1st Peter. This morning's message will be mostly introductory in nature, though we'll touch on some opening statements by Peter. I'll focus this morning simply on Peter's statement about who's writing the letter. And I know just in my study from time to time I keep writing Paul, so forgive me if I, because I've used his name so frequently of the past years. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Most commentaries in the introduction to Paul's letter to the Ephesian church tells us that the primary theme is unity. All that Paul teaches and taught us is connected to this subject of unity. After spending a significant amount of time in this letter, we concur. There are many different subjects that were presented and developed at some level, but it's not difficult to tie all of the instruction and application to the grand theme of unity in Ephesians. Most commentators in the introduction to 1st Peter tell us that the primary theme is suffering. Peter will pull in other subjects, but they will serve the grand theme of suffering in the life of a pilgrim. Most believe that this first letter of Peter is the most comprehensive material on this subject in the Bible. And by the time we conclude, God willing, we get through this, I believe that we will again concur the theme of Peter is suffering. This morning we begin a major shift in our minds from Paul's unique style to the style of writing of Peter. These differences are very real and they cause us to reflect on what is common and yet different between these two letters. What is common is that both are divinely inspired letters. That is common. We believe concerning divine inspiration of the word of God, and I just had to pull out of our confession of faith. We believe the Bible consisting of 66 books, Genesis through Malachi and Matthew through Revelation, was written by holy men of God who were controlled by the Holy Spirit so that the result of this cooperative work is the inspired and infallible word of God. The Bible perfectly reveals the will of God and therefore is the basis for Christian unity and the standard by which all conduct, creeds, and opinions should be judged. That's what we believe about the Bible. When we take the time to consider the subject of inspiration, we are forced to think about the mystery of God communicating to his own people through human words. Words that are found in the mind of a man, his vocabulary, influenced by his education, life experiences. God's Spirit didn't put words into the mind that this writer wasn't familiar with, but the Spirit used his words as they wrote. The Holy Spirit directed the writer and guarded the mind so that his words communicated what God wanted us to know about many things. Things about people, events, the redemptive plan, his will for us, on and on. Many different men, over 40 authors were used by God to write the Bible, and all were inspired and yet every author maintained his own humanness. That's the mystery. It's easy for me to believe that the Spirit of God could come down, take over a man's mind, put him in a trance, and have him write and write and write and write, and then when the trance is over he puts his pen down. That's easy. But to take that same man with his vocabulary, his mind, his experiences, guide him to write the very mind of God, that to me is amazing. That is evident when we study these two men, Paul and Peter. Very different men. Paul is different not only from Peter in his personality and his style, but both were inspired and yet their own words are used, drawn from their own vocabulary. Their words reflect their life experiences. No one could have written the book of Romans other than the Apostle Paul, a legal genius. It's a profound letter that only a legal mind could have ever pinned, and they were all words and ideas that were in his mind that the Spirit drew out and caused him to write. The same is true with Ephesians. Peter's, therefore I'm making this connection here, Peter's insight into suffering reveals a man who has experienced much suffering in his life. These are not things put into his head that he had not encountered. These were real genuine insights that he had from his experience. He's not writing in a vacuum, as we like to say. He's not inspired to write about a subject he's not familiar with. The Holy Spirit uses his life experiences to give us a much-needed explanation about suffering in the Christian's life. And there are many other biblical references that he draws from and that we will pull in as we work through our study of Peter on this subject. We must approach our study of 1 Peter with the same disposition that we've had with the book of Ephesians. We must hear God's Word to us through this Apostle, equal to the Apostle Paul in apostolic authority. What we have here, we are beneath and under because it's the authority of an Apostle of Christ. And so we must be ready to hear God's Word to us. And we must believe the words that we hear. And we must submit to the authority of his Word over our life as we hear it. And we must be ready to go out and do or practice what we've learned. These responses are important no matter which book of the Bible we chose to study. It's the same for Ephesians as well as for 1 Peter. 