Be sympathetic, compassionate and humble (I Peter 3:8-22)
David Sullivan - August 17, 2008
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Alternate title: “Spiritualise Me”
In 2004 the film “Supersize me!” was released. It featured the commonly called “junk food” that makes up the diet of popular culture. We often want to be spiritualised rather than to walk a spiritual life. We feast on the spiritual “junk food” of instant answers and fast spiritual solutions. We sometimes see spiritual characteristics as hats to put on for different occasions rather than our actual spiritual DNA makeup. We live in an age of the “1 minute Christian” or “The Bluffers Guide to Being Spiritual.”
Mankind has always looking for shortcuts to spirituality –
Eve in the Garden (Genesis 3:4-6) was told “Eat and you shall be as God”
1. Compassionate / sympathy – (v.8) is actually the Greek word sun-pathos from which we get the English word “sympathy”. “Being of one mind” is the Greek word “homophron” to have the same feelings – You hurt, I hurt. You laugh, I laugh. It is “love as brothers.”
Jesus was moved with compassion (Matthew 9:36; 14:14)
Our good works is to “destroy the works of the Devil (Acts 10:38)
“Our job is to bless” (The Messenger – v.9)
2. Humility - (v. 10,11)
The Christian life is a disciplined (taught) live.
Enoch (Hebrew – disciplines) walked by faith.
To please God we must walk by faith. Enoch did and he was not.
Faith comes by hearing, believing and attaching ourselves to God’s Word.
It bridles our tongue / lips (James 3:3-6) and puts His Word there (Isaiah 6:6,7)
(v. 12)
The great myth of this age is that God is not there and neither does He hear nor see (Psalm 14:1; Matthew 24:37-39) .
This is why we sin and why the world rejects Him.
This is true humility (Hebrews 11:6):
- a. Realising that there is a God
- b. Realising that He is over us
- c. Realising that He wants our good (v.15)
This, then, gives us a heart-inspired reason for life and an answer for those who ask us
(I Peter 3:15).