Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Lessons for Today’s Christians from 1 Peter

Tom Shepherd

1 Peter, Part 1

1 Peter, Chapter 2

1 Peter Ch. 3, Part 1

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Lord, we thank you for another chance to look at this beautiful book of 1 Peter.

We pray that you'll bless us, Lord, and that this message will speak to our hearts and will bless our Christian experience, in Jesus' name, amen.

We have 2 more days, Thursday and Friday, today and tomorrow, and we are talking about 1 Peter 3 today, and tomorrow we will talk about 1 Peter 4 and 5.

They are a little bit shorter and because of our time limits and what happened to us, we kind of have to push it together just a little bit.

We'll still get some takeaways from each of these chapters.

Okay, 1 Peter 3, the importance of 1 Peter 3.

1 Peter 3 has more written about it than any other section of the book.

Scholars, when they write about this book, they write more about this chapter than anything else.

Well, there's 2, because there's 2 passages.

Doesn't mean that they're simply the most important passages in the book, but they're passages that have attracted a lot of scholarly attention.

The section on the role of wives in 1 Peter 3, 1-6, which is a kind of counterculture, at least at first view, to what people in Western society are all about today.

And the section on Christ proclaiming to the spirits in 1 Peter 3, 18-22 that gets people scratching their head and saying, what in the world is Peter talking about?

So we're going to look, we'll talk about each of those passages.

We will talk about these 2 sections, But we will place them within their context, which helps us with the interpretation.

Now let me just say, when you come across a passage in the Bible that you don't understand, okay, let me give a little help maybe in terms of what should you do.

Well, the first thing you should do is pray.

Lord, your spirit is the 1 who gave these words.

Please send your spirit to help me understand your word.

Number 2, read the context, Read the verses around it, because those verses around it are part of its structure that help you to limit what the possible meanings could be.

Number 3, I recommend read good commentaries.

These are scholars who have thought a lot.

Sometimes there's stuff they'll say in there that we don't agree with.

You should read people that you don't agree with, because they'll keep you on your toes.

If all you do is read the people you agree with, you get lazy.

When I go to a professional meeting and I present a paper, I'll be presenting a paper on the ending of Mark, Gospel of Mark.

I'm a Mark scholar, so we have a group that I'm 1 of the co-chairs of in the Society of Biblical Literature, and I'll be presenting a paper.

Well, when I go and present a paper I want to hear from other people Well, it's nice if somebody says I liked your paper But I want to hear from them.

Because then I want to go home and fix it, you know, go home and make it better, bring out better arguments.

See, so the book of Proverbs says, as iron sharpens iron, so man sharpens man, you know, and it's true for ladies too, that You have to have people who oppose you to kind of help you improve your way of thinking.

Now, I will just give a little blurb here that there is a new commentary coming out.

You've probably seen or heard some about it.

It's called the Seventh-day Adventist International Bible commentary Now how many of you have the a copy of the old commentary?

All right, lots of good All right, that commentary was first published back in the 1950s.

That's a long that's what I was born that's a long long time ago And a lot has been done since then, a lot has been learned since then, and commentaries have gotten better since then as well.

So this new international Bible commentary, SDA Bible commentary, is written by Adventist scholars from around the world.

And let me tell you, the process of producing this has been a big job.

I'm on the executive committee, in fact, I'm their secretary, I keep good minutes.

And we have been at this for like 12 years now, working on this commentary.

You write the commentary, and we produced a series of guidelines on how you're supposed to write it.

You write the commentary, and then you send it to the general editor who sends it to 2 scholars to read through and critique All right 1 an Adventist and 1 a non-Adventist.

Yes, we want to hear what non-Adventists think about what we write Because they help us again to be sharper and what we're saying Okay, So then they come back and they send you those comments.

Then you go through your commentary and you respond to them and you fix things and so forth.

Then you send it back to the general editor.

Then he sends it to 2 more scholars for them to go through it, and then they send you their responses, and then you go through and you correct all that.

Then you send it in, then it can go to the executive committee, and they can tell you what they think needs to be changed.

Then it goes to Pacific Press and then their editors, their copy editors and people, and they send it back to you and say, this isn't clear, you've got to straighten this out.

And then finally once you've done all that, then it'll be published.

Yes, it's already coming out, and they'll probably produce 1 or 2 volumes per year.

The end product of this will probably be, my guess is somewhere between 15 and 20 volumes.

I wrote the MARC commentary, I'm just coming to the conclusion of that, and in a Word document it's 675 pages, about 250, 000 words.

But actually, it was a lot of fun to write.

And I wrote the introduction of the first 2 chapters on 1 Peter.

And that's not all the way through its process yet.

So, let's see if we can get this turned back on.

Well, I mean, they're coming out as they are, as the scholars get in the, and the editing process gets done.

Yeah, you've, you, you, you, the, the, the first volume that was published was the wisdom literature.

So it's Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes.

Then I think they have the 1 that includes 1 and 2 Kings is coming out soon.

And they have 1 of some of the epistles that's coming out I think also this year.

And hopefully Mark will be out next year, but we'll see.

All right, so we're gonna read now 1st Peter chapter 3 verses 1 to 7.

So if you have your Bible, let's take a look here and get that open to 1 Peter 3, verses 1 through 7.

I'm gonna have somebody read verses 1 to 3.

Ladies read the words to ladies, and a man reads the words to the man.

Wives, likewise be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe your chaste conduct, accompanied by fear.

Do not let your adornment be mere outward, arranging the hair wearing bold or putting on fine apparel.

Well, This is a passage that, shall we say, is a hot topic.

Oh yeah, I put a brand new battery in this.

I must have taken and left it on or something because it's died now so I'll try and get a new battery.

So the first part of verse 1 summarizes the instructions to wives and it is to submit to their husbands.

Now again this is the same term that was used of Jesus submitting to his parents.

Series

Lessons for Today’s Christians from 1 Peter

1 Peter Ch. 3, Part 1

Transcript

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