Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Let’s open our Bibles to .

There are times when a service is put together that intentionally flows together from music to testimony to preaching and there are other times when God does this for us.

I believe that today is a day that God has kindly worked our service together in this way because after hearing from Joab and Emily, our attention is going to be devoted to the next verses of our study in 1 Peter, which are verses 8-12 of .

Please read with me as I read

Read .

Pray.

I have entitled this message, “How to Live a Godly Life” because I believe as we look closely at this passage you will see that this text speaks to everyone of us, in whatever situations we may be facing and however deep your sufferings for Christ may be, this passage tells us how to live a godly life.

Whether you are living peacefully in Hastings or serving as missionaries in Northwest China, this passage informs us how to live a godly life.

How are you supposed to live today, while we mostly enjoy peace in America as Christians?

How are you supposed to live when the opposition against Christianity gets turned up and you are persecuted and slandered for your faith?

How does God want you to respond then?

For the original readers of this letter the idea of being slandered for their faith was not a hypothetical situation, as it may be for you.

In we read how these churches were being called “evildoers”.

In verse 19 of chapter 2 we read that they were suffering unjustly.

So the concern to live godly lives in the midst of suffering for them was not hypothetical.

As we look at this passage we are going to divide it into two parts.

We are going to see how this passage calls us to live a godly life among the church and how it calls us to live a godly live among our persecutors.

Let’s look at first, how to live among the church.

What do we see?

Love One Another As The Family Of God

How does your Creator want you to live among the church?

It is summarized for us in verse 8 and can be summarized with one phrase: brotherly love.

Read verse 8 again:

Peter begins with the word “finally”, but what is he referring to?

Here he is actually concluding the exhortations he began in 2:11 when he was urging us, as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of our flesh and to live honorably among non-Christians.

From that point on he has described for us what honorable living looks like in many situations and now he is telling us how we ought to be in the community of the church.

He lists 5 characteristics here.

But do you know what’s interesting about these characteristics?

In the original language they are all adjectives, not verbs.

This means that what Peter is commending to us here is not to do 5 things but to be a type of people.

Since God has called you out of darkness and made you a people for his own possession, he is working among us to be a type of people.

This is much more profound than the call to do a certain thing.

Anyone can do an act of love for a friend, but only the church can collectively be this kind of people.

What kind of people should we be?

A unified, sympathetic, loving, tender, and humble people.

These 5 traits should identify the community of the church.

Unity - Another word to describe Peter’s intention here would be “harmony”.

He unified or be harmonious.

Likely division is more common among churches than the gospel.

It is common and easy for us to be a divided people.

We differ on minor points of doctrine and various preferences.

Despite these differences, however, God’s Word says that we should be a unified people.

This doesn’t mean that we’re the same, but that we share thoughts and commitments to the essentials in our faith.

Treasure the gospel of Christ, the necessity of regeneration, the inspiration of His Word, the divinity of the Trinity, and the call to make disciples.

Be a unified people.

As Paul prayed in Romans 15:

Sympathy - We must also be caring toward one another.

Be people that are sensitive to the needs, joys, and sorrows of other people.

Cry and rejoice with one another.

Sympathize with the pain and struggle of other people.

Don’t be people that push the hurting and broken away, but care and sympathize with them.

Loving - Show brotherly love for each other.

Now this likely is the apex of the character traits Peter is describing.

All of the others can be summarized by this one: be a loving family.

This isn’t the first time Peter has called us to be this type of people.

From Jesus to Peter to the rest of the Apostles and writers of the NT, love is undeniably the character trait that should identify God’s people.

If we have all been united to Christ, then we are all one family.

This should show in our love for one another.

Tender - We should be tender-hearted or compassionate.

The root of the word here refers to the inner organs of a human being.

This tells us that we should feel deeply, have deep rooted feelings, for one another’s suffering and pain.

Don’t turn your back toward another person’s suffering.

Be compassionate and caring.

This is the heart of a Christian:

Humble - Consider others more important than yourself.

Do not be dominated by thoughts and actions that are primarily self-serving.

Don’t look out for your own advantage first.

Recognize your own dependency on grace, the unmerited favor that you have received from God, and wish that for others.

Don’t just look out for your own interests.

Be humble people.

This is the people God is making us to be.

This is the people God shows grace to:

Church, these 5 traits are more than a to-do list for you this week.

This is who God is making you to be.

We are to grow to be unified, sympathetic, loving, tender-hearted, and humble.

We are growing in this grace because we have been united to a sympathetic, loving, compassionate, and humble Savior.

He has cared for us in our suffering from sin.

He has shown us love and compassion while we were still dead in our sin.

He humbled himself by taking on flesh and dying on the cross.

Live this way as Christ lived this way.

(both for the church and before evildoers)

This is the Savior you have been saved by and now joined to.

You are being made into his image!

Be this kind of person, be this kind of community.

Love one another as the family of God.

And secondly,

Bless Evildoers

The second part of our passage turns our eyes away from our community and toward the world that slanders, reviles, and persecutes us.

How can we live a godly life in the world that is against us?

Peter’s answer is clear: bless evildoers.

Look at this in verses 9-12:

Having become the person that Peter describes in verse 8, our attention is now turned to how we live in a world of hostility.

In response to the hostility that they are experiencing, how should they live?

How can you live a godly life when you are treated poorly?

I know that we can look at an experience like the Meyers and have compassion for them while assuming that we will never experience something like that.

Sadly, that is not the case.

For those who are faithful to God, you will experience slander, opposition, and hostility because of your faith in Jesus.

It is coming.

Your response to this hostility can be summed up in 1 word: BLESS.