Message Information
- Key Scriptures: 1 Peter 3:13-18, NASB
- Series: Sent for the Sake of the Gospel (2026), no. 6
- Date: Sunday, July 5, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
Listen Online
Watch Online
Text
Pressure on the Gospel
I have reached a very exciting stage of parenting. I have a teenager who is bored on summer break, gets up early in the morning to talk with me before I come into the office, and says, “What do you need done outside today?” It is like the dream.
He is excited to do things outside, all the stuff I love to do but do not have time to do. He is doing yard work and fixing things. Last week, he discovered the joys of the power washer.
I loved that when I was his age. He has been a little more responsible with it than I was. I grabbed my mother’s power washer when I was a teenager and was out there doing things for her. I remember deciding to shoot myself in the foot to see if it hurt. It does.
As an adult, I have used a power washer to wash my car and try to get it clean, when I wash my car once a year whether it needs it or not. If you do it wrong, you can cause paint to chip off the car. You can cause things to crumble.
But this week, we had an old picnic table that Charla’s grandpa built. Benjamin said, “We need to do something with that before the wood deteriorates.” So I bought stain and had all this stuff ready. He went out there and pressure washed the table so that once it dried, he could sand it. Yesterday he stained it, and it is beautiful. Now it is sitting out in the rain and may need some more TLC later, but it is a beautiful thing.
I was thinking about him with that pressure washer in preparation for this message. The pressure that comes out of that thing is far above what you can get out of a hose. When you apply that pressurized water, that pressure will either cause things to crumble, chip, or peel, or it will cause things to get better. That table never looked better than when it was freshly pressure washed, at least until we stained it. The pressure will either destroy something or make it better.
Folks, as we are talking about being sent for the sake of the gospel, there are going to be moments in our walk and in our witness where we encounter pressure. There will be pressure, hostility, and opposition from the world. That pressure can either weaken us, or it can strengthen us.
The apostle Peter wrote to early Christians about this pressure that we experience and about how we should look at it as an opportunity to strengthen us in our relationship with the Lord and in our witness for Him. This morning, we are going to look at 1 Peter 3 and what is supposed to happen when the gospel is under pressure in our lives and in our witness.
Here is what Peter said, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit:
Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better if God should will it so that you should 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 that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.
Peter is writing to them about what is going to happen when they face that pressure. They were being sent out into a world that was hostile toward Jesus Christ. That is still the case. We are still sent out into a world that is hostile toward Jesus Christ.
As we have talked about this morning, we have freedom in this country to worship freely, to obey conscience, and to do the things this country was founded on. We are supposed to be, by design, free from government interference and government coercion. But that does not mean there are not elements within our culture, within our society, and within our country that are hostile toward the gospel. It certainly does not guarantee that once we leave the borders of this country, there is not hostility from the world and even from governments in other countries.
My first time out of the country, we went into Mexico on a mission trip. I was in college at the time, after my first year of college, I think. The leadership of our church pulled me aside and made very clear to me that the First Amendment does not apply in Mexico. They wanted to make sure I understood that.
Folks, we do not always feel it because of how sheltered we are, but our world is hostile toward Jesus Christ. You and I do not face the threat at this point of a knock at the door in the middle of the night where they want to haul us off and arrest us because we are Christians, but there is still hostility in the world. Outside our borders, again, there is incredibly more hostility toward the gospel.
We are going to face moments where the gospel costs us something, because we are going to face moments where there is pressure. Sometimes the pressure may be as simple as somebody getting mad at us. We should be able to handle it, but sometimes we look at it like that is the worst thing that could happen.
We talk to a coworker about Jesus, and they do not want to hear it, and they get annoyed. Or we talk to a family member, and they do not want to hear it, and they get mad at us and quit talking to us. If that is the worst thing that can happen, as real as those things are, we are the most blessed and sheltered group of Christians in the history of the church.
But there will come a time when we are called on to give an answer, when somebody pushes back against the gospel, when it costs us something in our family, in our relationships, in our workplaces, or whatever it may be. When the gospel costs us something, Peter wrote to them about how to handle those moments. We can learn from it today because the world is still hostile toward Jesus Christ.
