How to Behave Like a Christian

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Transcript:

1 Peter chapter 4 this morning, if you’ll turn with me there. 1 Peter chapter 4. As I read through it this week, parts of this chapter read like a how-to article for the Christian life.

I enjoy how-to articles. I’m thankful for them. A few weeks ago, I inherited a hand-me-down iPhone because I’m too cheap to go and buy one for myself.

But I’m not too proud for hand-me-downs. Thank you, Mom, by the way. So I got this hand-me-down iPhone, and I’d had it over the course of the weekend and got ready to walk into services or Sunday school, one of the two, and thought, I don’t know how to set this thing on silent.

And try as I might, I looked all over the thing and could not figure out how to put the thing on silent. And most of the people who call me are in this room, but I thought, just as sure as I don’t, it’s going to go off in my pocket. So I had to get on Google real fast and Google how to silence an iPhone.

And thankfully, somebody else had had the same problem because there’s a how-to article. Apparently, there’s a little switch like the safety on a gun. So I turned the little switch because the article told me to.

And the phone goes on silent now. So I was very thankful for how-to articles saving me the embarrassment of having my phone ring while I’m up here preaching. And I turned to how-to articles.

You may too. You may not go online to find them, some of you. But we’ve all at some point or another had to read instructions on how to do things.

We need how-to articles. We need how-to articles sometimes to learn how to do things. But there’s a distinction, there’s a difference between how-to articles that are showing us how to do something in order to make something happen and articles that are teaching us how to do something because something already has happened.

You know, there may be how-to articles about a plumbing problem, your plumbing explodes. Well, the how-to article is about what to do because your plumbing has exploded, not because you’re trying to make that happen. If Judy were here this morning, she could attest to that.

There’s a difference in being told how to do something in order to make something happen, or because something already has. And I got to thinking about this, and it’s true in many cases in life. I thought about my dad.

I told some of y’all yesterday he was running the Bentonville Half Marathon again the second time, and actually finished in less time than it took him last year. I was proud of him. But my dad is a runner.

I’ve thought about becoming a runner, but I just, we have small children. I’m tired. My dad is a runner.

Not because he went to the marathon. I went to the, or the half marathon. I went there yesterday.

I won the zero case sitting at the Walmart snack bar for three hours. I won the zero case. Just going to the marathon or the half marathon didn’t make me a runner.

My dad is a runner because he runs. Some other things, I’m a reader because I read. Now, I’m not talking about being able to read.

I’m talking about actually being somebody who does read. Brother Lindsay, when he was here a few weeks ago, told me that he gave me statistics that I’ve already forgotten. But suffice it to say, the majority of people never read another full book, at least in my age group, never read another full book after they leave school.

I can’t imagine that. I’m a reader because I read. I’m a turtle owner.

No, this is not a real one. I thought that’s a good way to get fired, would be to bring my turtles up here on the platform with me. I’m a turtle owner because I own turtles.

I went and bought turtles. I did something, and now I’m a turtle owner. But not everything that we do in life, not everything that we are in life, is as easy as just doing something outwardly, and then you are that thing.

Thought about my marriage. Now, I’m Christian’s husband, and we live in the same house together. We share expenses.

We share children. But any one of those things on their own, and even all of them together, and other things that I do because I’m her husband, just doing those things don’t make me a husband. The fact that I call her on a regular basis through the day to check on her doesn’t make me her husband.

I did that when we were dating, called to check on her at work. We share expenses and finances. Well, that doesn’t make me her husband.

I’m on my parents’ bank account, and they’re on ours, and yet I’m not married to them. See, being a husband is the result of something happening, something changing in my heart when I realized I love Christian. And then a commitment was made.

We have a little piece of paper. I tell her all the time, I have a little piece of paper that says you have to listen to me. No.

No. I only tell her that as a joke, folks. I do tell her that, but only as a joke.

See, I’m not a husband because I call her. I’m not a husband because we share expenses. I’m not a husband because we have kids together or even because I wear this ring.

I’m a husband because of the change that took place in my heart and then the commitment that was made in this little piece of paper. As we read this today, I’m telling you, you may think, why is he talking to us about turtles and marriage licenses and all this? There’s a reason for this.

There’s a reason for this because I want you to realize the difference as we go through this how-to article, especially at the end of the passage we’re going to look at today. I don’t want anybody to be mixed up and think, oh, I can be a Christian and go to heaven just by doing these things. What I’m going to tell you these how-to things today, what I’m going to tell you are things that we do not in order to become a Christian but because we already are.

