Living Hope When Life is Unfair

And speaking of Mark, Mark and I have been co-teaching this summer through the book of First Peter, grabbed the message notes that look like this from the middle of your bulletins. These will help you follow along. And you can open your Bibles to the book of First Peter. It is a tiny little book right almost at the end of the Bible. You can use those brown TLC Bibles in front of you and the pew backs or underneath some of these pews if you'd like. And you can use the index to look up where First Peter is so you can follow along in the Bible and in these notes.

Every single weekend here at the church we either choose a topic and see what the Bible has to say about that topic or we go to a book of the Bible and we kind of work through it systematically. And that's what we're doing here with a little book of First Peter. We call the series Living Hope because that's a coin that Peter himself, that's a phrase that Peter himself coins in this book. That's the subject of the book of First Peter is Living Hope. And this morning I want to talk about how to have living hope when life is unfair.

Ever feel like life is unfair to you? I love this Calvin and Hobbes comic. Calvin says to his dad, "Why can't I stay up late? You guys can. It's not fair." And Calvin's dad says what parents all around the world say, "The world is not fair Calvin." And Calvin says, "I know but why is it ever unfair in my favor?" You know, I love that line. Life is unfair but the question is how do you react when it is? When you get a car that's a lemon. When you get a boss who treats you like dirt. When you don't get what you paid for. Kind of like the guy in this TV commercial.

Sometimes life is just unfair and I don't think city cards will do anything to help. So what do you do when in your life there's an unfair thing? When you have an insurance company that just won't pay or somebody makes fun of you or you get cheated out of money that you were really counting on. Well the book of First Peter has a lot to say about how to react when life is unfair. The whole reason in fact that this book of the Bible was written 2,000 years ago was that its original recipients, its original audience was being very unfairly treated.

Let me just remind you about the historical background of this book since we're about halfway through now with our summer series in First Peter. So a background reminder, the original audience of this letter that Peter is writing had left their homes around Jerusalem because they were first century Christians, most of them from a Jewish background, and they were experiencing some religious persecution there in Jerusalem and so they fled their homes and moved north to the greater Greco-Roman world, right? And this new world, Peter writes exactly where he's writing, he says in verse 1 he's writing to believers living in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, these five cities.

Now this was an area about the size of the state of California and it was a very foreign place to these believers, again many of whom had come from this Jewish background in Jerusalem, and they step into this world which is extremely pagan. If you visit it even to this day you'll see the ruins of all these temples to Greek gods and to Roman gods, literally on every major street corner of these cities. Worship of these Roman and Greek deities was a part of their daily life. This, that previous picture was actually one of the rock-cut temples in Cappadocia, one of the very cities to whom Peter was writing here.

The worship of the pagan gods was everywhere and when the Christian said, "No thank you, we don't want to take part in that, we don't want to worship your idols," that was a big deal that got them treated very poorly in their cultures. Why? Well you have to understand this, back in those days every Greek or Roman city had their own patron god and worshiping that city's patron god was a little bit like waving a flag or singing the national anthem on the 4th of July here in America. It was a sign of allegiance to the city and so when the Christians said, "You know what, we don't want to do that," they were looked at as being unpatriotic weirdos.

And what's more, every city had a trade guild, sort of like the forerunners to our modern trade unions, and you had to be a member of a trade guild to get a good job in those cities. But to become a member of one of the guilds you had to worship that trade guild's patron idol and again when the Christians refused to do this they couldn't get good jobs and it was difficult for them to get into society and provide for their families. Plus there were these orgies of eating and drinking and of fertility rites associated with all these temples and most of the Christians wouldn't do any of that either.

So at best the Christians are marginalized as weirdos in these cities, right? These jokers are way too serious about their worship of this Jesus. And then it gets worse because the new Caesar, Nero, this guy, ends up making Christians the scapegoats for everyone's anger and for all the frustration and the culture clash tension in the Greco-Roman world at the time. And Christians are literally fed to lions and burned at the stake. They're the recipients of everybody's anger. I mean you talk about unfair. The reality of the people to whom Peter is writing is unfair treatment for living out their faith on a daily basis.