Opposition Should Not Surprise Us
In verses 13 and 14, we see that opposition to the gospel should not surprise us. Because of the environment many of us have grown up in, when somebody pushes back, when somebody does not like the gospel, when we suffer for the sake of doing what is right, or when we suffer for representing Jesus Christ, we are surprised.
We are surprised when not everybody loves Him. We are surprised when not everybody responds immediately to the gospel call to repentance and faith. Sometimes we are surprised when we are sure we are walking in obedience to the Lord and circumstances just get rougher.
But we see in these verses that suffering because of obedience to Christ and His Word is a feature of the Christian life. It is not a bug. That is software terminology. Sometimes our software does not work right. You try to pull up an app on your phone, and it does something it is not supposed to do. That is a bug.
We look at suffering for the gospel as a bug. We think, “That is not supposed to happen.” But it is a feature. It is built into the software. It is what is designed to happen. It is the exception when we do not suffer.
Even as we suffer for the cause of Christ, in whatever big or small way that may be, you and I are guided and guarded by the providence of God. Peter says, “Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled.”
What he is saying in verse 13 is that typically, when people see somebody trying to do good, they do not oppose that. They do not come after us for that. Doing good things is not usually a way to gain enemies.
But sometimes, even as we are doing good, we will make ourselves targets. Especially if that good involves walking with the Lord, being a witness for Him, and trying to point others to Him, we are going to become a target. Verse 14 teaches that there will be times when we suffer for doing what is right, not in spite of it, but because of it.
Sometimes it is the very fact that we are believers. Sometimes it is the very fact that we represent Christ that causes people to react in opposition.
Now, sometimes we suffer simply as a consequence of our own actions. Sometimes we suffer as a consequence of our personalities. I have told you before that I was a little bit obnoxious in high school and into college. That is why they pulled me aside and said, “The First Amendment does not apply in Mexico. Be very careful.”
I had to learn this. Sometimes I was suffering because I represented Christ. Sometimes I was suffering because I just had an obnoxious personality. There is a difference.
But when we are suffering for the cause of Christ, we have to understand that it does not mean we have done something wrong. It does not mean we are out of step with the will of God.
When it does happen, when we suffer for honoring Him, sometimes you and I will have this moment in prayer or in our minds where we say, “But Lord, I am doing the things You told me to do. Why is this happening?” We can say that almost as though God owes us an explanation, almost as if we expected that He promised we would never have trouble, when He promised the opposite. He said, “In this world you will have trouble.”
When we have those moments, God does not apologize for it. God does not act like this is so unfair and say, “Oh, I am so sorry that happened to you.” He says we are blessed. Right there in verse 14, He says we are blessed when we suffer for the sake of righteousness.
That is a statement that only makes sense when we look at it from His perspective. You mean to tell me that when I am doing what You told me to do and walking in obedience, I may still suffer the consequences of people’s negative reactions to it, and You are telling me I am blessed? That does not make sense from our perspective, but it makes all the sense in the world from God’s.
Because when we suffer for the sake of righteousness, not because we are obnoxious and not because we are rude to people, but for the sake of righteousness, it means we are doing something right. We are being effective in His service, and it is an honor to suffer for Him.
Something we remind ourselves of in the office when we are talking about things here, especially when we come in on a Sunday and things just do not seem to go right, is this: if this is an attack, Satan does not attack if we are not serving God. Satan does not attack if we are not being effective. The world will only be hostile if we are effectively presenting a witness for Christ.
So yes, if we look at it from God’s perspective, we are blessed because He is using us, because we are living out our calling, because we are being effective in what He has given us to do, and because we are suffering right alongside Him.
That is why Peter tells us not to be troubled. Every time Scripture tells us not to be troubled, not to be intimidated, and not to be scared, it is a reminder that it is not because circumstances are great. It is not some cliche promise that everything is going to work out in the end.
