5 Christian Virtues

1 Peter 3.8 is where we have left off in our studies. Although I think we'll diverge a little next week. Peter writes, Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. So you may be seated. Although we are only going to look at one verse of 1 Peter today, it is literally packed with information. This verse has several different words in it that are really commands of qualities that we are supposed to exhibit in our lives. and each one could probably be its own study.

There are numerous scriptures where we could go to to understand what some of these mean. So my goal is to actually get through this verse in just one week, which I think is actually really quick for everything that's here. And so you're just going to get an overview of what these things mean. but I think the advantage of going verse by verse through the scripture is that a lot of the things we're going to see that this verse is telling us are things we've already seen in first Peter and they're things we're going to see subsequently just even in the next five verses after first Peter chapter 3 verse 8 so even if there's something that maybe we will say we gloss over we don't go as deep into it as maybe we could have, there's going to be extra opportunity to study the same topic even in the rest of this month.

So we have a five Sunday January, don't we? So whatever that doesn't mean anything to us, we don't do anything special on five Sunday months, but we will probably get through a lot of 1 Peter 3 this month. And so it's interesting in Paul's letters and in Peter here is that sometimes they use the word finally. And people like to make jokes about a preacher saying finally and then still having two and a half chapters remaining. and what's interesting about the use of the word finally in 1 Peter 3.8 is he's not indicating finally, here's the end of the letter.

He's saying finally, as a completion of the thought that I started earlier, here's something I want to tell you in summary and then he's going to go on to a bit of a different topic. So it's not that Peter thought he was finished and then changed his mind. I don't think that's what it was. It's not that Peter thought he was done and then he started going on rabbit trails like somebody like me is apt to do at times.

It's that he's completing a thought. So what was his thought? Well, let's look back. If you look back to 1 Peter 1. And some of you, I know, weren't with us when we were in 1 Peter 1. But to give you the context, Peter says in verse 13 of chapter 1, he says, prepare your minds for action and being sober minded.

He says, set your hope fully on the grace that will that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So he's writing to the persecuted church. He's writing to a group of believers that are strangers in a strange land. They're sojourners and exiles there. Much like Abraham in Genesis 23. and he tells them in verse 14 as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance so he's letting them know you had a way that you used to be and I'm telling you, you're not to be that way anymore and he says, but as he who called you is holy you also be holy in all your conduct so in summary, he's saying you were unholy and you were conformed to the passions of your ignorance so because you were so ignorant of God you were unholy.

And now you can be different though and even in a strange land he expects you to be different. And then he finishes the chapter telling them basically look you're born again of imperishable seed. There's actually power here. So if I looked at you and said by your own power and strength you go out into a strange land and go and you act a different way than those people in that land act, most people would say that's literally impossible.

Even outside of a religious context. You go into a new culture, and it's almost impossible to not just assume the way the culture does things. But Peter's letting them know at the end of the chapter, they're born again of imperishable things, not perishable things. So we get into chapter 2, and he lets them know that they're priests of God. They're part of a living house that's to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. and then we get to verse 9 and he says that they were they're a chosen race, a royal priesthood a holy nation, they're their own nation even though they're in this foreign land they're their own people and he says that they're there to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus Christ that's my paraphrase and then in verse 11 he begins a detailed section of how to be holy He says, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

So he tells them, do not be conformed to your former passions, your former ignorance, but abstain from these things that wage war against your soul, and keep your conduct in this area with these other people the non honorable So do what right so that when they speak against you they see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation And then he gives them some specific instances of how, in different situations, they are to live. He tells them to be subject to every human institution, whether it's to an emperor or governors. So he lets them know, you're a person under authority. every single human being is under some authority.

Even the most supreme ruler in our world has authorities that can take him out. And we're all under authority. And you're either under some government's authority. If you're in the United States, we have multiple layers of government, which is kind of inconvenient at times, but it's also good at times, too. But you have authorities. You have authority in a church.

