Tawa Baptist

Joy to the World

Scripture: Psalm 98

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Joy
  • To the World
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

I have here in my hand a piece of fruit, an apple to be precise. Apples do not take long to eat. Maybe five minutes if you are not in a hurry. They take a lot longer to grow. If I were to plant the seeds out of this apple and nurture them, it could take anywhere between 5 to 12 years before the seeds produced more apples to eat. That’s a long time.

Earlier in the year we did an Anthems series, featuring some of the hymns and worship songs of the Christian faith. Today, because we are in the season of Christmas Advent, we take a break from our series in First Peter to focus on the well-known Christian anthem Joy to the World.

Joy is like an apple tree, it takes time to grow and produce fruit.

Joy to the World was written by Isaac Watts back in 1719, over 300 years ago. Isaac was the minister of the Mark Lane Congregational Chapel, a large independent church in London. Part of his ministry included training preachers.

Most of you would have heard of Eugene Peterson, who translated the entire Bible into an English paraphrase, for modern readers, called The Message. Well, the song Joy to the World is also a kind of paraphrase of Scripture. Isaac Watts did a similar thing with the Psalms of the Old Testament. Joy to the World is Isaac Watt’s poetic translation of Psalm 98, verses 4-9.

Let me read you the whole of Psalm 98 now…

Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;
his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
2 The Lord has made his salvation known
    and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
3 He has rememberedhis love and his faithfulness to Israel;
all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

4 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;
5 make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing,
6 with trumpetsand the blast of the ram’s horn—

 shout for joybefore the Lord, the King.

7 Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountainssing together for joy;
9 let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

Joy:

Joy is not the same as happiness. Joy is more resilient, deeper, less fleeting. There is a certain happiness with eating an apple, but that happiness does not last for long. Once the apple is eaten, and hunger returns, the happiness fades. Joy is more like the whole tree. Joy has its roots in the soil of hope. The tree of joy goes on bearing fruit year after year.

I said before that joy takes time to grow. Although Isaac Watts wrote the words for Joy to the World in 1719, his poetry was not put to music until over 100 years later, in 1836, by Lowell Mason. Some say that Mason’s tune was borrowed from the composer George Handel. Others say the similarity is coincidence. Whatever the case, the song Joy to the World started as a poem, much like an apple starts as a seed.

Isaac Watts never really intended the poem to be a Christmas carol. He was simply reinterpreting the psalms through the lens of Christ. What are these ancient songs saying when we understand the Lord (Yahweh) as referring to Jesus?      

Lowell Mason was a music teacher in the United States. He published Joy to the World during the Christmas season and it caught on as a Christmas carol celebrating the birth of Jesus. 

There is a certain joy in doing something creative. Whether that’s writing a poem or a song or doing wood turning or baking or painting. Whatever it is we create, takes on a life of its own that may be used by God in ways that we could never have imagined, much like Isaac Watt’s paraphrase of Psalm 98. 

We have compared joy to a fruit tree. We might also compare joy to the keel of a yacht. The keel is that part of the hull of a boat that we do not see because it is underwater. The keel keeps the yacht upright, especially in high winds. Without the keel the yacht would be prone to capsizing.

In the same way a keel lends stability to a boat, so too joy (born from hope) lends stability to our soul, especially in the storms of life.   

We have come through a pretty tough year in many respects. 2020 has been a perfect storm in many ways. Covid has affected so many different aspects of life, even more so overseas than in New Zealand. We are a bit sick of hearing about 2020 and all its difficulties so I won’t go on about it. We look forward (tentatively) to what 2021 might hold – hopefully something better.

This hope of a better year ahead is not unfounded. We have seen reports on the news of how a vaccine against Covid is being rolled out across the UK. While it may take some months for the benefits of this to be felt across the world, there is a certain joy in hearing a remedy is on its way. This joy acts as a kind of keel for our soul; it helps to provide some stability to our lives now.  

