Preaching to Spirits in Prison

Hebrews 9 verse 25, the Apostle says, Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own. It says, For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

It's talking about Jesus Christ. and just as it was appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, then it says, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time. Not to deal with sin, he's coming back, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly awaiting for him. It's outside the scope of what I really want to define for you today, But if you understand what is happening at a Catholic mass, a Roman Catholic mass, and I'll grant you that a lot of the Roman Catholics, you know, do not understand this themselves.

And they might not be able to even say, yeah, I agree with this. But what a Roman Catholic mass is, it's a sacrificial service. It's a place where Jesus Christ's body and blood is re-offered as a sacrifice for sins. When we do communion here, we're memorializing his body and blood. And we're partaking because we were commanded at a Catholic mass. They literally believe they're re-sacrificing Jesus Christ.

They're offering him as a sacrifice. And so what we do in Christianity is we believe in Jesus died once for sins. his death was sufficient you don't need any more to pay for your sins some of you need to believe in him in the first place some of you don't take your sin seriously enough at this point some of you know people like that who they don't understand the depth of their sin enough to seek a savior but some of you, you understand your sin, you hate it and like that prayer that I read before when we were praying, there's a part of you that feels like you have to make up for your own sin. That when you sin, you feel so bad about it, you want to fix it.

And yet God commands you to run to Him. When you're a Christian, and you've been a Christian for a little while, and maybe you're doing pretty good, and maybe somebody says, hey, you're a good Christian. Or hey, this thing you said helped me. Or you're really wise. Or you learned a lot of things. Or whatever people tell you. and maybe you're legitimately growing, you're doing a good job as a Christian, and then you fall, and something happens.

Maybe it doesn't have to be like some crazy, horrible thing that they make movies about. Just you sin, and you hate it, and you really hurt somebody, and you hurt your relationship with God, or you hurt your children or your spouse, or you do something at work that's embarrassing, and you don't want to admit it, and a part of you wants to run away from God, and you want to hide from God. Because you're ashamed.

And it's a legitimate feeling. But the problem is that God's your only hope. When Adam and Eve sinned and they hid from God, they actually added to their sin. Because it's running to Him that He wants. And that's the beauty of the grace of Jesus Christ. When you sin as a Christian, He's not angry with you.

Let me repeat that. When you sin as a Christian, God's not angry with you. His anger has been propitiated by his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, the righteous Jesus for the unrighteous, you, so that he might bring you to God. So you have access to God right now in all of your dirtiness and filthiness.

And when God looks at you, all he sees is his perfect son. And he wants you to come to him for help. He doesn't want you to be self-reliant. So now Jesus Christ was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. So you have this idea that Jesus is made alive in the Spirit, and then in that Spirit, he went to the spirits in prison and proclaimed and why did he proclaim to him in verse 20 because they formerly did not obey when god's patience waited in the days of noah while the ark was being prepared so see now you have this this this imagery that is a little bit confusing and if you're not confused then god bless you because the greatest commentators alive all differ on their opinion of this so good for you and maybe this was clear to the original audience i i one guy i read said this was certainly clear to the original audience i thought well maybe it was they didn't write it down for us so some people think jesus went to hell basically and preached to captive spirits and there's a little more well thought outness to it all that's not the theory that i believe so i i don't i don't really want to promote it too hard or explain it that much but it's one of the thoughts it's not that he went and suffered in hell it's not a a joyce meyer version of jesus going to hell but it's it's that he went and proclaimed victory to these captive spirits who had rejected the preaching of Noah.

Some people believe he went and preached to angels or demons basically. And they in some kind of prison And again this is not one of the theories that I bought into And so I not an expert on it And I didn want to explain all the different theories in any kind of detail If you're interested, there's lots of writing about this passage. And you can figure out what all the different guys thought.

