Conduct in Suffering pt. 1

Well, today, actually, we start a new section. I started a new section, and if you remember in Colossians, a couple of weeks ago, I started a new section. So I get to start a new section today in 1 Peter. So 1 Peter can be divided into three sections. Let me just get this up here.

The first section talks about salvation. The second one talks about submission. We've been looking at that quite a bit. And the third section talks about suffering. And that's kind of the section we'll be starting today. So under salvation in chapter 1 verses 1 through 2.10, You know, kind of the idea here, one of the ideas that comes across is talking about God's great mercy has caused us to be born again, speaking of our salvation.

Then under submission, you know, we spent the last quite a long, you know, 212 through 312 talking about submit yourself. What's submission about? You know, God has an order in his creation. were to submit ourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution. We saw about then in the home, where the husband and wife is submission there. And so, and then we talked about, then Andrew kind of finished it off last week.

So now we go into the section on suffering. And this section goes into the chat, into the whole book from 3.13 through 5.12. And here's a verse that kind of Kind of summarizes that you know Christ death for us is he suffered for us for Christ also died for For sins once for all the just for the unjust so that he might bring us to God Okay, so with that in mind now.

I'm going to do is here. That's the big picture. That's the whole book right now We're going to zoom in on suffering. Just as we're going to look at that. We're going to Kind of organize that section so this section has three divisions as well suffering for righteousness, which we're going to talk about today.

In fact, this is a verse we're going to, one of the verses, you guys are welcome to come closer. If you want to come closer, it's fine. You can see better and hear me better. Lots of seats. So the verse here today, we're going to study this verse actually, but even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear their intimidation or be troubled.

Okay, so that's kind of a key verse in 3.13 through 4.6. Then in the coming weeks we're going to talk about suffering with Christ. It's a beautiful verse that is very comforting when we're undergoing what Peter calls fiery trials. 4.12 says, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeals among you which come upon you for your testing, as though something strange were happening to you. That's been a very comforting verse in our lives, I know that. And then it closes out the last part of the book in chapter 5. Here's a key verse there. And this talks about suffering in service for Christ.

In 5.10 it says, 1 Peter 5.10, After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Okay, so now let's go back to the top one. We're going to look at the top, the first two verses in this section. Suffering for Righteousness. And we're just going to look, actually in the next two weeks we're going to cover 13 through 17. The benefits of suffering. Maybe you don't think there's any benefits. You think, well, suffering is just suffering, right? It's like I'm suffering with my back, right? Suffering is suffering. Either it hurts or doesn't hurt, right?

Well, God has an interesting thing. He says in the suffering as a Christian, You can have hurtful things happen to you, but that can be a blessing. And it's kind of like, well, how can that be? How can God tell us that bad things that happen to us, people that offend us, abuse us, hurt us, can be for your good? But that's what he says. Because think about it, our Savior, he was terribly abused right to the point of death. But that was a blessing, a blessing for the whole world.

So anyway, OK, so what we're going to cover today as A and B here, and this actually, Macaulay likes to call this a divine axiom. If you're into mathematics, axioms in mathematics are things that are true, regardless of, you know, one equals one, I don't know, I'm a good mathematician, you know. You have certain things in math that are true regardless, that's the foundation of math. So he says that the foundation here in verse one is, a believer is zealous for good, cannot be hurt. So you may have a, I found a little challenge. That's it. You know, we'll go through that. I think I understand it, but it kind of challenges.

And then in 14, he's going to say, okay, you can't be hurt, but you may suffer. 14 is going to talk about suffering. And then next week, we're going to talk about preparation for suffering. Just a beautiful verse, a couple of verses next week. They're just fantastic. And then the coming weeks we're going to talk about the perfect example, which will be Christ our Savior, and then the proper attitude in suffering. So we're just going to cover 13 and 14 today. So, Lonnie, if I can pick on you to read, I always do that. You're the closest. This is actually the next two weeks. We're just going to do 13 and 14 today. Alright, just thirteen point.