You have authority within your house. And he describes all these things. And so he says servants are subject to masters. And then he says the reason why you're able to do this is because Jesus Christ became a servant for you. He says wives are subject to their own husbands. So he talks about how wives are supposed to relate to their husbands, how they're supposed to act, how they're supposed to dress even.

And he says husbands are to love their wives. And he tells husbands how to love their wives and honor the women and how to think godly thoughts about their wives. And then he says finally, and he's completing that thought. So get it out of your mind that Peter was just a goofball that thought he was done and then changed his mind. That was not his purpose.

He's saying, finally, all of you. So after just addressing specific people, so knowing that a letter that would have been read in church to people, knowing that as soon as somebody heard the section on wives, if they weren't a wife, maybe they just shut off their brain. or once the wife section was finished and he started addressing husbands he knew that maybe some of the wives would have been thinking about what was just said to them and they might have just kind of shut off their ears a little bit because that's how we are those who were not servants may have started to lose attention so he says finally all of you and now he's giving a command to every single Christian and it's a binding command this is a command of God so there's a group of people out there called antinomians and they're people who believe that because we're in the new covenant and jesus came and fulfilled the law that we don't actually have to follow the law and and and we have our own arguments with them against what they're trying to say about god's law but the new testament even apart from uh understanding how it's a reflection of god's ten commandments is it's filled with commands so nobody can legitimately act like because you're in a new covenant, you don't have commands to follow. The new covenant has more commands in their details than the old one.

People conveniently ignore that. But so Peter tells them, this is what you're supposed to do as Christians, as sojourners and exiles in a strange land. Here is how you are to function. Have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. and then he gives a little bit of details about what these things are going to mean in 9 through 12 where he quotes Psalm 34 another Psalm that each verse starts with the letter of the alphabet of the Hebrew alphabet which tells you a couple things one it's just kind of neat you know it has 22 verses it's easy to remember that but just like Psalm 119 it was meant to be memorized God isn't just fancy He doesn't just put the first letter of the alphabet At the beginning of the Psalms Just so he can brag about how poetic he can be The intention was to help you memorize things If you were a Hebrew kid And we're not Well, I guess I'm half But anyway The intention is people were supposed to memorize his word And he made it in a way that would help people Be able to memorize it So even though we don't have some of those devices In the English translations We have other ways we can memorize things.

And yes, I think Psalm 119 would have been meant to have been memorized by little Jewish kids. And I don't think anybody in here has any excuse why they couldn't work at doing something like that themselves. But so let's dig into what some of this means. Unity of mind is the first thing that Peter's telling people to have. unity of mind has to do with being of one mind with others or being harmonious with others and having no conflict with them it's the idea that you are agreeing with other people about what you believe it's having this idea that when you say something about god's word when you say something about what you're going to do, other people are unified with you.

They have the same thoughts. And this is possible if you have the same spirit that you're taking your thoughts captive to and filtering your thoughts through. This is not a reference to whether or not we have blue chairs or green chairs. It's not a reference to whether we have a fellowship at 3 o'clock and then church at 5 or whether we try to do church at 3 starting next week and then we're going to try to do the dinner by 5. that's not what he necessarily means by unity of mind if you look at Philippians 4 we have a couple of ladies in a church that were having some issues and when Paul writes to the Philippians he says I entreat Iodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord and he's talking to the person he's writing to.

He says, yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life The command is to help these women to agree in the Lord So there was some disagreement going on And it was a big enough disagreement that Paul's sitting in prison. I'm pretty sure Philippians is a prison epistle. And he's writing scripture for people.

And I'll give you something maybe a lot of people don't know. Paul knew he was writing scripture. okay when Paul wrote scripture he knew he was a prophet of God it wasn't like a magical thing where he just wrote letters and people figured out like oh maybe this one's inspired like Paul knew and and God the Holy Spirit and Paul thought it was important to describe for these two women that they need to agree in the Lord and so by agreeing the Lord it's about understanding what the Lord says and what the Lord believes you can't agree with someone in the Lord if you don't know what he says. There's a reason why we have a confession of faith.