What I think is this. And I'm not alone. I think that the spirit of Jesus Christ being preached is what we're talking about here. this is not talking about Jesus having some kind of strange spiritual experience where he goes back in time or he goes into some nether world or underworld and he preaches to these spirits that are like behind these bars I always pictured like spirits behind bars and like Jesus announcing his victory to him because that's how I first learned this passage I don't believe that I believe that what it's saying is that when Noah was on the earth he preached righteousness and when Noah preached righteousness Noah was preaching in the spirit of Christ look at 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 5 in 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 5 just a reminder we'll start with the beginning of 4 for if God did not spare the ancient world so in verse 5 but preserved noah so god preserved noah and then listen to how noah is described a herald of righteousness or a preacher of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly so there's more context there about why god did that but the point is noah was a herald of righteousness so if you have in your mind noah just sitting around building an ark and just ignoring the rest of the world.

That's not exactly what Peter's telling us in his second epistle. Noah was a herald of righteousness. And when you're preaching righteousness, you're preaching Jesus Christ. Now, maybe in Noah's time, he didn't have the name Jesus. But in 1 Corinthians, we're told Jesus Christ is our wisdom. He's our righteousness.

He's our sanctification and our redemption. So when Noah preached the righteousness of God, when he preached what was right in God's eyes to the people, And when he told people, if he told them, flee the wrath to come and get on the ark. People argue about whether he actually invited people on or not. When Noah preached who God was to people, he was really preaching Christ.

He may not have described Jesus Christ with all of the details that we have now and all the revelation we understand. But the idea is, is that back in the time of Noah, while the ark was being prepared. Remember, there was 120 years from the time God told Noah, hey, I'm going to send a flood on the earth. Noah was a herald of righteousness and people for 120 years had Christ preached to them in the Old Testament.

People were told that God is good and God is going to one day send a savior, a Messiah, the seed of the woman who had crushed the head of the serpent. And Noah told people what was right and wrong. And certainly there had to be an answer. Why is there a flood coming? Oh, it's for unrighteousness. It's God's wrath being unleashed.

And so I think that when it says, he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formerly did not obey, that this is a reference to the fact that Noah proclaimed Jesus Christ to all the people of his day. And they were not obedient. Jesus Christ was made alive in that sense. He's made alive when we talk about him, when we preach him. It's not that he's not alive, right?

He was always alive, right? The idea here is that you tell people about Jesus. And now it says, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. So Peter, twice now in the next chapter, or in the next book, he said, you know, Noah and seven persons. So there's eight people that come out of the water of the floods.

So when you start to look around this world, and you start to think, wow, there's not very many Christians left. Think about Noah. There's more than eight people in this room that think they're Christians. Right? Can you imagine what it was like for Noah that the only people that would get on that ark with him were his own wife, his three sons, and their wives?

There's a sense that you believe that whether Noah told people or not that they could get on the ark, that anyone who believed would have ran to it. He wouldn't have been able to keep them off that ark if they believed what he had preached. But they didn't. And we live in a world today where a lot of people don't believe. We live in a world today where you can feel very alone.

It's one of the reasons we weekly gather. That's why I was vexed this morning at the thought of canceling church because of snow. And I was also vexed about the thought of somebody trying to make it here and getting hurt. It was a very vexing morning for me. It's been my word of the day or something. But the point is this, that we need to be in communion with other Christians.

Noah was brought through the water on the ark. And now we have our second kind of weird, I don't want to call it weird, hard to interpret passage. Maybe a little bit easier to come up with an interpretation of than the previous one that was difficult. But still a problem passage, one we have to deal with. Peter says baptism which corresponds to this now saves you And so the immediate response to that if you a Biblicist if you a Biblical literalist if you're somebody that takes the Bible seriously, if you believe the Bible is inerrant, the easy, quick response is, well, I guess baptism is what saved you.

So we should be sprinkling people and calling it baptism. We should be dunking people in lakes and rivers. We should be doing whatever we have to do to get people baptized. Because if that's what saves them, then why wouldn't I? If I told you owning a red car saved you, we'd own red cars. Why not, right?

It's worth the risk. But what's interesting is that Peter says baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you. And he says, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So when we evaluate the Bible, let me give you a hermeneutics lesson here. When you interpret the Bible, you interpret the clear passage, the unclear passages by the clear passages.

