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All right. Are you guys awake this morning? I’ll see what we can do for that today. I want to give you a few announcements real quick because there are important announcements. Normally, I’ll wait till the end of the service to do this, but because of their timeliness and significance, I just want you to know right now. Um, grace Haven camp, if you have a teenager, middle school kid, elementary kid interested in going. They’ve extended the early bird deadline to today. And so if you enroll your kids today, it saves you $20 as parents if your kid is going into either sixth grade or ninth grade, they get the opportunity of choosing which camp they want to participate in. They can either go to the um, if they’re in sixth grade, they can go to the middle school or elementary. If they’re in ninth grade, they can go to the teen or the middle school, depending on what’s convenient for your kid. Those are in your bulletins this morning. If you didn’t give a get a bulletin taken on your way out as a reminder to you. Second thing is this during the summertime, we’ve got free babysitting for you. Um, we. Yeah. That’s right. It’s a good time for you as parents as well. But we do these. We’re going to do this three times this summer. This is something called Kids Zone. And what it is we have missions teams that come out all summer long.
We have three teams coming this summer. The first team gets here on June the 19th and they run what’s called a kids zone. Every one of these teams will do either a 2 to 3 day kid zone in the park. And what they do is you bring your kids to drop it off and drop it off. Drop that thing off in the summertime. Sometimes they turn into it, so it’s like you drop it off and you have the freedom to come back and pick him up later if you want. Or you can stay and hang out with some of the other parents that are there and just enjoy some time at the park. We’re doing this. The first one is June 25th and 26th. It’s at Bandwagon Park. There’s directions on here. It’s from 1030 to 12. There’s crafts, games, snacks for kids that are provided, some other things as well. So it’s entertaining for your kids. And as parents, we want you to feel the freedom to invite neighborhood kids to. The more the merrier, the happier we are and the freedom you get by bringing your kids there. Okay, um, the other thing is, I really appreciate everyone that helped out with the booth this past Saturday. Even though some of you got a got a text message or a call that said, don’t bother coming because the wind ripped our tent into. So we packed up and left. We had good opportunity for the short bit of time we were there in the 90 mile an hour wind.
Um, but we have another opportunity coming up and it’s in the middle of the week. It’s the 27th and 28th. And so we’re going to be doing a kids zone 25th, 26th, and then a booth the 27th and 28th, which falls right in the middle of the week. So the reason I’m announcing this now is because we need people who have freedom in their in their schedules, flexibility, I should say, in their schedules to sign up, to look at doing that when when you leave today, because we have two days in which we run this booth and, and so we’re going to need a lot of help in being able to do that in the middle of the week. By the end of our booth. Time at Lehigh Roundup is what we’re doing. We have tied somewhere between 2 to 3000 balloons and handed out a couple thousand bottles of water. And so it takes, takes a lot of people to do the Lehigh round up. And because it’s in the middle of the week, it becomes very taxing as a church. So if you have the freedom, if you’re scared, this is the biggest encouragement for you. That’s all right. No one’s ever been bitten or anything like that. Sign up for that. And then as well, there’s a cookout today right after the service.
And if you’re interested, even if you’re not, we just want to encourage you to do that. We’re some people have went and bought all the meat for us to be able to enjoy at Wines Park, and I know some people have brought some sides. So if you if you didn’t bring anything to participate, it’s okay. Come. Anyway. We’d rather have you hang out with us. Right. And the only thing we’re asking is to cover the cost of the meat. Bring $5 a person to cover your share in eating the food that was provided. Because meat turns out it’s not cheap. So we would enjoy that. And so that’s at Wines Park right after the service. With that being said, I’m going to encourage you, if you’ve brought a Bible this morning, go ahead and turn to the book of First Peter. And we’re going to be studying beginning in chapter three today. As you turn there, I’m going to prepare my heart and just praying before the Lord. So let me go to the Lord in prayer. God, I just want to pause and just ask that you speak to us this morning through your word. God that you convict us if needed, that you encourage us where we need it in our lives. Jesus. And that you become Lord of our hearts, our minds, and our service in Jesus. We we thank you for right now. God, we thank you that we could honor you through Your Word.