We are told not to be afraid and not to be troubled, not because of our circumstances and how they are going to work out, but because of who God is. We are told not to be troubled as a reminder that no matter what the circumstances are here and no matter what the suffering may be for the cause of the gospel, God is still sovereign. God is still in control. Nothing can happen to us that He does not either cause or allow.
It is like Paul wrote, and I am paraphrasing here: if they lock me in prison, great. I have a captive audience to tell about Jesus. If they let me out of prison, I get to go tell more people about Jesus. If they kill me, I get to go be with Jesus.
That is the kind of surrender we have to deliberately set our minds to, so that we recognize that He is still sovereign and that He is going to work things out in His way, in His time, for our good and for His glory. When those things happen, He has already told us how to move forward.
Opposition Must Not Silence Us
In verses 15 and 16, we see that opposition to the gospel must not silence us. We should come into it recognizing that opposition to the gospel should not surprise us. We should not be caught off guard when people are hostile toward Jesus Christ. But even knowing that, sometimes opposition will cause us to clam up, pull back, or say, “I do not want to do this.”
When our witness invites hostility, He has given us some things we are supposed to do in verses 15 and 16. Peter says in verse 15, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” We are supposed to keep Christ on the throne in our hearts.
That word sanctify means to regard Him as holy. Now, He is already holy. When it says to sanctify Him, we are not making Him holy. He is already holy, and His holiness does not depend on our vote. What Peter is telling us is to recognize who He is. Look at Jesus for who He really is, recognize that, and get in line with it.
As we sanctify Him, it means we are recognizing His holiness. We are recognizing that He sits on the throne. We are committing ourselves to worship Him solely. We are not going to be driven by the things of the world. We are going to serve Him faithfully. We are going to pursue Him relentlessly. We are going to put Him right where He belongs, on the throne in our hearts and our lives, and make Him the focus rather than the circumstances around us.
Otherwise, we will come to moments where, as we see opposition around us, we are tempted to keep our eyes on other people. How is the world going to react? What is that family member who does not want to hear any more about Jesus going to think if I say this, or do this, or post that?
We are not called to manage other people’s expectations. We are called to be witnesses for Christ. The antidote to that temptation is to look at Christ more intently. Where opposition tempts us to keep our eyes on other people, we are told to keep our eyes on Christ. Keep Him on the throne.
In those moments when we feel afraid, when we feel like there is hostility toward our message, we keep looking to Jesus. If we are looking to Jesus, we will always be walking in the right direction.
Prepared to Defend Our Hope
Peter tells us in the next part of the verse, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you.” This is one of those Bible verses that I think of every day. Years ago, people used to talk about having their life verses. I do not know if that is still a thing, but this is one of those for me.
We are supposed to be prepared to defend our hope. Now understand, when we say defend, I am not talking about getting defensive. I am not talking about, as we discussed last Sunday night, arguing people into heaven. That does not work.
I like the phrase that has been used, that you cannot get people into heaven by knocking them upside the head with a two-by-four. If you could knock people into heaven with a two-by-four upside the head, I would be in prison because I would go around knocking people over the head. But we cannot argue people into heaven. I have tried.
That does not mean it is wrong to make an argument. An argument does not have to be hostile. Argument just means you are laying out your reasons.
Sometimes people just need that little thing to think about. I have heard people use the illustration of a stone in the shoe. You walk around with a little pebble in your shoe, and until you can get that pebble out, that is all you can think about.
Sometimes the answer we give for what we believe, for the hope that lies within us, is that pebble in the shoe to somebody who needs to walk away thinking about the gospel. You have given them a reason to think about it.
An example I have used for years is that we cannot force somebody to run after Jesus, but we can pull the goat heads out of their foot. For any of you who are not from this part of the country, a goat head is not something you would buy at the butcher shop. A goat head is a little ball with spikes on it that God decided to put on plants all throughout this part of the country, and they stick to your shoes and stick in your foot. If you get a goat head in your foot, you do not want to walk anywhere until you get that out.
