Sanctify the Lord God in Your Hearts - Konrad Stauffer

I'd just like to do a quick recap on our last message, just to form a connection there, give us a background and a little bit of context for the message today. First thing that we saw in the past message was Peter calls all godly women to be in subjection to their own husbands, and in the case that the husband is an unbeliever, the conduct of his godly wife may win him over.

The second thing we see here is Peter calls godly women to beautify that inner person, those eternal qualities, rather than the outward adornment of hairstyle, jewelry, and expensive attire. The adornment of the godly woman should be that of a meek and a quiet spirit.

Thirdly, Peter holds out the example of godly women of old who were in subjection to their husbands, especially Sarah, Abraham's wife. In the same way as those who are faithful in serving the Lord are called children of Abraham today, women who follow the example of Sarah could also be called daughters of Sarah.

The fourth thing we saw in the last message was men, on the other hand, are called to dwell with their wives according to knowledge. The thought being that men, the husband takes the time to learn to know his wife well, so he knows what she likes and doesn't like. He also encourages men to not let bitterness grow in their hearts because of towards their wives because of differences, keeping in mind that the wife is a delicate, dainty vessel.

Fifth point would have been the husband and wife are co-heirs together of the grace of life, and that was our title for the message last time, is that they're co-heirs together of the grace of life. They may have distinct roles, but all we do is to the same end, the beautification and amplification of God's eternal kingdom. So with those thoughts, we'll start with 1 Peter 3:8-18. We're going to work our way through this chapter.

I'm going to start with verses 8 and 9.

Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.

So how does Peter propose we are to love as brothers? This is the first phrase I have here that really strikes me as he says, "Love as brothers."

First, we will look at what he says we should do to enhance and build our relationships, and then we'll also look at what he says not to do. It's actually a very short list, but I think it's fairly comprehensive what he tells us to do. When I look at this phrase, "Love as brothers," I think of mutual loyalty between brothers. Yes, they may have their rough spots. They may have their brothers may have their disagreements. We all know what it's like. Most of us know what it's like to grow up with a brother in the house. You have your disagreements, but when it comes down to it and somebody goes against your brother, you feel like standing up for him.

And that's what I think about. It's love as brothers, be loyal to one another as brothers. Stick up for each other. So we're going to look at some of the things he says here. First thing he says is be of one mind. It is really difficult to feel a kinship with someone when you have nothing in common with them. So find things that you do have in common and build on those things. If I'm stuck on my own ideas and ways of thinking, I will ultimately destroy brotherhood. Even if I want brotherhood, I will destroy it if it's all focused on what I want. So you need to kind of look around and see, okay, there's something that we have in common here.

Well, let's work on that then. Let's start with that. Be of one mind. Try to draw together on the points that you have in common.

The second thing he says is have compassion for one another. If I have a, excuse the kind of little bit rough expression that we learned from, I think it was Tim Hader was the one that coined this phrase, suck it up, buttercup kind of attitude towards other people.

If we have that attitude towards our brother in his struggles, it's not going to be conducive to good brotherhood or good relationships. You need to have compassion on people, even if you don't understand their struggle. The Websters gives the definition of suffering with another, painful sympathy, a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another, pity and commiseration.

Compassion is a mixed passion compounded of love and sorrow. At least some portion of love generally attends the pain or regret or is excited by it. Extreme distress of an enemy may even change enmity into at least a temporary affection. That's Webster's definition. I tend to think of compassion as being more of an action where you see the poor man beside the street and you decide that you want to do something for him, even if maybe you're kind of not really connecting with him necessarily. You just see the need there and you do something about it. You're having compassion on him.

Be tenderhearted. You could say that that goes along with compassion, but I think you can kind of have compassion on somebody without necessarily being tenderhearted.

To have compassion for another person is the quality of caring for someone in their time of need, like we said before. To be tenderhearted is the quality of being able to feel with them, allowing their pain and their struggle to become your own. To have a soft heart, to be touchable. It's easy to kind of go through life and be a benevolent kind of person, but not really be touched by other people's situations, not letting them get to you at all.