And you might want to jot that down at the top of your notes because this is very crucial to understanding the whole book of First Peter. Peter sees this happening to these people that this unfair treatment they're just getting hammered by their culture and he writes them this book to encourage them, right? To lift their spirits. And that's why so far in this series we've seen that Peter has told these picked-on people, "Look, you're chosen. I know you feel marginalized but really you've been chosen by God." And not only that but you have a destiny and you have resources and you have a purpose.

We've seen this in the four messages so far in this series how Peter has been establishing their identity in Christ. He says, "Listen, you guys may feel poor but you have a lavish inheritance in heaven that will never fade." He is pumping up these picked-on people, giving them pep talk. And then in the section that we're starting today he makes a turn. And he says, "Now since all of that is true of you, you can respond with a degree of nobility when you're being mocked. You can respond positively when you're picked on." Now this was very important for him to say because we know from history some of the responses to persecution that these people in the first century had.

Now let me illustrate how difficult this is and I need a volunteer. Howard, I'll volunteer you. So why don't you stand up. I didn't say you had to volunteer but I'll volunteer you. So Howard, how are you doing? Good. All right now I want you to watch kind of a practical demonstration. Why don't you come up here a little bit further so the folks on the balcony can see you. And let's say, let's come all the way up here and let's say that somebody comes up to Howard and says just kind of poking him in the chest, "You know what? You're kind of a weirdo, kind of weird because of your Christian beliefs. How can you don't take part in what everybody else here in the society is doing? Huh? Why are you like that? Why are you such a weirdo? Why are you such a jerk? You're kind of freaking us out. We don't like you. We don't like you. We don't like you. Are you rooting for Howard to just smack me back right now, right?"

Well, some of you are going, "Yeah, go Howard!" These are the kind of emotions that you know, persecution can provoke. It's literally a provocation. And Peter sees this interaction happening between the Christians and their culture and he writes this letter to encourage them and kind of to warn them a little bit too. So you got kind of the visual in your mind. Let's thank Howard for doing a great job not hitting me back or falling off the stage. Thank you.

Some of these first century Christians, because of that provocation, yielded to one of four temptations you could call them. Jot these down. Some of them yielded to the temptation to compromise, to water down their convictions, to say, "Dude, stop poking me in the chest. I'll take part in some of your things. Maybe a little worship of idols is okay if it puts food on the table for my family, right?" Second, they were tempted to, and I may be teaching some of you a new word here, to apostasize. A-P-O-S-T-A-S-I-Z-E. Apostasize. What's that mean? It means to completely chuck my whole faith, to abandon my convictions, right? And we know from history some of these first century Christians, you know, we can put them on a pedestal and go, "Wow, they all became martyrs." No, they didn't. A lot of them apostasized, some of them for life and some of them for a brief time, because you can understand they were tired of being the butt of the jokes and all the, you know, Roman blogs and the late-night Greek talk shows, and they were like, "Forget it, I don't want a part of this Christianity thing anymore."

Third, some of them decided to privatize, to stay quiet about my convictions. I'm tired of being poked in the chest, so in private I'm gonna pray and worship Jesus, but in public I'm just gonna shut my mouth. I'm gonna be kind of a secret agent Christian, right? And fourth, some of them yielded to what you could call the fighting fundamentalist temptation. I will antagonize, right? I'm gonna attack people who don't have my convictions. I'm gonna smack them back. I'm tired of being poked in the chest. I'm gonna poke them back. I'm gonna talk trash at all the non-believers who are criticizing us, and they kind of created their own little culture war, this "us versus them" idea.