Sometimes the things that stick in people’s minds are objections like, “I cannot believe Christianity because there is no proof. There is no evidence. There is no evidence for God.” Maybe that is the goat head stuck in their foot. I am not saying you have to convince them, especially not in one setting. But maybe you give them a reason why you believe Christianity is true, and that becomes the act of pulling out the goat head so that as the Holy Spirit is drawing them to Jesus, they are able to walk there.
That does not cut the Holy Spirit out of this at all, because He is still the One drawing them. He is still the One who called us to go and share the gospel and defend the gospel.
But this is something sorely needed in our world today: believers who are able to give an answer for the hope that lies within them. It does not mean you have to go to seminary and get a degree in apologetics. Apologetics does not mean apologizing. It means making an argument for your faith. You do not have to go to seminary and get a PhD in apologetics.
The vast majority of people you talk to who have an objection to Christianity are also not going to have a PhD in the subject. The vast majority are going off what they saw on a YouTube video, what they read in an article, or what somebody shared on social media. Sometimes the ability to give a quick answer to that objection is enough.
It may not be enough to convince them, but it may be enough to get them thinking that maybe there is something to this. Then they begin to look into it, and maybe they want to talk to you more, and the Holy Spirit uses that. Again, you do not have to be able to answer every question, but we should be able to answer some questions.
I want to challenge you with this: if somebody today asked you, “Why do you believe Christianity is true?” what answer could you give them that would not also be true for Islam, Mormonism, Buddhism, or any other “-ism”? What answer could you give them?
Or if they said, “Why do you believe the Bible?” what answer could you give them that is true but that a Muslim would not also give?
For me, the very short version is this: for the time and for who He was as a Jewish carpenter in Judea, there is a relatively enormous amount of historical data that demonstrates that Jesus was alive and was killed in Jerusalem. His tomb was discovered empty, and we know that because nobody ever produced the body. The people who knew where the tomb was did not go back and produce the body.
For Him to have been stolen and the resurrection fabricated by His disciples would have required a conspiracy that you and I cannot imagine. It would have required motives that do not make any sense because they did not amass wealth, they did not amass power, and they did not amass women. Any of the things that motivate conspiracies like this did not apply to the disciples.
There were changes in the disciples, in skeptics who saw, and in the body of believers that grew up around Jesus Christ that cannot be explained without extraordinary means. There is more to it than that. But again, most people we talk to have not spent years and years studying this. We just need to give them a reason, enough to spark their desire to learn more.
Peter says that we do this with gentleness and reverence. We need to be well-versed enough in the gospel to give a reasonable answer for why we believe what we believe. So when the gospel meets opposition, we defend it. But the way we do this matters. We need to answer in a manner that is worthy of the gospel.
He instructs us to do this with gentleness and reverence. There is another translation I like that says gentleness and respect. That is important because we are not trying to win an argument with anybody.
Some of you, when I said you need to have an argument for why you believe what you believe, may have checked out because you do not want to argue with people. I do not want to argue with people either. I hate it. It makes my stomach twist in knots, and it really does not get us anywhere.
We are not trying to win an argument. We are trying to win a person. That is why Peter is very clear that we do this with gentleness and respect. In the world of apologetics, it sometimes gets a bad name because people who like to argue gravitate toward this. But that is not what we are told to do. We are taught to give an answer with gentleness and respect, trying to win people to Christ.
The way we answer matters almost as much as the answer we give. I think what Peter is trying to get us to understand is that the people who oppose the gospel in our lives, the people who bring the opposition and the pressure, are not the enemy. They are not the enemy.
What I have told you before is that if they bleed, they are not the enemy. They are the territory we are fighting over. We have to remember that so we do not do more damage than good.
Let Your Conduct Answer
We answer in a manner that is worthy of the gospel, and we let our conduct answer our accusers. Sometimes people will go after us personally. Giving an answer for the hope that lies within you is what happens when they come after the gospel message. Sometimes they will just come after us.
If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times while teaching the middle school Bible class about these things: when people start attacking you, you have won because they are out of arguments.
This happened often in the early days of Christianity. People could not get past the “He’s alive” argument. They knew the tomb was empty. They could not get past the resurrection. So what did they do? They started going after the Christians personally.