So I think Peter knows that to have good brotherhood, we need to be tenderhearted. We need to have a soft heart and we need to be touchable. And the last thing he has here is to be courteous. This quality should perhaps be come first before the other two, but I have decided to keep it in the same order as what Peter placed them here. But I think being courteous should be, we should all know that that's something that we should definitely be courteous, even if we don't feel like it.

I just looked up the strongest definition on this word. I don't have the Greek word here, but it says friendly of mind is to be kind or just simply courteous. We might say that it goes without saying that if we want to have friends, we must show ourselves friendly. But there are those who seem to believe that just being a Christian is good enough. They do not make much effort at cultivating relationships. In short, it is hard to love as brothers when we are not courteous or friendly. So I think that's important, even as small as that may seem, it's important.

The other thing, now we're going to look just a little bit at some of the things he says not to do. There's just two things he says here, but they're really important. It says returning evil for evil. Thankfully, most of us know that and understand that as Christians, we do not return evil for evil, but we do hurt each other sometimes, and mostly unintentionally. In such a case, it is easy for the one who feels hurt to want to give something back of like nature. I think a lot of us have that in our human nature. If we're paying any attention and somebody does something that kind of hurts us, there's a thing that flares up inside us, like makes us want to give them the old high beams back again.

You know when a car comes towards you in the dark and they have their high beams on and they don't turn them down to get right past you without feeling. Well, sometimes in a sense, we do that in the church. We pass each other and we hit each other. We rub each other the wrong way.

It's impossible to go through life and have close relationships without this happening sometimes. So he says, don't return evil for evil. Don't start that circle. It will destroy your relationships and ultimately it will destroy the church.

And he says, returning reviling for reviling. That's a little bit of an old word. We don't hardly ever use that word. Someone says something that's kind of stung or it hurt. Maybe you feel like it's an attack on your character. Here again, the only way to resolve this issue is to return a blessing and quietly absorb the wrong that's been done or said.

On to verse 10, he says, "For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit." The second phrase that we have here today is, that I see here is guard your tongue. It doesn't say it in those exact words, but guard your tongue. The Old King James version for this word deceit uses the word guile. And in the Strongs, the Greek word for the word guile means to decoy, to trick, or to decoy, to trick, or to be crafty, to deal deceitfully or with subtility.

There are people with whom we must be very careful in how we relate to them. There's people out there that do have that in mind. There are people with whom one must be very careful of how you answer them. They bait a person into a conversation and then use one's words to their own end or benefit.

They draw others into a trap to support or enhance their own personal agenda. Peter warns us against being that kind of person, and I think we should be careful too how quickly we answer when somebody says something just to, because we don't know when someone is doing that. But especially in the body of Christ, we need to be careful that we're not that kind of person where we have a private agenda and we try to draw things out of people so that we can support our own agenda.

And that's a little bit, that can be really tricky. I hope that we never get into that, but that can happen in the body of Christ. And I think Peter doesn't want us doing that, speaking with deceit, being deceptive. The next section of verses is verses 11 and 12. It says, "Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."

Let's just look here at what is evil and what are its qualities. My definition here is not complete, but it's just what I think about when I think about evil. Evil is selfish, self-seeking. Evil is deceptive. It can never be truly honest because it will compromise itself. Hence, it becomes ever more entangled and convoluted. It's really hard to get a tail on something. I think of wicked. Like they say a wick, if you try to kick a strand that's in the top of the wick and follow it down to the other side, you're never going to find that same strand at the opposite end because it's so mixed up and woven together. That's how evil is and that's how wickedness is.

And what is good and what are its qualities? Good seeks to bless. Good has no reason to lie or deceive others because it gives. It does not take. This, I believe, is the true nature and core of good.