And sometimes life contempt yet to strike back reminds me of the old joke about the guy who's in his doctor's office, and the doctor says, "Sit down. I've got some bad news for you." The guy sits down, and the doctor says, "I don't know how to tell you this. It's weird, but you've got rabies." The guy says, "Rabies? Are you kidding me? No, you have got rabies." The guy goes, "Wow." And he takes out a pad of paper and a pencil, and he starts writing down this list. And the doctor says, "Dude, you don't have to write down your last will and testament. These days rabies is completely curable." And the guy says, "I'm not writing my will. This is a list of people I want to bite." You know? That antagonism, right? Some of these Christians were just like, "Ah!" And they wanted to bite people back. Persecution can make people act out in weird ways, right?

Check this out. In Cappadocia, which is one of the very cities that Peter says in verse 1 that he is writing to, there are literally underground cities from this era before Christianity became acceptable that you can visit to this day. Early Christians lived down here in hiding in Cappadocia, and there are raiders of the lost Ark-style booby traps all through these many levels. I kid you not, including things like large, rolling round stones that drop down to block corridors and holes and ceilings through which defenders could drop spears. And the tunnel system has thin corridors because the Roman soldiers moved in groups, right? That's how they were taught to attack, which wasn't possible in these thin corridors, making it easy to pick them off.

Now, if I was 12, I would think that is an awesome way to live in some underground fortress, right? But sadly, these are great pictures of the psychological state that a lot of Christians find themselves in when they feel picked on or marginalized by society. And this is very directly relevant today. Not only are Christians around the world experiencing more persecution than Christians have ever experienced in the history of Christianity. I don't know if you knew that. There are more Christians currently imprisoned and even on death row than ever. There are more Christians have been imprisoned for their faith in the last 100 years than in the previous centuries of Christianity combined.

So unfair treatment because of faith is a real horrible reality for many of our brothers and sisters in Christ and we should be praying for them regularly. I hope you do. But even in America, some Christians are telling me, "Look, I know we don't have as bad as a lot of people around the world do, but I'm starting to feel marginalized here." Maybe teachers at the college or high school you go to or maybe your boss or co-workers at work or maybe you just watch TV and you watch sitcoms and movies and you're feeling marginalized. You're feeling like you're being made out to be the weirdo, right? Because of your faith, because of your convictions. You feel like society's poking its finger in your chest and psychologically what you feel like doing is going and passive aggressively hiding out in a holy huddle, some little Christian cave, and then attacking anybody who dares to come close.

Persecution, antagonism can provoke that kind of response and so Peter's saying, "Listen, you got to watch that passive aggressive behavior." I heard a funny story about American GIs at the end of World War II in France. The war ends and so they hire this old French man to cook for them and they play pranks on him constantly. I mean water buckets over doors, his shoes are sometimes nailed to the floor, they put bugs in his bed, non-stop practical jokes. Day after day, this old French man just takes it, doesn't say a word. And finally the GIs kind of feel guilty about this and they tell him, "Hey man, we're sorry about the practical jokes. They're gonna stop." And the old French man says, "Hmm, no more water over door?" "No man, no more shoes nailed to floor?" "No, no more bugs in bed?" "Never again." And he says with a smile, "Okay, no more spit and soup." That's passive aggressive behavior.

But these are all negative responses so the question is how do you respond to unfair treatment in a positive way, right? Again, this is really what the whole book of First Peter is about. Because listen, the greatest test of my faith will be how I respond to unfairness. The greatest test your faith will ever know is how you respond to unfair treatment, when your dreams are stolen from you, when people treat you poorly, when people mock the values you cherish. Do you lash out or do you go hide or both? Well Peter says here's some positive alternatives even when life's unfair. You have five positive choices and these are all from today's verses. He's saying we are revolutionaries as Christians, absolutely, but we're not the kind of revolutionaries who fight provocation with aggressive behavior. We're a different kind of revolution. We are revolutionaries of love and so here are the weapons with which we fight.