Psalm 98 begins with the phrase: Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things;

There are a number of psalms which talk about singing a new song to the Lord. This does not mean checking out the latest release from Hillsong. It means we have been through hard times and we are sick of singing the old songs of lament. We are sick of hearing and talking about Covid. We want something good to look forward to. God has given us a reason to stop singing sad songs and start singing joyful songs in praise of the marvellous things He has done. 

Walter Brueggemann classifies Psalm 98 as a Psalm of new orientation. Psalms of new orientation are songs written after a community has come out of a difficult time. Sometimes life throws us curve balls or is not fair and we go through a period of suffering and disorientation, when we do not know what way is up. After we have passed through the crucible of disorientation we emerge with a new orientation, a new perspective, a new way of looking at things.    

Most of the book of Job describes one man’s dis-orientation. But at the end, after God has spoken, Job sees things differently and is able to sing a new song. He is able to praise the Lord again. Job’s perspective has been enlarged, so now he has a new orientation, one which is deeper and broader in its scope.

Psalm 98 resonates with a number of experiences in Israel’s history, especially their experience of being set free from exile in Babylon. After nearly 70 years as captives in a foreign land, God let the exiles return home to Jerusalem and gave them a whole new orientation. Psalm 98 served as a helpful vehicle for praise in that situation.

While 2020 is only one year, and does not really compare with the many years of oppression Israel suffered in Babylon, Psalm 98 is the kind of song a community might sing after emerging from a year like 2020. It may also be the sort of song one might sing after emerging from a period of sustained personal grief or a crisis of faith.

To the World:      

Returning to our image of joy as an apple tree. You cannot eat all the apples yourself. Apples were made for sharing. Joy is multiplied in the sharing. In sharing your apples, you make friends with your neighbours and you get to feel good about doing something life-giving for someone else.

Psalm 98 is made up of three sections. Verses 1-3 are a call for Israel to praise God as their Saviour. Verses 4-6 are a call for all the peoples of the world to praise God as King. And verses 7-9 are a call for all creation (including the non-human world) to praise God as Judge.

The joy in view here is not just for a select lucky few. The joy is for the whole world. The joy is universal in scope.

Verses 1, 2 & 4 of Isaac Watts’ song capture something of the universal scope of the joy associated with Christ’s coming. Verse 1 reads:

Joy to the World; the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room, And Heaven and nature sing.

As I mentioned earlier the Lord that Isaac Watts has in mind here is Jesus. The Lord Jesus is a King. Not just any king but the King of kings. To call Jesus ‘King’ is to say that all power and authority rests with him. Jesus is to be honoured and obeyed, not out of fear of punishment, but enthusiastically and willingly because he is a good King.

The joy is in knowing that Christ is a King who brings salvation and peace to the world, not war, oppression and misery as other kings might.  

Jesus’ coming is past, present and future. Jesus has come to earth as a baby born in a manger 2000 years’ ago. But we also await his second coming in glory, at some point in the future. Then there is the sense in which Jesus comes to us in the present, by his Spirit entering our heart.

Now it needs to be said that Psalm 98 does not talk about preparing room in our heart for the Lord. Isaac Watts borrowed that idea from the New Testament. And we can easily see the Christmas connection, with Mary & Joseph struggling to find a room to stay in when they went to Bethlehem for the census. 

What then does it mean to prepare Jesus room in our heart? I think this phrase is talking about at least two things: intimacy and imitation.

Firstly, intimacy. Your heart is your inner most core. It is a private place and a sacred part of yourself. It is rightly closed off from public view. The door of your heart has no handle on the outside. It can only be opened from the inside. Most people are not allowed access to your heart but you may choose to let some people in.

To let Jesus into your heart means to show him hospitality and share with him at the deepest level. Preparing room in our heart for Christ requires us to the make ourselves vulnerable and trust the Lord. It means being honest with him and letting him see how poor we are on the inside. To let Jesus into our heart is to risk loving him.

When you let someone in like that you allow them to know the real you. At the end of the day the thing that matters is not how many sermons we preached or how many people we healed. What matters, when all is said and done, is whether Jesus knows us. [1] 

So making room for Jesus in our heart is about intimacy. But it’s also about imitation, as in the imitation of Christ.