The earliest churches were accused of cannibalism because Jesus had said, “Take, eat, this is my body. This is my blood that is poured out for the remission of sins.” People said, “They are eating human flesh and drinking human blood.” It was not true. It was never true.
Or they said, “Wait, they are all brother and sister,” because that is what we call each other, “and yet they are marrying each other.” They accused them of crimes there. The church was accused of horrific things.
When the world could not defeat the gospel message, they started coming after the messenger. Sometimes that happens as well. Peter tells us in verse 16, “Keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.”
Basically, we do not become what they say, and we do not become what they preach about. Do not give any inclination or indication to the world that the things they say about us are true.
Here is one. The church gets a bad reputation for this: “Those Christians are just so hateful.” Sometimes that is true. Some of the best people I have met in my whole life have been in church, and some of the meanest people I have met in my whole life have been in church.
If we do not like that reputation, then we go out of our way not to be mean people. It is really simple. Take care of your waitress on Sunday afternoon. I always tip even more at Sonic when I am driving the church van. There are basic things that we do, not to put on a show and not to be fake, but simply so that we do not become the things the world says about us.
Instead, we live in a way that glorifies Jesus, a way that so glorifies Jesus that it brings shame on them to slander us. “Keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.”
We are called to live lives that so glorify Jesus that when the world accuses us because they do not like the gospel, others, even in the world, look at it and say, “I do not think so. You are crazy.” Right now, by and large, the state of the church in America is that we are not there, but we need to get there.
Opposition Should Anchor Us in Christ
Then we go to verses 17 and 18, and we see that opposition to the gospel should anchor us in Christ. We are going to suffer in this life. It is inevitable. Peter 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.”
It is inevitable that we are going to suffer. The only question is whether we suffer for His righteousness or for our own misdeeds. We can live a life that does not reflect Christ, and we are going to suffer for that. I am not even talking about eternity. I am saying we are going to suffer the natural consequences of that here on earth.
The meaner I am to people, the meaner they are going to be to me. If I rob and cheat and run around in that world, I am going to be robbed and cheated. It is a natural consequence. We can live a life that does not reflect Christ, and we will suffer for that. We can live a life that reflects Christ, and we are going to suffer differently.
The question is not whether we are going to suffer in this life. The question is how we want to suffer. Why do we want to suffer? Do we want that suffering to count for something?
As we suffer, we look to Jesus. We should be suffering for His sake. We should expect that as we live for Him, we are going to meet opposition. Not everybody is going to love what we are doing for the sake of the gospel.
But Peter says in verse 18, “For Christ also died for sins once for all.” Did He die for anything He deserved or had done? No. He died for our sin. He had no sin of His own. He died for our sins once for all, the just for the unjust.
Not only did He die a death He did not deserve, but He died it on behalf of those who deserved it and did not get it. This is the most unfair thing that has ever happened in the history of the world, and thank God it happened.
The just died 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 as we suffer, we look to Jesus as our example. We cannot serve Him who suffered and expect that we are not going to suffer too. He even said the servant is not greater than his master. We look to Him as our example and realize that if Jesus suffered and we are following Him, we can expect that too. If He suffered for doing what is right and we are following Him, we can expect that same thing too.
But He is also our hope in this, because we know that no matter what we suffer for His sake in this life, there is something better waiting for us. No matter what we suffer in this life, as believers in Him we will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We know that we will spend eternity with Him. We know that there is eternal life and forgiveness of sins.
It is not even only some future in heaven. Right now, we can be right with God. We can have peace with God. We can lay our heads on the pillow at night and sleep soundly because we know we are right with our Creator because of what Jesus Christ did.
No matter what we suffer, there is a hope, a peace, a joy, and a fulfillment that comes from walking with Christ that the world cannot take away from us. That suffering drives us closer to Christ. The pressure we face can either crumble us and weaken us, or it can make us stronger and better than ever.
Peter has given us a recipe for the latter: the more the world tries to pressure us and drive us away from Christ, the more we are driven to Christ. Because He died for us. And if He did that, we can trust Him with what we go through now, because He went through far more for us.