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled. But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right, rather than for doing what is wrong. Thanks, Fonny. OK, so we're going to start with verse 13.

Who is there to harm you? So right off the bat, this is not an advertisement, but it does help if you can look, actually get on your phone, if you guys are familiar with the Blue Letter Bible, have you used that? You can look at what's something called the Interlinear, and that's a word for word translation from the original Greek language. So what the benefit of that is, it shows you sometimes, and this is one of the cases, it shows you words that for some reason the translators didn't think was appropriate.

And I think it's hugely important. There's an and, there's an and in there. Now it doesn't come, it comes, you know, Greek... Arranges the words differently it's a different language, so it hasn't so I've arranged some you know as we would read them So the and is there so it says and who is the one harming you so the first thing you say well wait a minute and Connects it back to the previous verse Which is pretty important if you just read what the this is new American standard says you don't see the direct connection. So that's really, so I want to look at that.

That's really important. So if you, you know, if you're a Bible student, you know, even a casual reader, look at, you know, today you can look on your phone and it will show you there's an and that should be there. Okay, so the and connects us to the previous verse, verse 12, and verse 12, as Andrew covered last week, is a quotation from Psalm 34, 15, and 16. I'm not gonna look at that Psalm, but I am gonna look at the previous verse, which is just incredible verse. Yeah, Andrew just hit a neat verse. So this is verse 12 with a few annotations.

So 1st Peter 3.12, the previous verse, for the eyes of the Lord are toward, or it's a preposition, or you could say into the righteous, and his ears attend, are into their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against Those who do evil so here's this beautiful picture, and I'm going to read you what?

So think about it. It's a picture I don't know and there's a saying here in the United States where I say I'm really into something right I'm into music. I'm into opera. I'm into football. I'm into whatever it might be I'm into the Bible you know so this says that the Lord is a into his creation, into, and in particular, the righteous. So who are the righteous, right? You only are righteous if you know Jesus Christ as your savior, right? So he's into us, isn't that cool? He's into us.

Not only that, his ears, where this is a picture of God who doesn't have eyes and ears, but you know, the solidification, and his ears are into our prayers. So the picture is, you have God, imagine this, you have a picture of God, it's like he's leaning with his hand over his ear, and he wants to hear our prayers.

It's just, I know, I found that just incredible, just so incredible. Andrew, I didn't listen to your message, but I just thought that was so incredible, that the picture of the Lord leaning toward his children who know him, and he's he's lean toward them and he said tending to their their prayers he wants to know about their prayers so that's a precursor that's a precursor to who is there that can harm you so think about that if god is that interested in the believer and he is scripture says that that's not the only verse So from that perspective, who can harm you, right? If the God who made you is that concerned about you, you're in pretty good shape, right? It's not like you're floating around on your own. It's just such a beautiful picture of what... So now this connects with our verse for today. This hopefully help makes it a little bit easier.

So we says, he kind of picks up on what that verse says, we says, seeing that God has taken such care for the righteous, the believer, who is he that will harm him? Reminded me of like, and we studied in Romans, right, it said, who shall, what shall we say then? If God is for us, who can be against us? So if God is on your side, listening to your prayers, That's a huge...

And that's actually to help us in suffering. To say, OK, well this is bad, but God is listening. He knows the situation. He's not... and you're not asleep at the wheel. People will say, when they really are having difficult times, they'll say, God has left me. Where is God? He just left me. I'm all on my own. But He hasn't. Scripture declares, I will never, never leave you or forsake you. I think this verse kind of speaks to that.

Okay, and actually what Macaulay says, he's the one that's called an axiom. It's a general truth, which is always the case. But what's interesting is, it's an axiom with an if statement, which kind of seems like it's almost counter, you know, if you did that math, I think, I don't know, my math is kind of weak these days, but having an axiom with an if seems to violate the axiom, but anyway. Okay, but there's a condition, right? The rest of the verse is a condition.