How does one seek and pursue peace? That's, I think, a pretty big subject, but I believe peace is more of a result than a thing to be taken a hold of in and of itself. So how to pursue peace is a big question. When my children are at odds with each other, it can be quite a challenge to restore peace and harmony. I've found it hardly ever works just to tell them that they need to be sweet and need to stop fighting, need to be kind. I found one of the most effective ways to restore peace is to find something to refocus them, something they may both enjoy.

And in the end, it takes their minds off of their differences and they can play in peace and harmony together. It seems to me that when adults are no longer at peace with each other, it's because they've lost their united vision.

Something has shifted. They have lost their sense of purpose. So as soon they are soon at odds with one another, the challenge for a peacemaker is to help both parties unite in a new and a living cause and a new and a living purpose.

And through that, the old enemies can be forgotten. But you see, just saying we need to have peace is not sufficient. Being a peacemaker is hard work.

We see how important peacemaking is from what Jesus said in Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

Peter says that God is all eyes and ears for those who pursue righteousness because righteousness is goodness. It's unselfish. It's a peacemaker. It loves to see others in harmony. So God puts his power and his full attention at the disposal of those who are such.

On the other hand, those who are self-seeking, schemers, and disruptive, their prayers, other than the prayer of true and full repentance, will make it no higher than the ceiling.

Verses 13 and 14, "And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled."

The key phrase being there, become followers of what is good.

Matthew 5:6 says, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." When we as Christians truly seek, pursue, and love all righteousness, we become very precious in the sight of God. There is no law of man that will be able to stop us. Should we suffer persecution for doing what is right and good, we are so much more precious in the sight of our Lord.

In Psalm 34:12-17, I think Peter is thinking about this psalm as we read down through this passage. It's almost identical, not quite, but it's very close to it. And I think Peter was thinking of this passage. "What man is he that desireth life and loveth many days that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are opened unto their cry. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles."

And just once again, just to rivet it in our minds, verse 12 in 1 Peter 3, "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are opened to their prayers."

Verse 15 and 16, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed."

And this is where I get our title for the message today, "Sanctify the Lord God in your heart." How do we sanctify, how do we sanctify the Lord God in our hearts? What does he mean? We all know God is holy, so how is it that we sanctify him in our hearts?

If we wish to sanctify him in our hearts, I have here a few thoughts that I believe are key, are important to begin to do this. I believe they are essential. The first thing is that God is king. He still reigns supreme.

He has always reigned supreme. The second thing I have here is God does not change no matter what the changes may be in our society. Sometimes we live so long and so much with the kinds of things that go on in our society, it's kind of easy to let that get used to that, get used to those things that are wrong and that are out of place.

But we need to remember that God has not changed. Whatever God has said in the past is still the same. He has not changed on that. So we need to keep that in mind. The third thing he says here is in all we do, or the third thing I believe that's important here is in all we do, he, God, gets first consideration. What are his laws? What is his will in this or that matter?

In other words, if we are true servants of God, we do not simply set about doing our own will and then assume our own will as God's purpose for our lives. I see this a lot in modern Christianities that a person receives Christ into their hearts, and I believe a lot of people do, but they are in a profession or in a way of life that's not in keeping with what Christ teaches.

But somehow they spiritualize that situation and they keep on living in that situation without changing it.

That's not what God wants us to do. We need to stop and evaluate ourselves and realize that maybe this isn't where God wants me to be. Maybe this isn't God's purpose at all for my life.

We must first familiarize ourselves with who God really is, what he has commanded through Christ, the apostles, and even how he expresses himself in the Old Testament. In other words, we need to get a true feel for what is really blesses and pleases God. This, I believe, is how we sanctify the Lord God in our hearts.

It's familiarizing ourselves with our king.

Always be ready to give a defense. It's another phrase that popped out to me here. At one point, Jesus told his disciples not to premeditate what they were going to say when they were brought before the judges and magistrates.

This would also go along with the thought of take no thought for tomorrow. However, Jesus does expect his people to work to provide for their families. We see that borne out in what some of the epistles read where it's not good for a man not to take care of his family and stuff, so he needs to take care of that.