And it’s in Jesus name, Amen. Well, as we’ve been studying the book of First Peter today, I love the opportunity it presents to us as a church family because it introduces itself in the midst of a church that’s facing a dilemma or a challenge. They’re being persecuted because of their faith in Christ. Chapter one of this book opened up reminding us as people of the significance of of who we are in Jesus and what that relationship with Jesus means for us as individuals. Our hope isn’t just bound up to this world. We have a hope that lasts for eternity because of Christ. And Peter referred to that faith that you have in Jesus as more precious than gold. My hope as a church family is that we perceive our faith in Christ that way, because understanding what God has called us to in this world, it isn’t always easy. And last week we looked at a difficult word to swallow as Americans. How dare I bring up the word submission? Who wants to submit? And out of all the areas that Paul taught us to submit, he he talked about to government and he talked about to work, and he talked about within our own families, our role as individuals and representing Jesus. But out of all those things, he even said, when it’s difficult and challenging, that God’s desire for us to still to submit. As if submission wasn’t a difficult enough word today, he also talks about suffering.
Now, I’m going to say that as a believer, the Bible is clear to us that in following Jesus at particular points in our lives, we will experience suffering. As a matter of fact, as a Christian, if at some point you haven’t experienced suffering because of your faith in Christ, might simply ask, are you really placing faith in Christ? I’m not telling us today as a church family go after suffering. It’s not something we want to seek in our lives, but in following Jesus with faith in him. Inevitably, because of our love and concern for Christ and making him made known in our lives, what it will bring forth and experience as suffering. And today, when Paul talks about suffering, he’s not talking about any suffering. I just want to clarify that in life we experience a multitude of suffering types. Sometimes we we suffer because we make poor choices. That makes the most sense. Inevitably, bad decisions create bad results. Sometimes we suffer because of other people’s poor decisions. Well, Paul addresses here specifically as we suffer also because we choose to follow after Jesus with our lives. And in talking about suffering in First Peter chapter three, Paul points out to us what we learn about suffering together. The first is this verse 80 says, to sum up talking about last week and all the submission and what we’re pursuing in our lives, he says, to sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind hearted and humble in spirit.
Well, Peter is doing here. He’s he’s looking at the church and he’s pointing to us. The the significance of who we are and our fellowship with Jesus. How important it is that we seek to honor one another within our church. And the way that we do that is through the adjective words that Paul has brought to mind here. Sympathetically seeking after one another. Harmoniously pursuing unity. Brotherly treating one another as friends, kind hearted and and humble in spirit with one another. He’s he’s pointing to us that this there is significance in the church when we suffer, because what we learn in suffering is that we need fellowship. More than anything, I wish that we didn’t learn that lesson the hard way. It’s not until our lives have wreaked, have experienced havoc, that then we desire to find a church to encourage us in our walk with Christ many times. And while Paul is recognizing for the believers in this passage of Scripture is that following Jesus is difficult. And so what you need in your pursuit of Jesus is to go ahead and join arms with a church body who carries the desire to encourage you as you pursue Christ in your life. He’s trying to get us to stack up a lifestyle that prepares for us suffering that may be before us and following after Jesus.
Suffering has the tendency in our lives to clarify what matters and what doesn’t matter, doesn’t it? You find yourselves in the midst of a trial in your life, and it tends to just simplify the importance of what life is about. And you and you begin to weed out things in your life that you fought for that you thought were so important. And you begin to draw family and relationships and friends in because you recognize that that is what is significant and encourages you from day to day. Through suffering, we learn that fellowship is important. Through suffering, we learn as Christians how to show sympathy and compassion to each other. Through suffering gives us an ultimate platform as a body of believers to express love. As one comes into the church wounded in his, the family of Christ surrounds them, encourages them and their walk with God. Suffering for us cultivates a tender heart, doesn’t it? For those of us who have endured suffering, when we see someone going through similar trials, it tugs at particular heart strings in our lives to meet that need. To show empathy and sympathy towards another individual who is experiencing that suffering for us cultivates a humble mind. It reminds us that we don’t always have it all together, and we can’t do it on our own. That God has created his church for a purpose, and that purpose is to strengthen one another. You know what we need, I think, more than anything, is people as a place where we can come in, that we know that we’re not going to be judged in a place where we know that we can come in when we’re hurting and be honest.
