Saved By Baptism

All right, here we go. So open your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 3. We are finishing off chapter 3 today. And I noticed a couple people looking skeptically at the title for this morning. The title that I've chosen this morning is Saved by Baptism. So you got me. So I hope that that fired you all up for some good discussion and conversation this morning. Because if you look, if you got to chapter three here, we're gonna be in verses 21 and 22. And if you look right at the beginning of verse 21, what does it say? It says, corresponding to that, baptism now saves you.

So what happened? What happened to grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ? Isn't that how we're saved? And of course it is. And the explanation is really clear right in the next line. But this is just to kind of open up the conversation. We want to ask, what is the baptism that Peter's talking about here? What is this all about? So that just sets us up, opens some... It gets the wheels turning here.

The most important thing for understanding any part of scripture, any verse or passage of scripture is what? What's the most important thing to understand it? Context. Context, right? And that's not just scripture, that's anything you read, right? If you take a sentence or a word out of context, you can end up awfully confused.

We want to look here at the context before and after, so the things before and following the verses that we're in. Now, my last lesson in this class was back in chapter 2, verses 21 through 23, and I titled that lesson, Called to Suffer. And I just want to reread those verses from back there because it helps us see the themes that Peter is talking about in this letter or book. So 1 Peter 2, 21-23 says, For you have been called for this purpose.

So this is stating God's purpose for you as a believer or at least part of it. You've been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously." And so this is This is really a major theme in Peter's whole book here, that God's purpose in suffering in your life, and really the value of unjust suffering. And he holds up Jesus Christ as a perfect example of someone who suffered unjustly. It wasn't fair, you might say.

So let's look at just now back to chapter three. Let's look at what comes directly before and after the verses that we're looking at this morning. So we've got quite a bit on the screen there. We're backing up to verse 17. And I've got a couple of things underlined there. And then I included chapter four, verse one. And this is one of the things that's difficult sometimes with Bible study is that we pay too much attention to chapter breaks.

And of course, Peter didn't put chapter breaks in this when he wrote it. And so you get to the end of the chapter, and you think you've got a handle on it. But you've got to remember, the very next sentence he wrote is connected to what he just said. So you've got to see those things for context.

Actually, that's one of my pet peeves with digital Bibles is that they often break it up by chapter. And you scroll to the bottom of a chapter, And you have to click, you know, next chapter to even see what's next. And so, I mean, I use digital Bibles too. I'm just saying, you know, it's really important to see the context. So let's read this. I'm just going to read, I'll read 17 and 18 and then we'll kind of... jump down.

So it says, 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. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust. So same theme that we just saw in chapter two, right? so that he might bring us to God having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. And then we get into the context that we've been studying last week and this week with verses 19 and 20 that Bob covered, which has to do with the flood and some other things we'll review here in a moment. And then we have today's verses 21 and 22, and then just continue reading as if there's no chapter break, because he says, therefore, right? So it's very much connected with what he just said.

Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. Now we're not gonna talk about that today, but I just want you to see that there's this sandwich here, right? On the, up in verse 17, It is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer. And then on the other side, Christ has suffered in the flesh.

Arm yourselves also with the same purpose. So that's really our context. And we just want to have that in view. So here's a question. How does that context shape our thinking? Just throw us some thoughts about that, about what we're looking at here now. In your own words, if you... Well, it seems like verse, you know, 4-1 really kind of brings it home, right? It tells us to arm ourselves with the same purpose. So, we see how Christ suffered, and then we... So, it's bounded, it's a sandwich, right?

Yeah. Suffering on both ends. Yeah. Yeah. Any other thoughts on that? Is it ultimately for a good conscience? Flesh that out a little bit. On our part. Well, we're going to see that in today's verses, what conscience and what does that have to do with all this, for sure.

You know, you get the sense that, you know, God's will for you may include suffering, you know, and maybe even unjust suffering or what we would say unfair. Things happen to you that, well, it's not fair, right? Why does God allow that? What's going on with that? What's his purpose in that? After all, Jesus, God's Son, suffered unjustly. Did the Father have a purpose in that? Absolutely. And Peter's pointing to that. And so, you know, that's our context and we really want to have that in mind.