It says, if you prove zealous for what is good. So our job is to see, what is this, if you prove zealous for what is good? What's that all about? Or we get out there, you know, you think of zealous, I think of the, they're out there, usually they're over the top, right? They'll do anything for their cause. In any culture, they're the most fanatical, if you will, for their, whatever it might be.

So anyway, so let's see what this says. Let's go on. OK. So let's start with harm. To harm you if you prove zealous for what is good. Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? So the word harm is this idea to do evil to someone, to ill treat them. And it occurs in this verse, which is very comforting.

Paul and all his missionary journeys and just going from place to place. He would go in the synagogues and many times after several days of preaching, they'd come after him, right? And this is in Acts 18, here's a place where the Lord comforts Paul and he says, for I, the Lord, am with you. You should put Paul in there.

No man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city. Now this is a little bit out of context because this is, he promised Paul directly. In this case, he was afraid for his life, Paul was. The people in the city were not going to get to him. He was going to protect him.

But it's the same word in our case. So what does it mean in our context is the question. We're working toward that. OK, now we come up to a little Greek language stuff. I'm not going to try to go too deep here, but I don't know too much beyond a certain. This is what's called, this if, there's what they call conditional statements, and this is what's called a third class sentence in the Greek.

And roughly it says this, the present condition, okay, presents a condition, maybe you will, maybe you won't, but it's likely. So it says, maybe you will prove zealous, And maybe you won't, but it's likely that you will. So this says that it's likely that you'll prove zealous for the Lord. Okay, that's kind of the deal here. And so literally it says, if you prove zealous of what is good, and you probably will.

Okay, so that's the word harm in the first class. Let's carry on here. Let's look at prove here. You prove. Prove here is ginome to become. So Macaulay, I think he did a good job here. He tries to capture what this means. He says, you're not fully this now, but I want you to be. It kind of reminded me of the verse that says, we're to grow in grace and the knowledge of him. The Lord wants us to realize that nothing can harm us. But it takes some time. We have to grow to know him.

And I think it's, this if-proves-zealous sounds like we've got to work really hard at it. But the more I look at it, it's more realizing what God has done for you. And not so much trying to prove something to God. Prove that you're a zealot for God. Go ahead. It's just making me think, if it changes your perception, what are your perceptions?

Exactly. You know, are you thinking, OK, God's going to take care of this? Or it's like, oh, I'm afraid because all this stuff is happening to me, and I'm not seeing the other side, that he's working in it, and he's going to protect you. Right. So it has a lot of... And that's a growing process. You don't, I mean, we don't, we're all not, we're all not convinced that God will protect us in every situation. We think, well, it's got to be... Well, and it's relative. What we think of as deductibles is not necessarily what he thinks of as deductibles. Exactly. And he allows it. So we're going to see that. We're going to go through that. And it's interesting. It's really interesting. OK, that's good, Carolyn. Thank you.

Okay, so the idea is that you so here's a little I hope I got this right this is The verb tense here is with something called error subjunctive. So heiress is the idea of an event So it's like saying this is repeated times when you Prove got that you're proving zealous for good works again and again and again and again It's just that not one event for all time. It seems like it's event after event after event. So that's how how I took it. So Okay, so the word zealous is in this it seems a little bit milder definition.

Maybe uncompromising follower It's a very strong word that refers to an enthusiast I would say over-the-top enthusiast Here's a here's a verse that uses this word in Titus 2 14 talking about Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and and to purify for himself a people, believers, to his own possession, zealous for good works. So God uses this word zealous in a sense that we're to be really focused on Good works, right? And in a way, the only way we can be focused on good works is to be focused on who Christ is, right?