Even this week, I had the fortune and opportunity of just sitting with a couple from another church who are carrying wounds on their shoulders. And the sad part about it is the wounds came from a church. I think sometimes the church that’s supposed to love you can even be the worst at displaying that love. You know what we need to find as a community is a place. When we’re wounded is a place to be honest. And I’m not saying lash out and attack other people back. I’m just saying get to the simplicity of understanding what’s really important in life. It is relationships and the other things that we fight for that we find so significant really aren’t. And when we come into a church family like this and we carry weaknesses and burdens upon our shoulders, we should find a place where we can sit with someone and say, I am not okay. On the outside I think I look okay, but on the inside I feel broken. You know, I think for the most part that in many churches you find that. I think oftentimes people use the excuse that churches are hypocritical, which we know that we are.
We’re just doing something about it. Right? We already know that cat’s out of the bag. We’re sinful. We confess. But I think a lot of times what keeps us from doing that as an individual is pride. Particularly to those people who are the types of people that are so good at serving others that never think to ask, how about me for just once? I know in the church family there are those who come sometimes, and all they want is for other people to serve them. But there are a lot of congregation that make up churches all across America of people that are just giving and giving and giving, but never take the opportunity to let other people serve them. That’s pride. You know, you rob the church of an opportunity of doing what the church should do when you try to serve and you not let other people in to heal a heart to encourage you. I’m not talking about just feel sorry for you. I’m talking about genuine encouragement and love. And Paul looks at a church or excuse me, Peter looks at a church. I’ll probably say Paul off and on throughout this service. And he wrote most of the New Testament. But Peter looks, looks at this church and he’s saying, listen, in chapter one, you guys have been called to this in Jesus, and you need to understand how important your relationship with Jesus is. And you’ve been called to submit to these authorities to manifest Christ and the lives of this of people in this world.
And it’s not easy. And so what you need to understand is the significance of the church in your life. And when we come together as a congregation and we carry difficult feelings towards one another, and sometimes we we rub each other raw and we look at a verse like this and we and we realize, but these relationships are so important. And so I need to come in and I need to love and I need to expose my heart, and I need to let people serve me, and I need to serve other people because the church is important for what God wants to accomplish. And Amen. I said, that’s a good message for us because as a family right now, we’re thinking about and we’re we’re moving towards that is buying a building just up the road. And we’re praying it doesn’t sell as we work with the city right now and the loans and everything that needs to get done. God, please allow it sell, right. What an important message for us to take, because every time we move, we’re going to grow. It’s inevitable. It happens. Whether it’s life, people are attracted to it. So when you come to church, act lively, right? But how important. And for us, what Peter is saying here is to recognize the significance of the fellowship of the church, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those who weep.
Peter goes on, there’s something else that we learn through suffering. Second thing is this is that godly suffering makes the gospel the biblical gospel. It makes it credible. It says not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead. For you are called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing for the one who desires life to love and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. He must turn away from evil and do good. He must seek peace and pursue it. Let’s stop right there. It’s going to simply say, in the natural way, to respond to evil is evil. My favorite way to respond to evil is evil. That’s being honest. That’s about Jesus working in my heart. But the supernatural way to respond to evil is with good at the heart of the gospel as Jesus dying to love his enemies. It takes strength and courage and real faith in Christ to respond to a world that might despise you for pursuing Christ, but instead choosing to love them for Christ and in loving others through suffering makes the gospel credible. It says it’s real. You think about what you ask people to do when you talk about Jesus with others. To lay down yourself. Maybe to lay down another faith or a belief to come to Christ.
I mean, Jesus even said, pick up your cross and follow me. There is sacrifice to pursuing Jesus and your life, and following after Christ is to be evidence to the lives of other people around you. That yes, the gospel is indeed credible. And the way that you understand and experience that is when you choose to persecute me. I respond in loving you the same way that Jesus did for me. And as Jesus loved me and changed my life as a sinner, so my hope is in loving you, your life will be changed for Christ. In verse 12 goes on. For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and his ears attend to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Simply said, said before, live the kind of life Jesus can bless. You’re going to suffer regardless if you pursue Jesus or not. But in pursuing Jesus, even in your suffering and in following after him, that is the life that Jesus blesses. And I got to say, in making such a simple statement, it takes a lot of faith to believe that to live for a hope that’s not just about this world, but for all eternity. Keeping that perspective in mind as you go into this world. I love this verse in the Bible. It always comes to my mind in hardships. I know I’ve shown it to you as a congregation before, but it says, and I heard this as revelation at the very end of the book, Jesus wins.