He says first choose positive not negative passions. Choose positive not negative passions. Peter says, "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul." Now this is huge because often when we're hurting, what we feel like doing is kind of self-medicating our wounds in ways that are really self-destructive. And what made this difficult for the Christians in that area was they were surrounded by a religious culture that encouraged some of this behavior. Romans would have sometimes orgies of eating and then throwing up and then eating and then throwing up again, repeat literally ad nauseam, or days of drunkenness, worshiping gods like Pan or fertility rituals, worshiping gods like Diana or Artemis, and their culture said this was fine.

Whereas Christians said no because what you're doing is you're taking beautiful things, the human body and food and drink, and you're turning them into obsessive compulsive addictions that are just twisted. Now do you think this might just apply a little bit today too? I think so. But I want you to look at how Peter expresses himself. First note that he says, "Beloved." He doesn't say, "You idiots." He doesn't say, "You stupid sinners." He says, "Hey remember man, you're beloved. I love you. God loves you." But he says, "Here's the thing, and I love the way, I love this little twist on his sentence here. He says, "Passion's of the flesh. Don't just do damage to the flesh. They wage war against your soul. They suck your soul dry. They leave you with superficial satisfaction but deeper guilt. They give you a high, but it's at the expense of your peace of mind. And you can almost feel your soul withering away and your body turning into basically one giant twitching nerve ending, right? And he's saying, "Man, that's not the abundant life that God calls us to live."

Now notice he's not saying, "Eliminate passions. Eliminate desire." That's not the Christian solution. He's saying, "Choose positive passions. Man, be passionate about your love for God. Be passionate about your love for people. Be passionate about your mission. Adopt the mission field. Adopt the cause. Be positively passionate, not destructively passionate." Very important for people who are being provoked by their culture. Second, choose positive, not negative actions. Positive actions. Peter says, and I want to read this next verse out loud with you. Let's read this together because this is so important. 1 Peter 2:12. Let me hear you. "Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." Would you agree with this statement? Too many Christians are known by what they're against instead of what they're for. Peter says, "Let him see what you're for."

Specifically, if you have a pen or a pencil, circle the phrase, "They may see your good deeds." This is exactly why we do the food drive here. Why I'm so passionate about that in the fall, or passionate about Sharefest, or Serve the Bay in the spring. Peter says a couple of verses later in verse 15, look at this, "For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men." What ignorant talk? See, in Peter's day there was all kinds of ignorant talk about the Christians. Like what? Did you know that people in the first century actually accused Christians of being cannibals? Now why would they accuse Christians of being cannibals? Well because didn't Christians say, "We eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood?" I don't know who this Jesus guy is, but they're obviously cannibals down there in their caves, and that was a rumor that spread about Christians. All kinds of crazy rumors. They were insurrectionists. They were going to lead a revolution because they say their Lord is this Christ person and not Caesar. And so people says it's ignorant, Peter says it's ignorant talk of foolish men silence it by your good deeds.

And today too, people in Santa Cruz County, less than 10% of the people attend a church on a given weekend. It's something like three or four percent. And so most people aren't in a church and they look in from the outside and if they've never been in a good church, they imagine all kinds of weird stuff taking place outside of these walls. And they don't imagine the good things. And so we need to shine that light. I'll tell you a story as an example. A while back, a talk show host, excuse me, here in the Bay Area was just railing on his popular talk show about how Christians always say how bad society is, but they never do anything about it. He said, "I would just once like to see Christians do something instead of spend all their money on buildings." That's all churches do.

So my wife at that time was a real talk show junkie and she's listening. She hears it. She calls me up. I tune in my car radio and I'm listening to this guy, Rael, and all his callers are talking about church abuses and churches stink and religion is toxic. And so I just sent him a short list of some of the things that we are doing for the community here at Twin Lakes Church and some of the things that other great churches here are doing. Santa Cruz Bible Church and Gateway and Vintage Faith. And I sent it to him and in my text to him, I wrote about our food drive. I wrote about the People's Pantry Ministry, the Moms Angels Car Repair Ministry, the Kids Closet Clothing Ministry, the Pajaro Women's Center. I told him about our Benevolence Fund, which we collect every communion weekend like today, which goes a hundred percent to help the needy. I told him about all the missionaries we support who start orphanages and child care centers and vocational training classes. I mean last year alone in 2011, this one church alone, just Twin Lakes, gave away to other organizations over $850,000. That's money we gave away to the community and to the world.