Our relationship to Christ. That's how we can do good works. So I'm gonna show you that in just a second. I have one of my favorite stories to tell too here. So it says, people zealous for good works. Here it says, if you prove yourself zealous. Okay, so for what is good or of the good. So here's a verse, and this is an interesting verse over the years. So this is a case where they were speaking to Christ and he said to them, why are you asking me what is good? There's only one who is good, right? Only God is truly good, right? Good in the sense of righteous and holy.

I had a friend who, at my work, and he was a believer, and we would pass in the hallways and he would say, I'd say, good morning, and he'd say, well how are you Roger? And of course I would say, what? I wouldn't say I'm bad. The typical American expression is, I'm good, right? And he's a believer. He'd say, Roger, you're good? Only God is good. And he liked to kind of play with me a bit. I'd say, yes, I believe you, brother. Yes, only God is good. Amen. And we'd walk on.

But he would do it. stuck in my head you know only God is good only he is righteous and we're only good so our part in this we can only be good righteous holy as Christ lives his life through us so that that to me is what is going on in this verse he's the idea of proving yourself zealous for good is basically being who you are in Christ, abiding in Christ, letting Christ live His life through you.

I thought it was interesting. Here's a case in Peter. This sounds like what Paul's teaching, right? Isn't it interesting? You start looking at it and delving into it. You say, well, wait a minute. That's the same message that Paul taught. He taught this message. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So Peter's bringing the same message, but he's phrasing it differently.

So I thought, just really interesting. And I think that's one of the neat things when we go off and we look at other writers in New Testament. We do so much of Paul here. We study a lot of Paul, right? I mean, you guys have been here a while. Paul, Paul, Paul, everything is Paul. Well, now we're in Peter, but Peter's going to give us the same message because he has the same information source, right? It comes from our Savior, the Lord Jesus. So any thoughts about that? OK, let's carry on here. OK, so here's, go ahead.

It's interesting, and looking at the literal translation, if the good imitators you become, and its middle, its deponent, which you are becoming, in other words, it sort of sheds a a difference compared to the different translations, because it's actually you yourself are becoming good. Not that you're focused on it, not that you're jealous or committed to it, not that you're following it, but that you yourself are good. It's interesting to me. Yeah, I saw a little bit of that, but I didn't really thought I was, you know, could actually express it.

Well, you did a great, that's great. Thanks, Roy. I see that, you know, it just really points out the fact that it has to be Christ living through you. It has to come to that. So, and the middle for your own benefit, right? For, you know, that's neat. It's a deponent, which means you take it to be literal, not... Oh, that's right, deponent, yeah, you're right. So, what we're looking at here is that you, right now, are imitating what is good, or you're mimicking, or you're committed to, you know, being who you have been made to be, I guess would be one way of saying that. Yeah, no, I like that. Doesn't that sound like Paul? Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Well, thank you. That's great. That's great. OK, so I have one last thing to share. This is Weiss' kind of summary. And I like it, and there's good parts in it. Anyway, so this is how Weiss tries to summarize this verse.

Peter tells us then, as a result of their righteous lives, so they have a righteousness from Christ, right? And God's care, he's constantly listening to their prayers, right? their blessedness will be such as to turn off the malice of their persecutors and make their suffering itself to be a joy.

I don't know. It might be a bit of a stretch. I like it. It sounds all really good, but I don't know. Sometimes your persecutors, they keep right on going, right? The people that don't like you, if they don't like you as a believer, they probably won't change their mind. I like the overall, he tried to capture it in one statement. I don't know. I thought it was interesting.

I'm not going to say it's Interesting thought here, so actually I'm finished with verse 13, so any last thoughts on 13 We're going to move into 14 which is going to talk about how we handle so this talks about In a way how we handle suffering because we realize what God is you know who God is and what he's done now It's going to talk about another aspect of handling sufferings in 14 so Okay, let's go on to that then So here's verse 14 But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.

Do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled. I'm sure you guys all know this, but whenever you see all these what we call block caps, that's the translators that try to indicate that's a quote from the Old Testament. You guys all know that, right? OK, just in case you didn't know that, that's what they try to do. I find it hard to read the verse when they do that. Anyway, that's my take on it. But they try to help you out.