I love that he wrote the Bible and he and he didn’t just leave an open ended like, what’s going to happen with Jesus? He goes ahead and tells you, I’m going to win. Okay, so go ahead and follow me. The victory is mine. You’ve got it in the bag. And so he says this in his victory. Towards the end, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be among them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death. There were no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. Amen. You never get to the moment in your life where the depths of your soul is crying so deeply that you don’t even have words to describe the hurt that you’re feeling. That hurt. Jesus sees it, too. And it’s not natural. Your soul is crying out in those moments because it’s not natural. When God created us, he never intended us for his people to experience sin and suffering. It wasn’t until that man rejected God that sin and suffering came into the world. And so our soul longs for joy and comfort and peace and security, because that’s why we were created or we were created for that in that reason.
God created your soul to not experience the hurt in which we are a part of. And in experiencing those things, we recognize the significance of turning to a God who can take away the hurt and the pain in our lives. And Jesus promises us, even in our suffering right now, that one day he will wipe it away. And I look at the suffering that we experience in life. And if I find a reason to be thankful for it, though, I don’t pursue it. If I’m honest with the suffering that I’ve endured in my life, I would have never turned to Jesus quite as often as I have without it. Foolish me right? I know how important God is, but it’s not until I really recognize it in a situation of desperation that I’ve really turned to God with a heart that desired to get close to him. I think sometimes God permits, even though he sees the suffering we’re experiencing, he allows us to go through it to teach us as people our need to depend upon him. Because when things are going our way and life seems grand. God’s just an afterthought. Passage goes on. Verse 13 Paul begins to share with us that as we go through suffering as well, that suffering teaches and shows us how God’s love becomes evident. It says, who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.
And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled. Let me stop there. Who’s going to harm you if you’re good? I love that phrase. It reminds me of Paula Deen. She made a living off being just sweet, right? She’s sweet in the way she talks. And she’s sweet. And the food she cooks. How can you hate Paula Deen? She made deep fried butter sticks coated in sugar. Popular. If you want to learn how to cook, good, go to the south. And that’s the secret. You deep fry it. Tons of butter and everything and sugar. And you’ve got the southern cooking. Paula Deen, she is sweet. And she is good, right? Unhealthy is everything. But who can hate that? Bible saying the same thing. When you respond to suffering, there are two ways you can respond. You can become bitter and they can eat you up. And when people look at your life, it’s repulsive. It’s it’s a turnoff. The gospel doesn’t look credible and Jesus’s love isn’t evident. But when you look at suffering and you have in mind how your faith is bringing such a glorious future. And you respond with Paula Deen sugar sweetness. How appealing does Jesus look to this world? That’s a shot to the complainers sometimes. Me right? I’m often first to complain about something rather than to rejoice about other things.
I’m the glass half empty rather than the glass half full kind of person. It’s not natural for me to oftentimes praise, but it’s something that I think about in my life need to do more of to make the love of God evident, to make his gospel credible. But even if you should suffer for the righteousness sake, you are blessed and do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled. He’s saying to you, yeah, bad things are going to happen, but that’s okay. Don’t fear the one who can just harm the body. Fear the one who can destroy both the soul. Jesus has got it under control. He’s bigger than the toughest bully in your life and the greatest obstacle you’re facing. Verse 15, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give, uh, excuse me? To give and for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence, and keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better if God should will it, that you should suffer for doing what is right, rather than for doing what is wrong. You know, oftentimes contextually read verse 15 out of this passage of Scripture. Always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you, in your life, in Jesus.
Right? And I would think that meant. Um, so I need to tell people about Jesus verbally. Just communicate. Jesus got to share that hope, right? And if they ask me a question that I don’t know, I get real nervous and I make something up. I don’t even know if I’m right. It just makes me nervous. But in the context of the passage, what it’s saying to us is, as a believer, God’s called you to share the hope that you have in you, in both your living and your words. Matter of fact, I think up to this point of passage, Paul’s talked about submission. He’s talked about suffering. Very little of the emphasis has been on communicating through verbal communication, but rather communicating through our actions. It’s not to say that we don’t talk about Jesus with our lips, but we need to first live him in our lives. And as we live him in our lives, we’ll receive platform to share them with our lips. He tells us in verse 17 that as we think about sharing Christ with our lives, we will suffer. But it’s better to be suffering following God than to suffer outside of the will of God. It makes me uncomfortable to say to talk about suffering. But Paul in verse 18 continues with an example for us. He begins to talk about Jesus. And, you know, I appreciate Peter talking about suffering to us.
