Pilgrim Living in a Fallen World: On Being a Blessing in the Desert I Peter 3:9-12

Pilgrim Living in a Fallen World: On Being a Blessing in the Desert

I Peter 3:9-12

Introduction: If our purpose in life is to know and love God and to do our part in spreading the fame of Jesus in the world, how should we then live? Peter has been urging his readers, who are experiencing trials as they live “scattered among the nations,” to endure hardship for the sake of the gospel, to be willing to have the attitude of a servant, as did Jesus, and by so doing to be light in the world. There is a saying in bioethics, “Above all, do no harm.” That is part of what Peter is talking about in this letter. We are not going to be perfect, we certainly are not sinless, but we want to live a life that draws people toward the Lord, not one that gives them an excuse not to believe! Above all, do no harm! Last week, primarily in v.8, he told them the attitudes that they needed, that God could give them, as a foundation for living as pilgrims in a fallen world: “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” Now Paul points to some of the actions that should flow from those attitudes.

The Maine* Idea: As forgiven people, destined for blessing, we should be patient and forgiving, guarding our speech, seeking to do good and pursue peace.

I. Responding to Opposition: Overcoming Evil with Good (9).

⁹ Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.   

       That verse probably sounds familiar for a couple of reasons: 1) I touched on it in the message last week, and 2) it echoes something Jesus said in the sermon on the mount.  We read in Matthew 5:38-45...  

³⁸ "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'  ³⁹ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  ⁴⁰ And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  ⁴¹ And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  ⁴² Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.  ⁴³ "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

I don’t believe Jesus is saying that Christians are to be defenseless, but rather that we don’t need to be defensive, because it is really not all about us, it’s about Jesus, His glory, and His mission in the world. Besides, the Bible makes it clear that the battle is the Lord’s!  So rather than striking back, we who have experienced such extreme forgiveness can practice radical forgiveness. C. S. Lewis said: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” I read a story of extreme forgiveness this week…

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, no person in all of East Germany was more despised than the former Communist dictator Erich Honecher. He had been stripped of all his offices. Even the Communist Party rejected him. Kicked out of his villa, the new government refused him and his wife new housing. The Honechers were homeless and destitute.

Enter pastor Uwe Holmer, director of a Christian help center north of Berlin. Made aware of the Honechers’ straits, Pastor Holmer felt it would be wrong to give them a room meant for even needier people. So the pastor and his family decided to take the former dictator into their own home!

Erich Honecher’s wife, Margot, had ruled the East German educational system for twenty-six years [she was called the purple witch by some in Germany in those days because of the slight bluish tint she put in her white hair]. Eight of Pastor Holmer’s ten children had been turned down for higher education due to Mrs. Honecher’s policies, which discriminated against Christians. Now the Holmers were caring for their personal enemy—the most hated man in Germany. This was so unnatural, so unconventional, so Christlike.

By the grace of God, the Holmers loved their enemies, did them good, blessed them, and prayed for them. They turned the other cheek. They gave their enemies their coat (their own home). 

Don’t answer evil with evil, or reviling with reviling.  Overcome evil with good. Augustine said: “If you are suffering from a bad man’s injustice, forgive him lest there be two bad men.” God called us to be peacemakers, “…that you may inherit a blessing…” He is not saying that we “earn” this inheritance, this blessing. This is alluding to the future for which we were saved. God loves us, He is our Father. John said, “Behold what manner of love the Father his given unto us, that we should be called the children of God, and such we are!”  Remember what Jesus did for you, then, as forgiven people, destined for blessing, we should be patient and forgiving, guarding our speech, seeking to do good and to pursue peace.

II. The Pathway to Abundant Life and Peace (10,11). 

¹⁰ For "Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;  ¹¹ let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.

     Peter begins v.10 with the word “for,” which introduces a quotation from the Old Testament. The sense is, “For [it is written]…” The motivation for the attitudes he describes in v.8, the reason we don’t strike back verbally (9), is because God cares deeply about our speech, he has given us instruction about how in the world we should live in His Word. Verse 10-12 are a quotation from Psalm 34:12-16. I’ll include a verse or two before and after from the psalm to give a context,

^34:11 Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.  ¹² What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?  ¹³ Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.  ¹⁴ Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.  ¹⁵ The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.  ¹⁶ The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.  ¹⁷ When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  ¹⁸ The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. 

Guard your speech! By the way, as Peter quotes from this verse he realizes that his readers are suffering and are experiencing injustice. He quotes realizing the theme we have referred to repeatedly in this series: We are Pilgrims living in a fallen world. A pilgrim has a homeland, there is a destination and a hope for which he is looking. And because of Jesus, that hope is sure. The next couple of verses in that psalm say,

¹⁹ Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.  ²⁰ He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.  ²¹ Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.  ²² The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. 

Jesus is the Righteous. We are righteous only because we are in Christ, He bore our sins and his righteousness was reckoned to our account. “He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken…” That Scripture was fulfilled when the soldiers were breaking the legs of the condemned men to hasten their death, and when they came to Jesus, he was already dead. So instead the soldier thrust a spear into his side. Jesus’ death made possible forgiveness and reconciliation for fallen humans like us. His death makes it possible for us to have peace with God, and so to experience the abundant life, the “good life,” for which we were created.

