Called to Suffer

The 4th Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C. Sunday evening, 1st of February 1987, Dr. Norris speaking on the theme, called to suffer. Scripture reference is 1st Peter, 2nd chapter, verses 13-23. This is 16th in the series, Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones.

Turn with me to God's Word as we find it recorded for us from verses 9-12 in the 2nd chapter of 1st Peter. You are a church and people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. A people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you are not a people but now you are a people of God, once you have not received mercy but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of wrongdoing, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day that he visits us. Amen, let's pray. Father, teach us the impact and the import of this year word that we might learn from it, might grow in it and might develop to your praise and glory, or we seek it in Jesus' name. I wonder if you have ever felt that you are out of place at a particular time. When I was a student in St. Andrews, we had a professor of chemistry there who was a Christian and just a little strange, perhaps we would say eccentric. The principal of the university called annually his staff for a bowl or a dance or a dinner supper and then a dance following. This was one of the great university occasions and on that occasion everybody had told Ralph and Sheila that it was a fancy dressed bowl. And so they turned up at the principal's staff supper in bunny rabbit outfits. Everybody else turned up in black ties. We stood there watching these two eminent people walking in bunny rabbit outfits and look around and think they had come to the wrong place. And they thought themselves just a little out of place. Fortunately Ralph is not a man to be faced by very much and thought that everybody else had got the wrong invitation and simply proceeded going on as though he was right and everybody else was wrong. But these two bunny rabbits stood out in the middle of a black tie occasion and everybody knew there was something just a little out of place. And in one sense that's an illustration of the way in which Christians live within the world. There are oddities, they're different. There is a sense in which there is a distinction, there is a sense in which there is an alienation of the Christian within the world. We're called as we read in the verses 9 through 12, we're called to be a very distinct people and we've examined what it is to be a chosen people elect according to the four knowledge of God. We've seen what it is to be a royal priesthood that is called up to offer to God the sacrifice of praise and worship and adoration that is acceptable to him in Jesus Christ. We've seen what it is to be a holy nation, set apart to God to worship him and to live with him. And yet that doesn't seem always to work. When we do these things we practice what we are in Christ in the middle of a world. We seem like bunny rabbits in the middle of a black tie dinner. We're different. And being a holy nation, being a royal priesthood, being a chosen people in the middle of a world who doesn't understand and which will not accept, the fact that Christian people are different causes and disconsulance in our lives. And these early Christians and you and I have to learn how to behave according to the standard that God has set and yet in such a way as to permit a relationship with the world to exist that neither compromises who we are in Jesus Christ and yet enables us to correspond, to speak, to minister, to those that are in the world. In these verses 11 and 12, and those are the concentration of our thoughts this evening, we begin to understand who we are and how it is that we result and how we minister in this world. We learn the standard required of us and the relationship that is hospitable to us in Jesus Christ. From the 13th verse through to the end of this chapter, we find that that principle that we learn in verses 11 and 12 is worked out. First of all, it's worked out in the context of a civil authority that is hostile to Christians. And the first century, as we see in verses 13 through 17, are bitterly hostile. We see that they are opposed and that they are persecuting Christians simply because they honor the Lord Jesus Christ above everybody else. And we also see in verse 18 through 25, how musters treat servants? Truly, harshly, because they belong to Christ and how servants relate to their musters and how we give obedience to those who have the legitimate right of exercising authority over us. And then from verse 25 to the end of this chapter, we see how the relationship with Jesus Christ impacts the homes in which we live and create. There is a standard by which Christians are called to live and which the great apostle Peter proceeds to expound in its main principles. And he teaches you and me to understand the context of our living. How is it that we understand who we are and understand the world in which we live and the way in which it interacts with us? Because if we don't understand that world, then we become bitter and hostile and we become shriveled in our soul and angry as people because we don't fit in. True holiness is perfected not in the monastery nor in the seclusion of a cloister but is perfected in the midst of a world that doesn't understand and doesn't love. And you and I are called to work out who we are as Christian people in the midst of a hostile environment. Sometimes we find it very hostile, sometimes we find it not hostile at all. And yet the reality is that there is a pressure always to make the Christian less than who God