Loving Life

 

Loving Life
I Peter 3:8-17
 
I want to talk to you this evening about "Loving Life." If you will look at the verses carefully as we move through them, you will see that I am finding that theme in verse 10. 
 
In this verse, Simon Peter, the human author of this book, is quoting, actually, from his Bible. He is quoting from the Old Testament Psalm 34, verse 12. It says, "What man is he who desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?" 
 
I think that is the desire of everyone. I think everyone wants to love life. I think everybody would like to see good days. Are you loving life? Are you seeing good days?
 
It is rather interesting to note that there were many people in the Bible who didn't seem to love life. Take Solomon for instance. Solomon had everything you would think that would make a person happy and would love life. He was a multi-millionaire. He had all kinds of things. When you study what he said in the book of Ecclesiastes, you will find that he rehearses all of the things that he had that we would think would cause a person to love life and see good days; and yet in the midst of it all Solomon said, "I hated life." 
 
Then I think about a man named Jacob. He was one of the great heroes of the faith. Jacob lived to be 130 years old. Yet, before he died, this man Jacob said, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life."
Somehow through all of those years he didn't love life. Somehow he couldn't see any good days.
 
Did you know there is a lot of pessimism today about life? There are many people today who are very pessimistic about life. Let me just read some quotations I picked up from certain people. For instance, one of them said, "Life is a disease for which the only cure is death." That is a very pessimistic view of life. "Earth is like a gigantic fly wheel making ten thousand revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it." What a pessimistic view of life. Hear the words of a song that was popular at one time. "Living is what you do while you're waiting to die." It is obvious that there are many people who are looking for life in all the wrong places.
 
I am speaking this evening to a congregation that is predisposed to agree with what I'm about to say. I am about to say to you that if you really want life with a capital "L" then you come to experience that kind of life by a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
Jesus said, "I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish." When you know Jesus, you get eternal life. You're going to heaven when you die. But that's not all. Jesus also said, I am come that they might have life here and now and "have it more abundantly." You can love life and you can see good days if you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
There are three basic ways to live life. You can just endure life. There are some people who just endure life. They just try to get through it. 
They don't love it. They just endure it. 
 
There are others who try to escape life. Life is just too painful for them. They try to escape life through alcohol or through drugs or some even through suicide. Some try to escape life.
 
There are others, and I hope you are one of these, who enjoy life. He says in verse 10, "For he that will." Did you notice the little word "will"? "For he that will love life." What he's saying is that loving life and seeing good days is a choice. 
 
I read a book a number of years ago by a Christian psychiatrist entitled, "Happiness is a Choice." Loving life and seeing good days is a choice. "For he that will love life, and see good days."
 
I want to talk to you about loving life and how to have good days. I understand that even as a Christian you have your bad days. There are some days when you get up on the wrong side of the bed and you kick the cat and it's a bad day. If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, your worst day as a Christian is better than your best day was when you were living for the devil. 
 
When you read these verses which are wrapped around this key verse of verse 10, you will discover that a great deal of loving life and seeing good days has to do with
 
Relationships. 
 
As I have already suggested, the first relationship and the ultimate relationship and the primary relationship is your relationship to the Lord. 
But you will notice also in these verses that Simon Peter wraps this matter of loving life and seeing good days around two primary relationships, your relationships to other believers and your relationships to those who are not believers. 
 
I. Those who share your faith.
 
He is saying first of all that if you want to love life and want to really love living and see good days, then you need to properly relate to those who share your faith. 
 
You are sitting in a building full of people who share your faith. You are talking to people and you are fellowshipping with people who share the same relationship with Jesus Christ you do and so now you are in a relationship with them. 
 
If you want to love life and you want to see good days in relationship to those who share your faith, he gives us here what our attitudes should be and what our actions should be. In verses 8 and following he gives a series of attitudes that should be characteristic of those who know Jesus. They are Christ-like attitudes. 
 