       And so Peter quotes the psalmist, “Whoever desires to love life and see good days…” Peter was talking about the abundant life of blessing that God wants us to have. Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).  That doesn’t mean your life will be marked by “health and prosperity.” I am reading Libby Grove’s book “Grief Undone.” She is sharing the story of their family’s experience as her husband Al (my Hebrew professor at WTS) dealt with melanoma that had metastasized to his brain and lungs. God’s people deal the effects of living in a fallen world as do unbelievers. Jesus was also pretty explicit in the upper room, “Don’t be surprised if the world hates you. It hated me first!”  He said, “In the world you will have tribulation…”  The point is, we can have peace and joy that goes beyond the circumstances of the moment.  We can count it all joy when we fall into various trials. Why? Because God is with us and in us. Because we know the end of the story will be better than we can imagine. Because we can be assured that God is not only interested in the destination, but he is with us on the journey.  Remember Psalm 84:6, “Blessed is the man who passes through the valley of Baca and makes it a well…” Streams in the desert! We are still “passing through” this valley of tears. At times we walk through the “Valley of the Shadow of Death.” But we know this isn’t home. All of the things we love, that truly bring us joy in this life, are only a glimmer of what God has in store for us. The best is yet to come! Because that is true, we love life, and anticipate the “good days” God has for us.

        Turn from evil and do good! Turning from evil implies a change of direction, a new orientation in our life. The idea is not that we will never sin again (would that that was possible!). But it means that we are no longer slaves of sin and of Satan. We have been set free. So we need to make choices to live in the light of that reality. Paul said to the Romans, “…How can we who died to sin still live in it? …So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin an alive to God in Christ Jesus…” (Rom 6:2,11). We are dead to sin because of our union with Christ. Still, moment by moment, day by day, decision be decision, we turn away from our old life, from the things that we know are against God’s will and in rebellion against His authority, and we turn to Him. He is in charge.

        Seek peace and pursue it!  The language of “seeking” and “pursuing” peace is like that of a predator going after its prey, it doesn’t give up, it knows the importance of the pursuit, life and death! We might think of times we have pursued something in life. Maybe your spouse. Maybe your job, or a promotion. Here it is “peace.” One of the lines that Jesus spoke in the famous sermon on the mount was, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” The Christian life is all about peacemaking. He has commited to us the ministry of reconciliation. Humans need to make peace with God. And we need to be at peace with one another. James said “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (James 4:1). Peter says that we are to not only want peace, but we are to “seek” it and “pursue” it. That means we go the extra mile. That means we do our part first of all, we forgive, let go of bitterness and anger, make peace with those who would “war” with us.  We have an enemy, and he isn’t flesh and blood. We wrestle against “Spiritual forces of wickedness in high places.”  If you have trusted in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you have peace with God! And so, as forgiven people destined for blessing, we should be patient and forgiving, guarding our speech, seeking to do good and pursue peace.

III. Trusting our Sovereign Lord (12).

…For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

      When we see these references to “the righteous one” in the psalms, it is good to remember that there is only One who was practically righteous, who never sinned.  In fact the psalm that Peter is quoting, as we noted above, Psalm 34 goes on to say in verse 20, as he is talking about the afflictions of the righteous, “He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.” That is quoted in John 19:36 as finding its fulfillment in Jesus. He is the righteous One, and because of Him, if you know Him, if you have trusted Him as your personal Lord and Savior, you are "justified," declared righteous, by grace, through faith. 

       Jesus is the righteous one, the One who knew no sin. And the Father laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He took our sin so that we could receive His righteousness. In that time on the cross the “face of the Father” turned against Him, such that He cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  He did that for all who would one day turn to Him in faith. We symbolize in baptism our unity with Christ in His death and resurrection, buried with Him, and raised to new life. As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live!  Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I know live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” And so, because of Jesus, when the eyes of the Lord are on us, because we are hidden in Christ, He sees Jesus Christ, the Righteous.

What is God saying to me in this passage? As forgiven people, destined for blessing, we should be patient and forgiving, guarding our speech, seeking to do good and pursue peace.

What would God have me to do in response to this passage?  Is your love and joy in the Lord, “Sweeter as the years go by”?  Do you feel like something is missing? Remember the story of the married couple who were talking as they drove down the road. The wife, sitting in the passenger seat, asked the husband as he drove, “Dear, why don’t we sit together like we used to when we were dating?” He was sitting behind the steering wheel, looked over and said, “I haven’t moved!”  God is still there, He hasn’t moved! In fact, he is still calling, still wooing us, still speaking to us. 

       C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world…” Are we listening? If you know Jesus, you are forgiven!  You have eternal life! That is reason to rejoice, no matter what else is happening in your life.  You are destined for blessing, and the certainty of that future blessing is itself a blessing right now, that sure hope motivates us to love life, to live the abundant, Spirit filled life for which we were created.

       It means since God has loved us, that we love one another, and we are moved to compassion for those who don’t yet have the same peace. As forgiven people, destined for blessing, we should be patient and forgiving, guarding our speech, using our tongue to build up, not to tear down.  God has you in the world for a purpose. Seek to do good.  And as far as it rests with you, pursue peace with all. And be about the mission He has entrusted to us.          AMEN.