And when I read Scripture, God never wants to undermine our suffering. Our suffering is important to him. That’s why he gives us a promise at the end of revelation chapter 21, that he’s going to wipe it away, that we know within our souls as we ache. It’s not natural. God wants to remedy the sin and the effects of sin in our lives, and give us the hope and joy and future in Jesus suffering, in particularly your specific suffering and what you endure in your life is important to God. We never want to undermine that because Jesus doesn’t undermine it. We weep with those who weep. We mourn with those who mourn, and we rejoice with those who rejoice. But I got to say. Some of us make an idol out of our suffering. And to be honest, suffering is not the worst thing in the world that could happen. Peter, in this passage begins to point out to us, suffering by far isn’t the worst thing that could happen to us, and we need reminded of that because when we’re going through suffering in our lives, oftentimes when we begin to make it an idol, we also get very selfish and all we can think of is just that hurt. And we don’t realize that there is a world outside of us that God has called us to live in, and that God desires to heal us.
If we would just follow after him. And our suffering isolates us, and our suffering traps us. And we begin to think so much of self that praying to God and talking to God about it may even become the last thing on our mind. And Peter begins to share with us how suffering isn’t the worst thing that can happen to us. And he says in verse 18, For Christ also died for sins once for all the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits. Now in prison, I want to explain what that means. If you’re looking at that same wall, what in the world is he talking about? All right. He gets real confused and he starts talking about Noah and the men, and you’re like, uh, spirits in prison. Noah. What’s that got to do with Jesus dying on the cross? I don’t get it. But the point of this passage that Paul is saying to us that Jesus. The importance of Jesus in your lives is the the pillar of what life is all about. And we get so fixated on our suffering, and that’s not even the worst thing that can happen to us. A life with Jesus, what God has called us to rejection of Jesus and coming before an Almighty God with that upon our shoulders.
That’s the worst thing that could happen to us. Judgement. Time. Meet God rejecting Jesus. See how that goes. Many times people get mad about that because it brings up the idea of hell. Some people try to argue about hell so much so they’ll argue about hell until they find themselves in it. It’s not fair, right? I don’t want it that way. God, I want to do it my way. God can’t send people to hell. Those are harsh. The Bible tells us he who has the son has life. We live life as if we are God. Sometimes we get angry about God, about the way things going, as if God promises us more than today. All that we get is today. God owes you no tomorrow. He gives you out of his grace tomorrow. And it’s not like God didn’t give us a way of escape. I don’t want to meet a holy God with sin on my shoulders. God’s demand for entry into heaven is perfection. It’s perfect God and his perfect kingdom. I don’t want to meet a holy God with sin on my shoulders. God gave us a way of escape. It’s not like he just damned the world. He gave us hope. It’s the simplest thing ever. It’s faith in Christ. Jesus died for sins once for all. Look at this. The just for the unjust. Jesus took your sins upon his shoulders so that you could experience the righteousness of God for all eternity in your life, that you could experience his kingdom forever and ever.
All you have to do is come to Jesus. There’s no earning it because you can’t earn it. It’s perfection. Jesus has already done it. That’s why on the cross he said, it is finished, which means paid in full the expense that you owed to God. Jesus paid it if you just want to accept it. And people just reject it. And we shake our fists at it and say, forget you. Suffering is not the worst thing that could happen. That’s right. It’s honestly choosing to come before a holy God shaking your fist at Jesus. Paul shares that it says in verse 19, in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits, now in prison, remember that for just a minute Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison. Okay, I’m going to throw something else out to us. I’m going to explain what that means. We were once disobedient. He’s still talking about those spirits. When the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh. It’s talking about water baptism. So it’s not water baptism, okay, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus just coming to Jesus.