For instance, he says in verse 8, "Finally, be ye all of one mind." He's talking here about unity of purpose. When people come to know Christ as Savior and identify themselves with a local fellowship of believers like our church family. You are now involved in a unity of purpose. There is a oneness of purpose. There is a oneness of mind. 
 
 
 
When there is this oneness of purpose, it does not mean that you sacrifice your individuality. Some people think that oneness of mind is the idea of a pile of sticks that have all been cut exactly the same way. That's not what it is at all. But rather, it is the idea of the parts of a flower that are all combined together to make a flower of beauty. It's kind of like a football team and you have different positions and different assignments on the football team. But on that team every member has one assignment, one unity of purpose, and that is to win the game.
 
Take your body. You have different parts of your body, and they all have individuality and they all have a specific function. But if the body is working properly, there is a oneness of mind. There is a unity of purpose. He says that if you want to love life, then get involved in this oneness of mind, this unity of purpose of the children of God.
 
He says secondly in verse 8, "Having compassion one of another." The word compassion means sympathy with one another. If you want to love life, you need to learn to have sympathy with your fellow believers in the Lord.
 
Romans 12, verse 15, says, "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep."
 
Unfortunately, sometimes our fallen nature makes it a lot easier for us to weep with them that weep than to rejoice with them that rejoice. "Bless his poor heart. He lost his job. We've got to pray for him." "My, can you believe that. He got a brand-new car and paid cash for it. How in the world did he pull that off?" 
 
What I'm saying is that we've got to learn to be in sympathy with one another. We need to be compassionate one toward another. You will learn to love life when you learn to get involved and interested in the problems and burdens of other people and begin to pray and care about other people.
 
Then he moves on and says, "Love as brethren." There he's talking about the love that God's people are to have for one another. 
 
One of the things I enjoy about our fellowship also is the great spirit of love between God's people. The word "brethren" is used generically. It means the brothers and the sisters.
 
There are some of you who are desperate for love and you are desperate for loving relationships and you need to be a part of something where there is love. That's why you need to come to Christ and that's why if you are a Christian, you need to be a part of a fellowship of Christians where there is love. "Love as brethren."
 
When I think about love as brethren I think about that beautiful Old Testament story of Jonathan and David. These men had a marvelous love for one another. I think about what Jesus said in John 13 when He said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love one toward another."
 
The identifying mark of God's people should be, "Behold how these Christians love one another." You learn to love life when you learn to love your brothers in the Lord.
Then he says, "Be pitiful." That King James word may give the wrong meaning. It's not really pitiful. What it really means to be is to be tenderhearted.   Are you tenderhearted? Life has a way of hardening you if you're not careful. 
 
We have become almost desensitized in our culture. Television has done it. Our children and our young people are brought up with a regular, daily fare of blood and guts and murder and killing. Psychologists talk sometime about emotional breakdown or emotional wear down or emotional overdrive. We see so much that we lose our sensitivity and we don't have that tender heart. 
 
Are you a tenderhearted person? Do you weep easily? Is your heart broken when you hear the misfortune of someone else?
 
I heard someone say a number of years ago something I've thought a lot about. He said that what we need to do is to develop a hide as tough as a rhino and a heart as tender as a baby and the trick is how to toughen the one without toughening the other.
 
Life hits you with so many blows. Life gets so tough sometimes that if you are not very careful you will develop this hard veneer about your life and you will become so unemotional about it all. But the Lord says here that if you want to love life, then be pitiful, be tenderhearted, be like Jesus.
 
Do you remember when Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus? I think the sweetest verse in all the Bible is where it says that Jesus wept. 
 
Somebody said, "Didn't Jesus know that He was getting ready to raise Lazarus from the dead?" Of course, Jesus knew that but Jesus was tenderhearted. He had a tenderhearted sweet attitude toward Mary and Martha because they were grieving over the loss of a family member. If you want to love life, then ask God to help you to have tenderheartedness about yourself.
 
