MY HEART – CHRIST’S THRONE – 1 Peter 3:15
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 21, 2013 under 2013 |
Preached Sunday, July 21, 2013 from 1 Peter 3:15 and various passages
Theme: What does it mean to sanctify Jesus Christ as Lord in our hearts?
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
In 1 Peter 3:15, the apostle Peter wrote to a group of Jewish Christians. They were suffering persecution for their faith in Jesus. But Peter wanted them to know that, if they were of the right frame of heart, their persecution for Christ would lead to an opportunity to testify of Him. And so, he wrote and told them;
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear . . .
When unbelieving people watched what was happening to these persecuted Christians, they were to see a remarkable hopefulness and peace and joy, and a love they had for their persecutors. And seeing that, they’d ask the reason for it. “How can you have such confidence and hope in the midst of such suffering?” And whenever that would happen, these suffering Christians were to be ready to give an explanation for the hope that was in them with gentleness and reverence.
You may have heard many sermons and lectures on how this passage teaches us to ‘be ready’ to defend our faith. Like me, you may have even read entire books about how it teaches us to ‘give a defense’ for our faith. But I don’t believe there has been enough said about how to do the first part of that verse—that is, how to ‘sanctify the Lord God in your hearts’. After all, the command to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us is dependent on there being a genuine ‘hope’ in us that can be seen and asked about. And as this verse shows us, the presence of that hope is dependent upon our having, first, sanctified the Lord in our hearts.
This morning, I ask that we consider what we need to know in order to do what it says, and to truly ‘sanctify the Lord God in our hearts’.
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Now; as I read this verse, you may have noticed your Bible translates it differently from mine. The translation I’m using has it that we are to sanctify ‘the Lord God’ in our hearts. Other translations have it that we are to sanctify ‘Christ as Lord’ in our hearts.
There’s certainly a sense in which either of those two variations would be speaking the truth. After all, our Lord Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. He is the eternal Son of God—one with the Father. But scholars who have made a careful study of the various ancient texts of the Greek New Testament tell us that the best and most reliable version of 1 Peter 3:15—the one most likely to be the original—is the one that points specifically to Jesus. We are to ‘sanctify Christ as Lord’. And so, that’s the understanding of this verse that I’m going to go with this morning. This verse instructs us to ‘sanctify’ Christ ‘as Lord’ in our hearts.
The word translated ‘sanctify’ simply means to ‘set’ something ‘apart’ as holy and sacred from all the rest. But we need to be very careful how we understand that. This isn’t suggesting that we—in any way—change Jesus Himself. He is already unspeakably holy. He is already ‘set-apart’ from all else. Our ‘sanctifying’ Him, as this verse instructs us, doesn’t make Him holier than He already is. Rather, it means that we change our way of relating to Him personally, and that we set Him apart from all the rest ‘in our own hearts’.
To ‘sanctify’ Christ ‘as Lord’ means that we recognize Him for who He already is, and—as it were—’enthrone’ Him in our inner-most being as Lord. We simply say, “Lord Jesus; my heart is Your throne! I acknowledge you as Lord, and ‘set You apart’ as such. Sit upon the throne and exercise complete lordship over me—over my words, over my thoughts, over my actions, over my treasure, over my very life! Be in me what You already truly are over this universe! Take Your rightful place within my inner-most being as absolute Lord and Master!”
You see; there are many professing Christians—perhaps many here this morning—who have prayed long ago to trust Jesus as their Savior. They were saved by Him, and have known Him for many years. He is a part of their lives. They even acknowledge Him as Lord. But they have not yet truly made Him Lord ‘in their hearts’. They have not yet removed themselves from the throne of the inner-most depths of their own being, and allowed Him to take His rightful place there instead.
And He will never take His place on that throne against our will. He will only sit in the place of prominence in our own hearts if we personally invite Him to do so. But until we have done so—and unless we learn to keep on doing so as an ongoing pattern of life—we will not exhibit the kind of peace and joy and hope in times of suffering that makes other people ask for an explanation. The “hope” that they are to ask about, you see, is a by-product of His lordship over our lives; and unless He has been truly ‘set-apart’ by us as Lord in our hearts, He cannot produce the kind of hope in us that attracts others to Himself.
How important it is, then, that we learn to sanctify Christ as Lord in our own hearts! May He teach us—each one personally—to truly make our own hearts His throne!
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Now; I’d like to share with you from various passages of Scripture this morning to help develop this whole idea. And the first way I’d like to develop it is by suggesting that we . . .
1. BEWARE OF ‘SUBSTITUTES’ FOR CHRIST.
There are certain ways that we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we have enthroned Jesus Christ in our hearts; when actually, we haven’t done so at all. One of the ways that we can deceive ourselves in this is through outward religious rituals. We can fool ourselves into thinking that if we observe the right religious ceremonies and rules and regulations, then Christ is in His proper place in our hearts—when in fact, our hearts are actually very far from Him.