So I wanted to see how he'd respond. And then that talk show host did something that you just don't hear talk show hosts do very often. He gets on the air, he reads my list, and apologized. And he said, "I had no idea this was going on." And then he says, "I tell you what." He goes, "If you're out there listening and your church is doing something good for the community, I want you to call and tell us because I didn't know any of this was going on and probably a lot of our listeners don't know any of this is going on either here in the San Francisco Bay Area. So call up and tell us what your church is doing." And for the rest of the hour, it was Christians talking about, "Well, our church does this for unwed moms and our church does this for latchkey kids in the community." And that is exactly what Peter is talking about doing here in this verse. Yeah, praise God.

Now again, remember his concept. He is literally talking to Christians in Cappadocia at least who are hiding in caves. And he's saying, "Guys, get out of your literal holes in the ground and drop your defenses and do some good." Here's a pop quiz for you. Shout it out if you know the answer. Do you know the church denomination that consistently gets the highest approval rating in all the Gallup polls of any Christian denomination in this country? Do you know who it is? Shout it out if you know. A couple of people said who it was. It's the Salvation Army. Isn't that interesting? You think about it, of course. People know they feed the hungry. They shelter the homeless. They'll treat addicts and alcoholics. Every time there's a disaster, they're the first ones there. And they tell people about salvation. That is their mission. I mean, they are all about salvation found in Jesus Christ. But people love them because their ignorant talk is silenced by their good deeds.

Another example, Mother Teresa held so many "politically incorrect" views against abortion and sexual immorality. But people always let her talk about it because by her good deeds she silenced the ignorant talk of foolish men. She told the story of an atheist who visited one day at her home for the dying in Calcutta, India. And while he was there, a sick, maggot-covered man had just been brought in from the gutters. And this atheist journalist watched as Teresa and her volunteers were bathing him. And this man told her, the atheist told her at the end of that, one day he said, "I came here totally godless and frankly full of hatred." He came there to do an expose on her ministry. One day later he says to her, "I am leaving full of God because I have seen God's love and action. Now I believe." That's the power of choosing positive, not negative actions.

Now the next point may actually be the hardest. Number three, choose positive, not negative attitudes. Choose positive attitudes. What attitudes? What attitudes are positive? Well look at these verses and then you tell me what word pops up over and over. Verse 13, "For the Lord's sake, respect all human authority." Verse 17, "Show proper respect to everyone. Love the brotherhood of believers. Fear God. Honor the King." Verse 18, "Accept the authority of your masters with all respect." And skipping ahead to the next chapter in chapter 3 verse 15, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone, but do this with gentleness and respect." What's the one word you see repeated here again and again? Respect. That's the key attitude. Respect.

Now do we need to hear this today and go online, look at the comments under any news story. There is so much disrespect flying around online between, you know, Christians and atheists and all kinds of other people. It's so sad. And remember when Peter is saying, "Even show respect to the government." I don't know what you feel about our government right now, but I can guarantee you the government of Nero was worse. It was way worse. And yet did you notice Peter says incredibly audaciously, "For the Lord's sake, respect all human authority." What? Now a lot of Christians these days, they don't even pretend to show respect. One nationally known Christian figure on the radio, I won't say who it was, a Christian preacher on the radio, called a senator from California, I won't say which one it was, quote, "She's a snake, a witch, and an evil woman." Folks, that does not pass the respect test.