Your heart is to your soul what ground control is to an astronaut – it is the command centre. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by taking our instructions from him, like an astronaut following the orders of ground control.

Your heart is to your soul what the Beehive is to New Zealand – it is the parliament in which decisions are considered and made. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by letting him be our Prime Minister and following his lead.

Your heart is to your soul what a cockpit is to an aeroplane – it is the place from which you control yourself and set the direction for your life. To prepare room for Jesus in our heart means to imitate Christ by being his co-pilot. He is the captain and His Spirit is the navigator. We are not passengers in our own lives, sitting in the back eating biscuits and drinking coffee. No. We are in the cockpit actively flying our soul with Jesus alongside us setting the course.    

To prepare him room in our heart is about intimacy and imitation. We need to let Jesus in and we need to follow his example, because he is our King.

The universal scope of Jesus’ salvation comes out again in verse 2 of the song, which reads…


Joy to the earth, the Saviour reigns! Let men their songs employ;
While fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains repeat the sounding joy.

Jesus is not just the Saviour of humanity, he is also the Saviour of non-human creation as well: fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains. This is a way of describing all things high and low. The reference to floods is perhaps a poetic way of including all sorts of weather. As we heard a couple of weeks ago, nothing is beyond Jesus’ reach.  

One thing about joy is that it must be expressed. The kind of joy Psalm 98 and Isaac Watts are writing about cannot be contained. It is graceful and dignified. A mountain or a field does not make a lot of noise but its very presence, its natural beauty, echoes the permanence and majesty of God the creator.

We have likened joy to an apple tree and to the keel of a boat. Psalm 98 makes it clear that joy is also a positive energy, the energy that comes from hope.

If hope is like a wind turbine, then joy is the electricity generated by the turbine. Or if hope is like a hydro dam, then joy is the power generated by the hydro dam. Or if hope is like an open fire, then joy is the heat given off by the fireplace. Or if hope is like a candle, then joy is the light shining from the wick.  

You know when you are climbing a mountain, just putting one foot in front of the other, it feels like it’s taking forever and you are never going to get there, when all of a sudden you turn a corner, see the summit and realise the end is in sight. It is at that point, that you get a second wind. You get a fresh surge of energy to keep going and finish the climb.

Joy is that positive energy generated by hope, when we see the end in sight. It must be expressed. And what better way to express joy than in praise to God.

Verse 3 of Isaac Watt’s song is probably not familiar to most of us. We tend not to sing it. Verse 3 reads…


No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

This verse of the song does not come from Psalm 98, at least not directly. It comes from Genesis 3, where God curses the ground after Adam & Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Jesus’ coming is joy to the world because Jesus reverses the curse of sin. The idea that all of creation, including the ground, is affected by Christ’s coming is touched on in Romans 8 where the apostle Paul writes…

19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 thatthe creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Jesus’ coming means joy for all creation because Christ liberates the ground from the curse of sin and he liberates human beings from our bondage to sin as well.

The last verse of Joy to the World reads…

 
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love.

This verse roughly equates to the end of Psalm 98 where the author writes…

9 let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

Isaac Watts does not directly talk about Christ as a ‘judge’ but that is what he means when he refers to Jesus as one who rules the world with truth and grace.  

We might tend to shy away from the thought of judgement and may prefer to not think of Jesus as our judge. This may be because we have a distorted view of what judgement is. For us, here in New Zealand, judgement is associated with destructive criticism and putting people down. (Tall poppy syndrome.) But that is not what is meant by Psalm 98 or Isaac Watts.

Jesus does not judge the world with harsh criticism and blind condemnation. No. Jesus judges the world in a compassionate and discerning way with truth and grace. Truth sets people free and grace is something good that we do not deserve. With Jesus truth and grace always go together.

Furthermore, Jesus judges us as someone who is human himself. Jesus understands how difficult it is to walk this life. He wrestled with suffering and temptation as we all do, except he was without sin. To have a judge who is one of us, and who gets us, makes all the difference.