And to give so that they also have to give to those who have need. In like manner, Jesus expects us to do our homework spiritually. We do need to familiarize ourselves with the material before the test so that when the test comes on and people ask why we do this or that, why we live this way or that way, we can give them a clear answer. But let all be done with humility.

I'm impressed with how proactive the early Christians were, even in writing to the rulers and the emperor and those who were in authority in their time. They would write letters to them explaining their position, explaining what they believed, and defending the different things that were said about them. I feel like there's a place for that in our day-to-day is for people to be proactive and sharing, being on the offensive rather than on the defensive.

Always be ready to give a defense. Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:1-2, "I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine."

I like this verse because it again gives that idea of being ready, being on the ready, having your gun loaded, so to speak, being ready for that time. It's not talking about being worried, which is what I think Jesus was talking about when he talked to his disciples and he said that they were not supposed to worry about what they were going to say to the judges or the magistrates if they were brought before him, but he would give them utterance at that time. But we need to have our we need to do our homework as Christians.

Having a good conscience, your life truly needs to bear practical, tangible testimony of that hope that lies within you. We as Christians need to live a life that is above reproach, a life that is clean, true, and pure, one that shows that we really believe what Jesus has taught us. We need to live in such a pure life that if someone wants to accuse us of evil, they will have to imagine and make up lies out of nothing as they did with Jesus. And they also did this with the early Christians. If you read any at all about the early Christians, some of the things they said about the early Christians were absolutely awful. They said they got together and had cannibalistic feasts where they ate their babies and stuff and all sorts of weird things they came up with.

It's because their consciences were pricked and they couldn't find anything wrong with them, so they had to make up things. But we need to have a clear kind of testimony that the world has to make up things about us, that they have nothing against us, have no ammunition to throw at us, having a good conscience.

In 1 Peter 2:11-12, he says, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conversation or conduct honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation."

On to verse 17 and 18.

"For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit."

Just like to focus in on this verse just a little bit. "For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good rather than for doing evil." In short, it is far better to be put into prison for being Christ-like than for being willful, rebellious, or foolish. If I don't pay my taxes and end up in prison, there is no blessing in that.

But if I end up getting sued for not baking a wedding cake for a homosexual wedding, then I will have a blessing from the Lord because I'm standing for principles of righteousness. I'm standing for something that is right and is good. And this is something that's happened in our country. So it's something we can relate to.

Or if I suffer in any small way or small or great ways because I stand for Christ and his kingdom values, I am blessed. Peter holds out the example of how Jesus suffered the just for the unjust and how when Jesus suffered, he succeeded in drawing people to God the Father.

Are you and I willing to suffer the just for the unjust?

Does our suffering have a redemptive quality or is our reaction repulsive?

I see a lot of Christians standing for the truth, and yet their way of standing for the truth is so repulsive that only rebels are attracted to them. My thinking is that if you suffer in that way, with that attitude, you have lost your reward in Christ. The world may not love you because your manner of life brings conviction of sin, but may it never be because we are acting in a way that is intentionally abrasive, like burning a Quran in public, which is something that's also been done and has happened.

These are just little examples.

I'm just going to circle back to these verses, 15 and 16. "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." That's the attitude. That's the mind that we need to be in. That's what Lynn was talking about this morning in Sunday school. "Having a good conscience that when they defame us as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed." Does our conduct shame the world or not?

What is our testimony today? What is our living testimony today? I just have a few questions I want to leave us with here. This is we're at the end of our passage for the day. Are we loving as brothers, standing up in loyalty for one another? Are we careful what and how we speak? Do we promote and pursue peace? Are we in earnest about seeking that which is good, or are we hungering for righteousness?

Are we daily sanctifying the Lord God in our hearts? Does he get the first and the last word in our daily lives? Are we sharpening our senses spiritually every day, thus being able to give an answer when someone asks us about our faith and practice?

Do we have a good and clear conscience before God so we may be able to give clear answers? It's hard to answer someone clearly if you don't have a clear conscience. Are we willing to suffer injustice and injury for the sake of our Lord and his kingdom?