has called us to be. The first thing that the apostle teaches us is the context of our Christian living and he does this by showing us two things. First of all, he shows us that the Christian is exemplified by the way in which they behave. You have maintained a good conduct amongst the Gentiles. He is speaking to Jews, people who are set apart by God and were in a category so distinct, a heritage so unique that they contrasted with every other nation in the whole of the world. In the New Testament there is a division between the Jews and the rest of the world, the Jews and the Gentiles. It was an universal phenomenon but here what you find the apostle teaching us is that there is a distinction between the Christian and the Gentile and by the Gentile he means not only the non-Jew. He means those who are opposed to the gospel. You see, Christianity was cradled in Judaism. Today we are all familiar with politicians telling us that they espouse the Judeo-Christian ethic. And what they are concerned to do is to tell us that they are living continuity with the whole of that Christian ethic that has been worked out in our life. They are trying to link the Christian and the Jew, Jewish system together. And there is a sense in which we grew out. We who are the followers of the Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, we grew out of the Jewish tradition. And there is a linkage between them. There is one ethic. There is one God. There is that great sense of worshipping the mighty Lord. But there is more than that. We were cradled in the very bosom of Judaism. It's true. We grew out of that single understanding of the Lord and the Old Testament is as much a part of our religious tradition under much a part of our faith as it is of the Jewish faith. But there is a sense in which we are different from Gentiles. That is those who have never seen God as He is and the greater apostle. Distinguishes the fact that we have to be different by a conduct from those who live in the world. And his understanding is this. It's a very simple one. There are those who have seen the true and the living God and there are those who worship the pagan gods. And those who have seen God in Jesus Christ, those who have witnessed the light and the grace and the mercy and the power of this mighty creating God are distinct and different from those who still follow idols and the correction of their ways. And because we follow this one true God, we follow Him with integrity and with righteousness and with the distinctiveness of a witness that is different in our world. We maintain a good conduct so that the world sees not only that we are righteous but that we love God but more than that. There's a second thing that distinguishes us in terms of our life in Christ and it's this. It is that the world will accuse us of being different. Not only do we live with a different morality but that you will be maligned as criminals as the authorised version. And they distinguish us from the world in the sense that they accuse us of all different things. The early church, the first Christians, were accused by their adversaries and by the world around them as people who broke up families. Simply because they said, how can those who believe in God and those who do not believe in God coexist together? How can darkness and light support one another? How can those who follow the Christ and those who do not follow the Christ live together? It doesn't matter whether you're born naturally into families. If you belong to the Savior, there is attention. And in that early world they turned round and they accused Christianity of being a divisive force. They saw the Lord Jesus Christ as one who had caused a sword to come in the middle of families for some believed in Him and some did not. And they said He is destructive of the very social fabric of our universe. It's not new. There are people who today will turn round and will say you see how destructive Christianity is. It causes brother to hate brother and sister to hate sister and child to hate parent because they are in Christ Jesus. And there is a sense there in which there is a tension between the family that is natural and the family that is created by God who does not know and which does not accept Jesus Christ as Lord. The early church said here is a sign of verse who would divide and break down and destroy that which God has given. The early church also faced the charge not only of the destructiveness of families and the disintegration of social fabric but they also faced the charges of being those who turned slaves against their muscles because the Christian gospel declared that every man and woman was free in Jesus Christ. There were a new creation and they were not slave and subject and that masters were called to treat their slaves no longer simply as those who were beasts of burden but as people created by God for his glory and in which he would dwell. And the early assaults upon the Christian community were centered upon this sort of attack and you find the very early haters of the Christian gospel saying that Christianity was destructive of the social fiber of the day that they were attacking the nature of slavery and of master. And then a third assault, a third area of attack of these early Christians was upon the fact that they were trying to destroy the empire they were disloyal. They were impeding trade, they were disloyal to Caesar and indeed in the first century of the Christian church history you find that there was a great persecution whereby they tried to eradicate Christians from the imperial army because they felt that if they were Christians who served as soldiers, they could not be