"Finish Well" - 1 Peter 3:8-12 (Larry Malament)

Sermon Quotes:

Edmond Hiebert: “An individual may have enough self-restraint not to resort to active violence, but may yield to the less violent urge to use insolent and abusive language against another who has injured him. To render ‘railing with railing’, is to think to wash dirt off with dirt.” 

Edmund Clowney: “Christians are free from vindictiveness because they trust God’s justice; but they are also free to bless because they know God’s goodness. It is not only in the world that Christians must repay evil with good; they must do it in the church, too.”

Edmund Clowney: “Peter cites the psalm to describe the blessing of life to which Christians are called. Those who practice love of compassion, refrain from speaking evil, and pursue peace are blessed by the Lord. His eyes are on them; he hears their prayer. The blessing that they inherit reaches to eternal life, but it also fills this life with ‘good days’. Peter affirms this although he knows that days of suffering will come (3:14). Yet the blessing of the Lord will make days of suffering ‘good days’ in his favor. A ‘good day’ in a television beer commercial pictures friends imbibing in the sunset at the fishing-lodge. ‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ they say. A ‘good day’ in the book of Acts shows Paul and Silas in a Greek prison, their backs bleeding and their feet in stocks. They are singing psalms at midnight – perhaps Psalm 34! Silas, now sitting beside Peter, would remember with him the word of Jesus, ‘Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”