1 Peter will be equally rewarding to your life, I believe, as the book of Ephesians has been, if your disposition is properly framed as you listen to his Word. Peter. That's how it starts. Peter. Peter identifies himself as the author of this letter. You remember this is not his birth name. He was born Simon. That's a good name. It means God hath heard. Leah gave her son that name. But Jesus in Mark 1 says that Jesus called Simon to follow him. That's what he says. And Simon with his brother Andrew, they were called from gathering fish to now being fishers of men. And they left their nets and they followed him. He was called Simon. And shortly after that, by the time we reach chapter 3 in Mark's account of these events, Jesus imposes a new name on him, surnamed. I mean, he presses this new name, imposes it on this man called Simon. And his name is now Peter. Peter is an important name for this apostle. It's descriptive of his unique relationship to Jesus Christ. He will function as a vital part of Christ's establishment of his church in the New Testament. It's fitting that the rock, who is Christ, the cornerstone of the church, would call this man to be a stone, as it were, chipped from the rock, a piece of the rock. That's his name, Petros. He is Peter. Christ gave him that name. And he will become connected to that cornerstone, to that rock which is Christ. And Peter plays an extremely important role in the Gospels and the first half of the Book of Acts and the establishment of the early church. He, among the other apostles and New Testament prophets, and there were several who make up the New Testament scriptures for us that have become the foundation to the church. Christ is that cornerstone that squares all of the teachings of the apostles and prophets. Peter is a part of that foundation connected to that rock. And so it's fitting that the first, as Matthew says, the first and foremost among the apostles, he says, was Peter. He was sort of chief among them. He was a leader among them, as Matthew describes him. Peter has been on a, at the time we read here, verse 1 of his first epistle, he has been on a very lengthy journey of life. From his call to follow to now writing this epistle. Let me give you just a quick timeline. It's important to identify this as you think of Peter. He was one of the first disciples to be called to follow Christ and to become a part of a team of men whom Christ would mentor and then he would launch them as apostles. Peter spent three and a half years walking with Jesus Christ on the earth, listening to his teachings, observing his miracles, communicating with him face to face, sitting around the Last Supper, experiencing a moment of cowardice, where the man he loved and drew his sword and would have died for, he now denies. At the end of those three and a half years, and yet he has recovered. And that opens sort of the second phase of Peter's life, which begins, we move from the Gospels to the book of Acts, and you immediately find Peter taking charge and organizing leadership among the early disciples. And at Pentecost, he is given a very special calling and grace from God to preach to the thousands that had gathered from all over the Roman Empire, mostly Jews at that time. And he preached. Thousands were saved. What an impact he had on the early church. Peter, a fisherman, rugged, common, simple, blue-collar man, not like Paul, probably in our thinking, white-collar man. Peter is more blue-collar. And this fisherman stands up under the influence of the Spirit and preaches a message and is given the capacity to begin to tie passage to passage to passage from Old Testament and begins to declare the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is Peter. And in the initial 14, 15 years of the book of Acts, which takes us about halfway through the book, Peter is the prominent figure there. God gives him special insights as to how Gentiles are going to be brought in and be given full privileges and rights to all of the promises that God had given once to the Jew. Peter is given that insight. He even defends them in a horde of councils in the early church. He defends the Gentiles and their right to the promises of God. And then Acts 14, we have the Antioch incident. Peter had fallen under the influence of religious Judaizers. They were Christians, but they also were not willing to let go of their Judaism. It was too valuable to them. It was their whole history, their heritage. They could not let it go. And we're told that Peter stood with them. Instead of standing against it, he caved under the pressure and stood with them. Paul stood up at that meeting, rebuked all of them, including Peter, for how he chose to deny the full rights to Gentiles and restrict them, keep them, as it were, in an outer court. And Galatians chapter 2 describes a little bit of that encounter that Paul had with Peter. That's the end of his second phase of Peter's ministry in the New Testament. The rest of the book of Acts, Peter disappears. He's gone. He's no longer actively engaged in any kind of public ministry. There was a consequence for his failure. He lost a position of leadership and influence among the early saints. Instead of defending the truth as he knew it, he had succumbed to pressures. And as a result of that, he could not be trusted at that moment for a period of time to any longer be allowed to exert an influence. God set him aside. We don't know exactly the full length of time, but we're probably looking at somewhere between 12 and 13 years from the Antioch incident to the end of the book of Acts. Peter's going to die in about three or four years. He's going to be martyred. It is right here in this little brief window where Peter re-emerges again. A man who has been again recovered, refined by his experiences, and now suitable again to be an influence among the saints of God. Took a while. There were consequences for his behavior, but here he is now. So when we open 1 Peter, there's a lot of drama that leads up to this. Peter, who will shortly be martyred as we are told by those who were there and the stories were passed down, chose to be martyred upside down instead of on a cross, but he refused to die as his Savior died. He died upside down, crucified. The life of Peter, his story. Think about this. How well known it would have been in the early Christian community. Everybody would know Peter. 