Because a lot of times it's easy for Christians, especially in a feel-good Christianity kind of an era, to avoid doctrine like this. God doesn't want you to suffer. He wants you to, you know, just to have a happy life. Well, God loves you, and he does ultimately, you know, he's interested in your ultimate happiness, I guess you could say, but he's got bigger things that he's doing in your life, and suffering is really involved in that. If only we understood it from his perspective, we'd understand why.

So without any doubt, the context is the suffering of believers. And actually, if we were to go back a little farther in Chapter 3 and kind of examine more of the context and spend some time in that, what we see, if we kind of think back to where we've been here, we'd see that suffering often gives an opportunity for the life of Christ to be displayed.

You guys can remember some of these verses that we've been through that, you know, people are, you're in different relationships with different people in your life and people pay attention. They see how you respond and they especially see how you respond in suffering situations, right? Because it's easy to be a nice person when everything's going well, but when things are hard, then, We see your true colors show through, right? Who you really are underneath the veneer, right? Begins to show through, and especially under unjust suffering. When you're being treated wrongly, when it wasn't your fault, you know, how are you going to respond? And we can see the way Jesus responded, right? Well, you know, who uttered no threat, right? While he was unjustly suffering. Well, that kind of thing happens when we go through suffering situations, and especially unjust suffering in our lives.

There's this huge opportunity for the character of the Lord Jesus Christ to show through. And that's the thing, that right there is what God the Father is pleased with. He's pleased when Jesus Christ is seen in you. Because it's pretty obvious, I think, when a person, you know, responds the way Jesus responds, you know, in a situation like that, that it's not coming out of the flesh.

That's kind of the whole purpose. Actually, we'll look at verses 8 and 9 here, because this is where he points to this fact. He says, To sum up, all of you, be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit, not returning evil for evil, or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead. For you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit the blessing. Again, we could say, well, that's the life of Christ. That was described there, that's the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's, you know, not I, but Christ, Galatians 2.20. And what's going on there is that the Father is pleased because something of the Son is being displayed in you. So, and what it says there, it says there's a blessing for us. You might hear a blessing. There's a blessing for us when Jesus is living his life through us.

So, that's setting up the context. Now, what we want to do is we just want to look at verses 18 through 22. That's what happened. Bob and I decided to split this up the way we did. 18 through 22 are kind of a section. Well, I guess Bob did 19 and 20 last week, right? But we're going to look here at 18 through 22. Do I have that?

There we go. And the reason we split it up the way we did is because some of the interpretive challenges, especially in 19 and 20 there that Bob covered last week, we thought it'd be best if we kind of handled it in chunks like that. But the reality is, is we have to see it together, because they do, they're connected. It's not two separate things. And why is that?

What do we see at the beginning of verse 21, where we're beginning today? What's the word that he starts with? Verse 21, what do you have in your translation? 21. Okay, read the first few words. And this, okay, what's the first three words? Yeah, I've got NASB up here, so it says corresponding to that. What are the other options you got up there? Okay, give me the first phrase.

There's also an antitype which now saves us. Very good, that'd be New King James, right? I think New King James is the only one that uses the word antitype, which is actually what the Greek word is. The NET has in this prefigured baptism. That was another unique translation there. So it's very clear, and it was what I'm pointing out, it's very clear in verse 21 that Peter's looking back. He's saying, okay, what I just said, now corresponding to that, and he's going to say something else.

So, the word there behind that is transliterated from the Greek as antitype. So, it's, in the Greek, it's antitupas. And what that word is, is it's a compound word. And so we recognize that prefix ante from English words that use that, right? It means, in this case, it means over against or opposite to, right? And then you've got the word tupos. Do you know what English word we get from tupos?

Not to pay. What's that? Type. Type. Type. And we get the word type from 2POS. So we have anti-2POS. So we have over against and type. So if you can picture a typewriter, that's a really good example, or a rubber stamp. Yeah, kids have no place for that.

Or a rubber stamp, right? Or even you can think of like a shoe print in soft dirt, right? And the image you want is that the imprint corresponds to the original, right? Because you can look at shoe prints and say, oh, I think that was so-and-so because that's their That's their shoe. And the same way that the typewriter or the original printing presses, they had movable type, right? And you'd arrange it and make an imprint of the type.