The other thing we note is that Jesus judges the world in righteousness. This means that he is fair and equitable. More than that though it means that Jesus puts things right. His justice restores people and things. Jesus did not come to punish and condemn. He came to make all things new. 

You may have heard the story of Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII.

One bitterly cold night in January 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.

“It’s a real bad neighbourhood, your Honour.” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. I expect he was sick of hearing the same old sad tune. So the mayor did something new. He did something creative. Something that would take on a life of its own.

He turned to the woman and said “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.”

But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He took out a $10 bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”

The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. [2]

I am pretty sure not everyone who appeared before the judge that evening got bailed out by the mayor. I imagine those without a good excuse paid the fine or went to jail, but that’s not the point. LaGuardia’s message was, we need to sing a new song. We need to get a new orientation. We need to be kind and learn to love our neighbour in creative ways.  

Mayor LaGuardia’s justice was an imitation of Jesus’ justice. It is a justice that restores. Jesus is a judge who puts things right and in the process gives us a new orientation. Jesus’ righteousness puts the whole world right. He makes all things new.

Conclusion:

Psalm 98 and the song Joy to the World are a call to worship – a call to share the joy. This call starts with God’s people and enlarges to encompass all of humanity and indeed all of creation. 

Jesus comes as a Saviour, a King and a righteous Judge and that is cause for real joy because it means Jesus is going to put everything right.

One final observation. Unlike many other psalms, psalm 98 makes no mention of enemies. The joy that God brings eclipses all evil and fills our soul leaving no room for bitterness or grief.

May the goodness of God fill us with joy so completely that all fear and anxiety, all bitterness and resentment would be cleansed from our hearts.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

[1] Refer Matthew 7:21-23

[2] Brennan Manning, The Ragmuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2

Tawa Baptist

AAA

Scripture: 1st Peter 4:1-6

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Attitude
  • Abstinence
  • Accountability
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Some years ago, before the internet, each household with a landline phone was given a telephone book. This book was quite thick (thicker than it is today) and was divided into two sections, a white pages and a yellow pages.

Since the book was organized in alphabetical order, some tradesmen used to put three AAA’s in front of their name so they would be the first in the phone book. The three AAA’s did not stand for anything necessarily. The idea was that the triple AAA Plumbing company was going to get more business because it was easier for people to find their number.

The internet is not organized in the same way, so putting three AAA’s in front of your company’s name does not really work anymore.     

Today we continue our series in the New Testament letter of first Peter, focusing on chapter 4, verses 1-6. This is a kind of triple AAA passage, except these A’s do stand for something: Attitude, Abstinence and Accountability. From 1st Peter 4, verses 1-6, we read…   

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. 2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4 They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. 5 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead,so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

In this reading Peter addresses the need for Christians to have the right attitude to suffering, to abstain from immoral behavior and he reminds us that everyone will be held accountable to God for the way they have behaved in this life. Let’s start with the first of Peter’s three A’s; Attitude.

Attitude:

If you are in the police force or the fire service or if you work in the emergency department of a hospital, then you know that in your line of work you are going to face some fairly confronting situations. Although you are there to help people and to do good, not everyone is going to cooperate with you or appreciate your presence. Therefore, in going to work, you prepare yourself mentally.

In the same way a police officer puts on a stab proof vest and a firefighter wears special protective clothing and a doctor or nurse puts on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) so too they arm themselves mentally with the right kind of attitude or mindset to cope with the unpredictable nature of their work.

In verse 1 of chapter 4 Peter writes: Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin.

Peter’s first century readers were (generally speaking) not understood and not liked by the wider society in which they lived. Earlier in the letter Peter had described the Christian community as aliens and strangers in this world.

With this in mind believers needed to have the right mental attitude to suffering. Like a police officer or a fire-fighter, they needed to go into the day with their eyes open, not expecting it to be easy but being prepared to suffer in some way.

It’s like when a rugby player places themselves to catch the high ball. They do so knowing they are likely to get pummeled in a running tackle. Or an opening batsman in a test match knows they have to stay sharp to avoid the bouncers and body blows coming their way from the fast bowlers fresh with the new ball.

