Bringing Us to God (Part A)

When death comes my way, when its cold dew lies on my brow, bring me to God. That's what I want, and there's only one that can do it, and that is the Christ, the one who was spat upon and struck and mocked and crucified. There is no other way to bring us to God. Salvation is everything. That's what it's all about.

And that's, it's a full time, it's a full time commitment. After today's message, to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of First Peter chapter three, as he begins his message bringing us to God. We are continuing in First Peter chapter three.

If you have your Bibles, please turn. Verse eighteen is where we will begin reading. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit, by whom he, by whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water. There is also an anti-type, which now saves us, baptism.

Not the removal of the flesh, the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. Bringing us to Christ, that is where hopefully the emphasis will lie this morning on this passage of Scripture. Before our beginning verse, which is verse eighteen, in verse seventeen he had said to these persecuted Christians, it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. And then you get to chapter four, verse one, he says, therefore Christ suffered for us in the flesh. Of course, we started at verse eighteen, Christ also suffered once for sin. Suffering, suffer, that word is the one that is standing out.

What is it all about? What does suffering have to do with the children of God and the preaching of the gospel? It's what it has to do, that's the point that Peter is trying to make. He says, yeah, you're being persecuted right now, but the preaching continues in season, out of season. If it's in the season of peace and calm, you preach the truth, you preach the gospel. If it is during time of persecution, when evil is exalted, you preach the truth, you preach the gospel.

This is the way that Noah did it, this is the way Christ did it, this is the way we do it. And persecution comes in many forms. There is of course that hateful persecution that we can be subject to, and then there is the persecution of luxuries, where the flesh just persecutes the appetite of the spirit. And so we have a lot to do here in this life, we Christians. Meaningful work, bringing us to God, that was the role of Jesus Christ, that was what Noah did, that is what we do, verse eighteen, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit, not wasted suffering.

There are people that suffer, and it's just a waste. At the end, they get hell, and we are to do all that we can in the power of the spirit to intercept those souls that are on the wrong course through this life because they have rejected Jesus Christ. So the sufferings of the son, all about bringing lost souls to God for salvation, he was abused right before the cross. They had found him innocent and condemned to death. So they abused him. They spat on him, they smacked him, they mocked him, then they crucified him. Not, then they killed him, then they crucified him. Oh, they wanted him to suffer first.

And then while he was dying, they mocked him even more. Those especially who should have been knowledgeable of the scriptures and the fulfillment of the scripture through his life, they led the charge. Isaiah says he is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him, he was despised, and we did not esteem him. Well, of course, Isaiah is writing over 700 years before the birth of Christ. Christ, of course, fulfilled this verse, it spoke of him, and through the ages, people have rejected him. Of course, his own people, what Isaiah says, and we hid. That means the Jewish people, we should have known better, but we did not esteem him. There are people to this very day not esteeming the Christ.

Unfortunately, many times Christians give them all the ammunition they need to reject Christ. His sufferings were prophetic, but they were also voluntary. Christ did not find himself in a bad situation, he put himself there for us, voluntary suffering. I almost never volunteered to suffer.

Maybe you do, maybe there's something wrong with you. I'll do it, I'll hurt. We do if, of course, love is involved, we would suffer for a loved one, and that's what God has done through Christ. It was vicarious, he suffered in our place, the judgment that is. There are other sufferings that belong to us that he's not going to suffer for us. Though he suffers with us, but this suffering that he took upon himself was to remove the dirt of judgment that would be upon us on that day when we leave this life.

It was also vicarious. There was fruit that came out of it, it was not wasted. One of the reasons why he will reference the eight souls saved on the ark is that it wasn't wasted. No, it did achieve fruit from all the preaching that he did, and he had over 120 years to preach just that part about the judgment to come.

Not to mention things before that. And so, once for sins, Peter tells us, Christ does not, nor will he ever again suffer injury for sin. Though he suffers, what we go through, his spirit sees what we go through. Of course, he suffers that much, but not suffering for sins to remove the judgment.

There is no perpetual suffering of Christ on our behalf. Romans 6, verse 9, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. You know, really, death never did have dominion over him, because they didn't kill him, he gave up his spirit. He dismissed his humanity when he was good and ready to dismiss it.

He loved the Lord Jesus Christ because of his splendor, because he is awesome. He says once for sins. Now, there are a great many who attend churches who refuse to face brazen sin in their own lives or the lives of others, and this is a big problem because it helps Satan. Impenitent sin in many circles just goes on like nobody checks it.

Like an invasive weed, it just takes over. And then, then there are those that demand that their blatant sin be accepted, while they rudely trample upon the commandments of Christ, trample upon the word, insisting others say nothing about it. They try to take the shame out of sin.

We don't do that. Sin is shameful. Those who are born again know it full well. There are even those foolish enough to advocate for those who are blatantly sinning in churches. Don't you dare, don't you dare call them out.