trusted in fighting the barbarians on the front because they would betray the state. And the whole of the Christian gospel was seen to be antagonistic and oppositional to the sense in which the world ran its life and there is a place in which the world was not wrong. Those early apologists understood something that we have forgotten that the Christian is committed to the destruction of the way of the world as we understand it. Oh we may be mortal citizens, we may uphold all the good virtues but at the same time we are prepared to raise our voices and our arms against those things that are opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when that early church was caused to submit to the indignity of offering a sacrifice of incense to the altar of the state, the divine or gustus they refused because they placed guard above country, above state and above society. And when they did that and when they dared to do that they were regarded as enemies of the order of things and of the state. It is not surprising that you and I may be clasped and properly clasped as subversive elements within our society. For you and I can never be content simply with things as they are because we follow the gospel of Jesus Christ and we are opposed to humanism of any description because we are committed to that order, that fabric of society that is offered by God in his word. And there is a sense in which the mighty Apostle Peter was trying to make his people aware of the fact of how distinct they were and how oppositional they would be even though they didn't see it. You see these early Christians didn't see themselves as overturners of the state, they didn't see themselves as subversive of the Roman Empire and all that it stood for. They saw themselves simply as worshipers of the true God and yet those who saw them saw not only their worship of the Lord, not only the ritual and the liturgy of their religious observance, they saw also the danger but these people were consistent. And in their consistency they subjected the very fabric of society to a scrutiny of God's law and said there is right and there is wrong and where it is wrong we will challenge it because God is God. And in that sense they were a dangerous people. In that sense you and I are called to be dangerous people. We are people who hold to the status quo, we are people who are supporters of one political philosophy or another. We are those who hold first and foremost to the living and the true God to whom to follow is sometimes the foolishness of this world. The earliest political cartoon against Christianity is to be found scrolled on the palatine walk in Rome and there they have a picture of men and women bowing down to a cross and on the cross is a donkey who is Christ or he had dead to stand against the whole of the power of the Roman world and the church were those who worshipped him. And underneath there is the inscription that says Alex Aminos worships his God those who are fools worship the donkey for he would seek to change the order of mankind for he would seek to change the world in which we live. Christ was an ass or a donkey to the ancient pagan world and those who worshipped him and those who loved him were doubly so. And that is the kind of opposition that teachers saw for this church those who were dumb donkeys because they loved the living God. And there was a relentless opposition to everything that was Christian and it's that which we need to bear in mind as the social context in which the faith is worked out you and I live in a democratic society and we thank God for it. And yet we should never be so distant from the reality of this first letter of the apostle Peter to the reality of the context of persecution that we do not understand the cause. Of being in Jesus Christ people will accuse us falsely of trying to do all things none of us are unfamiliar with the fence of Christians being accused of being simplistic understanders in a modern world of complexity. We're told that we have a simple outlook on the world and in the complexity of our political and our social and our economic world we are people who simply follow the living God and we are simple in our faith and we are to be discounted as a consequence of that. There is a sense in which the principle of following the Lord Jesus Christ will always be the threat to the established order and to the status quo of the day. Because where there are men and women who are sold on Jesus Christ and him alone and obedience to his standards and called to his order of life they are an indefatable enemy of everything that is wicked. And so we will be maligned we will be called fools would call simplistic we will be called silly and those who do not understand the complexity of our life accused of breaking up families accused of turning slave against master accused of impeding trade and disloyalty to our governments because first there is the call of Christ. If we do not understand that and if we do not understand the illegitimacy of that claim that is given against us by the world we will always be surprised and we will always be hurt and we will never understand that the world raises its arms in hostility against us and yet this is the context of our life. Of our life Christ the greater possible that whereas they speak evil against you as evil to us they may by your good works which they shall behold glorify God in the day of visitation. The second thing that we see in terms of the context of our life is that Christians have a different end in view. Is it simply to create a new society in which men and women are captivated to the spirit of the age not at all? It's to create that climate of worship where