When Peter, says whoever suffers in the body is done with sin, he does not mean that believers have attained sinless perfection. Rather he means those who commit themselves to suffer, who willingly endure scorn and mockery for their faith, show they have triumphed over sin. [1] They show that their commitment to a new way of life is greater than their commitment to their old way of life. They are not perfect yet, but they are on a completely different path.

Now in saying that Christians should be mentally prepared to suffer, we need to be careful not to misunderstand Peter’s intention. The suffering in view here is as representatives of Christ. While God does have ways of redeeming any kind of suffering, it does not automatically follow that all suffering is good. Sometimes suffering can cause us to walk in the way of righteousness and other times it actually makes us more vulnerable to sin.

For example, if you grew up with alcoholic parents and suffered as a child because of it, that suffering might motivate you to avoid the same mistakes that your parents made. But it might also make you more susceptible to following in their footsteps.

Or if you suffer from loneliness, then it could have the effect of softening your heart and making you more open, more kind, more available to those who don’t fit in easily. Then again it could drive you to drink or adultery.

Suffering, in the form of depression, can reduce your capacity to enjoy bodily pleasures (like eating and drinking and sex). But by the same token it can also rob you of hope and take away your ability to praise God. Losing all lust for life is not a good thing.

Suffering can take you down any number of paths. Suffering is not intrinsically virtuous. So we don’t want to go looking for suffering. There is enough suffering in this life without adding to it. The suffering of illness. The suffering of old age. The suffering of wars and pandemics and economic hardship. The list goes on. Better to try and enjoy life within God’s boundaries.

In any case, the kind of suffering Peter has in mind in these verses is not the random suffering anyone might experience in life. Rather it is suffering as a consequence of doing God’s will. Verse 2 of chapter 4 makes it clear that our attitude or mind set needs to be oriented towards God’s will, even if that means some discomfort for us in this life.

We won’t always get a hard time from non-Christians for being faithful to God. In fact, we may get respect. But Peter’s readers lived in a culture that earned them dishonor and disrespect for living a Christian lifestyle. Because the way of Jesus is foreign to the ways of the world, it is inevitable that Jesus’ followers will suffer through their association with Christ.    

Jesus certainly had a mindset, an attitude and an orientation of being obedient to his heavenly Father, even if that meant suffering. Jesus consciously and intentionally embraced his God given calling.

In Luke 9, we read that Jesus set his face like flint toward Jerusalem. Jesus knew it was God’s will for him to go to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die. Did he want to suffer like this? No, not really. But he set out resolutely – he steeled his mind, he armed himself with the right kind of mental attitude, to face the coming trial.

We see Jesus’ attitude to suffering for the will of God most clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prepared himself for the pain of the cross. In Luke 22:44 we read: And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Jesus armed himself with the right attitude through anguished prayer.

Now, while it is true that we need to be mentally prepared to suffer for doing God’s will, wisdom requires us to maintain a healthy balance in our attitude. No one can function at high alert all the time. No one can sustain Gethsemane level intensity for very long.

When a police officer or fire-fighter or ED worker finishes their shift, they need to take time off to relax and decompress. They need to find something else to think about so the job does not swallow them whole.

While we can never really switch off from being a Christian (because it’s a 24-7 gig) we still need to make sacred time and space to enjoy life in a healthy way. We need to stop sometimes and recognize the good news. If we go into every day thinking: ‘Here we go again, another round of suffering for Jesus’, then we run the risk of developing a siege mentality and always expecting the worst.

So there is a balance to find here in our attitude, between being ready to suffer for righteousness and ready to celebrate the good things.

Okay, so having the right attitude is Peter’s first A. The second A stands for abstinence.

Abstinence:

Getting baptized and becoming a Christian means abstaining from certain behaviours that do not characterize Christ. To abstain means to not do something.

A couple of months ago there was a short series on TV3 called Match Fit. Match Fit featured a number of ex-All Blacks, who Graham Henry & Buck Shelford brought out of retirement to play in a one off game against a Barbarians side.                     