And so what you have here is, in the Greek, you've got a tupos. which is the form of the pattern, and you've got the antitupas, which is the corresponding impression. Does that make sense? So it's, right? And so Peter's actually chosen this word antitupas quite carefully because an antitype is not the original. It's not the same thing, but it's corresponding to it. There's some similarity. You can recognize who walked there based on the shoe pattern because it's, you know, it's the print of their shoe, but it's not their shoe, right? It's the anti-type.

So there's a correspondence or a resemblance between the two. So what Peter is is saying is that there's a correspondence between what he just talked about and what he's going to talk about now. So what did he just talk about? What was he talking about in verse 19 and 20 that corresponds? If you look back. Would it be a result of? No. It's, yeah, that's not the, so what was verse 20 about? Yes. Noah, okay, Noah and his family, right, during construction of the ark, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water. So the Tupos, the type, is the flood of Noah.

And corresponding to that is baptism, or the baptism that he's going to talk about here. We'll get into that in a moment, right? So what we're going to do now is we want to review 19 and 20 because that's the type. That's what he's pointing to as having a resemblance to this baptism that he's going to talk about. So we need to just understand and be clear.

Now, Bob did a great job of presenting this last week. And it wasn't easy because why? It's some challenges in those verses. And there are a couple of different views. And they're plausible, viable interpretations of the text. And so what Bob's goal was to show us, hey, usually we come up here and we say, this is what this text means. We interpret it. We help you interpret it. We work through it together. And we give the interpretation. And sometimes you have to pass it.

And you just have to honestly say, there are a couple of possible interpretations. And neither one of them, you know, we throw out any interpretations that disagree with the rest of scripture. But sometimes you come up with possible interpretations that both agree with what scripture says elsewhere, and you just have to say, well, we don't know in this case. Of course, that never affects, you know, critical doctrine, as we'll see.

I mean, we talked a little bit last week about, you know, we got into the, you know, the Nephilim. Is this the Nephilim? You know, and I was talking to, or on a called Dennis Rockster this week, and he said, somehow it came up. We weren't talking about our Sunday school class. It came up, and he said it was funny as people will get wrapped around the axle of the Nephilim, but they can't even get the gospel straight. So it's like people will really, and I'm not saying Bob did that.

Those were his verses last week. We had to talk about those things, and it was important. And we should be aware of these things. But anyway, so there's some difficult things in this text. So what we're going to do is I'm just going to put those verses on the screen. We're going to do 18 through 20 because it kind of, it flows as a, sort of as a paragraph there. And we'll just kind of walk through what are some of the, what do we know and what do we not know here?

So verse 18 is fairly straightforward, right? In the beginning we just have the fact of Christ's substitutionary death for all mankind. It says, for Christ also died for sins once for all. the just for the unjust so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. So that's pretty straightforward. I don't think we have too many interpretive challenges there, but let's walk through verse 19 and just kind of break it down here and ask some questions.

Verse 19 begins, in which also he went and made proclamation. Well, question, when did that happen? Well, we don't know. Actually, I mean, we might think, well, after he died, he went and made proclamation, but it doesn't actually say that. Now, one of the possible interpretations is that it's talking about having gone to make a proclamation to those spirits. who were living on the earth in the days of Noah and who are now in prison. And then that's a possible interpretation. So we have to be honest about what we know from the text and what we don't know from the text.

So when did it happen? We don't know. Where did he go? Well, to this prison, but we don't know where that prison is. We can't answer that question. So we don't know. What did he proclaim? It just says he made a proclamation or an announcement or pronouncement. Was it the gospel? Well, we don't know. We can't say that. Peter doesn't tell us, so we got to be honest. We don't know.

And then he says, to the spirits now in prison. Well, what spirits are these? We don't know, right? I mean, because the word spirit can apply to the Holy Spirit. It can apply, of course, it's plural here, so it wouldn't be the case, but it can apply to angelic spirits. They are spirit. It can also apply to the human spirit, right? When you die, your spirits, Departs the body and so is Jesus speaking to human spirits.

Well, we don't know. Okay, so verse 20 It says who we do know something about them. We know this verse 20 who were once disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, but What was the disobedience? If we knew that, see if we had the answer to probably any one of those questions, we might be able to pin it down a little more, but we don't know. It doesn't say the angelic spirits who procreated with human women during the, we don't know that.

So we can't read that into the text, right? Could be, but could it not also be the human beings who were disobedient to the Lord during the building of the Ark and their spirits have departed their bodies now, right? So, again, so we don't know, right?

That's why those verses are hard to interpret. And I applaud Bob for his work last week in walking through those. So there's a lot of hard things to interpret. We have a lot of question marks left. But the rest of verse 20 states some very clear things. And this is sort of our own solid ground here now.

It says, And that's really important because that's what's tied to verse 21. So verse 20 says, when the, continues on, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through the water. So what are the key ideas in that chunk of verse 20? What do we see there?

Starting with, Well, it's the Days of Noah to start with. Yeah. And it's an ark being constructed. Yep. And he names how many people. Only a few. Only a few. Yeah. Yeah. So the things you've named off, we could put those into categories. We could say God is patient during the building of the ark, which we can say was probably 120 years, because God said, right, man, she'll be 120 years. So God was patient. That's quite a long time. Why didn't he bring destruction immediately? Because he's patient, right? So we see God's patience. What do we also see?

We see God's provision of a way of salvation, the ark, the building of the ark. Who gave the blueprint for that, right? God gave the blueprint for the ark. So God provided a way of salvation. And then we also see, like Roger said, that there were eight people, a few, but there were eight, who passed through the water. Now, anyone could have gotten on the ark. I mean, that's why Noah was a preacher of righteousness. He was saying, hey guys, let me tell you what's coming. And nobody believed him. It was only Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives.

They were the only eight people in the world at that time who believed God and trusted him about the coming judgment. And those eight people I'm going to say it this way because we're going to connect it to something in a moment. They exited the world that existed at that time and they were carried over from that world into a new world.

That's biblical terminology about that, about what happened there. Okay. We'll get to that in a minute. Peter actually tells us that. So that brings us to verses 21 and 22. Corresponding to that, and we know what that means now, right? Related to this whole thing, yeah. Baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him. Now this ties in incredibly well with the passage this morning in the main service. Roger and I don't... We didn't plan this. We don't plan that. God does. Yeah, exactly. So let's settle this important question that we opened up at the beginning.

What baptism is this? What's his baptism? Anyone want to take a guess? Well, it's not water baptism. Okay, and what makes it clear? Write in the context that this isn't water baptism. He gives this parenthetical clause. We got it right between these M dashes, right?

Not the removal of dirt from the flesh. That's just Peter's way of saying this does not have to do with physical baptism in water, okay? Not that we typically think of, you know, baptism, ritual baptism is removing dirt from the, but I mean, you know, it's just Peter's way of saying this is not a washing with water. This is not a physical thing. Not having a bath, no. Don't have your rubber ducky and, you know. It's not water baptism. They've added that term, the water baptism. Because I was going to say, we have the word water right at the end of verse 20 safely through the water. But I was just about to say, don't let that confuse you.

Because if you think about the flood, who got wet in the flood? It wasn't Noah, right? It was everyone outside the ark. So that's a bad correlation to make. That's why I didn't draw out the water concept when I said, what things do we see? Water is there. In this baptism that Peter's talking about, we don't see water. In fact, he says that it's not the removal, and he just, so. This is, this baptism is identification.

That's where we're going, yeah. So what does the, what does the rest of that, that parenthesis make, say? Okay, it says not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but what? and appeal to God for a good conscience. Now, we see that and say, what does that mean? Well, I want to keep it simple, because I think that's what Peter is trying to do here. We hear the word conscience and we just, it's like you can't get your hands around it, right? And what Peter's doing, I think, here is saying, this is not physical and outward. This has to do with the inward part of you. This has to do with the inward aspect. So the contrast is between the flesh and the conscience, the external and the internal. And notice who the appeal is made to. The appeal is made to God.

God's not dealing with, right? It's like, as opposed to man ritually baptizing you in water, this is God doing something in the inner man. Right? So the main point is here that this baptism isn't external water baptism. It's something that God does, something that God has done inside you as a believer. So what do we know about baptism?

Let's just talk about that word a little bit more. Okay. Baptism in English, right, is a transliteration, is what we call it, of the Greek word baptisma. That's the noun form. You're probably more familiar with baptizo, which is the verb form, right? And that's, we say baptism or baptize.

And so the problem, I say this every time we come to this word, but it's just so important because the English word baptism doesn't help us one bit because we invented the word to translate the Greek word. But if you were a Greek speaker in Peter's day, This would have been a word that you knew. You were familiar with this. It was a relatively commonplace word that had a variety of meaning in different contexts. So what does it actually mean? That's the question. And good question is, what should we translate it as?

But we won't really get into that too much. What I'm going to do is I'm going to quote from Lewis Sperry Chaffer's Systematic Theology. Now, I'm going to read more extensive portion than what I put on the screen. What I put on the screen is a subset. So you can just listen to me for a moment. This is what Schaefer said.

In its primary sense, baptizo indicates an interposition. We were having a little fun with that word last night because nobody, it's not in any of the dictionaries. So, but we can kind of get the idea in context. In his primary sense, baptism indicates an interposition of physical envelopment in an element Which element has the power to influence or change that which it envelops? That's the primary meaning. But this is important because it says, in its secondary meaning, however, baptizo, as in the case of the secondary meaning, Sorry, I should have scrapped that line. In a secondary meaning, baptizo departs somewhat from the original physical aspect and refers to one thing being brought under the transforming power or influence of another thing.

You understand that? So we've kind of departed from the physical immersion thing. Because when we see, you know, we talk about being baptized into Christ. We'll talk about that a little more in a moment. This is not a physical immersion into him as a person. You have to remove that aspect of the word baptism from your mind and understand that the principle is applied. So the word baptism in the Greek was used in a physical sense for, you know, immersing something into, as he calls it here, an element. in such a way that it changed it. So it was used of, you know, quenching steel in water when you're, you know, as a blacksmith would do. And that changes the molecular structure. It hardens it so that it's, you know, it's not malleable anymore. Or it's used to putting pickles into the pickling solution, right? And they're physically immersed in it and their nature, their character has changed, right? No child ever looked at a pickle and said, that's a cucumber. Right?

So that's the physical primary meaning of the word, but it came to be used in a sort of secondary sense of that same idea, but without the physical aspect. And so it's one thing being brought under the transforming power or influence of another thing.

This is where he quotes from Dr. James W. Dale. He says, none could speak with more authority respecting the precise meaning of baptizo than Dr. James W. Dale. Because of his extensive research, he defines this word in secondary meaning thus. So this is the quote you have now.

Whatever is capable of thoroughly changing the character, state, or condition of any object is capable of baptizing that object. And by such change of character, state, or condition does, in fact, baptize it. Okay? Now, and then he actually goes on to say, this is Chafer now, says, such a definition is most important since the great majority of New Testament usages of this word are wholly within its secondary meaning. So that's, that's important. So, so what Peter is saying is that someone or something has changed our character state or condition, to use the words of, on the screen, of us, right?

Someone or something has changed our character, state, or condition. So what baptism is that? And it's already been mentioned here, right? We can be pretty clear that this is Holy Spirit baptism, baptism into Christ, identification with Jesus Christ. And we see that in 1 Corinthians 12, 13. Did I put that? I did. Good. For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit.

And in Galatians 3.27, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. So when does this happen, by the way? I mean, these verses don't exactly say, but notice that it's assumed that all believers, Paul could write this to the Corinthians, even the carnal Corinthians and say, we were all baptized into one body. And so what's assumed is that this is something that God does for every single believer. The moment, so what we say is the moment that you put your faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit undertakes a work that we could call baptism.

Right? And he identifies you with the Lord Jesus Christ. Right? He joins you to Christ as a part of the new creation. So you've changed from being a part of the old fallen Adamic creation to being a part of the new creation in identification with the Lord Jesus Christ. So, important question.

In what way does that baptism save us? How does that baptism save us? Now, what we'll see is that this is right in the text. We're not making this up. If we pull out the parenthetical clause there in verse 21, it reads a little more smoothly. So he says, corresponding to that, baptism now saves you. through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So now we pulled out the little explanation part that pointed out this is spiritual, not physical. And what he's saying is that baptism saves you how?

Well, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that word through is little Greek preposition dia. And here, what it means is by means of, right? So you could read that and said that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the means by which you were saved. Okay?