So if we had an entire Bible that said, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone. Jesus suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he may bring us to God. We have the Apostle Paul in Corinthians saying, I thank God that I baptized none of you. Do you remember that? Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 1, I think.

I'd like you to see it in the text. Look at 1 Corinthians 1, 14. I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius. He says, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. He said, I did baptize the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not even know.

And he says in 17, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. So if Paul's right, baptism is not what saves people, it's the gospel. He says it in Romans. He says the gospel is the power of God for salvation. And so we already understand that baptism is not the saving agent. You are not dunked under the water in baptism and then regenerated when you come out.

You are not dunked under the water in baptism and then when you come out filled with the Holy Spirit. You will not suddenly have your gifts of the Spirit and start babbling in tongues or anything like that. So what does Peter mean? Peter gives us his own interpretive clue, but God also knows that we would read the whole scripture. But Peter says, baptism now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body.

So it's not the water that washes you in baptism that saves you. That's not the cleansing that you needed. I'll add that if you sprinkle somebody with water or even maybe pour a little over them, there's not going to be a lot of removal of dirt. You have to immerse people to baptize them. That's a different lesson. But he says it's not the removal of dirt from the body, but it's an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So this is why you get baptized. You get baptized because baptism is your sign that you identify with what Jesus did on your behalf. It's not the cleansing of your body that baptism accomplishes that saves you. It's Jesus Christ dying for you. bringing you through the waters of judgment. That's why it says baptism is the anti-type to what happened with the ark.

Baptism corresponds to the type that the ark was. The ark was something that people got on in order to be pushed through the floods of judgment, but be unscathed by them. Baptism corresponds to that in the sense that you have been saved by Jesus Christ, and now you have an appeal to God for a good content. So you go to God and you tell God, I professed faith in Jesus Christ.

And one of the ways you know that you professed faith in Jesus Christ is that you got baptized. If you have a confession, you can open it. Chapter 29 of our confession. The writers say baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ to be unto the party baptized a sign of his fellowship with him in his death and resurrection. Of his being engrafted into him of remission of sins and of giving up into of giving up into God through Jesus Christ to live and walk in newness of life. that's your appeal to God for a good conscience.

Your baptism is what you point back to to remind yourself, no, I've been saved. I got baptized because I was saved. You're not saved because you were baptized, but your baptism is for you. So that when you're having the struggle, when you're having the tough day, when you're losing the battle with sin, when you can't make it to do the things that you think you supposed to do as a Christian you reminded that you have a clear conscience before God because Jesus Christ died on your behalf And you look back on that day that you said I going to do the first thing that God commands Christians to do and that get baptized It's a ordained by Jesus to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him. one of the reasons we don't sprinkle or baptize I wouldn't even call it baptism one of the reasons we don't sprinkle babies with water and call it baptism at this church because that's not a sign of their repentance and faith in Christ you can't point back to when you were a baby and somebody else had you sprinkled with water at a building that you had no choice to be in and say well there's my sign that God has forgiven me of my sins you have to stand up yourself and you have to personally profess Jesus Christ.

You have to repent of your worldliness, of your self-righteousness, of your self-reliance, of all of your trust in anything except for God through Jesus Christ to save you. And when you do that, you follow Jesus Christ and you get baptized. Jesus got baptized. Remember that? And John protested. Do you remember?

He's like, you should baptize me. Jesus said let's do this because I need to fulfill all righteousness Jesus lived the perfect life that you and I could not live even being baptized was completely unnecessary for any kind of cleansing for any appeal to God for a good conscience he didn't need it but he did it because there's going to be those of us there's going to be Christians that failed that thief on the cross goes to God right? remember the thief on the cross that repented of his sins and Jesus says, today I'll see you in paradise? And if God looked at him and said, well, where's your proof you got saved?

And the guy can't point to his baptism, he can point to Jesus' baptism, you know? Jesus did all the good works that every Christian was supposed to do. So baptism corresponds to the ark in the sense, not that you're dunked in water or anything like that for sure, but it's more that the ark was what carried them through the waters of judgment. and it was their faith in what God had said that brought them onto the ark.