That’s what he says. You want that, right? Look to God. Just come to Jesus. He’ll take away your sin. Who is at the right hand of God? Having gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him? Jesus runs the show. That’s what verse 22 says, Come to Christ. So what does all this mean Jesus died for? For our sins. All of a sudden he’s talking to his spirit prisons. And then and then the Bible just throws in Noah. What does Noah have to do with anything? I got to say, in reading this passage of scripture, there’s not many interpretations of it. All of them are pretty similar to what this passage is talking about. I will die for none of the interpretations of it. All right. There are things in this world that I think are important I’ll die for. I’ll Jesus the Bible. You want to stand on the pillars of what Christianity has stood for for all time when it comes to this passage of Scripture and interpretation of it, I want to tell you, there’s a little bit of liberty here, okay. And here’s why. When he talks about, in verse 19 about the spirits that Jesus went and preached to different opinions on what this is talking about, and let me give you a good rule of thumb when you go to interpret difficult passages of Scripture like this.
Don’t isolate this particular passage of Scripture to itself. You want to use easily understood passages of Scripture to infer meaning to what difficult passages of Scripture are talking about. Okay, when you take a difficult passage of Scripture, you have no idea what it’s talking about and you just develop a theology from it. You get crazy beliefs in this world, okay, all system of beliefs of different religions are built on weird verses of the Bible that were misinterpreted. We don’t want to do that here. Okay. So we’re going to take this passage of scripture. We’re going to look for other similar, similar passages of Scripture in which this relates to what we find is when Jesus went in and preached to the spirit prison, some people have taken that to say that Jesus literally went to Gehenna or to hell, and he preached to the spirits that were in hell, pronouncing their judgment upon them for rejecting him. Okay, there’s nowhere in Scripture that teaches that that was a theology that developed later in centuries that people have held to with this passage of Scripture. There’s no biblical principle to hold to for that. If you want to hold to it, you’re holding to tradition rather than Bible verses. Okay. Another thought on it is that Jesus went to hell, and he preached to angels who were on the walking the earth during the time of Noah, and they were bad angels.
They were sent there. And so Jesus went to preach to them their judgment. The third theory, which is what I hold with loose water here, is that Jesus went to Abraham’s bosom, and he he went and led the captives free. But he also preached to those who were in Gehenna. Which is why in the next verse he starts talking about individual people in verse 20. Okay, but if you read Luke chapter 16, starting in verse 19, you’ll see a picture of what Abraham’s bosom was before Jesus ascended into heaven, sitting at the right hand of the father. And the angels subjected him that we saw in the very last verse of this passage in verse 22. There was a place called Abraham’s bosom, in which those going to heaven were. And on the other side there was a divide where it was Gehenna or hell. Those who rejected Jesus stayed there. If you read Luke chapter 16, it gives a picture of Abraham’s bosom. It describes it in one side of Abraham’s bosom. In that story there is a man named a rich man on the other side, a man who accepted Jesus, a humble man. His name was Lazarus, and the rich man was allowed to speak into the other people’s lives from Gehenna, to give them an experience of what Gehenna was like. It was a place of pain, sorrow. A place where God’s gracious presence wasn’t found.
The other side is Lazarus. When Jesus died on the cross, according to Luke 16, my belief is that he went into Abraham’s bosom with those who accepted him, and there he delivered a sermon of of salvation to those who accepted him, and a sermon of destruction to those who have rejected him. And in Abraham’s bosom those in Gehenna could hear his message to understand their judgment. Jesus went right after his death and preached that message in Ghana. He ever asked the question, where did Jesus go after he died on the cross? You know, three days later, he was resurrected. He was just in limbo land somewhere. According to Scripture, it tells us that he went and preached a message, and it goes on and says in verse 20 to those he preached who were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the water. Let me just tell you how Noah fits into this. In the time of Noah, let me just show you in Genesis six and the time of Noah, it tells us in the opening verse. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So during the time of Noah, who was evil, everyone, how bad were they? They were wicked.
All people were evil and wicked. You got that? There wasn’t a good person in this world I like. There’s one pastor who gets to this passage and he hates children’s Bibles when it talks about the story of Noah. Every time you see it in a kids Bible, it’s like beautiful things, you know? It’s like your kid in a picture book goes to the zoo and sees all these animals. And Noah was a great guy and God loved him because he was a great guy. And when you read the actual Bible story, it’s nothing like that. You got destruction of the entire world. That’s not a pretty thing, right? We paint it on our nursery walls. Look, kids, it’s snowing. It’s beautiful boat, you know, it’s like people are dying. They swam for a little bit, but they’re drowning, you know? It’s not. It’s not a good story. Like you read it with your kids. It’s not. It’s not a happy tale. Okay. So he says in verse six, and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and was grieved in his heart. Then the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land. These were people whom God has promised he would come and die for their sins. And they look at God and said, we’re having it our way. We’re shaking our fists at you and forget you.