OK, so let's look at the first part. So now it comes, 14 tells us, what do we do when we do suffer for righteousness? So let's say we're suffering for righteousness. Somebody has it out for us as a believer, right? He, for whatever reason, doesn't like believers.

They're trying to push your buttons. OK, good. I like that. Excellent, Mike. That's actually right to the point here. Poke the bear. Poke the bear, right. So you could translate it, but if indeed you suffer, you should suffer. So it's a strong contrast. And another conditional sentence again. So this is another, maybe you will and maybe you won't. It's uncertain of fulfillment. But this case is interesting.

This word suffer, I'm not sure how to pronounce it exactly, is to be afflicted by something from without, to be acted upon. It's an external action that's coming upon you. denotes unpleasant or hurtful experiences. And it's, okay, suffering, you should suffer, it's in this, in Greek there's this thing called mood, Greek verbs have tense, mood, and voice. And mood is going to tell us something about the verb. So mood can either, this is what's called optive, which sounds kind of beyond our understanding, right? Optive is the idea, it's used to introduce something that's possible, but not probable. Optive has, there's like four possibilities.

It can be reality, that's like God is love, right? That's the reality, right? The verb is can be what they call indicative. Right. Love is love. You're right. So this is optive. Then there's two other ones. There's subjunctive, which is probability, and there's imperative, which is command. So this is in contrast to a direct statement like God is love. This is saying this statement about the fact that you should suffer for righteousness.

It's a probability. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's not probable, which is interesting. I'll tell you my thoughts. So it says here, you could translate it. Well, actually, Macaulay says, these believers are facing the possibility of suffering for righteousness. So I was going to make a statement. Maybe it's not true like in India, and maybe definitely not, probably in Ukraine.

But in the US, we don't suffer much for being a Christian. Right? I mean, nobody comes to my door, and people know I'm a Christian in our neighborhood, I think, in general, and people don't accost me in saying you're a Christian. In some other cultures, I don't know, in India, would they accost you for being a Christian? Not in my city, but in other cities, especially in rural areas. It can be difficult. Nowadays in cities also.

And I believe that USA is also heading towards that direction. No, I know, I know we are. But right now, you know, and so actually this is interesting. Peter is writing here and he says, it's not probable that you're going to suffer for righteousness sake. It's interesting. I thought, boy, that's interesting. Is he talking about like today? I don't know, that's an interesting thought here. So let's carry on here.

But what he does say, but even if you should suffer, and you probably won't, You could say this is for if you suffer for righteousness sake the Bible teaches this over and over again That's considered godly suffering. That's Suffering that glorifies God right because you're in a way you're suffering as Christ suffered, right? He suffered as a righteous man. He only said was true and right yes, he suffered for that so so that's what's called righteous suffering and it says Go ahead You said this was third class, right? The first time you said third class, it may or may not, but it probably will, and now you're saying the opposite.

I know. Isn't that interesting? How do you know that? Because that's what the original language said. I didn't make this up. This isn't Roger. But there's a difference. The verbs are different here. In this case, it's an optive mode. It wasn't the case in the previous. It's a mood. The mood tells you, right. Yeah. And I didn't jump in there.

But anyway, it is interesting that he changes. In the other case, he says, you probably will. In this case, he says, it's not probable. If someone has a comment online, I'm open to it. But in this case, it changes here. It says, probably not. It's not probable.

So the point here is that if you do indeed suffer for righteousness, you're blessed. So when we as believers suffer for righteousness, we're blessed. Is this kind of like the... I think it's in James where he tests the gold. Right, refinery, refining you. Well, in a way, you can think of yourself, and some people take this to extremes. They say, well, I want to suffer like Christ suffered. There's a guy that goes around with a, he lugs a cross around. I've seen him on YouTube. He lugs, goes around the world. I'm suffering for Christ. I don't know. I mean, it's... I think it was a way for him to spread the gospel. Okay, and that's fine. If he wants to do that, just fine. But, you know, I think suffering quietly for Christ is much more impactful.