How do you talk about our government? Many times over the years I've had people forward me emails about our government. Now it's about Obama. Four years ago it was about George W. Bush and so on back into US history. And sometimes those emails make total sense and they're about, "Here's why I disagree with this administration's policies," and that's great. But sometimes they are so filled with invective and so filled with hatred and so filled with lies. Just this last week while I was writing this very sermon, somebody who's been attending here at Twin Lakes Church forwarded me an email that has been going around one group of people here in the church, in this church, in Twin Lakes Church, and it was filled with the most hate-filled things about our current president. Again, not just, "I disagree with his policies, here's why," hate, hatred.

I can't even repeat to you some of the things that were said, things that nobody should ever say about anybody according to the Bible. And this person forwarded this email to me and said, "René, if this is beneath the surface of people, is this where this church is coming from?" And she said in her email, "Do I need to be looking for another church?" Just as your pastor, let me say this, if the way you talk about the authorities is putting an obstacle, an unnecessary obstacle to faith in somebody's path, if the way you talk about our authorities, not just the fact that you disagree with them, but the way you disagree with them is causing some people to leave a church, you better rethink the way you're talking about the authorities.

I mean, the goal of our lives as Christians is to introduce people to the love of God. And if you get so uncontrollably emotional and hate-filled about the way you talk about our president or our senators or anybody else, if that is keeping people from finding the love of God here, I'll be very blunt. How are you going to stand before God at the judgment seat with that on your conscience? And folks, it is just gonna get harder as the election nears. So am I saying don't be political? Of course not. Hold your political opinions with conviction. Try to convince other people of them. Do so with all the powers of persuasion you have, but do it ethically, do it respectfully, do it gently, as the Bible says to you. Your role model is not radio talk show hosts. Your role model is Jesus Christ. Do I hear an amen from this church about that? I hope I do. Show respect.

And by the way, this verse also means not just be respectful in your mind or your language, but it also means obey the government. Oh no. Does that mean obey their laws? Yes. Does that mean obey their tax laws? Yes. Does that mean obey their traffic laws? Unfortunately, yes, yes. One guy told me the other day, "René, the last thing to get saved on my body was my right foot. Every other part of my body loves Jesus, but my right foot." He puts the pedal to the metal every time he drives around town, and I can relate to that, right? Now some of you are saying, "Well, what if the government tells me to disobey God? What am I gonna do then?" Great question. Here's your answer. The Bible is filled with examples of civil disobedience. Think about it. Daniel, Jesus, Peter. The guy who wrote this epistle. Peter was arrested for disturbing the peace in the book of Acts because of his preaching, and he tells the authorities, "I must obey God rather than man." But even that, his posture, even when he's called before the authorities, is one of respect. As Peter says, "Show proper respect to everyone."

Now take a couple of steps back and remember the context here. We've seen in previous weeks Peter has just been pumping the people up, right? "Hey, you are the chosen people of God! I know people are picking on you, but you're children of the king!" So what he's saying here is that does not give you the right to push your finger in their chest and say, "Don't you know who I am? I am a chosen child of the king!" Right? Our own son Jonathan, I asked him if I could share this, and he said, "No, but I'm going to anyway." No, just kidding. When Jonathan was about five years old in Sunday school, right over in that building here at Twin Lakes, his teacher said, "Okay, time for all the kids to pick up the toys now." And Jonathan, five years old, says, "I don't need to." And the teacher says, "Yes, you do." And he looks up at her and says, "Do you have any idea who my father is?" And she wisely says, "Yes, I do, and why don't we both go and ask your father right now if you need to help pick up toys?" And he quickly repented.

And Peter's just saying, "Yeah, you are children of the king, man, but respect, your children of the king, but respect the other people's kings." Right? Watch, here's a key verse. I love this. Verse 20, "How is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, now that's commendable before God. Now why do you think he had to say that in this context?" Well, he had to say it because it's an answer to those Christians who see everything as religious persecution. Peter's saying, "Not all punishment is persecution." I've heard people say, "Yeah, man, I'm being persecuted because I'm a Christian." And sometimes I want to say, "No, you're being persecuted because you're annoying, frankly." Right? You're not a martyr, you're just weird, man. I'm a Christian and you bug me, you know? And that's what Peter's saying.