25 years before Peter writes this letter, Matthew wrote his gospel account of the events surrounding the life of Christ. And Matthew spent a lot of time writing about Peter. For whatever reason, he gives a lot of information more than the others about Peter. He describes his call, his prominent leadership among the disciples, his special role in the inner circle with Jesus Christ, how his name was changed by Christ. He records many of the great statements and acts of Peter that he made during that gospel period with Christ. And he also records the many foolish statements that Peter made and foolish actions. No doubt Peter had heard about Matthew's account. Possibly a copy had been put in his hands 25 years have passed since Matthew wrote it. What thoughts were stirred up in his mind and affections as he read an honest account of his own life? Would anyone of you want that to happen to you? Could we assign someone to walk with you for a period of three and a half years in your home, where you go to work, your quiet time, downtime, serious time for three and a half years record your life. Write it and then disperse it to every person they could think of. That's what happened to Peter. And there are a lot of sad things that occurred in Matthew as he writes about the man called Peter. And I can't imagine how often, can you imagine being Peter 10, 15, 20 years, whatever, you know, have passed since his time with Christ and every person he bumped into, right? Every believer that he knew. Can you explain why you said that? What were you thinking? What were you thinking when you rebuked Jesus and he had to refer to you as Satan, speaking to him and get behind me? What were you thinking? What was in your mind when you chose to deny your Savior? Can you explain yourself? I sometimes wonder if what we have here at the end of Peter's life is not the result of having thought about these things a lot, because these, remember, these are things in his mind. And Sparrow's not putting this information in his mind. These are things in his mind. You wonder if Peter hesitated to write these things just because of his life, because of the ridicule, because of the, he was like a lightning rod, right? I mean, things happened when Peter's name came up. People felt a certain way. When his name was mentioned. And so here we are at the end of his life. And he's now ready to speak and he's ready to share his journey. The story of Peter is more intense in its personal applications to Peter than maybe Ephesians was to Paul. Although when you read through Ephesians, you do find Paul pulling himself in from time to time to deal with matters as he explains his own journey when necessary. Peter, he's ready to speak. He's ready to share what he's learned from his journey. He is still an apostle. He hasn't forfeited that calling. His apostleship was given to him and he remains to this day at the end of his life, though he had disappeared for 15 years, 14 years, whatever it was, he had disappeared. All that time, he had not lost his apostolic position. We know, according to Peter, that he is out in the outer skirts of the Babylonian Empire in a city called Babylon. And he's an elder in the church there, which we are told had a large Jewish population at that time in history. He's an elder in the church. He calls himself that in chapter 5. So, he's actively serving, but he has not at this point written anything. And now we have him as an apostle of Christ writing. Writing to bring, to bear upon the minds and the conscience of God's people certain truths as well as applications of those truths that need to be heard in such a time as this. What was happening at that time in Rome? Christians were suffering. They were being persecuted by Nero. They were scattering, fleeing to the mountains, any place they could go to get away from persecution. What a better time to write a book on suffering than at that time. He must speak now. He may have been silent during his old journey in learning curve experience of Peter's life, but now he has to speak for the sake of the saints, the pilgrims who are suffering, he must speak. And so, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. He is not self-appointed. He didn't earn this title, nor did he deserve to continue to be called an apostle. But the one who gave him that apostleship has not rescinded it. It was given to him by Jesus Christ and it was still in effect. He believed that or he wouldn't have written this letter. And so, he carries out what God had put in his life and experience. And so, he still possesses a very unique role and function in the early church. And so, he writes his letter as an apostle of Jesus Christ. Earlier in my message, I mentioned how unique each author is and how their unique features tend to shine through their writings. Even though every word is under the influence of God's spirit, the human element is not eliminated. Peter's nature, Paul's nature, our nature is a real thing. We are distinguished by certain features of our nature. None of us are exactly the same. We're very different. Our nature was formed in the womb of our mother. Psalms 139 tells that story of the drama of the development of an infant in a mother's womb. And during that whole process that is being contributed to the process is the gene pool of parents and grandparents, right? Somehow, mysteriously, all of that is happening in the mother's womb, making us who we are. Peter is Peter by God's design. Paul is Paul by God's design. You are you by God's design. And yet, you can't rule out the mystery of all of these things working together under the supervision of God. Indeed, we are a handiwork of God. Peter's nature, his personality, his temperament, they're going to shine through in this letter. Certain potentials for good or evil have already been manifested in his life. And because our nature is fully contaminated by sin, we are naturally prone to use and misuse and abuse what has been given to us naturally in our natures. And as our life begins to grow like Peter's, we are influenced, our natures are influenced by many things, by our culture, by our home life, by church life, by friends, by experiences. And God will use all of these influence to shape us and make us into a useful servant to advance his will in us and through us. Our regeneration, when we are born again, doesn't change our personality. You are still who you are, nor does it neutralize our sinful tendencies. We still have them in us. But with our new life, we are now empowered by the Spirit and the Word to make changes to our life and to bring it into conformity to the will of God. An important element in the process of your renewal of your old life into a new life, Peter is going to tell you, is