Joshua and Judges: Push to the Promised Land: Return to Kadesh, part 6; Moses' failure. 1Pe 2:18-25.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Push to the Promised Land: Return to Kadesh, part 6; Moses' failure. 1PE 2:18-25.

 

Announcements/opening prayer:

 

 

1PE 2:18 Servants [household slave], be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.

 

Some of the masters had good hearts and were fair and gentle, but there were others that were unreasonable.

 

The masters had their faces dead set against these Christian slaves. The slaves lived lives of singular purity, meekness, honesty, willingness to serve, and obedience in the households of their heathen masters. This was a powerful testimony for the gospel, and brought their masters under conviction of sin. All this irritated them, and they reacted in a most unpleasant way toward their slaves, whom they would punish without provocation. Yet they did not want to sell these Christian slaves and buy pagan ones, for the Christian slaves served them better.

 

1PE 2:19 For this finds favor [this (is) grace], if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.

 

The believer operates in God's agape and grace and so goes beyond what would "normally" be expected. The cross was not what was ordinarily expected from God dealing with rebellious, ungodly, sinners. 

 

And Peter gives the motivation - "for conscience toward God."

 

The conscience of man is his process of thought that enables him to determine good and bad.

 

No other creature possesses it. It is a gift of God's image. It is a dynamic, since it can change, set of norms and standards that are constantly fed by knowledge. The Greek word is literally "know with". Man may know with secular education or religion, culture or family, friends or experience, or anything that feeds knowledge into his soul. The believer is a new creature that now can discern the knowledge of God through the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. The knowledge changes his conscience and so changes what he determines as good and bad. His norms and standards change, and over time, as more of God's knowledge enters his soul, these changes become more defined and more specific. To quote the Lord, he has lost his life that he found Christ's life. In this situation of suffering under persecution, the conscience thus says, "I'm in Christ, I'm His representative on earth, and so I am to display His love to evil rulers, which is what He did, so this way is His way. It is for His sake, not because He needs anything, but because precisely, He is perfect truth and His way is everything."

 

It is not a conscientiousness in any other sense than Christ is our life and we have been given the opportunity to reveal Him in this world by emulating and reflecting Him in this life.

 

The victory is in the preparation which is exercised when the time comes. There is a reason that the Holy Spirit is leading me to spend time on this from this chapter and 1Ti 6 before we get back to Moses.

 

1PE 2:20 For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

 

"credit" - kle,oj[kleos - only used here] = good report, fame, renown, reputation. We don't gain credit but a good report from God - well done My good and faithful servant.

 

I wanted to make this clear because a false idea can come from the use of the word credit that may lead one to think that something can be earned. Nothing is earned in the Christian way of life. All is by means of grace, i.e. gifts given. It should read, "For what good report is there if you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience."

 

"Harshly treated" is a Greek word that means buffeted. In the present tense it could be translated as pummeled.

 

These Christian slaves were being pummeled by their irate masters, the only offence of the former being that they lived Christ like lives which were used of the Holy Spirit to convict the latter of sin.

 

The same word is used in:

 

MAT 26:67-68

Then they spat in His face and beat Him with their fists; and others slapped Him, and said, "Prophesy to us, You Christ; who is the one who hit You?"

 

This was prophesied:

 

ISA 52:13

Just as many were astonished at you, My people,

So His appearance was marred more than any man,

And His form more than the sons of men.

 

This passage bears the marks of Peter's memories of that awful night. The Lord looked at Peter after this beating when Peter had stated his third denial in the courtyard of Caiaphas' house.

 

Peter's exhortation to these Christian slaves is that when they are being unjustly pummeled by their masters, they should remember the Lord Jesus and how He was unjustly pummeled for them, and react towards their masters as Jesus did to those who mistreated Him. They are to take this punishment patiently, and this would be acceptable with God. The word "favor" is the translation of the same Greek word, charis, in verse 19.

 

1PE 2:19 For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.

 

1PE 2:20 For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

 

Patiently is the verb form of our old friend hupomone. So then the solution is to not run away, but to endure it with patience, knowing that it finds favor, or a good report, with God.

 

Patient endurance of unjust punishment on the part of these slaves is in the sight of God an action that is beyond the ordinary course of what might be expected, and is therefore commendable.

 

The believer who is young in knowledge of Christ wants nothing to do with this. The maturing believer desires it more and more as he desires to share in Christ's suffering, and not because he is an ascetic, or desires martyrdom, but because he desires to identify with his Lord in all things.

 

Php 3:8, 10

I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, … that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

 

1PE 2:21 For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps,

 

It is a natural result of the world that does not know Christ that He would be persecuted, and now He is persecuted when He is seen in the believer.

 

Enduring under unjust suffering as the Lord did is a display of the gospel.

 

MAR 15:39

And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

 

The good news is that there is deliverance into another world for the sinner.

 

1PE 2:21 For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps,

 

"example" - u`pogrammo,j[hupogrammos] = to write under, to trace letters. The idea is of a child tracing over the writing of his teacher so as to learn how to write and often to learn a moral.

 

By using a moral the child would by repetition learn to write the characters as well as having the moral repeated over and over in his mind.

 

When Peter used hupogrammos, he went back to his boyhood days for an illustration. The word is only used here in the entire NT. The word means literally "writing under." It was used of words given children to copy, both as a writing exercise and as a means of impressing a moral. Sometimes it was used with reference to the act of tracing over written letters. Peter changes over easily from the idea of a child tracing over the writing of the writing-master to a Christian planting his feet in the foot-prints left by our Lord. In this context, these footprints are foot-prints of suffering. But the illustration holds good for our Lord's entire life. Just as a child slowly, with painstaking effort and close application, follows the shape of the letters of his teacher and thus learns to write, so saints should with like painstaking effort and by close application, endeavor to be like the Lord Jesus in their own personal lives. Or, as a small child endeavors to walk in the footprints made by his father's feet in the snow, so we are to follow in the path which our Lord took. The Greek word "follow" means literally "to take the same road" as someone else takes. We should walk the same road that Jesus walked, in short, be Christ like in our thinking, speaking, and actions. We are powerless to do this on our own. We must choose to do so by means of application of the word of God, in this passage that is agape love expressed in graciousness and patience, and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

 

Recall from our passage in 1Ti 6 where we added HEB 5:7, that Jesus was heard because of His piety, which was His reverence and careful handling of the Father's gifts to Him.

 

We are to take the same road as Him, carefully tracing His steps. This includes the what and the how.

 

1PE 2:22 who committed no sin, nor was any deceit [craftiness of trickery] found in His mouth;

 

1PE 2:23 and while being reviled [extremely harsh rebuke], He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;

 

entrusting = handing over or giving over to someone else for their care and management.

 

The intense mocking, rebuking, reviling words He gave over to His Father. The people who did them, He gave over to His Father. The pain that results from being the object of them, He gave over to His Father. He could do this and we can do this because the Father judges righteously.

 

1PE 2:24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.