Notice that he says, "Be courteous." Let's talk about that for a moment. I want to get this as practical and as down to earth as I know how to be. Let me use this as an illustration. 
 
How many have been to a restaurant in the last week?   I remember when I was a boy the big deal was if we could go to McDonalds one time just every now and then, maybe about once a quarter. Some of you eat out every day. 
 
You go into a restaurant. In those restaurants are people who serve. They have a tough job. That's not an easy job. Think of all that they have to do and all the guff that some of them have to take.
 
If you are a Christian, and specifically a Christian who is a member of the Trinity, when the servers in this city see you come walking in their restaurant they should be shouting happy, "Hot diggity dog. Here comes a Christian from the Trinity Baptist Church. They are going to be courteous to me." Leave a good tip. Don't be cheap.
 
I've seen people with a table of ten and those servers are working hard. "Go get me some tea. I don't have enough tea. I need some more lemon."
 
Then when it's over some old lug of a guy takes a dollar bill and pops it on the table. I want to just hit him right in the mouth. Learn to be courteous in your relationships.
 
But that's not all. In verse 9 he says, "Not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling." He's saying that if you really want to learn to love life don't retaliate when people are unkind to you. You know the normal tendency of our fallen nature, not insult for insult when somebody puts it on us. Then we want to put it back on them. "I'll show you. I can hit you just as hard as you hit me."
 
Simon Peter says here that if you want to love life and see good days, then don't retaliate. Just say something kind. When somebody says something ugly about you, then you say something sweet about them. When somebody fusses at you, then you just be sweet to them.
 
When people fire at you, it may be that there are other things going on that you don't even imagine or dream.
 
If you want to love life, then be Christ-like in your attitudes. Be Christ-like in your actions.
 
Verse 10 says, "For he that will love life, and see good days," number one we need to, "let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile," that is, be careful of your words and the things you say.
 
Verse 11 says, "Let him eschew evil," that is, avoid evil. Be careful of the things you do. Then he says, "And do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it." Be careful of the things you think. This will bring peace. If you want to love life, then you have to be careful about your relationship with those who share your faith.
 
He moves on and in verse 12 he points out that the Lord is looking. "For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous." 
 
"For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers, but the face of the Lord." 
 
Do you know where it says that His ears are open unto their prayers? Literally the preposition there is "into." The ears of the Lord are into their prayers. That means that the Lord is interested in you, and when you pray He gets into your prayers. He gets into your life. The secret of loving life is to get the Lord in your life.
 
II. Those Who Scrutinize Your Faith.
 
If you want to love life you have to develop a right relationship with those who scrutinize your faith. We're not talking about your fellow Christians, your brothers and sisters in the Lord. Now, we're talking about those who are not saved, those who scrutinize your faith. He's talking about those who do not know the Lord, to whom you are a witness.
 
You are a witness to the lost. You say, "Oh, no. I'm not a witness. I don't ever tell anybody about Jesus." Yes, you are a witness. You are either a good witness or you are a bad witness. Those who do not know our Savior are scrutinizing your faith. They're checking it out.
Let me hit some things here that have to do with being a good witness. If you really want to love life, you need to learn to be a good witness to those who scrutinize your faith, those who are watching it.
 
He talks about your relationship to the Lord first in verse 15. It says, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts." That statement troubled me for a while. "Sanctify the Lord God." The word sanctify means consecrate. "Set apart the Lord God," in your heart. The thought to me was that that sounded impossible. That sounds contradictory. How can I sanctify God? That's like trying to say make water wet or make fire hot. 
 
What does it mean to sanctify the Lord God in your hearts? It means that every day of your life, if you really want to love life, you begin your day by enthroning Jesus as Lord in your life.
 