Look, don't put unnecessary obstacles to faith in people's way by your disrespectful behavior. Show respect to others. And why do I need to show respect? That's point four. Choose positive, not negative examples. Positive examples. Let me ask you, what are our examples for how to deal with unfairness, right? When somebody's poking the finger in your chest. I mean in our culture. What are our examples? Think of the movies. Charles Bronson, right? He made a career of this in movies like Death Wish. Somebody does them wrong and for the rest of the two hour movie he is exacting revenge. Or Commando, right? Arnold, if he likes you he'll kill you last. Mel Gibson and Payback or, you know, Uma Thurman, Kill Bill. There's this whole genre of movies called revenge fantasy. And this is how our culture is trained to treat provocation.

But there's a better example. Because what this response creates is what endless payback. This payback loop. It's, you know, the Hatfields and McCoys ad infinitum. And so Peter says there's another example. To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, watch this, leaving you, what? An example that you should follow in his steps. No one was ever more ripped off than Jesus Christ. I love this illustration. This is Gustave de Re, the famous 19th century illustrator. And I love it because it shows all of these voices all around Jesus Christ on his way to the cross. And they're slandering and lying and mocking and spitting. And Jesus isn't even responding to them. I mean he knows he's got a tough road ahead of him. You can see that in his face. But his eyes are fixed on the prize in the future. And that's what Peter says too.

He says when they hurled their insults at him he did not retaliate. When he suffered he made no threats. You know a kangaroo court sentenced the most perfect man, the only perfect man who ever lived, to be executed. Completely unfair. But when he suffered, Peter's writing this, he saw it happen with his own eyes. When they ripped out his beard and when they pounded nails into his hands and when they forced the crown of thorns down on his head and when they slandered and lied and mocked and spit, not only to Jesus Christ, not retaliate, he pronounced a blessing. "Father forgive them." What was his secret? Peter says instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He entrusted himself to God. Let God defend you.

Now does that mean you can't go to court if somebody does you wrong? Of course not. Peter's not dealing with the kind of democratic court system that we have today. You can, you know, use the legal recourse that's available to you, but you have to resist the temptation even in that environment to let it get acrimonious and disrespectful. You have to remember that even in that environment your primary goal as a believer is to win people to the love of God, not to win your rights back. And the Bible talks a lot about that. And that leads right into the final point. Choose positive not negative words. Choose positive not negative words. Peter elaborates on what he's just said about Jesus in the next chapter, verse 9 of chapter 3. "Don't retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do. And he will bless you for it." I love the way he says, "Pay them back with a blessing." Blessing isn't passive. Blessing is payback. Blessing is assertive. Blessing is a weapon for good.

You see, what are you talking about? I'll never forget the story of Larry Trapp. Larry was the grand dragon, that is the main guy in charge of the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska. And he's leader of the Ku Klux Klan and then a Jewish family moves next door to him. It was the family of this man, Rabbi Michael Weiser. And so Larry, the KKK member, decides I'm gonna take a stand for, you know, my white supremacist bigotry. And he sends them hate mail every day. He literally stapled, chunk, chunk, anti-Semitic tracts to their front door. He would call them up and leave messages threatening to bomb their synagogue. But Rabbi Weiser and his family kept saying, "Larry, we love you." In fact, they actually left phone messages on his phone at least once a week, sometimes more often, and they were always kind of love bombs, you know. "Hey Larry, there's a lot of love out here. Don't you want some?" That kind of thing, you know. And Larry would never pick up. "Larry, are you there? We just want to tell you that we love you." He'd never pick up.