One of the reasons we have a confession of faith that we expect people to agree with if they're going to join Covenant Bible Church is that we want to agree in the Lord. There's going to be division and there's going to be difficulties if people can't agree on how God is to be worshipped. If people don't agree on how salvation occurs and then they won't agree on how evangelism should occur, you won't have the agreement that's necessary to have the unity of mind and the fellowship that Peter commands that Christians ought to have.

Now they ought to have it across denominational lines. So I'll give you an easy example. We're not Presbyterian here. We're Baptist. We believe we would not sprinkle your child and call it a baptism. We wouldn't pour water over your child and call it a baptism and say they've entered the covenant community apart from a profession of faith. we don't have unity of mind with people who believe that so if you go to a presbyterian church and the way they worship god is going to be baptizing a baby you won't have unity of mind with them and so we understand that there's going to be some mixture of truth and error in every true church because we're human and we fail but our goal is to have as much unity of mind as possible in the Lord.

Our goal is to agree with what God has said. And if you agree with what God has said and somebody else agrees with what God has said, you're going to agree with one another. True unity is achieved around truth. And around the truth of what Jesus Christ has revealed. Let me give you a few verses to support how important this is. 2 Corinthians 13.11 We'll do a little bit of jumping and around, just look at some verses, some of them without a lot of context or explanation, but just to bolster the same command over and over.

In 2 Corinthians 13, the end of the last letter, Paul writes to his biggest problem church. He tells them, finally brothers, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, which will go along with the next thing when he says to have compassion and sympathy and tender heartedness. He says agree with one another. And he doesn't mean it superficially.

He says live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. There was an old picture I remember going to a thing about marriage. I like the picture of it. And it was telling a man and a woman how they can grow together. because everyone's got marriage problems, right? Everyone's got difficulty in marriage.

And everybody thinks it's unique, like, oh, wow, I didn't know it was this hard. And unless somebody told you, you don't realize it. But all places where two sinners are together, you're going to have a problem. And the picture, though, it had the word God at the top, and then there was like a triangle. And it had the man over here and the woman over here. and it was trying to show the man and the woman like trying to come close together, like you want to grow close to your spouse.

But what the image they were trying to portray was if the man would grow closer to God and the woman would go closer to God as well, they would be growing closer to each other. And so the way to have unity with your fellow Christian, the way to have unity in the church, the way to have unity with your Christian spouse is to grow closer to God. If you end up in a situation with a spouse that's not a Christian, you still need to grow closer to God because you need Him maybe even more to comfort you in that difficulty.

So unity of mind is the first command that Peter tells us to have. There's a couple other lists that I want to show you Ephesians 4. repeats the same virtues. The first verse, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. So because you're born again of imperishable seed, this is how you should live, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

He says, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit. Peter and Paul are saying the same thing. Your unity with your fellow Christian is based on your love for Jesus Christ and how close you are to Him and believing the same things. It says in verse 32 of the same chapter, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

Tenderheartedness was the fourth virtue that Peter told us in chapter 3, verse 8, that we're to possess. So to have unity of mind with your fellow Christians is what God calls you to. Romans 12 is another passage that going to teach a lot of the same things There more than a dozen commands in there for us to try to follow 1 Thessalonians 5 Colossians 3 is kind of parallel with Ephesians 4 and 5 But let's move on to sympathy.

I want to describe the five virtues for you. And I'll just spoil the ending now. I want to describe the five virtues. I want to define them for you. I want to give you an idea of how they're exhibited in Scripture for you. I want to give you some application and then most of all what I really want to do is I want to show you how Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled all of them and now he's our model and our example at all times and so I want to make sure I move quick enough so I can get to what I think is the good part telling you how Jesus did all these things sympathy is generally known as having compassion right so you have pathos is the Greek word for feeling basically to have feelings if you're sympathetic you have feelings with someone else.