You better ignore the dragon in the room. Christ died for our sins, not for us to dismiss them as though they were meaningless. Every piece of pain in humanity is due to sin. There's no record of pain in humanity until Adam and Eve sinned, 1 Corinthians.

And this is just one spot. Paul hits it harder in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, but I'll just take this one in 1 Corinthians. He says, But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother. That is, any Christian, he continues, who is sexually immoral, covetous, that is to the lustful fault of it, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. Paul lays it out. He says, Listen, you've got somebody saying they're Christian, but they brazenly live like they're not Christians.

Cut them off. Now, he's not saying that those who struggle with these things, he's talking about those who just don't care. They insist, Well, I'm saved. Jesus died for me. He didn't die for you to keep your sin like that.

Maybe you're not saved. And so we are careful about these things, hopefully, all of us together, not judgmental, but holding to what the Scripture says. For the just, he continues in verse 18, that Christ died, the just for the unjust. Well, we sinners, we owe a debt to God we cannot pay. That debt is obedience.

We can't pay it. By nature, we sin. I'm a sinner.

I'm born one. I'm going to sin, and so are you. But Christ paid the debt he didn't owe. He didn't owe this.

He didn't have to do it. We don't understand that. This is part of our message.

This is the gospel. Christ did not come into this world as the incarnate Jesus, born in Bethlehem. He did not assume humanity onto his deity just to show us how to live. He did not become human to say, I want to show you how it's done. That was part of it.

That was not the main part of it. He did not become the incarnate Christ to relieve pain and suffering from every life he came in touch with, or just a few thousand that he did in his day, or probably an innumerable amount. What about the other generations whom he did not touch and heal and cleanse? He did not come just to teach us about God, to sympathize with us. He entered this world to suffer, to bleed, and to die for sinners, to buy us back, to redeem us. And so we read, and Peter is clear on this, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God.

How powerful is that? Bring me to God. That's what I want. When death comes my way, when its cold dew lies on my brow, bring me to God. That's what I want, and there's only one that can do it, and that is the Christ, the one who was spat upon and struck and mocked and crucified. There is no other way to bring us to God. Salvation is everything.

That's what it's all about. It's a full-time commitment to work out our salvation, to carry it out, to behave as though we have been bought with the blood of Christ. Hebrews chapter 2, For it was fitting for him, that is Jesus, for whom all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. He is the captain of our salvation, the blood of Christ.

It can, and it does, cleanse and cancel out the judgment of sin. Being put to death, he says, in the flesh. Now maybe as I'm reading this, you're saying, yeah, that's all right, this is basic Christianity. Get to the part about preaching to souls in the underworld. Well, we're going to come to that in a minute. Now in another group you say, well, what?

So we'll hang around for a little bit and we'll get to it. He says, being put to death in the flesh. Well, those who did not believe him killed him for daring to be so righteous in their face. Not intentionally, he just lived righteously.

They took it that way. All of our guilt and sin and suffering for sin and shame, all transferred to him. In the Old Testament, when the Jew wanted to bring a sin offering or a burnt offering to God, they would take it to the tabernacle where the altar was, where the priest was, where the Shekinah was. And they would take their sacrificial animal and they would lay their hands on that beast before that beast was slaughtered on their behalf. Their sin was being transferred to that animal.

Christ has fulfilled that type. His holiness, his righteousness, his goodness and acceptance is transferred to us. So that when God looks at us, the sin is gone.

It's washed away in the blood of Christ. He has made us acceptable in the heavens through his sacrifice. At the cross, he would die that we would live. He took on our sin.

He transferred it to himself. And his righteousness to us, that is salvation. He says, but made alive by the Spirit. Again, they could kill the incarnate body by his permission.

But they could not kill him. As I mentioned, he dismissed his soul when he was good and ready, sovereign to the end. But this, made alive by the Spirit of God.

Well, this is very important to understanding what's now coming. Verse 19, by whom he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine long sufferings waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. Well, Peter, you know the thing is when you write, when you write spiritual things, it's usually because you've thought them out and often you've already preached them. So you've formed your theology and your presentation. It would not be out of character with Christian pastoral behavior to say that Peter likely was preaching on these things when he wrote the letter, when he dictated the letter.

And Silas is writing it down. So that means that Peter understands what he's saying. His audience may be totally there with him because they may have heard sermons like this from Peter or others who preached it at the time. But by the time 2,000 years have rolled by, we're a little confused when we come to such verses as this. Who is this in prison and what spirit is preaching?

What is going on here? It's really not that complicated of a passage of Scripture. Now, I'm not a sci-fi Christian.