And then one day Larry picks up. "What do you want Rabbi?" And the Rabbi says, "Well, Larry, I heard that you're disabled." And he was, he was confined to a wheelchair, Larry Trapp was. And the Rabbi said, "I thought you might need a ride to the grocery store or other places. I want you to know we're always available to give you a ride anywhere you need." Larry hangs up on him. Well finally one day Larry calls the Rabbi here and he says something surprising. He says, "Listen, I want to stop this, but I don't know how." And what eventually happens is this white supremacist grand dragon of the KKK ends up moving into the Rabbi's house. And he and his family become caretakers until the day Larry Trapp dies. And their relationship inspired this book, "Not by the sword." How the love of a cantor and his family transformed a Klansman. And that's exactly what Peter's talking about.

We have weapons, but we don't fight by the sword. It's about transformation. See the goal is to save your oppressor's soul. And when for all intents and purposes you are saying to your enemy, "Go to hell." You are literally saying, "I don't care if you go to hell." Man, you don't want to do that. Love them so that they can be changed. So look back over these five points. Let me ask you, which one of these do you have the most trouble with? Because you know what? This isn't just applicable to Christians undergoing persecution or Christians who are treated unfairly. Every single day of your life you're challenged to have these things, right? Every day you're challenged to have positive attitudes. Every day you're challenged to look at the positive examples. Every day you're challenged to speak positive words. And Peter is saying, "Man, when you're revolutionaries of love, the kind of respectful behavior, positive behavior you show in this way, ultimately that is what's going to win people over. And what's going to make a difference in their lives."

Now some of you are looking at me a little bit doubtful. Can Peter's message really make a difference? If believers apply this and respond with quiet respect to even unfair treatment, say, from a boss, can that change that boss's life? Well, I want you to meet somebody who has seen it do just that in his life. The director of our Spanish language ministries here at Twin Lakes Church, Jose Santillan, before he became a Christian, would mock believers, including his employees. Watch him talk about it in this clip.

About ten years ago I used to be a supervisor in a cable company in San Jose, and I had a crew of about 20 technicians, and two of them were Christians. And I knew they were Christians because other people had told me. One of the things I had to do as a supervisor was schedule the work and give it to the technicians, and that was always a challenge because there was times when there was too much work and I just didn't have enough people, so I had to overload people. And there were times when just there wasn't enough work for everybody, so I had to send people home. And guess who I always sent home or overloaded with work? The Christians. And it was because they were always so happy. They always had so much joy. They never complained. So they popped into my mind all the time.

On top of that, I used to mess with them in every way I could. I used to challenge their faith and mock them, and I especially messed with one of them that was a single guy, and he had made a decision to wait for the right person, so I always thought he was insane, and I laughed at him for that. But one thing I can tell you is that the more I messed with them, the more I mocked them, the more I challenged their faith, the more I wanted the same thing that they had. My heart just jumped at the possibility of me finding what they had. So when my sister invited me to church, I said yes, and that was the very first time I went to church.

St. Francis of Assisi once said, "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words." Now I called these Christians a few years ago, and I thanked them for doing just that, for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to me in a way that words were not necessary. Isn't that great? That's awesome. And now Jose's in the ministry. Wouldn't you, listen, wouldn't you love to be the recipient of a phone call like that? Somebody call you up and say, "Man, you didn't know, but years ago you were an example to me by your respectful, gentle, joyful behavior." Well, in order to get that phone call a few years from now, you need to lay that foundation today and respond that way to provocation. Because here's the bottom line to what Peter's saying in these verses. "As an ambassador of the Prince of Peace, be a person of peace, and you could change someone's life forever." Let's pray.

Bow your heads with me. I want us to prepare our hearts for communion, which we're going to close the service with today. And during communion, you'll have an opportunity to focus on the suffering of Jesus Christ, not just as your example, but as your atonement. And as we prepare our hearts for that, I know that some of you are sitting here today and you're dealing with such an unfair situation in your life. And maybe you're thinking, "René, you have no idea, and you're probably right. I have no idea." But you know what? God knows. And He can give you such peace even when life's unfair. Lord, help us to deal with life's unfairness in this proactive way to think of how our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered on the cross. And help us to remember that in His suffering, He bought our hope. In Jesus' name. Amen.