins. Not by launching airstrikes at the enemy. But by helping to show the world that what we have is beautiful that the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides salvation and a way of being pure and holy, eternal life. And that the joy we can have in Christ doesn't depend on which color of person is in charge of the United States, red, or blue, or who is winning a culture war? What it depends on is the fact that we have a Savior, who died on a cross, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And we can show the world the beauty and power of our golf. If we have confidence in that, if we truly have confidence that Jesus is coming again, and we know that we are right. All we have to do is wait for the world to recognize it. Because eventually their insanity will make them insane. And we can be here saying, when you're done, we're ready. We will welcome you. We will love you, and we will give you Jesus in His name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai