The Faith We Proclaim

This world is in a state of constant flux.

It always, no matter where we look, it seems to be changing,

doesn't stay the same any length of time at all,

and it reels under various blows today.

Blows of nationalism and terrorism,

population explosions,

and, of course, waves of illegal immigration,

and even scientific discoveries have come and changed

the way that we live and the way that we interact with others as well.

And, of course, all the time we have got these high-octane warnings.

They've been happening for some time,

but they're now reaching an even more shrill pitch

of what used to be environmental damage.

It is now all about climate catastrophe, no less,

and also the threats of nuclear extinction.

And interwoven with all of this,

we have miles and miles of propaganda,

and we have these people that are pushing

the, what we call today, a woke agenda,

and that woke agenda is trying to infiltrate

every stratum of our society.

Very interesting to note the comment by Elon Musk

just a number of days ago,

and he was talking about video games,

and video games, as you'll probably know,

or maybe if you're not into them, you'll not have a clue about it,

but video games, they, too,

have not been able to insulate themselves

against the climate crisis,

against the propaganda of a woke agenda.

And he said, Elon Musk,

getting lectured with tedious propaganda

is not why people play games.

But you see, those that are pushing this agenda

want to infiltrate every single area of life,

right from the youngest years

through to the final days here,

for people on earth.

And yet, with all of this,

there is plenty of reason to praise our Lord God.

For whatever changes take place,

no matter how numerous those changes are,

no matter how much they might confuse us

and leave us in their wake,

there are immutables, still immutables,

that are the same today and forever

will be the same as long as this world lasts.

Yes.

For example, our Savior is the same.

There is only one.

The way of salvation, again, it is the same

because Jesus alone still remains the way,

the truth, and the life.

So our message, it has not altered,

and our mission is still focused.

We are wanting to present a fool Christ

to a world that is knowing an emptiness in their heart,

a fullness.

A fullness of need.

How do we do it?

Well, what we require as a church body,

as individual Christians,

and what we need very urgently today

is the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit

that will bring our unchanging gospel

and will apply it to the changing times

in which we live.

And ultimately, if you just look at verse 12

in the passage we read,

1 Peter chapter 3,

and 12,

you will see there that ultimately

how it ends is not in dispute.

The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous.

His ears are open unto their prayers.

The other side of the coin,

but the face of the Lord is against them

that do evil.

When Peter took out his pen here, or quill,

and he writes this first epistle,

we find he's addressing the people of God

who were living in a rapidly changing world.

They're even facing the possibility,

real possibility,

of having to suffer for righteousness' sake.

And that's what he mentions in verse 14

of 1 Peter chapter 3.

He's saying to them,

some of you, you're going to be laying your lives

on the line for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some of you are going to be persecuted

unto God.

Death.

And so he pulls back the curtain

on a fiery and explosive time

that lay ahead for these people.

And in the light of that,

he urges them to make sure

you have a Christian answer

or confession ready.

And that's where our text comes in

in 1 Peter 3 and the verse 15.

But sanctify.

The Lord.

The Lord God in your hearts

and be ready always to give an answer

to every man that asketh you a reason

of the hope that is in you

with meekness and fear.

The day may well come.

Sometimes it seems closer than others

when we too will encounter persecution

on account of the gospel.

It's happening.

To Christians in Nigeria.

And I'm mentioning one case.

There are so many cases

around our world today

where the people of God

are being persecuted

and we can lose sight of that.

It doesn't come to the top

of our news bulletins.

It's not widely spoken about.

But up particularly

in the Muslim majority north of Nigeria,

the people of God are laboring

under intense pressure

terrorized with impunity

by Islamic militants and armed bandits.

In fact, more people are killed for their faith

in Nigeria each year

than everywhere else in the world combined.

The attacks, brutal,

involves the destruction of their properties,

abductions of people, holding out for a ransom,

sexual violence, and death.

And those believers,

they are stripped of their livelihoods

and driven from their homes.

And there's a whole trail, therefore,

of grief and trauma

that they're experiencing.

And when you hear of the Fulani militants

and Boko Haram

and ISWAP,

Islamic State in Western African Province,

then you'll identify

those who are responsible

for the persecution of God's people in Nigeria.

And the government seems impotent.

Doesn't or cannot do anything about it.

And sadly, the governments of the world

aren't running in the way that they did to poor munitions,

and millions into the likes of Ukraine,

but seem to be pretty silent

when God's people in that area are being wiped off the map.

And that's literally what's happening.

So Peter is saying here,

this is going to happen to you.

And it has happened in Western societies before,

where there's been persecution against God,

against God's people,

but it's usually only jeers.

It's usually only sneers.

It's usually only agitation.

It's usually only deplatforming a person.

Not the kind of thing that's happening in Nigeria.

So we have a kind of Cold War situation

that exists around us today,

as far as the people of God is concerned,

and persecution for the faith that we have in Christ.

But there's no doubt there could well come a time

when these conflicting beliefs

will move beyond mere frost and ice,

where the battle could heat up,

where the day would arrive

when people are compelled to stand

and give a witness for Christ

in the presence of bitter hatred and vicious opposition.

The Scottish Covenanters

are hundreds of years removed from us,

but not really that far

when you consider 1688 and thereabouts.

Our Lord promised that the time would come when,

and he talks about it in John 16 in the verse 2,

and in Matthew 5 verse 11 and 12,

the time will come when they put you out of the synagogues.

Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you

will think that he doeth God service.

And the question is,

how do we prepare for this kind of a time?

When tribulation, John 16, 33,

our Savior promised it there as well.

When tribulation comes,

when affliction comes for the cause of the Lord Jesus,

what are we doing?

Well, Peter here lays out a good battle plan

in 1 Peter 3 and 15,

but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts

and be ready always to give an answer to every man

that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you

with meekness and fear.

So we're going to break it down into three areas,

and first of all today,

there is a dedication that is Christ-centered.

That's the focus of the verse here in 1 Peter 3 and 15,

a dedication that is Christ-centered,

but sanctified.

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

You could actually put that another way.

Sanctify the Lord as God in your hearts.

So what's Peter saying here?

I think we could traipse back into the book of Isaiah

for a moment, and Isaiah chapter 8,

the verse 12 and 13 I believe holds a key here

where we're told, say not a confederacy,

to all them to whom this people shall say,

a confederacy, neither fear ye their fear nor be afraid.

Rather, what are you doing?

Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself

and let him be your fear and let him be your dread.

In other words, here's the bottom line,

if you are going to tremble at the sight

and the sound of anything, let it be the Lord.

Matthew Henry put it like this,

an awful sense of the divine perfections

is the best antidote against the fear of sufferings.

And then he adds, did we fear God more?

We should certainly fear men less.

Isn't that what our Savior said in Luke 12,

the verse 4 and 5, I say unto you, my friends,

be not afraid of them which kill the body,

and after that they have no more that they can do,

but I forewarn you whom ye shall fear, fear him,

which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell.

Yea, I say unto you, fear him.

There needs to be a recognition of Christ as Lord,

and that's where Peter is going here.

Sanctify the Lord God, or the Lord as God in your hearts.

That's the starting point for a child of God.

Paul tells us that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord,

but by the Holy Ghost, 1 Corinthians 12 and 3.

And the implication is plain, if I am standing

and if I am owning Jesus as Lord in my life,

then that is proof of salvation.

That's the starting line.

This is the point at which we must begin.

That's the equivalent of, you're in the army,

they're setting out into parade here,

and you hear the sergeant call out,

by the left foot march.

And so to set off on the proper course,

to get off on the right foot,

when we acknowledge and we crown Jesus as Lord of our lives,

that's how we do it.

Remember how Paul, the apostle, started himself.

He's out on that Damascan highway.

He's lying in the dust.

There's a light above the brightness of the sun

that beams around him.

And in the middle of that traumatic experience,

he cries, Lord, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?

Acts 9 and verse 6.

And from that point on, he made this the foundation

of his theology.

This was baseline.

And merely recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord

at the beginning of his Christian experience

wasn't the end for him,

because that was the continuation of his life,

and that was the climax of his life.

He is always working towards this target and this goal.

We must crown him Lord of all.

In all of my efforts, in all of my endeavors,

I am laboring to lift up Jesus as Lord.

We think of his words in Philippians 2, verse 10 and 11,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

of things in heaven and things in earth

and things under the earth,

and that every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father,

and with all the energy God gave Paul.

He took those missionary journeys.

He went through the waves of persecution and tribulation

so that in those areas of the world

to which he was unable to go,

he would install Christ by God's Spirit

as Lord in hearts and in lives.

Cross-reference it in Romans 10, verse 9 and 10.

So it's the starting point for the child of God.

It's also the stepping stone for a child of God.

In other words, you'll only ford the river

that'll lead you to glory

by using these stepping stones.

You'll only advance in the Christian life

by keeping Christ as Lord of your hearts,

by doing what Peter says here,

sanctifying the Lord God in your hearts.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was,

one of the greatest preachers of all time.

Not for nothing was he known as the Prince of Preachers.

And his soul is moved in preaching

one Lord's Day evening.

And he's exhausted in his body,

and his voice is virtually gone.

And then he speaks these words,

Let my Liam perish,

but let Christ Liam last forever.

Jesus, Jesus, crown Him Lord of all.

He said, you will not hear me say anything else.

These are my last words in Exeter Hall

for the last time.

Jesus, Jesus, crown Him Lord of all.

And see, when persecution boils up,

breaks around you,

the key to a life of faithfulness then

is to keep recognizing

my Lord Jesus Christ.

He is Lord of all,

but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

Moving out of London and up the road

and getting to Manchester,

we come in the days of Spurgeon

to another preacher,

a Baptist preacher as well,

by the name of Dr. Alexander McLaren.

And he says, we need to take care

that our thoughts about Jesus Christ

are full of devout awe

and reverence.

That's what 1 Peter 3.15 is all about.

I venture to think, he says,

that a great deal of modern

and sentimental Christianity

is very defective in this respect.

You cannot love Jesus Christ too much,

but you can love Him

with too little reverence.

And don't we see the evidence of that?

All around today,

in those that are,

well, they probably take the title,

okay, Christian entertainers,

their reverence is not there.

McLaren went on to say,

and that was 150 plus years ago,

this generation, his generation,

looks at the half of Christ.

Forgetting that He is judge,

forgetting that He is the Lion

of the tribe of Judah,

forgetting that while He is manifest

in the flesh as our brother,

He is also God,

our Creator,

as well as our Redeemer,

our Judge,

as well as our Savior,

some do not hallow Him enough

in their hearts as Lord.

Dr. Graham Scruggs,

he was preaching on the Lordship of Christ.

At the close of the meeting,

a young woman came up

and she had been greatly troubled

through the message

and as they get into conversation

and discussed what issue was troubling her,

Dr. Scruggs asked her,

why don't you yield?

She said, I'm afraid I'd have to do two things

if I did yield.

What are they?

Well, I play the piano at a concert home

and I'm afraid I'd have to give it up.

And the other,

well, I'm afraid God would,

when I stop playing the piano,

stop playing the piano there,

He would send me as a missionary to China.

Scruggs did something very wise.

He opened his Bible at Acts 10,

the verse 14.

And there we read,

But Peter said,

Not so, Lord,

for I have never eaten anything

that is common or unclean.

And Scruggs began to tease out

how absurd that answer of Peter really was.

Not so, Lord.

A slave, he said,

never dictates to his master.

And to say not so

and then use the word Lord

is impossible.

Now the preacher said,

I want you to cross out

the two words not so

and leave the word Lord.

Or else,

cross out Lord

and leave not so.

And he took his pencil out

and he handed his pencil to her

and he quietly walked away

for two hours.

That young woman struggled.

Then Dr. Scruggs returned

and he looked over her shoulder

and he saw the two words not so

were crossed out.

And with a gladness,

in her eyes,

she left the building

and she went home

and she repeated the word

over and over and over,

Lord,

Lord, Lord.

No longer was she going to dictate.

She was his disciple.

He was her Lord and Master.

And I pray each of those

who name the name of Christ

will acknowledge this.

Not just sing,

He is Lord,

He is risen from the dead

and He is Lord.

But we will live

where Christ is Lord

of our lives.

But sanctify the Lord as God

in your hearts.

A dedication that is Christ-centered.

Then secondly,

an education here

that is Christ-centered.

Peter goes on to words

in her text here.

But sanctify the Lord God

in your hearts

and be ready always

to give an answer to every man

that asks you

a reason of the hope that is in you.

Back of that

has to be the thought of education.

An education

in the things of God.

Be ready always

to give an answer

to every man that asks you

a reason of the hope that is in you.

Those words are so loaded.

The word answer, for example,

is the word apology.

And it's

the kind of word that

when originally used in a speech

would have been somebody

like a prisoner

or a man on trial.

And he's giving an account

in his own defense.

But as time went on,

this same word became

associated with those treaties

or grand volumes

that were written by men

when they were defending

the Christian faith.

Heretics had come in

and attacked the faith.

They had all manner of falsehood

against the word of God

and the Christ of God.

And so people,

they stood up and they answered

what the heretics were saying.

And their answer was known as

an apology

for the Christian faith.

Now, if you're ever going to do that,

you're going to need to know

what you're talking about.

And that's the whole emphasis here.

Be ready always to give an answer,

an apology to every man

who asks you a reason

of the hope that is in you.

Some people will dismiss Peter

right out of hand here

and say,

well, Peter, isn't he the man

that we read about in Acts 4

in the verse 13

and we're told that he's an unlearned

and he's an ignorant man.

He's just fresh from the fishing nets.

He's a stench of fishing upon him.

What would he really know?

Peter received his academic training

under the greatest tutor there ever was,

the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was his master, his teacher.

He listened to the words of Christ

for three and a half years.

He watched him day and night

and, no doubt for many people,

the whole subject of theology,

God's truth,

revealed through the Word.

It might bore people at some stage.

It might seem insurmountable.

A heavy hill to try to climb,

but it forms the basis

of that unanswerable argument

for the faith we possess.

Be ready always to give an answer

to every man that asketh you a reason

of the hope that is in you.

We need to know what we believe.

Whenever the JW knocks your door,

whenever the Mormons come,

whenever the woke brigade

are flying their flags and marching

and infiltrating every area that they can,

we need to know this book very, very well.

It was said of those in Berea

in Acts 17 to verse 11,

these were more noble than those in Thessalonica

in that they received the Word

with all readiness of mind

and searched the Scriptures daily

whether those things were so.

They were like sponges.

They were eager to learn

everything they could learn.

They wanted to receive all they could,

enjoy all they could,

and their anxiety to be taught in the truth

is seen in this intense effort

that they put in to searching the Scriptures.

They were digging down deep.

We need to be like them,

to be like the Psalmist in Psalm 19 and 10,

more are they to be desired than gold,

sweeter also than honey in the honeycomb.

In Psalm 119 verse 97, verse 162,

O how love I thy law!

It is my meditation all the day.

I rejoice at thy Word

as one that findeth great spoil.

Jeremiah said in 15 and 16,

Thy words were found and I did eat them

and thy Word was unto me the joy

and rejoicing of mine heart.

I don't have time.

In an age when we have time

to be on our phones incessantly,

generally to little or no purpose,

and usually with no accomplishment at the end,

in a day when we can switch on the television

or the radio,

and we don't notice the hours going by,

in a time when we can engage in physical exercise

and bodily exercise,

the Bible says,

does profit.

It profits little,

but it does profit.

And if we were to take those times

that are being eating up,

those chunks of times

that are being devoured,

and contrast that with the time we spend

searching, studying, applying,

the Word of God,

I think that'll be a very sobering revelation.

Somebody said,

I entered the world's great library doors.

I crossed their acres of polished floors.

I searched and searched their stacks and nooks,

but I settled at last on the book of books.

And sometimes that's how it is.

It's the last thing we do.

We look at everything else.

We read everything else.

We're engaged by everything else.

Enthralled by everything else.

And the book of books comes at the end.

The problem is,

men and women today largely try to

adjust God's Word to suit their lives,

rather than adjusting their lives

to suit God's Word.

Some dolphins were stranded on a beach

near Boston.

Scientists said,

do you know what's happened?

They've run aground because of a hearing problem.

As we know,

they use waves to judge the depths,

and they discovered that the worms

had clogged their sinus cavities

and the inner ears of those stranded dolphins.

It had made it difficult for them to hear.

And is it not true that some of us as God's people

are dull of hearing?

We were thinking of Elijah on Wednesday night past.

And yes, it was the earthquake

that nobody could have failed to have heard.

But when it came down to where God was speaking,

it was a still small voice.

The Holy Spirit speaking through the Scriptures.

And a lot of people aren't listening.

They're not detecting it.

They don't hear it.

It's disastrous for us as individual Christians

and for the church of Jesus Christ

as a collective body.

We need to be taught of Christ,

and we need to be taught by Christ.

Think of those doctors of the law in the temple

that Christ was teaching in Luke 2 into verse 46.

Those who attended His ministry,

they discovered His Word is with power.

We need to attend to that.

Luke 4, 36 of Miriam who sat at His feet.

Luke 10 to verse 39 of those two disciples

on the road to Emmaus.

And their whole world was shattered.

But then they became buoyant as they reflected,

did not our hearts burn within us

while He talked with us by the way

and opened to us the Scriptures.

That's what we need to do.

We need to be shoulder to shoulder with these people.

Learn what they learned.

Focus on Christ.

So we've looked at a dedication that is Christ-centered,

an education that is Christ-centered.

And then finally in our text today,

a presentation that is Christ-centered.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts

and be ready always to give an answer to every man

that asketh you a reason

of the hope that is in you with meekness

and fear.

If we are dedicated to Christ,

educated in the school of Christ,

we'll be able to present Him to the world

in a way that He should be presented.

And that's important.

We need to do it reasonably.

Every man that asketh you a reason.

The word reason is translated from logos.

It's simply a thoughtful and a reasoned explanation.

At times, even preaching today

is just the churning out of unrelated Scripture texts

and an evangelical cliché here

and another evangelical cliché somewhere else.

I hope this ministry never gets to that pitch.

It needs to stop when it does.

When nothing is being said,

plenty of words are being spoken.

But there's little thought and there's little effort

and there's little devotion of time and energy.

God forgive us when we do that.

And if we hadn't been employed by a merciful Lord,

then some preachers would have been fired long ago.

Reasonably.

Reliably.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

Give an answer to every man that ask you the reason of the hope.

The hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

I open the pages of the book and I find beginning to end,

it's a message of hope that I discovered here.

It brings hope to the hopeless.

Are there any hopeless out there?

Belfast is full of them.

Northern Ireland is full of them.

The United Kingdom is full of them.

This world is full of hopeless people

who do not know where to turn.

They will feed on every diet the world puts in front of them.

They will take every route the devil encourages them to take.

But they're hopeless.

Scanning his eye over the Old Testament,

summing up its value to us,

Paul tells us in Romans 15 and 4,

whatsoever things were written aforetime,

they were written for our learning,

that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures

might have hope.

It's a book of hope.

The New Testament message, it's one of hope.

And I'm looking at Paul again in Romans 5 this time,

verse 1 and 2.

Therefore, being justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

by whom also we have access by faith into this grace,

wherein we stand,

and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

So we have a message of radiance to give to the world,

a message of relevance for this world today

that is hopeless, that is lost, that is perishing.

Ours is a message of hope,

and we should never lose sight of that.

When two Iraqi missiles smashed into the U.S.S.

Stark, Persian Gulf, May 1987,

35 American seamen were killed.

Before the bodies were loaded onto a military transport plane

to be shipped back to the States,

there was a solemn airport ceremony.

It was attended only by Mrs. Barbara Kaiser,

wife of one of the victims,

and her five-year-old son by her side.

She said,

I don't have to mourn or wear black

because I know my husband is in heaven.

He's better off.

God doesn't make mistakes.

What a testimony of hope that is.

And I'm reminded every time I conduct the funeral of one

that I've known to be a faithful and an earnest child of God,

I'm reminded of what Paul says.

I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,

concerning them which are asleep,

that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

Because these people had hope.

As God's people, they had hope.

And what hope they had.

I'm possessed of a hope that is steadfast and sure.

Since Jesus came into my heart,

and though dark clouds of doubt now my pathway,

obscure since Jesus came into my heart.

Now unless we have this kind of hope in us,

unless the radiant reality of a personal experience of Christ

is with us as we present Him,

all the education in the world will amount to nothing.

We present Him respectably.

Notice the final words.

Do it with meekness

and fear.

So we don't go out and conduct ourselves with arrogance

and with self-assertion

and try to fry up people

or use a flamethrower on those that haven't come

to the knowledge of the truth just yet.

We are not to do that with due respect toward men,

with reverence before God.

It's a holy awe that is in view here with meekness

and the word fear is that holy awe.

And so as far as many people are concerned,

and let's get this,

as far as many people are concerned,

it's not line after line after line of theology

that will persuade them.

That's necessary because we need to be right

in what we're teaching.

But what people will pick up on,

more even than the contents of this statement we make,

is the spirit with which we make it.

And they will not give a hearing to the statement

if our spirit is all wrong.

So Peter says here,

you're giving this answer to every man

that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.

You do it with meekness and fear.

And look at verse 16,

having a good conscience that whereas

they may speak evil of you as of evildoers,

they may be ashamed,

that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.

So here's the acid test.

The acid test of a proper presentation of Christ

is having a good conscience toward God,

a good commendation before men

because we are delivering the message in love.

I close with an incident

and then a statement from Frank W. Crossley.

A Manchester man again.

And he was in the west of London

and in a meeting he used these words.

How are we to attract

the most people into this earthly and yet heavenly paradise?

That is a much vexed question, he said.

What, for example, are legitimate means

or what is legitimate be it?

I am, he said, somewhat familiar with the flies and worms,

in use among fishers of men.

I believe, I know of only one safe kind.

We must be the bait ourselves

and be willing to be gobbled up.

Then he went on to say, let us be real,

that is really like the master,

filled with his love and self-sacrifice

and we shall soon prove

a very catching lot.

No other bait will be wanted, he said,

if the Spirit of Jesus is seen

in his followers.

No other bait will be wanted

if the Spirit of Jesus

is seen in his followers.

But sanctify

the Lord God in your hearts

and be ready always to give an answer to every man

that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,

with meekness and fear.

That is a word for today.