I can remember people talking about our brother Hal. Sometimes he would be maligned. Actually, I knew Hal at work. I worked with him at Raytheon in Hughes. And he would be maligned at our work, where I worked. People would say bad things about him. And it hurt me to see that happen. But actually, in a way, you're suffering as our Savior suffered, which is pretty cool. And then one time they stole his Bible.

Yeah, actually, at our work. I worked for the Department of Defense, or now it's called the Department of War. They changed the name, anyway. Anyway. In the secure facility, which you have to have all these badges, clearances, they have guards, machine guns, the whole works.

Somebody stole his Bible. I don't think it was a Christian either. I doubt if it was a Christian, but anyway. Well, they didn't like his testimony. His testimony was offensive to them. So what would take away his Bible? He won't be able to talk to us about, you know, convict us.

So anyway, pretty cool stuff. So blessed is pretty curious, pretty familiar word stated, marked out by being completeness from God. And this is, you know, we says the spiritual state of those who suffer persecution because of their righteous lives are prosperous, spiritually prosperous. And if you remember, it shows up a lot in the Beatitudes, you know, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who are gentle or meek. But just a caveat here, another word for good Bible students, you guys all know, right? Remember, this is Beatitudes, right? You know, don't put the Beatitudes in the wrong place. Don't put them for the Christian life now.

They're describing what happens in millennial kingdom. So anyway, that's a side note. If you wanna talk about that, we can do that later. But anyway, but it's wonderful statements. Blessed are the poor, blessed are those. I've heard some people say, well, I'm gonna live the Beatitudes. That's my Christianity. I'm gonna live the Beatitudes. You can't do it. Because it has to be Christ's life. So anyway. Let's carry on here. All right, so now the last part of this.

So the last part of this verse has two ideas going on here. Do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled. So it says, as you're undergoing this suffering for righteousness sake, here are two things you're not to get fearful of. OK, now here again, pull out your blue letter Bible. Well, actually, in this case, we have this word appearing twice. This word fear appears as a noun and as a verb. So it should read, this is the modified, do not fear their intimidation, do not be troubled. Or actually, just stop at intimidation. But you, implied, do not fear, as a verb, the fear of them.

So think about this, isn't this like the idea, you try to, the idea, there's an American expression, get in your head, you know, something enters you about a dog, right? You see a barking dog, it looks vicious. In your mind, you're imagining he's going to come and chomp you right up and bite you and you'll be in the hospital. So you're fearful. because the fear he incites, it gets in your head, right? That's what this is saying. Do not fear the fear of them, right? Do not fear the fear of them. That's what it's literally saying.

So it kind of gets in your head, right? And if you're into sports or you're into Some kind of competition. That's one of the tactics, right? You get your opponent to be fearful of you as a player, right? You try to out, if you're, I'm thinking ping pong, that's a pretty mild sport. Whatever, you try. That's vicious. That can be, yeah. Or if you're into all the sports, like football, they're always trying to intimidate the other team, right? We're the big tough guys, and we're going to squash you guys, whatever. OK, so we kind of translate. This is a good trailer, I thought.

Do not be affected with fear by the fear which they strive to inspire in your heart. He said again, do not be affected with fear by the fear which they strive to inspire in your heart. He says, don't let that fear get into your head to cause you to fear, right? That make sense? So this is a mind game, right? Well, you know, the Christian life is a mind game. Use your mind, right?