Did you know in every heart there is a cross and a throne? If self is on the throne of your heart, then Jesus is on the cross in your heart. But if you'll put self on the cross in your heart, you will enthrone Jesus on the throne of your heart. Every day set aside Jesus as Lord of your life. 
 
That's the key to witnessing. It's not your lips. It's the Lord. It's your relationship to the Lord. If you're not a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ right now, chances are the reason is because Jesus Christ has not been set apart as Lord of your life. Every day of your life acknowledge His lordship. Yield to His lordship and that day will be a day when you will love life and you will see good days.
 
 
He says in verse 13, "And who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?" In other words, chances are that if you just pursue that which is good, if you do that which is right, nobody is going to give you any problems. A lot of Christians create their own problems. If you are inconsistent in your life as a Christian, if you don't live the way you should live, if you are a reproach to the name of Jesus and to your church fellowship, no wonder they give you a hard time.
 
He goes on and says in verse 14, "But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake," if you are living a consistent life and then if they give you a hard time, "happy are ye; and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled." The word troubled means inward agitation. He's saying here that your life sets the stage for your witness with your lips. The testimony of your life, the way you are living prepares for the witness that you give.
 
Look at the witness. He says in verse 15, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts," and now he gets to the lips. He's talked about Jesus being Lord of your life. He's talked about your life. If they give you a hard time for righteousness sake, then don't worry about it.
 
Verse 16 says, "Having a good conscience, that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ." If you're not living the life you should live, then you ought to be ashamed. If you're living the life you should live, then it will make them ashamed. That's something, isn't it?
 
 
Then notice what he talks about, the witness of your lips, in verse 15. "And be ready always." Your witness to those who scrutinize your faith, first of all you should be ready to witness. Are you ready to witness? In other words, when the opportunity comes to be a witness, are you ready to do it?
 
We miss so many opportunities. I'm so thick headed sometimes. The Lord just lays an opportunity right there in front of me; and old thick headed me, it just goes right by and I miss it. 
 
He says, "Be ready." Are you ready? If you walked out of this building today and the Lord opened up a door for you to be a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ, are you ready to do it? Do you know how to do it? Can you be a witness for the Lord?
 
I heard about a man who was working at a job with some big equipment in a factory. He fell and was injured fatally. He was dying right in front of them. The people were gathered around, and the man said, "I'm dying and I'm unprepared to die. Is there anybody here who could tell me how to go to heaven? I'm about to die." There were several church members standing around and not a one of them could tell him how to go to heaven when he died.
 
My Life sealed my lips.
 
Do you know how to tell anybody how to go to heaven? You may have that opportunity in the morning. You may have it before this day is over. Be ready. Wake up every day and say, "Lord, help me to have eyes to see the opportunities that are mine." Be ready.
That's not all. He says, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." Be ready to give an answer. The word answer is the Greek word from which we get the word apology. But it doesn't mean apology in the sense that we use it. "Forgive me. I apologize for what I said." That's not the meaning here. 
 
When he says to be ready to give an answer and he uses the Greek word apology from which we get apology, it was a word that was used in a court of law. We use it in the Christian faith. We use the word apologetics. Are there any of you young people who picked up on that? Christian apologetics means a logical, clear, reasoned defense of the faith. Are you ready to give an answer to anybody who asks you?
 
Be ready. 
 
Be reasonable. Have a reasonable faith. Then he says in the last part of verse 15, "Give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness," that is, with gentleness, "and fear." That means reverence.
 
Colossians 4, verse 6, says, "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man."
 
Your witness doesn't have to be rude and crude. Some people think that witnessing is like Bible bushwhacking. They get a big old family Bible and just beat people over the head with it. That's not the way you witness for the Lord. You can woo more people to Jesus than you can bully to Jesus. 
If you will just live for the Lord, have a consistent Christian life, and then when the time comes for you to speak a reasonable, respectable word for your faith, it will have its impact on their life. He that will love life will see good days.
 
Let's bow our heads in prayer.