These are the things that are expected of us because of the change that was wrought in our heart by God and because of the commitment that was made when we decided to trust Christ and follow Him. And some of these things this morning, some of you in here may have never trusted Christ before. These are not things that are going to get you to heaven, and these are not things that are going to make you a Christian.

That’s why I brought all these things up, because I want everybody to understand. Now we can talk, and I will tell you in the course of the message how to become a Christian, But these things today are geared more toward the believers and how God expects us to act. What it is that God expects from us.

And so I’ve titled the message this morning, How to Behave Like a Christian. And even Thursday night when I came to Disciple Way, I was still struggling with the message for this morning. And I’d start in on one passage of scripture and studying it out and trying to put a message together.

And I’d decide, no, that’s not what God wants me to talk about. And even Thursday night, I asked the people, He said, pray for me because I’m still struggling with this. And then something Brother James said stuck in my mind that wouldn’t it be great if everybody who claimed to be a Christian, I can’t remember your exact words, but wouldn’t it be great if everybody who professed to be a Christian actually acted like it?

And I thought, well, it sure would. And then I came across this passage in 1 Peter that tells us how. It tells us if we’re to be a Christian, what’s expected from us?

It’s his how-to article. One of many how-to articles on how to behave like a Christian. 1 Peter chapter 4, starting in verse 1, says, For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.

For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. And what he’s talking about here, as Peter writes this and the book of 2 Peter as well, he’s writing to people who were already in the middle of persecution and were about to suffer some very, very intense persecution. This was during the time of the Emperor Nero.

As I’ve told the disciple way groups many times, Nero is said to have been so brutal toward Christians that when they were having the chariot races and the gladiatorial games and it would start to get dark and he didn’t want the games to end, he would actually dip Christians in tar and impale them and use them as living human torches. Now, as I’ve told the group, I don’t know whether that’s historically accurate or not. That was a rumor even back then.

But the fact that it was told and believed about Nero tells you something about his feeling toward Christians. If somebody told you I use Christians as living torches, nobody in here would believe it because I don’t have that kind of character or behavior towards Christians. I don’t have that kind of feeling towards Christians.

But he had such an animosity towards Christian people that whether it’s true or not, people believed it. And that tells you something about how much he hated Christians. And as the Roman emperor, he started a lot of persecution.

And in a few years after this, it was about to get worse when there was the Jewish revolt in Jerusalem. And the Romans came in and practically wiped out everyone and everything in the town. and very often Christians in this day had a choice to make whether they suffered for the cause of Christ or whether they abandoned him altogether and I tell you that because I want you to understand also that when he said when he talks about suffering for Christ and when he talks about suffering putting an end to sin this is not the Roman Catholic teaching that by suffering you can somehow pay for your sins and there are I don’t know that their church as a whole teaches that but there are groups within the Roman Catholic Church that teaches if you’ll just suffer enough, you can put an end to your sin.

You can be perfect in your standing before God. What he’s talking about is suffering for Christ, the people who made the decision that, you know what, my life is not my own anymore. I belong to Christ, and if that gets me killed, so be it, but I’m his.

And you basically start to look at the world a little bit differently, a lot differently, I should say. And we don’t suffer the same kind of persecution here right now, but we still can come to that point where we say it doesn’t matter what the world says. I belong to Christ. I’m his and I’m going to do what he says.

It doesn’t matter. I’m not my own anymore. I’ve been bought with a price.

But to them, he says specifically that they’re going to be suffering. He says, for they that have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin. He’s saying the people who are so committed to Christ, the people who are so committed to Christ, they’re willing to die for him.

Talks about an end of this lifestyle of sin. It doesn’t mean sinless perfection either, but it means when we the conscious decision already as believers, already as believers, when we decide I’m going to follow Christ no matter what the cost and do what he says, I give up any right to claim that this is my own life and that my will is what needs to be done. When I give up that right, it’s going to change the way I live, whether we’re under persecution or not.

And that’s the kind of thing that Christ expects from us. That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. That the decision has been made, the commitment has been made, that no longer do I serve myself, my own will, my own desires, and the lust that I have, but my life is oriented around serving God and fulfilling God’s will.

This is a tall order, and this is not something we could do. Again, the things we’re going to talk about today, we don’t do them in order to become a Christian because we could not do these things apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. But when you trust Christ, the Bible says you’re indwelled from the moment of conversion by the Holy Spirit of God.