Okay, so let's go on here. So we have fear used as a verb and as a noun. So as a verb, to put fear in, to terrify, to frighten. So here's a verse. It's an interesting verse. I'll have you guys help me. I don't remember what Andrew taught in this exactly. So here, we just covered this a couple weeks ago, 1 Peter 3, 6. But Sarah obeyed him, calling him Lord. and you'll become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear so what's the fear maybe andre can answer this what's the fear what did you teach andrew about the fear the sarah might have what was she fearful of do you remember i don't know oh yeah that that little part was a toughie i said that's why i'm asking you Oh, I think it was, um, it can be if, if Sarah was doing good by obeying Abraham, she had, I think I brought it around to, if, and it's talking about women who are, wives who are, have unbelieving husbands. Okay. All right.

Shouldn't be frightened by any fear. of whatever that unbelieving husband could do to them now that's good that's actually excellent excellent yeah and that's one interpretation there were others i think that i don't know i like that that seemed to fit me but you hear my unbelieving husband who knows what you know he's not a believer what he does ask me to something crazy you know or you know she could be fearful that so that makes sense so that's fear that's fear is a verb so let's have a sphere is a noun Okay, we have it, and it's translated by different words, as you probably know. It's translated as intimidation in our verse here.

It's translated as respectful in 1 Peter 3.2. Observe your chase and respectful behavior. Reverence, and first, we're gonna see this next week, in the last part of 3.15, where it says, yet with gentleness and fear, about the hope that is within you, Then in John, 1 John is fear, where it says, the noun fear, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. So there it is as a noun.

So what do I say here? So I think, so I kind of summarize, I think we have instigating fear here, they want to instill in you fear. because of who they are. And Numbers passage is the one where Israel was coming up to Moab and the Moabites were just terribly frightened about the Israelites because they'd seen what they'd done and they just, they totally freaked, we call it freaked out or you know, they couldn't. So fear got into their heads and they couldn't, you know, it was just terrible. So I think that's what is in view here.

But even if you should suffer for the sake of Righteousness you are blessed. Do not fear the fear of them now the very last part is this last thought here Neither be troubled and this actually kind of fits in with the fear part to to be disturbed or agitated It's in the path. It's in the passive to be apprehensing or dread another thing about Looking at your opponent, and you you dread the opponent or your apprehension of the opponent where trouble is used consistently for mental agitation. It fits very well with the other part, worry or turmoil. You're being troubled by that.

So it's used in Luke. This passage is a pretty strong passage. I wish some unbelievers would read this. I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more they can do. Here's the part. But I warn you, but I will warn you, I will warn you whom to fear. Fear the one, speaking of God, who after he has killed you has the authority to cast you into hell. Yes, I tell you, as I tell you, fear him. So that's the kind of fear you should be fearful of.

Okay, so again, the idea here is do not be affected by the fear of them, by the fear which they strive to inspire in your heart. So, and not to be troubled by that. So actually that's it for this week. Next week, this beautiful verse in 15, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, Let's love this, for always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And that word reverence is fear, again. And keep a good conscience so that in the things in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it's better if God should will it that you should suffer for doing what is right rather than doing what is wrong. I always like that verse 15 because it says it helps me in talking with people.

Some people don't want to talk. So am I to be out there kind of forcing my way into their lives and forcing them about the Lord or do I wait for them to ask me? The only problem is, many times they don't ask you. Especially your relatives. Your relatives never ask you because they already know about you, right? They already know where you stand. Your relatives know probably where you stand. And so, it's hard. They probably know all the buttons. They do.

But we go back to the wonderful passage about the wise with unbelieving husband. What's the Lord's commandment to her, right? to win your husband without a word. Boy, that's an incredible thing. And as Bob testified, his first wife, he was one without a word. Just amazing. Just amazing. Because he stole her Bible because he read it. OK. All right. OK. All right.

Any last thoughts here? I'll close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, Father. We thank you for your marvelous word that tells us about, Lord, just such a wonderful picture of how you listen to our prayers, you attend your eyes toward us and your ears toward us, Lord, and you listen and you care about us and you died for us, and you desire that we walk in you and believe what you've told us. and abide in your wonderful son. We ask it in his name. Amen.