A lot of people would say it's like caring for the plight of others or even for their fortune. So like Romans 12, I think verse 15 says, weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. So being sympathetic to somebody else's situation means understanding what they're going through to some extent and actually caring about it. Now this is different from empathy Okay, so we're going to get into a little bit of pop psychology for just a moment And I'm going to pop right out of it as quick as I can But I think that people need to understand that sympathy and empathy are different things You need to understand a bit of the distinction between them and what the Bible says about them we are in 2020 or 2021 now that's where some i've said that from a pulpit i guess in in the 21st century and really going back to the 20th century we are a people who absolutely idolizes empathy we have made empathy a god and i might say some things that step on a few people's toes when I go here, and I'm not going to spend an hour going through it, but I'd be happy to talk to you about it afterwards and go into a little bit of detail about it.

But we have made empathy our God. We have taken sympathy and empathy, and we have decided that empathy is somehow the most important thing. So sympathy is having some level of understanding for your fellow man. For seeing them in a difficult situation usually, it's not so much the positive side, and wanting to comfort them and wanting to help them in that difficulty that they're in.

Empathy enters into the suffering with the person in a way that is not always bad, but is not always good. Empathy is often seen as the person can truly understand. So if you, I'll use an example that if you've had a miscarriage and somebody else has had a miscarriage before you, oftentimes that person is able to truly empathize with you. While you are going through the pain you are going through in that moment, another person who has gone through the same exact pain as you, who can tell you they know exactly how it feels.

And you know they know because you know they've been through it too. And you know it's an experience that before you had it, you did not understand it. And so you truly think that having an empathetic person around you is helpful. And I think that there's times that is really helpful. and I know that for us when we've had three miscarriages other people coming up and telling us their story of the same situation was very comforting to us to know that we weren't alone empathy helped us to not feel alone but somebody who has not experienced that but has categorically experienced similar concepts of things like loss death of a loved one those people could try to offer compassion and sympathy and it would have been wrong for us to say well you couldn't possibly offer us any compassion because you don't know exactly what we're going through that is not what the Bible prescribes for us we are to be sympathetic with others not necessarily empathetic although if you can be empathetic because you've experienced something, maybe you can offer condolences and sympathies that are more helpful and compassionate and received by people.

But if you imagine the difference between sympathy and empathy in some way, you go to the doctor, you've got a broken ankle, and you walk into the doctor's office and the doctor looks at you and an empathetic doctor would break his own ankle and then sit next to you and hurt with you. if you're broke and you're on the street begging for food and a guy walks by and he's got some money and you ask him for some money so you can buy food if he's going to exhibit empathy what he would do is he'd get rid of all of his riches and wealth and he'd just come and sit next to you and be poor with you it sounds kind of silly when I use those examples because it does become silly if we make empathy the true measure of whether we're caring about others but that is something that if you look around our world that is something our world really espouses and idolizes and there are christians who have been fed this from the world sometimes we'll say subliminally in a sense where you are you've been lulled into the sense that if somebody is not suffering right along with you they are not being compassionate that if somebody not literally experiencing the same emotions that you're experiencing right now, you think they aren't offering you compassion. Because what you are desiring at that moment is empathy. And so you may have people in your life who are wonderfully sympathetic, compassionate, tender-hearted people who love you and care for you.

And they've come alongside you in times of difficulty, and they've offered you the kind of help you would want if you walked into a doctor's office with a broken ankle. You wouldn't want a doctor with a broken ankle. you want a doctor who can set it in a cast or whatever. I don't want to get into medical science and have somebody tell me casts aren't good or something.

But somebody who would help you truly. That if you were broke, instead of your buddy showing you empathy by going broke with you, he just comes along and buys you a sandwich. That's the kind of sympathy and compassion that we actually want. That's the kind of sympathy that James tells us to have. Don't tell somebody, be warm and fed actually give them the sandwich and the warm food and the blanket.