And he and he alone empowers us to make these kind of decisions and to live in this way as a result of our having trusted Christ. He says that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past, our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries. He said, you know, it was normal when once upon a time we did the will of the Gentiles, the pagan countries around them.

When we walked in immoral ways and lust and drunkenness and reveling, it’s like partying on steroids, banquetings where they would get together and they would just have excesses of food and excesses of wine and excess of everything and abominable idolatries because they would not only worship pagan statues, they would worship their own selves and their own will. That still goes on today.

my wife is going to is teaching tonight in AWANA about idolatry I helped her make a poster last night of some things that are idols and it was only at the very last minute I said why don’t we draw a little statue on there because there are still some people who bow to idols today bow to statues and I can’t draw I can draw but I can’t draw human beings so there’s a stick buddha on there that doesn’t actually look she said what is that but that was an afterthought because most of the idols that people worship today are not statues made of gold and stone and wood. They’re the other things that we put on that poster, the television, the car, money. Folks, the biggest idol in our world today is self.

Hear me on this. There are no atheists anywhere in the world. Atheism does not exist according to the definition that it’s the belief that there is no God.

Everybody is worshiping something, as I’ve told you before, even if it’s self. And if self is somebody’s God, they’re not an atheist, they just have a messed up idea of who God is, because they believe they’re on the throne of their lives. And he says it’s, it was normal, it was expected that back in former times we would behave this way, drunkenness and partying and violence and revelry and worshiping of idols.

Verse 4 says, wherein they think it’s strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot speaking evil of you. And he was telling the Christians there that, no, it’s understandable that before you trusted Christ you behaved this way. But now it’s to be expected that the people that you used to run around with and carouse with and do all sorts of evil things with that they would scratch their heads.

They would stand there and not understand what has taken place in his life. What is wrong with him now that he doesn’t come and party with us anymore? What is wrong with him that he doesn’t get drunk with us anymore?

What’s wrong with him that he’s not running around and having affairs with us? And this excess of riot that the Bible talks about, this riotous living, that it’s normal for the Christian, it’s expected for the Christian that we should live in such a way that the people who knew how we used to live would scratch their heads and say, what is wrong with him now? What’s happened?

What’s changed? And as a result, he said, they speak evil of you. And I’ve seen that happen to people.

Now, I was fortunate by the grace of God. I was saved at an early age before I had the opportunity, if you want to call it an opportunity, to be involved in much riotous living. And so anybody that’s known me for most of my life has known me as a Christian.

But I’ve known people who’ve gotten saved after years of hard living, and not only did the people that they used to run around with and sin with not understand the change that took place, but rather than have to face the change that was made in them and face the assertion that maybe God is real, maybe the Holy Spirit does change people, maybe there is something to trust in Christ, instead just speak evil of them and say, oh, they’re just holier than thou now. Oh, they just think they’re better than us. Or spread rumors about them.

Because if you can muddy up their character a little bit, you don’t have to deal with the claims that they make. You see it in politics all the time. You can’t argue with the guy’s ideas, so you just sling a little mud at him.

Well, folks, the difference in us ought to be so pronounced, again, not something we do, but the Holy Spirit does within us. The difference in our life as a Christian from what we lived before should be so pronounced that the world doesn’t understand it, and it makes the world so uncomfortable that they speak evil of us a little bit. If we live in the world and nobody has anything bad to say about us, there’s something we’re not doing right.

That’s hard for me to say because I want everybody to like me. When somebody’s upset with me, it makes me physically sick to my stomach. And yet there’s something to be said for the idea that if we have no opposition, if nobody’s mad at us because of the way we live as Christians, then there’s something we’re not doing right.

If our life doesn’t make the world outside just a little bit uncomfortable, we’re not doing something right. Who shall give account to him? He’s talking here when he says who, he’s talking about the Christians.

He says, who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead? See, we live differently, not only because the Holy Spirit empowers us to do so, but because we realize that there is judgment coming and there is an answer to be given. And as a Christian, we don’t stand in condemnation that God’s going to send us to hell when we sin, But we realize that when we sin, God sees it and it disappoints him.

And we give an answer for it. We talked about this this morning in Sunday school. And I told them that the scariest verse in the whole Bible to me personally is Matthew 12, 36, where it talks about giving an answer for every idle word.

Because I like to talk. And I have a lot more words than a lot of people. And I’m afraid I’m going to have a lot more to answer for because of that.

