Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. We are back. I am incredibly proud of you. We're gonna finish up First Peter today. All right? We're gonna finish up one Peter. If you have not done the reading, then just go ahead, pause this. Mute me. I'll be right here when you're done with the reading. Go ahead, do the reading. We've gotta read First Peter chapter four in First Peter chapter five, two short chapters. And I'm gonna give us just enough information so that will make sense and you can get a lot out of it. All right, let's do it. Context, clue. Remember, when Jesus gets arrested, Peter is the guy who has a sword on him. Let's just stop. Pause right there. I mean, my man traveled with a sword. So I want you to think about how changed, how transformed Peter's worldview is because he's writing an entire book to persecuted Christians telling them, hey, don't repay evil for evil. Hey, don't. I know the Roman world that you have been called to minister to is persecuting you. I don't want you to have that same spirit back. I don't want you to have that same heart back. I want you to be like Jesus. So chapter four starts out with these exact words, since therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh. Okay? So everything that I'm about to tell you is because Jesus suffered in the flesh. I want you to follow in his footsteps. I want you to actually be like him. I think this is hard for anyone to hear who's not lived in any kind of persecution, who's not lived in a country or in a nation or under a government regime where Christians are being persecuted. I want you to try to put yourself in a context where the Roman governor. I mean, you're not in Rome. These are Christians who are getting this from Peter, who's in Rome, but they are in Asia Minor. So they're under Nero the Caesar, but they're under local governors who have the green light to completely kill torture. Not just social persecution. We're talking physical and literal persecution. Put yourself in that frame of mind, and Peter's giving this appeal to, like, suffer well, and part of Peter's testimony is that he got this really, really wrong, like, right before Jesus is arrested. He pulls out a sword and he goes and he cuts off the high priest's servant's ear. Like, Peter is someone who is down to fight, is down to fight back. And I can relate to Peter. I am not the, like, you know, lay down and just act like everything's okay. I'm not like a people pleaser or like, that's not my personality. I'm feisty and I'm a fighter. And I can. I can see Peter, over the course of his life, changing and transforming into the kind of person that's been marked by the person of Jesus. And you can just see it. It's a night and day difference. Peter, who I don't even like, why did this man even have a sword? Clearly Jesus knew he had a sword and just didn't bother him about it. I want you to see this. This is chapter five. It says, so I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ. So, like, the sufferings of Christ, it's front and center. And from that little detail, we realize, yeah, Peter's in his older years at this point in his life. This is probably, you know, Peter's probably in his 50s or 60s. Like, this man has had decades to ponder on what it means to have seen Christ arrested and to witness the sufferings of Jesus. All right, so that's kind of like just some context. That's our context clue. Let's move into a nerdy nugget for the day. This. This is little thing. And if you. If you know it, then it immediately clicks that the persecution that these Christians are facing is because Nero has burned the city of Rome down. Okay? And he has now blamed it on the Christians. And he's using Christians as a scapegoat in the fabric of the Roman society. And so there's these two little. Just like Peter is brilliant in terms of the subtlety of his writing. And you can see his nod to that fire in First Peter, chapter 4, verse 12. In 1 Peter 1:7. I'll read 1 Peter 1:7 first. Remember, Christians are probably living in the worst conditions that they've lived in in the Roman government because of Nero's decisions. And here's how Peter is going to frame this. First Peter 1:7 says this so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire. You can see, like the use of the word fire, very, very intentional. Then we're going to get it one more time. 1 Peter 4. 12. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. First of all, we can just break down that whole verse. But the fiery trial, don't be surprised at the fiery trial. I think Peter is saying, yeah, suffering's always a testing by fire. You know, suffering's always a fiery trial. But I think he's also saying it specifically based on the context that we know that Nero has burned Rome down, a fire that's lasted for five whole days. And here you have Peter, like, using the word fire to make everyone remember that the literal fire that they are in and the persecution that is sparked by a literal fire is actually there. Is actually there. And there's two things that we need to learn. A, it's going to test you. So, like gold, you're going to come out of this more refined and better. And then number two, you shouldn't be surprised. Like, why are you even shocked? We serve a Messiah, we serve a God. We serve a God made flesh that suffered. So why should we be shocked that we're suffering? And I'll get into that a little later in my timeless truth. Okay, let's like, kind of move into our nerdy nugget before we get into that. I want to give you two verses so that you can kind of see Peter's. Again, like, his theology of suffering is. Is coming out more and more. First Peter, chapter 4, verse 16. And first Peter, chapter 3, verse 14. I'll read 3:14 first. 3, 14. But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. So Peter is saying, hey, whoa, whoa, you're suffering for righteousness sake. You're suffering for a good thing, and you'll be blessed. It's okay. One chapter later, 1 Peter, chapter 4, verse 16 to 19, says this. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. So again, we just get more of Peter's theology of suffering. All right, last thing that I wanna draw our attention to is Peter is going to use this metaphor throughout this epistle. And one of the things that Peter's gonna say is that you as an individual are living stones, okay? And you're being built up into the house of God. Now this is Peter talking about the temple. He's, he's talking about a house, but really he's talking about the temple because house is a metaphor for Solomon's temple or the temple that exists up until 70 AD or that exists in the Old Testament. And so the image that I need you to see is that this entire house, which is a collective unit, is comprised of individual stones. So you are a living stone, but when you come together with all the other believers, you create this thing called the house of God. And so Peter is clear, it's more important that we as a collective unit decide that this is how we are going to respond to the suffering and to the persecution that is currently at hand. And that how we respond and how we decide to respond is more important than how you as an individual, as an individual want to respond or desire to respond. You can see right here where like our individualistic American Western minds have, have a problem with or kind of are at odds with a group oriented thought process in Paul and Peter gives a clear metaphor that says, yep, you're, you're just one stone that's making up this house. And we want to make sure that we, although we're being persecuted because we're part of a group and we want to respond to that persecution in a certain way, so you don't need to do what you would do as an individual. We are responding to this as a unit and we are, are responding to persecution as a united front. And I think that this metaphor is at the forefront of Peter's mind because he wants the believers to know how you feel as an individual is not more important than how we have decided to respond. And we have decided to obey the government and we have decided to witness to the wider world in a certain way. It's funny, I was, I was in the Seattle, Washington area, I was talking to a pastor recently and he said that, you know, he was in a group chat with probably 12 to 15 other pastors. And every, this is during 2020. And every time the governor of Washington would come out with, you know, churches can be open or can't be open or this or that. He said, of course, like, we gave everybody in the group chat the freedom to respond however they need it to. Obviously every church needs to respond differently, but said there was this conviction that like, we all wanted to reopen on the same Sunday, that we wanted to communicate a unified presence in Our city. He said, you know, there's some churches that couldn't rock with that and went ahead and opened before everyone else. And then there's some churches who waited even longer to open. But just that idea that I don't just represent my own interest, I don't just represent my church, but I represent Christians everywhere. And the way that I respond to suffering in hardship and trial and persecution, the way that I respond to that has an impact on how the world thinks about Christians at large. I think that we're in a day and age where we need to get back to that. I know growing up as an ethnic minority. Ethnic minorities have this group identity, right? Sometimes part of the conflict that happens, especially as black Americans and white Americans talk about race in America, is that black people, generally speaking, I don't wanna, I'm making generalizations, okay? I'm not talking about every single black person on the planet, but generally speaking, black people in America, it's like you grow up knowing I represent black people. So if somebody does something, if that black person is doing something that's making us look bad, there's this representation that happens, right? You can even see that in. You know, I grew up in a church where the average person probably couldn't afford to drive a Mercedes, but I remember the year that we all pulled our money together so that our pastor could get a Mercedes because the pastor becomes the representative of the group. Okay? One of the things that is, that is working against us as we talk about race is that white Americans don't have that same, like, oh, this white person represents our whole group. Like, so when a black person sees a black person murdered or, you know, unjustly by the police, I see myself. And when I see a black person doing something that's embarrassing, I see myself. And black people tend to think about their, the group, right? I'm, I'm, I'm going through life with more of a group centered identity. Whereas in the conversation around race, if you, if you have one group that's like, oh, yeah, like our group is taking responsibility for, you know, the actions of one, right? And then it's talking to a group that is steeped in hyper individualism. And so the average white person doesn't see that the actions of one white person represents all white people, right? That's, that's just. And until it's almost like the conversation underneath the conversation, the question behind the question, until we can even come to grips with that, it's going to be hard to talk about stressful things as it relates to race. We kind of first have to go, okay, I come into conversations with an assumption, not saying it's right or wrong, but it's a group oriented assumption. You come into conversations with an individualistic assumption. But, okay, great, we're gonna have to have grace for each other so that we can actually see what the other person sees if we're gonna have helpful dialogue around race in this country. That's such an aside, but I hope that's helpful, especially if you're in a diverse or multi ethnic or multicultural context. Hope that that's actually really, really helpful. So Peter is saying, well, if you're a Christian anywhere, you represent Christians. Everywhere Christians represent Christians. And there are times where I'm like, yeah, that's awesome. And then there are times where I know that pastors don't always represent this group called the clergy. Well. And sometimes I'm embarrassed to say I'm a pastor because of trifling, just despicable things that pastors have done. I can't address that by denying the reality that the moment somebody engages a pastor, their engagement with me is triggering however many interactions they've had with however many pastors. Peter is saying, hey, the way we interact with the world has to be the way that we do it. And I think that's helpful. And Peter is saying this in the middle of a very, very individualistic Greco Roman world.