the living God is honored first and foremost. Where God's standard is the inflexible rule of our life and the grace of God in our hearts is the soul strength. By which we respond to every situation the Christians had one end in view and that was to glorify God in the day of visitation. He could describe the ultimate goal of the Christian life in this context as that of acting and behaving in such a way that God would be glorified. And we need to take seriously this his second admonition to us as he has taught us the context of our life so he teaches us now that which is the great aim of our obedience. And we need to take seriously the fact that we live in a day and an age when the church much less the world has forgotten what her prime duty is. You see we look around and we see churches absorbed in social issues absorbed in the context of changing the governments and having forgotten that the first task of the church the first task of the believer is to reflect the glory and the might and the majesty of God in her midst. And if you and I are not doing that it doesn't matter how many pronouncements we might make we will find ourselves set with a different goal than the supreme one of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rarely do these things enter into the life of our churches. The fact that we say orthodox things about God doesn't always mean that they're very worthy to often the creeds that we recite together are like dummies, mannequins in shop windows, dressed up and dead. Where the reality is that our creeds should reflect a faith that is alive and vibrant not a dead statue, not some created mannequin but that which dares to beat with a heart created by God for himself. We talk about God as our father as Christians are very often and yet we live as though we were orphans and have no parents to whom we are accountable and both for whom we grow up. In these verses the Apostle Peter throws us to the place where almost we break out dancing at the idea of ignorant and blasphemous pagans being so utterly changed. That their lips and their hearts begin to praise God and it's part of our commitment that not only the pagan but the Christian you and I should give place to the glory of God in our lives. And it becomes a wonderful and exciting challenge to see how we are able to reflect his presence in our midst that our calling amidst this context of strife, of misunderstanding and of ignorance. We are called to be those in whom God dwells with all his power, with all the light of his majesty, with all the glory of his face and we are able to make him known. Peter considers in again the same phrase that it is the work of a visiting God. He made it clear that there's an intimate connection between the occasion of God's visitation when he produces salvation in the soul of scoffers and persecutors and those who are believers. He says having your conversation honest amongst the Gentiles so that whereas they speak against you as evil doers they made by their good works, by your good works which they shall behold glorify God in the day of the salvation. He says that the world may scoff and may laugh and may hate you but the reality is they have to witness the fact that you live out of the profession of your faith in a way that gives the very light to every word that they speak so that where they accuse you of destroying the family they see in reality that you are committed to the family. So here is a great point at which we are people who are under the microscope of the world. They say you're destructive, you tear brother from brother, you tear mother from father, you dare to say that the gospel of Christ breaks down the family but we're the same people who say the family is integral and important within the created ordinance of God he has given that as the very means whereby our world should survive and should live and should grow. And as the world accuses us of being divisive so they have to deal with the reality of the church being that which causes the family to come together living in harmony and grace and unity. So that every accusation of the world is seen to be met by the life of the believing community in a way that answers it without greater apology but with a significant way in which you and I are committed to serving Jesus Christ. So that when the world accuses the church and the Christian gospel of breaking and destroying the very fabric of society by challenging the illegitimate and proper governance of our world they see Christians as proper and beautiful citizens holding that which God has given to them and pricing that which is given to their hands. So that the Christian is accused on the one hand and the accusation is reflected not by their great writing but by the integrity of their life and their witness for him and the Apostle Peter is calling the Christian community not to shout and to rant and to rave or simply to live and to bask in the glory of God. So that those things that the world accuses us of being and hostilely being we might deflect by the lies we live. You know the first Christian apology, the first Christian letter of defense ever written was produced by a man called Justin. He's known as Justin Marta Justin the Marta and in the extracts that remain to us extend from that first apology you see that the world the empire accused the Christians of being cannibals because they shared in the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So was there understanding of what the church did that they belied the reality of the spiritual communion with Christ, seized upon the words of that institution that we repeat over these 20 centuries and tried to make light and little of