But folks, we live in such a way that we know that there’s a God and we understand that there’s judgment coming and we live as though we fear Him. For this cause, verse 6, was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, spiritually dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live according to God in the Spirit. And He said because there is judgment coming, because there is sin, and because God does consider sin serious business and must punish it and must judge it, the Bible says for that reason was the gospel preached to spiritually dead men.

Why? so that they would have the opportunity to repent and throw themselves on the mercy of God. Because God, even in his justice, is merciful and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

It says, but in the end, verse 7, but the end of all things is at hand. Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. Now this is an objection that people raise a lot of times.

Well, he said he’d come back soon. That was 2,000 years ago. I told a professor at OU one time when he asked me about that.

He said he’d come back soon, and that was 2,000 years ago, and I told him, well, it’s even truer now then, isn’t it? Soon according to God is not the same as soon according to us. And in God’s vision, where he sees all of eternity as the snap of a finger, yeah, the end is very near.

And whether for the world or for us as individuals, the end is nearer than we think. And so he says to the Christian, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. Take spiritual matters seriously.

Don’t treat them as though they’re something you can put off and wait to deal with later. There will always be time. Folks, we’re promised eternal life in Christ, but we’re never promised that we’ll live to see tomorrow.

It says, treat spiritual things seriously and watch in prayer. And above all things, have fervent charity among yourselves. We should love one another.

Folks, as Christians, I want you to read along in your Bible, but I want you to look up at me for just a second while I say this. I want to see your eyes. As Christians, we are supposed to love one another intensely.

When it says fervent charity, if they were translating this today, they would say intense love. We are to love one another intensely. Okay, you can look back at your Bibles now.

And above all things, have fervent charity, intense love among yourselves. For charity shall cover the multitude of sins. I’ve had trouble with this verse for a long time, but I think I finally understand what it means.

I know based on what the Scripture teaches as a whole, it’s not telling us that if we just love people enough, if we love enough that God will overlook our sins. That’s not what it’s talking about. Because if that was the case, we could all just be very loving and Christ would never have had to die.

But the word sin in Greek is hamartia, which means missing the mark. And that’s true for God’s standards. We all miss the mark.

We all fall short as though we were shooting an arrow and not even hitting the target, let alone the spot in the middle. What he says here, when he says here, for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. Godly love will cover the multitude of sins.

That means when we miss the mark in each other’s eyes, it’s not talking about ignoring sin against God. It’s not talking about, oh, somebody else in the church wants to go have an affair or wants to go kill somebody. Let’s just overlook it and love them.

And if we love them, it’s no big deal. What it means is when we fall short in each other’s eyes, if we love one another enough, it will cover a multitude of our shortcomings. And that was very convicting to me to realize that if I love others, I’m not going to see their shortcomings as much when they fall short of my standards. And to realize that if all I do is criticize and nitpick and attack somebody, I cannot say that I love them the way God expects me to.

And neither can you. Because he tells us charity. And that word there in Greek is agape, which means God’s kind of love.

God’s kind of love covers a multitude of transgressions. Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another.

as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. So far in the instructions, he’s talked a lot about living differently, which the Holy Spirit enables us to do. And he’s talked about our behavior toward one another.

Because then as now, churches had problems. And a lot of times in their day, they were fighting between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. And because of their ethnicity, they fought one another. Now it’s not so much ethnicity today, but there are still factions in churches.

I’m friends with this guy. Maybe some of y’all like me, Maybe some of y’all like Brother Phil better. And so we’re just going to snipe at each other all the time.

That went on in some churches. I’m of Paul. I’m of Apollos.

I follow this guy. I’m friends with this guy. And he doesn’t like you.

Folks, whatever the reason is, it reminds the Christians then as now of how we’re to love one another, how we’re to treat one another. Because the world looks at it. Yes, we’re supposed to love the world outside.

But if we can’t love one another within these walls, we can’t love the world outside. And believe it or not, the world outside looks and sees what goes on in the church and says they don’t even love each other, and yet they say they love me. Use hospitality one to another without grudging.

That means our hospitality toward one another should not be stingy. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. God gifts each and every believer for ministry so that we can minister the grace of God.

You know that? And there’s debate over how many spiritual gifts there are. Some people say there are 80-something.

Some people say there’s one, and it’s the gift of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know the exact number. The people who say seven and the people who say 12 are most convincing to me.

But regardless of whether you believe this number of spiritual gifts or this number of spiritual gifts, the Bible is clear. And I may get into that at some point in the future. But the Bible is clear.