And so although empathy sometimes can feel really good, and there are people who are empaths, I guess, and I'm not an empath. My wife, I think, is one. There are people who more naturally just enter into the suffering of others. And it's very normal for them. And the pain that they feel with others drives them to positive action oftentimes to help those people.

And it comforts people in a very real way. And I don't think there's anything wrong with being empathetic. I think where we become pathetic is when we expect everyone else to be empathetic rather than allowing people to be sympathetic and compassionate in a helpful and godly way. True compassion actually seeks to alleviate the difficulties of others. That's what God did, isn't it?

God saw your state as a pathetic sinner. And God looked down upon you with pity. And rather than becoming a sinner and just suffering the curse in a sense, God shows his compassion by sending his son to die to free you from that state. So true sympathy, I think, true compassion, is not necessarily getting down with the person and feeling the same exact pain, but it's caring about their pain in a way where you can show that categorically you understand what it means to be in that type of pain.

Jesus Christ was a compassionate and sympathetic high priest. in his sermon on Hebrews 2. And I want to read Hebrews, the verse for you. Hebrews 4.15 We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus can sympathize with us. But in Hebrews 2.15 2.16 The writer said, a sinner. And how can you trust somebody who doesn't even know what it's like to have the same attraction to sin that you have?

Because true empathy would require that Jesus literally understood sin the way we understand it, where it's an inner desire where we actually want it. But Jesus wasn't empathetic. He was sympathetic. He became a man and he endured difficulties of temptations on our behalf so that he could say that he knows what it's like to have temptations flung at him.

But this particular section from Charles Spurgeon's sermon 1974, that's 1974, this is Spurgeon. His disciples, though he loved them so intensely, yet each one tried him. Even John, the dearest of them all, must ask for places at the right and the left of his throne for himself and his brother James. Even Peter took him and rebuked him. All the disciples were much of Peter's mind when he described himself as about to be crucified and slain.

Their spirit was often so worldly, so selfish, so foolish, as to greatly grieve their Lord and leader. While he was the servant of all, they were seeking who should have the preeminence. While he was seeking the lost, they were calling for fire from heaven upon rebels. They spoke unadvisedly with their lips and committed their master by their words. And you know how worst of all he had to complain in utmost bitterness of spirit he that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me So that from the circle of his own favored ones, he gathered more thorns than roses.

He received wounds in the house of his friends, even as you may have done. herein you see his power to exhibit sympathy with us he suffered just as we do he suffered being tempted even by the failures of those whom he loved Jesus Christ was tempted in all ways not every single detail the same way that you're tempted but who was tempted in all ways yet without sin is the high priest who can sympathize with your weaknesses because he knew what it was like to be tired. He knew what it was like to be hungry. He knew what it was like to be lonely.

He knew what it was like to be abandoned and betrayed. And you know what? Probably none of you have ever personally been tempted by the devil directly either. And he knew what it was like to be tempted by the devil himself. And how filthy it was to him, the thought of all these things. something else I read the person who's tempted internally by his lust in some ways he doesn't suffer temptation he actually enjoys the temptation sometimes he seeks for it but the truly righteous person suffers temptation as Jesus did the person who hates the sin but is continuously accosted by it by the temptation of performance, that person's suffering along with Jesus.

If you're tempted and you're giving in, you're not suffering. So if you want to be glorified with Jesus, you are to suffer with Him, according to Romans. I'm not saying don't be empathetic. If you're an empathetic person, praise God, you probably have some special skill I don't have in some circumstance that we're all being not as useful as you. But what I'm saying is that we're commanded to be sympathetic, to commiserate with our brothers and sisters and to try to do things that are helpful to them.