I do not try to read into verses things that are sensational but really don't make any sense. For example, those of you familiar with Genesis 6, the giants and the women. Not the New York giants. There are those that believe that there were intimate relationships between the giants and the women. How big were these giants? I mean, were there no female giants?

I mean, you've got a lot of problems now. They were spiritual beings. So now you've got these, what, hybrid spiritual beings having physical relationships with human beings and then having physical offsprings. You now challenge the virgin birth because later on you're going to be able to say, how do we know that the virgin birth was of God?

You just create problems that aren't there. They were the Gebors, the Nephilim. They were the giants of society, not physical giants. But there are many Christians that, and good Bible teachers, otherwise good in other passages, they got it, they know the Gospel and they're sharp cookies, but on some passages the best of them get a little weird.

This is also one of them, and I'll bring some of that out in a moment. So where he says, by whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison. Because Peter is talking about the crucifixion and death of Christ, who was raised by the Spirit, that's what he says. There are many of the commentators that keep this passage, verse 19, connected to the crucifixion of Christ, supposing that when he died he went to the underworld and there he preached, which is really kind of pointless.

He delivered the saints, for sure. Hell was not fully populated then. More people, people at this very moment, hell is being populated. They would have missed the sermon, pointless. But anyway, that's just another part of this. We can be too quick to accept the sensational when the simple is most proper. And I think all of us have met God-loving, God-fearing Christians who believe anything very quickly that is weird and eerie.

I would counsel against that, because usually it is at the cost of reason. That does not help the preaching of the gospel or the strengthening of the individual. Peter's reference to Noah is the key to understanding what is going on here. He's not talking about Christ after the crucifixion going and preaching into the underworld. He's talking about Christ being raised by the Spirit. That same Spirit was in Noah. And Noah preached to those who were then alive in his day. For 120 years, he preached. He was a preacher of righteousness, Peter will tell us. And those who rejected that message are imprisoned spiritually. They are dead, they are gone, and they are not in heaven. And that's the point that Peter has made.

So that's the short answer. The Spirit of Christ was in Noah, preaching to the antediluvians, those before the flood. Now, here's one otherwise good commentator. Here's what he says about this verse. Between Christ's death and resurrection, his living spirit went to the demon spirits bound in the abyss and proclaimed that, in spite of his death, he had triumphed over them. I don't agree with that. I'm not alone. It would be nice if I was like the only one that discovered the true meaning and I could say, all those guys are wrong, but not me, I'm special.

But that's not the case. John Wesley, Wesley that great, great man of God from England. His ministry failed here in the United States.

He suffered a lot before he got it together. But anyway, he writes about this. By which spirit he preached through the ministry of Noah? The spirits in prison, unholy men before the flood, who were then reserved by the justice of God, as in a prison, till he executed the sentence upon them all and are now also reserved to the judgment of the great day. And so I agree with that, Wesley.

Here's another. I won't name the ones that are still living or have been not living long, having died recently. Peter is describing what happened in the days of Noah. It was the spirit of Christ who preached through Noah to the unbelieving generation before the flood. They were not disembodied spirits at the time. But living men and women who rejected the warnings of Noah and were destroyed by the flood, so now they are spirits in the prison of Hades. Now that's not a teaching to divide. If you insist, no, no, I want the, you know, I want the eerie one, then okay, have at it. But again, it's not something to divide on.

I think if you take that route, you're going to be confused by a lot of other things, though, and so I would caution against it. In verse 19, and we'll develop it a little bit more as we go forward, where he says in verse 19, by whom also he went. Peter speaks of the spirit of the Holy Spirit in Christ, who spoke through Noah, as I mentioned. Christ was very active before the manger. Christ was alive and functioning before he was born in Beth.

You know, when you say, oh, happy birthday, Jesus, he doesn't have a birthday. He's eternal, he's self-existent. He's always been, he always will be. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

Now I know it's a sentimental thing, and I'm not telling you you're sinning by saying it, and if you want to keep doing it, that's fine. But he has always been, and he has always been active, and so has the Holy Spirit, and so has the Father. These three are one, and they are not.

They're indivisible. 1 Peter chapter 1, of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you. Well, who showed them these things to prophesy?

Of course, he goes on, Peter does, searching what or what manner of time? The Spirit of Christ, who was in them, that's what he says, was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Christ was in the prophets in the sense that he revealed to them things about his ministry on earth as we started off reading from Isaiah 53 verse 3.

Christ gave them that, just as Christ gave to Noah his message, just as Christ gives to us our message, and that's the point. You Christians are being persecuted, but Christ is still ministering to you. The Holy Spirit is not withdrawn from you. You are still expected to conduct Christian business in the midst of these things.

This is the point. This entire section about preaching in the face of ridicule and persecution, Romans chapter 8, But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he's not his. So you see the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ, you can't separate them.

You go mad trying to. They're joined together. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of 1 Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia, and we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the Scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.