So, how does, now we can kind of clarify, go on with this question, how does baptism save us by means of the resurrection, okay? So we ask, how does baptism save us? Well, it's by the resurrection. Well, how does it save us by means of the resurrection?

Let's just look at Romans 6, 3 through 5, and I think it'll become clear. Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? That's the key. Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death so that, right, because death isn't, death isn't the end of the road, right? We've been baptized into his death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life for Logical conclusion for if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit joins us with Jesus Christ in such a way that his death and resurrection become ours. The Holy Spirit makes us as Christians participants in his death and resurrection.

Okay. Verse 22, okay? Because Peter doesn't stop with resurrection. So before we kind of explain this and talk about this, we wanna continue on into verse 22, because it is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, comma, verse 22, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to him, okay? When Jesus died, he died to... He died to this world. He died to this whole world system. When he was raised, he was raised a new kind of man to be the head of a new kind of creation.

I want to quote here from Ruth Paxson. Has anyone read Ruth Paxson's Life on the Highest Plain? It's a thick book. I really recommend it. It's one of the books that really transformed Miles Stanford's thinking and understanding of the Christian life. So if you want to get behind Miles Danford, go read Ruth Paxson, who actually, interestingly, really influenced Professor John Whitcomb, who some of you recognize as the author of the Genesis Flood, which kick-started the entire creation science movement of the 20th century, 21st century. So very influential woman in her understanding of the Christian life, and this is something she said.

In Christ crucified, God made an end of the old creation and all that pertained to it. In Christ risen, he made the beginning of a new creation. Through his resurrection, Christ Jesus became the head of a new order of beings. who are to be as heavenly and holy, as pure and as perfect as He is, the progenitor of a new race of redeemed men whose ultimate glory through grace is to be complete conformity to His image.

That's what Peter's pointing to in verse 22. He says that as believers, we belong to an entirely new created order. And that means that we don't belong to this world, right? We live in it for now, but we've been delivered out of it, right? That's why he's pointing to this, that Jesus Christ, he was resurrected and he ascended and is seated at the right hand of God. It says, having gone into heaven, This is after angels and authorities and powers have been subjected to him.

That's why he is the head of this new order of things, Jesus Christ as the God-man, right? He's been eternally God, but he became man. And as a man, he has been placed above every power and principality in the whole created order. And he has been ascended to the highest position of authority in the universe as the head of God's whole new creation, which is coming, right? He's the first piece of it.

We belong to it. Although it's still coming, we belong to it, right? So you and I now as believers, we belong to that. We belong to that coming new creation. And this makes a lot of sense. If we understand what Peter's getting at here, it makes a lot of sense with what he said earlier in the book. Sorry, I don't have these on the screen, so you have to look at them in your Bible. 1 Peter 1, 1, right? The very beginning of the whole letter. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to whom?

To those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, and so on. Believers reside as aliens in the world. Why? Because we belong to the coming new heavens and earth. Chapter two, verse 11, again, he says, beloved, so clearly talking to believers, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from the fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. And you can answer that is why? Well, because you don't belong to this world. You belong to what Jesus Christ is the head of, right? So with all of that in view, how does that, how does all of this correspond with the flood of Noah? Okay, so we set up kind of, we made some observations about the flood of Noah, okay?

We said that, We see the patience of God in 120 years between the time he warned of the flood and the time it came. We saw God's provision of a way of salvation in the ark. And we see that everyone who believed was delivered from judgment and into a new world. It was only eight people, but it was everyone who believed, right? We could say that every single believer was delivered. And as we said, they were carried over. Now it kind of makes sense why I was saying they were carried over from that world into a new world.

And I said that Peter uses that same language. Let's look at that now. In 2 Peter 3, 5 through 9, pay attention to how he describes the flood of Noah. And we're jumping in the middle of a context, so we just have to forgive that. But it says, for when they maintain this, we're not going to talk about what that is, but for when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water. What's that talking about?

That's the first creation event, Genesis 1. All right, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. So the world is created out of water and by water, and then it was destroyed by water when? Genesis 6, right? The flood of Noah.

But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire. kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day." What's that? God's patience, right? The Lord is not slow about his promises. Some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish. but for all to come to repentance.