God gifts us and enables us to do ministry so that we can demonstrate the grace of God, not only to one another, but to the world outside that desperately needs the grace of God. And He enables us. Some of y’all may be thinking, He enables each of us for ministry?

I don’t want to preach. I don’t want to get up and sing solo. That’s not what we’re talking about.

God enables each of us to minister in different ways. It’s because God wired each of us in different ways. And whatever ministry God calls us to do, God enables us to do so that we can demonstrate His grace.

If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. Now, if you’re familiar at all with the word oracles, you’re probably most familiar with it because of the oracles at Delphi in ancient Greece, where they’d go and they’d ask these pagan priestesses what they should do, and they’d give them answers. And now it’s believed they stood over a fissure or a crack in the ground that had some kind of noxious fumes coming out of it that put them in some kind of trance.

But these oracles, the ancient Greeks thought, spoke for the gods. When he says here the oracles of God, let me explain this. It’s a similar thought.

The Bible talks about the oracles of God in other places. And when it says the oracles of God, it does not mean some priestess who stands there and gives you answers to specific questions through some kind of occult means. The Bible talks about unto the Jews being committed the oracles of God.

It means the word of the prophets. It means the written word of God. It means the gift of prophecy.

It means any means by which God spoke to mankind. Now to us today, the oracles of God are this book right here. This book right here.

In their day, they had part of this book. They had the Old Testament. Those were the oracles of God.

God gave people a gift of prophecy where they could speak messages on God’s behalf. Not necessarily telling the future, but telling the message that God wanted them to hear. Those were the oracles of God.

And so when he says, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. He means if anybody has anything to say, let it conform to the word of God. If anybody has anything to say, let it conform to the word of God.

If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth. Again, God gives each of us gifts and abilities to do the ministry that he calls us to do. That God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion forever and ever.

Amen. All these things should be done so that God, through Christ, should have the glory that’s owed to him. Now this morning in just the few moments that we have remaining, I want to in particular take you to this last verse that we’ve just looked at and give you about three things, give you about three things that as general principles will help us to behave like Christians.

And it’s probably going to be nothing new to you, but we need to be reminded. And if you’re anything like me, you need to be reminded frequently, especially on this first one. We talked about James in Sunday school this morning.

and that’s why I was talking about the idle words, and we talked about the tongue. That is the hardest thing to control. And we as Christians can maybe get to where we don’t sin a whole lot in our actions where we’re not going out and drinking every night, and we’re not going out and sleeping around, but yet the tongue is hard to control.

And if anybody thinks he’s perfect, let him control his tongue, because you’d have to be perfect to control your tongue. The first thing for us to know this morning is that if we speak, our speech should reflect the Word of God. These are the first blanks in your bulletin if you’re following along and taking notes.

If we speak, our speech should reflect the word of God. He says, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. Now, he’s talking specifically, I believe, for when they would gather together in the church and they would edify one another.

Again, they didn’t have the New Testament in its completed written form. And so God would speak through prophets, people with the gift of prophecy and people with the gift of tongues at that time to edify the church, to teach the church. But those things, folks, are very easy to fake.

And God does not reveal things through some kind of special revelation that contradict what He’s already said. And so the oracles of God that they had, being the Old Testament, the gifts of prophecy, if anybody had anything to say to edify the church, if anybody had prophecy, if anybody had a message in tongues, it had to be consistent with what they knew about God from what He’d revealed in His Word. The same is true today, by the way.

We have the oracles of God in the Old and New Testament. And if anybody, me or anybody else stands in this pulpit and tells you something that’s inconsistent with this oracle of God, he needs to shut his mouth. But we can take it just a little bit further.

And in our personal lives, as we minister, as we represent Christ on a daily basis, if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. Not just from the pulpit, but when we talk to one another in here, when we leave out of here and we go to the restaurant, when we go to the grocery store, when we go to the bank, when we go home, If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. When we open our mouths, is what we say consistent with what the Word of God teaches?

And I submit to you, I fall very far short on this one. Because I’ll say things. Did you see what he did?

Can you believe what she was wearing? No, not about any of you. More often when we go to Walmart or.

. . Anyway.

Yeah, I heard my wife say he’s choosing his words. I think that’s what you said. Yeah, I’m choosing my words very carefully.

because of what I’m talking about. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. We were all taught as children, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

I had a good friend who used to say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me. And I’m sad to say that’s more often been my mode of operation. I’m not just talking though about nice.