suffering. God is going to use suffering for your renewal. It's going to help you make changes. It's going to help you put off the old and put on the new. Peter is going to be very clear about that. God uses trials, tests to confront us and our weaknesses so that we become more fully aware of our broken nature and develop a greater resolve to be who we are called to be and to walk worthy of our calling and be acceptable to God in all areas of our life. Maybe not all at once. We know that to be true. But we are endeavoring day by day to walk worthy or just simply means, if you remember, it means our going about wherever we're going. As we go about, walk worthy of our calling and to please God. Many things are deeply rooted, however, and require a fiery trial to purge it out of our nature. This is the force behind Peter. He learned this firsthand. It's going to take fiery trials to change me to be the man that God wants me to be. And so we must learn how to harness our vices and develop virtue in its place. And you know what I've found in life is virtue and vice are generally the opposite ends of the same thing in us. Vice is where we allow this thing of our nature, this part of our nature to be controlled by our sinful tendencies, and virtue is where we allow God in His spirit and word to shape this thing in us so that it can be used for God. And so we will spend our entire pilgrimage learning how to become more Christlike. And we will learn the value of the flames of trials. We will learn to recognize the need for suffering in a word that simply means in definition. Are you ready? Pain. That's what the word means. Pain. God will have to inflict pain many times, many occasions to help change us from our old ways, our old besetting tendencies and sins. To give you just a kind of a quick glance at all of what I'm saying, a reference out of each chapter, look at chapter 1 in 1 Peter. You read, I mean, this whole thing is just filled with this information that we're talking about, but look at verse 7. Why do we suffer? Why do we go through all this heaviness and manifold trials of life? Why? Why? Peter says, so that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the peering of Jesus Christ. Why? So that in the purging and the purifying of your life, you will be to a greater degree of praise to the name of Christ when he returns for you. Of course, it's surrounded by a lot of information there. We'll get to in time. Look at chapter 2, verses 19 through 21. This is praiseworthy. This is thankworthy. If a man for conscience' sake toward God endures grief, suffering wrongfully, that's something to be acknowledged and to be honored, that a man because of his conscience toward God is willing to endure suffering wrongfully. But you know what? That's not the biggest problem with us. The biggest problem with us is we suffer because we have caused it. And Peter's going to explore that very well. And he even says it here in verse 20 and 21. For what glory is it if when we be buffeted for our faults that we take it patiently? What glory is there in that? But if when you do well and you suffer for it and you take it patiently, that is acceptable unto God. Listen to what he says. For even here unto were you called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps. So we have the example of Christ concerning suffering. Being righteous people and suffering is a good thing. Suffering because we are doing and making wrong choices and then suffering and we're enduring it, there's nothing praiseworthy in that. You ought to endure it. You caused it. But when you suffer and you didn't cause it, that's praiseworthy. So Peter's going to develop this whole idea. Look at chapter 3. He says a similar thing here in verse 14. But and if we suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are you. Right? I mean, consider yourself to be blessed and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled in those who threaten you. These are some good words for us as we move through the decline of our own culture. How are we going to stand up? Are we going to cower? Are we going to be bold? Are we going to stand fast for Christ? What will it look like in your life? Look at chapter 4, verses 1 and 2. For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. For he that has suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh, for the flesh, to the lust of the flesh and of men, but to the will of God. Did you catch that? Suffering is preventative. It's not only purging. Suffering keeps you from sin. Look at verse 12. In chapter 4, he says, Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing has happened unto you, but rejoice. Inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings. Can you imagine that? That's what Paul was talking about. The fellowship of his sufferings. When you go into suffering, you become a partaker of Christ's sufferings. What does that mean? Well, he goes on to say that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad with exceeding joy, because you will be glorified, as it were, in Christ when he returns. Chapter 5. A couple other references before we conclude. And so a general disposition that we are to have when we're dealing with God in our life, you have to see at times, it's so visual for me, I see the providential hand of God at times in my life, pressing down upon my life, carrying out, imposing on me his will that I need, that I don't like, but he's doing it. And what I have learned, submit to the mighty hand of God, is Peter's excitation. Where do you think he learned that? Well, we know where he learned it. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time, his appointed time. You know what I have found in the pressing hand of God? The more I fight it, the more I fight it, the more it presses down. And when I'm ready to surrender and yield to him in his will, in his way, there is a beautiful thing that turns that hand to lifting me up, as it were, just like he said. The same hand that I'm fighting against in all these little circumstances of my life, when I surrender, it becomes a special thing of his lifting us up. And then finally, when he comes toward the end of this letter, notice what he says in verse 10. We're to be resisting all these negative, evil influences around us, and not succumbing to them in verse 10, but the God of all grace. Boy, are there some wonderful things that we will explore, God willing, we get to this portion in Peter. But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his glory, eternal glory. Think of this, the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while for a season, make you to be perfect, established, strengthened, and settled. God is doing some very wonderful things through pain. It's not just physical pain. This can be emotional pain, spiritual, mental stress, anguish going on in us. We need to be careful about running from these encounters with God. Because when we do, we are trying to circumvent what his intentions are. And I've got news for you, you can't do it. Can't do it. You may think you can. Can't do it. And so the goal in all of this is to have a right understanding of suffering. Understand the purpose of pain in your life. Don't divorce it from you and God. A good God doesn't do that. Wrong. A good God will do that because he loves you. And he is going to require of you the change that is necessary. And he will chasten you, scourge you, as Hebrews said. You know what that word means, right? It's the rod being applied. He will scourge every son, every child he loves. So we need to have a develop a right attitude as we go through life, this pilgrimage of ours. We need to have a right attitude about suffering, about its placement in the Christian life, why God has chosen to use it and what it accomplishes so that we are able to respond properly and profit from those experiences. One of the saddest things that I have witnessed in my life is to see people who are actually suffering and they don't understand why. They're ignorant why. They don't get it. They go through it and through it and through it and they don't get it. And the reason is they're unwilling to identify it's God working in them. God demanding surrender to him, submission to him. You know what I have found too, and I'm speaking by experience like Peter, is that when it comes to the matter of this pressing providence and sovereign hand of God in my life, that when I acknowledge God in it and I become focused on him, I have a clearer picture of my problems. It becomes pretty clear why I'm here. I can see it. But isn't that the way it's always worked with God? As you read through the scriptures, anyone that's come and encountered God sees themselves differently. They see themselves in a different light once they look to God and acknowledge him in their life. So all of us like Peter, we have deep-rooted tendencies besetting sins in our nature. The world and the flesh and the devil around us are able to excite our own nature and lead us all too often back into sin to fall short again in our commitments of glorifying God and failing to advance our Christian life according to the Father's will. That was Peter. That was Peter's life. And so Peter's story as it seeps through all that he writes about, these are things in Peter's mind. These are things he's pondering and thinking about for a long time. And all of us like Peter. So Peter's story is for all of us this morning. What he learned, he has written for us. Peter learned that suffering is an important tool that God uses to burn out sin embedded in us and to soften us through the heat of trial so that he can reshape us and to purge us in those flames so that the dross will come to the top and can be seen and removed so that we can be more fully to the praise of our Lord when he returns. The story of Peter's life is folded into this letter. That's why I've taken the time to think about these things with you. And from it, we stand in awe of God's faithfulness to us, do we not? And his endless mercy that he pours out onto those who acknowledge their sins and confess their sins and are humbled under the reality of his mighty hand and see a holy God working in them causing us to be humbled before him. It's upon them that mercy is received. That's Peter's life. That's why he, at the end of his life, is writing this letter. Every day I get a little pop-up verse on my phone. And as I'm sitting at my desk finishing up my thoughts this morning, a pop-up verse shows up on my phone. And it was Proverbs 11.2. This is Peter's story in a nutshell. Here's what the wise man said. When pride cometh, when it takes over our mind and enters into our life, then cometh shame. Peter experienced shame because he allowed pride to enter his life. But the wise man goes on to say, with the lowly is wisdom. So when we are willing to humble ourselves, to place ourself under the hand of God, it is that person, very descriptive here, of who is given wisdom, who is able to utilize wisdom. It's the humble. It's the humble, not the proud. Be humble under the mighty hand of God, Peter said. Where did he learn that from? Proverbs 11.2. He learned it from life. It made perfect sense to Peter, and he incorporates these very thoughts into his letter. So that's an introduction. There's a lot of content that we're going to be unpacking in the coming weeks and months, years probably. And I pray that God will bless it and make it a rich study for all of our lives, that we would have a better disposition and understanding of how God works with his pilgrims, how he uses pain in our life to remake us. Father, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being such a faithful God. Thank you for your faithfulness and mercy that you pour out upon your people who are willing to humble themselves under your mighty hand. Bless our study, Lord, as we move forward. May it enrich all of us and cause all of us to become stronger in the days ahead. Uncertain days they are, Father. Sometimes little terrifying days. Give us the hope and understanding of Peter's experience as he writes to pilgrims suffering, that we would learn from this text and become better servants in the age in which we live. I pray this for your glory and honor. In Christ's name, amen.