Most of these players were out of shape. The programme showed some of the things they did to get ready to play at Eden Park. A big part of the preparation was having the right mental fitness, the right attitude. They had to get their head sorted at the same time they worked on their bodies.

Getting match fit also required the players to make a radical change to their lifestyle. They had to re-establish healthy routines of eating, training and resting. This meant a certain amount of abstinence. No more eating pies and chips and lollies.

One of the things their trainer said, which stuck with me, was that when you take something bad out of your diet, replace it with something good. So don’t just abstain from eating chocolate biscuits. Don’t just go hungry. Eat a carrot or an apple instead because your body still needs fuel to function.

In verses 2-3 of chapter 4, Peter writes:      

As a result, they [meaning those who have the same attitude as Christ] do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.

Peter is talking here about abstaining from self-indulgence and immoral behavior. He is saying, when you abstain from debauchery, drunkenness, orgies and idolatry, replace these things with the will of God. The will of God is healthy food for us. The will of God is like fruit and vegetables for our soul. It might not always be to our taste but it is good for us and it sustains us.

Now some of the words in Peter’s vice list are self-explanatory, like drunkenness, we all know what that looks like. But there are a couple of words there that you may not be familiar with like ‘carousing’ for instance. Carousing is another word for a loud drinking party. The sort that brings noise control out. Like ‘crate day’.  Debauchery refers to an over indulgence in bodily pleasures, particularly sexual pleasures. And idolatry is the worship of anything other than the one true God.

Eating and drinking and having sex with temple prostitutes was often part and parcel of the pagan religions of Peter’s day. The Romans and Greeks had made a religion out of debauchery and carousing. For them getting drunk and having orgies was not considered bad behavior. For them it went hand in hand with appeasing the gods and being a good citizen. 

In contrast to the paganism of the first century, a Christian lifestyle is not characterized by excess, but by moderation. Balance is important. It is usually better to avoid extremes because the pendulum of desire has a way of swinging back in the other direction.

In other words, it is okay to drink alcohol so long as you don’t get drunk. Of course, if you are not able to stop at one drink then you are best not to start drinking at all. It does not work to go out on a bender on Friday night and then sing worship songs in church on a Sunday as if Friday night did not happen.

Likewise, it is okay to celebrate with a party but the purpose of the party should not be to get intoxicated. The purpose should be to express thanksgiving and build healthy relationships with others.

And, for Christians, there is nothing wrong with enjoying sex, so long as it is within a loving marriage relationship.

Worship is good too, but only worship of the living God. We must not put anything else in the place of God Almighty.

The point is, we need to abstain from self-indulgent excesses and instead replace that behavior with doing God’s will. This is more sustaining to our soul and more consistent with the life Jesus lived.     

Jesus famously went without food in the wilderness for 40 days. The rest of the time though he was quite happy to enjoy people’s hospitality and go to parties. Jesus abstained from lots of things during his life. He abstained from bitterness and revenge. He abstained from hypocrisy and deceit. He abstained from sex and bad language. Jesus had perfect control over himself – both his mind and his body. And there is a certain peace and empowerment that comes with that.

How was Jesus able to do this? In John 4, after speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus’ disciples urged him to eat something. But the Lord said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

There is a fulfilment and meaning in doing what God wants us to do, which satisfies and sustains our soul, in a way that nothing else can.

Jesus was able to abstain from self-indulgent excess because he had the right attitude. His mind set was to obey the will of God for him, even when that meant suffering.

The other thing that helps us to do the will of God is accountability.

Accountability:

In the Match Fit TV series, the players underwent a special body scan at the beginning of their training to measure their body fat and metabolic age. Then at the end of the series, after they had trained for a couple of months, they had a second scan to see what difference the training had made. All of them improved to some degree or other. That second scan was their accountability.

They had another measure of accountability too; a fitness test known as the Bronco. With the Bronco players run shuttles of 20, 40 and then 60 meters. This set is repeated 5 times. The goal is to do this as quickly as possible.