And sometimes if you truly love them, it's going to look very different, even though the situation might look the same to you. Some people need a harsh rebuke. Some people need to be encouraged. some people just need a little help and you need to keep your mouth shut and each situation could be different with each person if you watch me I can show you how to do it wrong a bunch, make a bunch of mistakes doing it and you just try to learn how to figure out what these situations are I'm looking at 1 Thessalonians where he says help the weak encourage the faint hearted and admonish the idle you don't want to admonish the weak or the faint-hearted.

You don't want to encourage the idle. You don't want to help the idle. You want to help the weak. Encourage the faint-hearted. So determining who those people are requires love and affection. It requires dwelling with people, having unity of mind with them.

It requires taking your eyes off of Facebook for 20 minutes and talking to people at your church and in your neighborhood and in your family and things like that. It requires a lot of the things that we're just not good at and we're not in tune to. it requires brotherly love. The word Philadelphos, it's where we get the city of Philadelphia, where if you go there, you'd probably think it's a misnomer, but when it was first created, they wanted it to be the city of brotherly love.

Phileo is Greek for love, and Delphos is brothers and sisters. So it's a city of brotherly love. You're to have brotherly love. One of the ways you know you have brotherly love is that you're adopted by God. If you believe that you've been adopted into the family of God, then that means that you believe that everybody else who God's adopted into his family is your brother and sister, quite literally.

They're very truly your brother and sister. This is why Christians were accused of incest when Christianity started, because husbands and wives were calling each other brother and sister because it was so exciting to people to realize they were part of a family, they'd been adopted by God. and some people accused him of incest. But there's a friend that sticks closer than a brother and a brother is born for adversity.

And so when you have brotherly love with people, it's more than the unity of mind. It's not so much more than it, but it accompanies it. It allows you to care about people in a very real way. Brotherly love like David and Jonathan had, it was described as even greater than the love a man has for a woman. husband and wife love is really great, and it's super important.

But if you have a close friend in church who's a brother or a sister, where there's nothing else going on, it's just, I purely love this person, I don't even expect anything from them. Husbands and wives expect things from each other. There's things that you're supposed to expect, technically. When we really love another brother where we can really stick by them When we know they going to stick by us that a special thing We going to have that brotherly love In John 13, verse 34, Jesus is talking to His disciples.

He says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Love manifests itself in a number of different ways. Love doesn't always mean I approve of what you're doing. It doesn't mean I always say the nicest possible, most polite things to you in every moment, because sometimes you might need to hear something difficult. love actually dictates that I'm going to confront my brother about his sin.

That I'm going to go to him and I'm going to tell him his sin against me because I love him. If you have a tender heart, this is a neat word. If you look at the etymology of this word for tender heart, you're going to see that it has to do with your bowels or your guts. so if you ever heard the phrase I hate your guts I think that embodies a little bit of what this concept is it's about hating the inner person so much but also you love from your bowels according to the ancient scriptures Isaiah 63 is kind of an interesting passage Isaiah 63 15 proves this point slightly in a poetic way it seems like Isaiah is writing he says look down from heaven and see from your holy and beautiful habitation he says where are your zeal and your might and he says the stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me In the King James, he says, your bowels, right?

And it's just this idea that in ancient times especially, that was the center of where we thought we got our emotions and feelings. And if you remember some of you people that are a little bit older now, when you first started to love your spouse, maybe some of you younger people have experienced some of this, when you get a little bit of a crush on someone or whatever, what do they say, you get butterflies in your stomach, right? some of you are nodding, it hasn't happened yet, it'll happen one day. But it affects you to your very core, some of these feelings we have, this tenderheartedness.

And so from the deepest recesses in parts of who we are, we are to love one another. This is not a superficial kind of love. This is a sacrificial kind of love. In Hebrews chapter 13, the author of Hebrews, which was likely just a sermon that was preached and jotted down. In Hebrews 13.3 we're told remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them and those who are mistreated since you also are in the body.