the church's witness, the English poet. An imperialist poet of that, Rudyard Kipling, if you want to ever read British imperialism read what he wrote wrote a poem called If and in that poem he has one line that says if you can see the life you've given taken and twisted by names to make a life of fools. He captures the way of the world with the church, naves taking the light twisting it and saying to the world you see these Christians they eat the flesh of others like humans they drink the blood and deliberately not understanding. That's what we experience so that when the world is hostile to who you are and to your witness when they take the words that you offer when they take the explanations that you bring and they twist them as naves. Naves twist words and they produce that twisted end result your first reaction is to shout and to scream you know I hear an awful lot of things. People say this is what Rob said and this is what Rob wants and I hear it as it pierces through my study door Rob said this and I think well I never said that at all. Or Rob wants this and I say I never wanted that at all it doesn't matter whether I say it or whether I don't people will make it up anyway so I can never win but the fact is it doesn't matter what we say or what we don't say or want or don't want people will take what they want and twist it for their own ends. Our first reaction is to go around and to shout and to scream and say that's a lie that's not true at all but the Apostle Peter says that's not the way to deal with it because the more you shout about the way in which people will take what you say and twist them. The more you'll find that they will only believe what they want to believe let the life that you live and the witness that you bring bring the lie to that which is maligning you and every one of you will have experienced this. The frustration of that truth or half truth that lie that twisting of what you said or didn't say or wanted or didn't want such that it distorts every part of reality and you say but this isn't what I said or wanted or meant and you know that nothing you can say can ever repair that. How do you deal with it? One answer is to climb the wall and I do that sometimes the other answer is simply to say I will walk with consistency and see if that will produce it and that's what the Apostle says the church has to do in the midst of the world that will take her witness and twist it and conform it to its own image. He says walk. Walk according to the light that God has given you in consistency with his word and if the world will twist what you say and what you want and what you don't say and what you don't want then walk yet in his grace. All of us have known the frustration of having what we've said twisted repeated multiplied and exemplified and then said this is what you said and we say that's a distortion and all our protestations are in vain. The Apostle Peter says is in the world so in the way in which you deal with one another simply walk and know that the church will go deep and real. Know that you can't simply slough it off or we pretend to we shrug our shoulders and say that's not our problem that's theirs but you and I know that that's our problem too because it hurts us and it penetrates us and the Apostle Peter says you bear that and you simply keep going. Bearing the malicious word the slandered gospel. Bearing those things and knowing that in Christ you have simply yet to walk with him. So as the Apostle we do not dare flinch from the exercise which is involved. How do you go on with that? How in the face of all these twisted lies that are told about you how in the face when people say all these things do you go on there's a forefold encouragement given to us here. You go on because you respect the Father. That is you bring your life and conformity to the Father who has given you life and purposed your life. You go on because you have a debt to the Son. He has given himself and he has surrendered his blood on Calvary. You go on because the Spirit of God has taken a life in you and you go on because your first concern is the glory of God. Those are the forefold encouragement that enable us to take all the slunders, all the lies, all the twisted truths and half truths. The pain doesn't go away and sometimes the anger doesn't go away and sometimes the mystery of why are people saying and doing this to me and saying it about me that doesn't go away either. But you can't deal with every lie and every rumor and every whisper. You deal simply with the Lord and each one of you will face the fact that you shadow box with rumors, with insinuations, with lies, with people who work with false assumptions about you that you cannot challenge. For every time you challenge the assumption it simply confirms it according to their mind and with a frustration that causes you to weak to say, how do I deal with it? I deal with it by respecting the Father who gave me life by honoring the Son who gave me his salvation by walking in the power of the Spirit and by determining that through his glory I will live for him. That's a real problem for most of us, for we've taken and we've seen our words taken and used in this way. Don Calvin writes this, God implies the holy and honest life of his people as a preparation to bring back the wandering to the right way and ultimately it is only the consistency of our life in Christ that will give the lie to the false accusation that is proposed to us. Well, you say, how do I go on in doing that? Oh, and my time has gone, but we will finish it nonetheless. There are two very brief things that I would mention to you. And the first of them is that the Apostle