You understand? It wasn't the ark that saved them in reality. The ark was the instrument God used. But they had to believe God to get onto the ark in order to be shut in the ark and protected from the waters. John Gill, this is the guy who was in the pulpit before Spurgeon. He said the ark was a type of Christ. into whom whoever enters by faith or in whom whoever believes shall be saved.

But as they that entered into the ark were but few, so are those that enter in at the straight gate or believe in Christ. So most of the commentators I read on this passage made a real big deal about it being only eight persons, about it being a small number. One guy, one guy made a big deal about the fact that they were all adults, a Baptist guy, of course.

But listen, he says, and they that went into the ark were saved by the water bearing up the ark. This is really interesting. We think of the water as the judgment on the people, right? He says, even by that which others were destroyed, so it was the water bearing the ark up that actually saved them he says as the very same thing for different reasons is the cause or means of destruction and salvation so that which god meant for the destruction of some he actually means for the salvation of others the death of jesus christ is actually the greatest condemnation on anyone that won't believe in him it's also the greatest salvation for those of us who do he says so christ is set for the full and rising of many is a stumbling block to some and the power and wisdom of god to others and the gospel and the ministers of it are the saver of life to some and the saver of death unto others i like to believe that one of the reasons you're sitting here is you actually like to hear me preach.

And the things I say, assuming they're spirit-led or feeding your soul, and yet some of you have been there. Elijah was there recently. Some people don't like what I preach. It's the savor of life to some, the savor of death to others. It's the spirit of Christ being preached. If I preach Jesus Christ, those who love him should be elated, and those who don't won't be.

That's the expected response we get. Back to John Gilley says this instance of the dispensation of the providence of God to the old world is very appropriately, though by way of digression introduced by the apostle Peter here. showing that in times past, God's usual method has been to afford the outward means to ungodly men and to bear with them long and then bring down his vengeance upon them and save his own people. So 120 years Noah preached, endured the scoffing, the mocking, whatever happened to happen in that time. if the thoughts on every man's heart was violence all the time I don't think we can pretend like well maybe Noah was spared of some of the violence and some of the hatred and malice at the time so it's extra biblical but it's implied in the text that Noah would have probably suffered greatly as a preacher of righteousness at a time when there was only eight people in the world willing to believe what God was saying but No.

God affords the outward means to ungodly men, bears with them long, and brings down his vengeance upon them, saves his own people, and this suffering saints might depend upon would be their case, and therefore should bear their afflictions patiently. So Peter, the apostle of suffering here, he's telling you, not only did Jesus suffer once for sins, and that's your example, not only did he go to Pontius Pilate, and he opened not his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, and he didn't revile those who reviled him, and when he suffered, he did not threaten. Not only is Jesus your example, but Noah.

The history of the Bible is godly men and women suffering. God vexed at the hands of the unrighteous around them. God consistently allowing his truth and gospel to be proclaimed to all those who will hear it, bearing with them patiently that his vengeance might even be more severe when it comes. He's almost, think of it as he's fattening up the evil for the slaughter. and so you wait patiently Psalm 119 we read beforehand Psalm 119 when will you judge those who persecute me He said I ask how long until you comfort me You're not alone, dear saint.

You're not alone. So herald the righteousness of God. Right now we have more revelation. You herald Jesus Christ to people. You unashamedly tell the ungodly who Jesus Christ is, knowing that it will be used by God for his glory and to their destruction if they be evildoers and if they should believe it will be used for his glory and their salvation. And then you suffer like Noah, you suffer like Jesus, you suffer like Elijah, you suffer like Elisha, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, even Jacob who was kind of a bad guy sometimes, he suffered.

That's God's call to his people. So do not be surprised. Father in heaven, your word is true and it washes us clean of all of our self-righteousness and self-reliance. We can have no hope, Lord, apart from Christ. I confess, Lord, that it is a difficult thing for me sometimes to just remember that it's all Christ. All the time, it's only Christ.

So help us, Lord, to be faithful and to understand these truths that you've revealed perfectly in your scripture. Amen.