And so what we have here, look at how it's described, right? We have the world that then was. Or as in this translation, it says the world at that time. Some translations have the world that then was, right? And what we understand is that the world before the flood is pictured as a whole different world. The world after the flood was a new world. And that's exactly what we read about what's coming. Right? And so let's finish filling in the chart here.

We have under the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which all of us have participated in, what's going on? Well, we see the patience of God. God has been patient for 6,000 years with mankind. Ever since Genesis 3, God has exercised patience towards mankind. But God has provided a way of salvation. Right? And what is that way of salvation? Just as, if we can make this really concrete, right?

With Noah and his family, what were they baptized into? You could actually say they were baptized into the ark. They were placed in the ark, which became the vehicle that transported them from the world that then was into the world that was to come. And in a similar way, we've been baptized into Christ. Remember, don't think physical, right? But we've been identified with him. We've been made one with him. We're joined to him. He is the head, we are the body. That's the language we're seeing in Colossians, right?

So through baptism into Christ and through participation in his death and resurrection, right? When Christ died, you died. When he was raised, you were raised. You have become, you've entered into the vehicle of salvation. The only way to be carried through the coming future judgment is to be united to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our ark. And then, of course, we can parallel as well that everyone who believes, just as in the flood, everyone who believed and entered the ark, everyone who believes and is baptized into Christ Jesus will be delivered from God's wrath on the earth and pass into the world which is to come.

So that's the end of chapter three. Any thoughts, comments, questions on that? I know the last little bit there went fast and hard. Good stuff. It's as clear as mud. These things, these are huge concepts, right? We're taking a really big picture of biblical things, but that's what Peter's talking about.

In these few verses here, he's summarized huge concepts in simple terms. And it's helpful to be able to say, okay, just like the flood, had these aspects to it, we also see that the salvation that we have is parallel to it. And he's really pointing to that baptism. He wants us to understand that being identified as the Lord Jesus Christ is God's vehicle of salvation, his way of salvation.

The only problem is Noah's still at it. Exactly, right? The sin nature carried across that. But why won't it carry across this time? Because this involves our death, right? We died with Christ to all that we were in Adam. New creations in Christ Jesus. We don't carry across the sin nature into the world that's to come.

All right. Yeah, absolutely. If we are in Christ, we're perfect, too. Say it again. If we are in Christ. Oh, if we are in Christ. We're perfect also. Right, but we had to die to all that we were in Adam. Yes. Exactly. That's why Romans 6, right? And elsewhere.

1 John 3.9 says, no one born of God sinned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of- Not sinned because he's been born of God. That's right. Not that we don't still commit sins, but that in our nature we've been... That's why that whole baptism concept is so important. We have been given a new nature. That's what baptism means in that context.

All right, we're over time. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We pray that you would... continue to teach us these things, make them real to us. We understand. And Lord, we haven't really talked today so much about maybe the practical results or application of this, but it's tremendously practical, Lord. And we pray that you would teach us that. And we just, but we pray that we would see with real clarity what Peter is portraying for us here in these verses. It's so important to understand that we have been delivered.

We are in Christ Jesus. We have a new, an entirely new nature in him, a new nature and character that is suited to the coming, the world which is to come. When Jesus Christ will reign on this world, in this earth, perfect righteousness and justice. and establish his peace.

We look forward to that day. But we also know, Lord, that, as we saw at the beginning, all this, what Peter's saying, is within the context of suffering. We're living here in this world now. It's like the days of Noah, when Noah was building the ark. He's waiting for that day when he would be delivered out of this world. We're here in this world. We look forward to the day when we'll be delivered out of it, but right now, you're accomplishing really important things.

And just like Noah was a preacher of righteousness in his day, I pray that we, too, would be Preachers of righteousness, which doesn't mean we all have to be on a soapbox or in a pulpit, but Lord, that as we live our lives in front of all of those around us, all the people that you put in our path, that they would see something of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they'd recognize that guy or gal is so out of this world in the way that they respond to difficulty and hardship and trial, and that they'd realize this is not normal. And Lord, we're not normal people. We belong to your son, Jesus Christ. We've been made like him. We pray that his life would be manifest through us in a way that is not normal, a way that's supernatural, that points the eyes of those around us to him and draws them and shows them their need for that salvation that's available to them as well. We just pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.