If you are going to be on national TV, you don’t want to make a fool of yourself. When the day of accountability comes and they measure your visceral fat you want to have better stats than when you started. Same thing with the Bronco. When the day of accountability comes you want to have a faster time.

From verse 4 of chapter 4 we read:

They [that is, the pagans] think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. 5 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

Notice the poetry in that phrase, flood of dissipation. It creates a connection with God’s judgement through the flood of Noah’s day.  

Many of Peter’s readers used to live a pagan lifestyle, complete with orgies and wild drinking parties. But when they were baptised and became Christians they stopped all that. As a consequence, they were ridiculed and verbally abused by their ex-drinking buddies.

As I said earlier, the pagan society of the first century had made a religion out of debauchery so, in their mind, Christians were bad citizens for not appeasing the gods and going along with their rituals. In fact, the pagans used to refer to Christians as ‘atheists’ because they refused to participate in the worship of the Roman & Greek gods.

Peter is saying that those who criticize and malign Christians will have to give account to the one who judges the living and the dead. In other words, everyone who has ever lived, past, present and future will be accountable to God Almighty for the way they have conducted themselves in this life.

Some will be vindicated by God (because of their loyalty to Jesus) and others will condemn themselves by the choices they have made.         

In verse 6 of chapter 4 Peter continues the theme of accountability where he writes: For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead,so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

This is one of those bird’s nest verses, if you remember last week’s sermon. People have got themselves into all sorts of tangles trying to unpick the meaning here.

Some think this verse is talking about Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead so they can be saved. While that idea is attractive in some ways, it is not consistent with the teaching of Jesus and it is not what Peter is getting at here.

Let me explain. The pagans of Peter’s day could dismiss the Christian faith by saying that Christian believers died in the same way as unbelievers. So if everyone succumbs to the same fate (of physical death) then what is the point of suffering and abstaining from bodily pleasure as Christians do?

Good question. What is the point? The point is, this life is not all there is. Physical death is a kind of judgment but it is not the final judgment. Those Christians who are now dead might be judged by non-Christians to have wasted their lives. But actually death is not the last word for believers. Those people who are now dead, but who put their faith in Jesus while they were still alive, will one day be acquitted at the final judgement and raised to eternal life with Christ.

This might seem like old hat to us but it was welcome news for Peter’s readers. We need to remember that the death of Christians created a problem for the church in the time of the apostles. It made some people think those who died before Jesus returned had missed out on their reward. But that is not the case at all. The dead in Christ will be raised to life also. 

Peter probably had in mind the Wisdom of Solomon when he wrote verse 6. From chapter 3 of the Wisdom of Solomon we read:

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself…” [2]

In basic terms both Peter and the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon are saying:

The wicked wrongly think the death of the righteous is a punishment and so the righteous are no better off. What the wicked do not understand is the difficulties of the present are only temporary. Believers have a future hope of eternal life. [3]

Conclusion:

Peter’s triple AAA gospel not only offers the promise of heaven. It stands for something in this life as well: Attitude, Abstinence and Accountability.

Let me leave you with a couple of questions:

Which of the three A’s is most difficult for you?

And what do you think Jesus would suggest you do about that? 

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • What attitude or mind-set do you face the world with? Is this working for you? How is your attitude similar to (or different from) the attitude Peter recommends in 4:1?
  • What examples do we see in the gospels of Jesus’ attitude to suffering and obedience to God?  How might we arm ourselves with the same attitude as Christ? How might we keep a healthy balance in our mind-set?
  • Why did the pagans of the first century ‘heap abuse’ on Christians? Why do we need to abstain from the vices Peter lists in 4:3? Why is moderation helpful to aim for?
  • In what sense is God’s judgement a source of hope for Christian believers?
  • What does Peter mean in 4:6? What first century issues / questions was Peter addressing in this verse?
  • Which of the three AAA’s (Attitude, Abstinence or Accountability) is most difficult for you? Why is this do you think? What little steps of improvement can you make in this area? 

[1] Refer Thomas Schreiner’s commentary on 1st Peter, page 201.

[2] Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-6.

[3] Refer Thomas Schreiner’s commentary on First Peter, page 209.