It says this from man to animals to creeping things and the birds of the sky. For I am sorry that I have made them. But it says in verse eight, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Verse five, who was wicked? Everybody. But Noah finds favor in the Lord. In the Hebrew text in verse eight, the word favor. Favor is the Greek word for grace. How to know I get that the Bible tells us that Noah didn’t do anything. Noah was wicked just as everyone else was. But Noah, in a moment of humility, trusted in God. And rather than receive condemnation, God gave him grace. And so why in the world is this story about Noah in the Bible? You know, I got to say, after Noah came to know God and trusted in him and the salvation that he’s going to bring for Noah, Noah was in his family was carried through on the boat. We know the story, right? It lands. Everyone’s so happy, you know, right after the party was over, Noah made a sacrifice. They celebrated for Jesus. And then Noah got, like wasted drunk. And it tells us that his son, even sexually, according to the text, it looks like his son sexually defiled him. Noah was not a perfect man. No, was not by any means a pretty man. Noah just came to God and trusted in the salvation that would come to Jesus.
He wanted God’s grace. He knew the wickedness that he had, and he wanted to trust in God. Because coming before a mighty God, judging this world in all sin, in his perfect kingdom, Noah knew he had no hope. Suffering is not the worst thing that could happen to us. And so it says this. Let me go back to the text so we can see it. In verse 19, excuse me, verse 20, who were once disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the water. Get a picture of this moment, if you’re Noah, because the two things that we’re talking about here is when someone does you wrong, are you going to do evil back, or are you going to love Jesus in return? And are you going to love them for Jesus? And Noah’s time, if you picture all the wickedness that’s all over the earth. Noah for over 100 years now, is building a boat. He is the only one who has given his life to God. Everyone would been walking by Noah, and many scholars believe that rain didn’t come from the sky at that particular point in the Bible. It was actually coming from the ground. There was no need for boats. And so you’re walking through this earth and you see this guy for over 100 years building a boat, and what are the people continue to do? They do nothing but mock Noah.
But Noah, in that mockery, rather than responding with evil, chooses faith in Jesus. And so what this passage is doing for us is, is recognizing the need for trusting in Christ. We can respond with the wickedness of the world and mock those who follow after Jesus. Or we can just submit and pursue Jesus with our lives, the kind of life that God can bless. And so he says in verse 21, corresponding to that baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh. It’s not the dunking under water that’s going to save you. It’s your faith in Christ. No, it’s carried through water. And it was a picture for us of the change that Jesus does on on us from the inside out. He washes us clean. He forgives our sins. But an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus, who is at the right hand of God, has gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him. Jesus is in control. That says to me, I should be on Jesus’s team. God’s got everything under control. In our suffering. The suffering that we experience in this world as people makes God’s love evident to us. It shows the significance and the credibility of the gospel. It points to us the importance of the church.
It reminds us as people, as Jesus suffered for our well being, so we can suffer for the well-being of others for righteousness sake. It reminds us as we focus on our suffering, we become isolated and and we think that we’re the only one on the planet, the only one experiencing pain, that suffering isn’t the worst thing that can happen to us. The beauty of the church and the message and the hope that it carries, is far more important in this world than any suffering that should hinder us from the task that God has called us to do. But they even began to swallow a message like that. You’ve got to understand the significance of Jesus and how precious your faith is in Christ. And so my hope is as a church, when we come in on Sunday, we gather together on any day we’re not too proud to admit when we’re hurting. But we can just stop and look at another brother or sister in Christ and say, you know what? I’m not okay. And I try to serve more to cover it up, but I just need someone to serve me for a little while. You know how powerful that church becomes with a message like that to not just hear the words, but to take it into our hearts and understand the significance of what Christ has called us in this world. The hope of Jesus. A hope of eternity and a faith that is more precious than gold. I have everybody go ahead and bow your heads for just a moment.