exhorts, listen, dearly beloved I'd be seated you as a pilgrim and a stranger abstain from the fleshly lust and he exhorts the Christian to live as before God, refraining from the things that would harm the gospel. The phrase refers to that which is crude, sexual, sensual sins but it refers to much more than that. It refers to the whole of the world, the flesh as the Apostle understand it. And the second thing he says is that if we would live giving the light of those who would accuse us falsely and malign character, it is that we would give an explanation of our life. Not in terms of everything that we say but that we are pilgrims and aliens. And what he means by that is to say you have to recognise the fact that all your life you will face people who will twist the truth, whether they mean to or whether they don't. And whether you find it in the halls of fourth church or whether you find it on the street of River Road, you will find people who will take things and twist it and will malign you. First of all walk uprightly in the face of it and be witness. And the second thing you do, how do I face that? Because it eats at my heart and I tell you it eats at my heart as much as it does yours. How do you face it? You face it by recognising that you are an alien and a pilgrim in this world and that you can expect nothing more from the world than it will malign you and that the world's lies will sometimes soak into the church and will sometimes cause you the greatest harm and the greatest hurt that ever you can know. I doubt that the world ever hurts the Christian as much as the Christian hurts the Christian because we are infected by the world and we share that infection and in sharing it we hurt and we penetrate and we kill. It says the Apostle Peter, you can't live as a believer without fighting those shadows and those shadows will be with you till the day you die. They will be with you as long as you breathe the name of Jesus Christ. Keep going on and then recognise that you are an alien and a pilgrim a stranger in this world. And because the world doesn't understand you, it will hate you and unless you understand that you are different and unless you understand that the world thinks of you in this way and responds to you in this way, every lie and every untruth and every corrupted heart truth will penetrate and pierce and kill. And I doubt that there is one believer in this whole tonight that has not be penetrated by the lie or the half lie, the rumour or the half rumour that has sought to kill and to cut down all your aliens and strangers. The world doesn't know you, therefore it hates you and if you think that the shadows are going to go away, you are wrong. Live recognising who you are, that the battle in which you are engaged is a powerful one and your enemies are those that are supernatural enemies. Don't engage with them, fight off the temptation to be a part of the world, reign against the soul of the believer and hold yourself in Christ. That's what the Apostle says, you are different and he uses one word. The rapid demos, you are strangers in transit, that's the polite translation. The impolite translation is your tramps or hobos in this world. You are simply passing through and as you pass through they will throw things at you, they will hate you and they will despise you. Understand that and bear it with the same majesty and the same... Turn the tape over. It's demand and ruled by its king and that is where we serve and that's where we follow. And as we serve and as we follow we will know the pain of struggling. We won't always be right and sometimes the rumours will be right but we struggle. We struggle always to honour him, recognising that the world will never do that. No will they honour us for doing it. And so when Kipling says, you see the truth, you've given your life for broken and twisted by names to make a crap for fools. What does he say? Stuk down and take that which is broken and remake it. That you might live in Christ. Let the apostles answer, not Kipling's. Stuk down with worn out tools and start again. Saddened, chasing, hurt, but ever persevering with Christ knowing that the world does not understand you and what it does not understand it will hate. And what it hates it will reject and what it rejects, it will despise. And ultimately, you have no home here, you are moving through. That's why the fellowship you share with Christian people is precious. That's why those who are gathered with you in worship are as important in their relationship to you as any in this world. Because they with you are aliens and strangers. Peculiar people, some of them, very strange, but they are your aliens, they are your people. They are God's gift to you to struggle through this world. You didn't choose them but God has equipped you with them. And if that fellowship is not knit and dear and true, then you have no resource. There are tears that will ever be understood, no heart that will be with you. That's why it says the apostle. You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. You are together, but God has called you to be to walk through this world in His grace and by His power. And you have no one else save your Lord and you have nothing else save your true confession and the integrity of your witness. Therefore, as strangers and aliens, walk on. That's right. Our living Lord, we come as pilgrims through this life that you might lead us in bless us, that you might govern us in keep us, that you might cause us to understand. And in your grace, cause us to love and care and to support one another so that we might build up and not tear down in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.