You have a tender heart towards these people. You have compassion towards them. I think compassion is the King James version of 1 Peter 3.8 this word. In verse 16 the author says do not neglect to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing you have a tender heart you want to be moved toward your fellow man in the church toward your brother or sister this is how you exhibit your brotherly love it's how you show that you have your unity of mind and your sympathy towards others is by being moved for them so in humility is the very last word that Peter gives us.

It says to have a humble mind. The first word was unity of mind. And the last word is a humble mind. They both have the same root word for mind in them. It's about not thinking very highly of yourself. Some people say humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

And that's like a cute little phrase. It's not exactly biblical, though. Humility in the Bible actually has to do with a bit of a debasement of self, a loathing of who you are apart from Jesus Christ. Literally, in Ezekiel, we're told after God makes us born again, we're going to hate ourselves for what we were. Paul says, there's no good thing in me. He says, oh wretched man that I am.

I don't think Paul was playing around. I don't think he was using figurative language. And I don't think anybody in here is less wretched than Paul was. Paul said that as a new believer who, I think we still can generally agree went on to be the greatest Christian who ever lived So to have humility is the final way that we can embody what Peter's telling us in this sentence.

Humility will allow us to have unity of mind. Look at 1 Peter 5, verse 5. Humility will allow us to have sympathy for others. humility will drive us to love others. Love will drive us to humility too. Peter says, likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.

Peter repeats this a couple chapters later. We're going to get there soon. Humility is super important. He says, clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. it's for every single person it's like you're supposed to be covered in it without it, it's like you're naked and you're exposed and you're yucky and it's disgusting and it's dishonorable and it's immodest clothe yourselves with it I don't have to tell you what I'm wearing, right? if I stood here and told you, did you know I'm wearing a tie? you'd be like, yeah, we can see it right?

You don't have to tell people when you're clothed in humility, they see it. That's what you're supposed to put on before you go out. That's what you're supposed to put on before you get out of bed. That's what you should put on before you come into church. So we clothe ourselves in humility. Look at James chapter 4, a little more on humility.

James 4 9 James the brother of Jesus says be wretched and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you James has not been offered a TED Talk yet. Please welcome in this pulpit. Because humility is what the Bible calls us to. So that we can do these other things. Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Why? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus said. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Those that have proper control of their strength and know when to use it and when not to.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be satisfied. Jesus later says in Matthew 5, I was just quoting, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. It's not talking about police officers, just so you know. Peacemakers are those who come to God and by faith believe that Jesus Christ lived the life that they could not live and then died to death.

They deserved to die and rose again three days later according to the scriptures. Those are peacemakers. They've made peace with God. They seek peace and pursue it, which is what Peter is about to quote from Psalm 34, just following the passage we're in. And peacemakers who make peace with God seek to make peace with others with God. So they evangelize.

And they seek to make peace with one another in the church so they have unity of mind. So maybe next week we will see how Jesus fulfilled all of these because apparently this sermon is twice as long as I anticipated it was going to be. So I'm not going to keep you another 45 minutes. But suffice to say, meditate on the fact that Christ is the example of all these things, that he is our perfect peace, and that as you grow closer to Jesus Christ in your humility, you will grow closer to other Christians who are doing the same thing.

And you will start to treat people the way that He wants you to treat them. Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You that we can always trust that Your Word is infallible and inerrant, that it's sufficient for our needs, that we don't need extra biblical things to help us to grow in our sanctification, to help us with our justification, we need your word.

I pray that you would bless the preaching of your word today, that you would help us to take seriously these commands. How often I've read through one little sentence like 1 Peter 3.8 and just glossed right over it, not considering what you're really telling us, not considering how Jesus is the fulfillment of every good thing that you command of your people not considering that he's the one that did it on my behalf because I couldn't and so forgive me for that forgive the people for all the times they have failed to really rest in Jesus Christ as their hope and savior I pray that you would bless the rest of our time of worship today Amen