In Matthew 15, we’re told of how the religious leaders of the Jewish people once confronted Jesus for not observing the religious rituals that they thought He should keep. It says;
Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”—then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:1-6).
In other words, He told them that they were actually placing their man-made religious traditions above God. And that’s when He said;
Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:
‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth,
And honor Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (vv. 7-9).
Please understand—religious rituals and traditions are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves. But they are very wrong and very self-deceiving when we think that we can set Christ on the throne of our hearts by merely keeping a bunch of man-made religious rules!
Another ‘substitute’ to beware of is pious displays—that is, outward actions and behaviors that make it simply appear before others that we have a spirituality that we don’t really possess. Jesus Himself warned us as His followers;
“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (Matthew 6:1-6).
“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (vv. 16-18).
Outward displays of ‘piety’ are no substitute for Christ’s genuine enthronement in our hearts.
Another ‘substitute’ to watch out for is a reliance on ‘experiences’. Now; I say this carefully; because spiritual ‘experiences’ aren’t a bad thing. In fact, when they’re a product of Christ’s lordship over our hearts and are the real thing, they’re wonderful! But we mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking that, if we have ‘experiences’ of some kind, it must meant that we have truly enthroned Jesus in our hearts.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that—on the day of judgment—many would come to Him who had ‘experiences’. But they would be in for a terrible surprise. He said,
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
There will be some people—”many”, in fact—who will be able to boast to the Lord of having remarkable ‘experiences’. But without a relationship to the Lord, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Mere spiritual ‘experiences’—even remarkable ones—are themselves no guarantee that Christ is truly enthroned in our hearts.
Nor is mere ‘association’ with Christians. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that Christ is truly enthroned in our hearts simply because we are in a church, or grew up in a Christian family, or hang around a lot with Christian people, and adopt all the outward forms and the talk and the habits of Christians.
Who could have hung around with greater associations than Judas? He was one of the twelve disciples. He was in the presence of the Lord Jesus for three-and-a-half years. But after Judas hanged himself, Peter said to the other disciples;
“Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus; for he was numbered with us and obtained a part in this ministry” (Acts 1:16-17).
He was numbered among the twelve. He had obtained a part in their ministry. But even the Lord Jesus Himself called Judas “the son of perdition” (John 17:12)—that is, “the son of destruction”. Merely being among Jesus’ other disciples, or even in the bodily presence of the Lord Himself, didn’t mean that Jesus was enthroned in Judas’ heart.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; we need to beware of thinking that things like these—a conformity to outward religious rituals and traditions, or displays of piety, or remarkable spiritual experiences, or even close associations with Christians—means that Christ has genuinely been sanctified as Lord in our hearts.
It’s terrible to be deceived by such things into thinking we have real intimacy with Jesus Himself.
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So then; after having considered the ‘substitutes’ that we need to beware of, how do we pursue the real thing? I’d like to go on now and suggest ways the Bible teaches us to . . .
2. ACTIVELY ‘SET HIM APART’ IN YOUR HEART.
Now; just as would be true with the things we just mention—the things we should beware of—I wouldn’t want to suggest that I’m about to give you a complete list of everything we should to do enthrone Christ and ‘sanctify’ Him as Lord in our hearts. But I believe there are certain basics. And one of the basics would be that we make sure that we love Him first. We sanctify Christ in our hearts when we place our love for Him above all other loves; and love Him most of all.
In the Gospel of Matthew, He told His followers;
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household’” (Matthew 10:34-36).
That means, of course that, sometimes, we must make a choice. Sometimes people will tell us, “Look; I don’t want anything to do with this ‘Jesus’ of yours. I don’t want to hear about Him. It’s either Him or me! Now which is it?” And when it comes to such choices—even with regard to the dearest people in our lives, we must choose to love Jesus above everyone and everyone else. He even went on to say;
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” (v. 37).
Please understand—that doesn’t mean that we aren’t to love our father or our mother or our son or daughter. We should love them deeply. But what Jesus means is that we must love Him and be devoted to Him more than even the most closest human relationships in our lives. That’s one way that we are to set Him apart as Lord in our hearts.
Another way is by making sure that we follow Him wherever He goes. We’re to go where He goes. We’re to commit ourselves to follow in His steps—wherever they may lead. We’re to imitate Him.
Jesus once said; “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also” (John 12:26)— and then added, “If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.” If we would ‘sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts’ in a way that pleases the Father, then we must walk in the path that He sets for us—even if the path seems hard, and contrary to the way the rest of the world is going. We must follow Him wherever He goes.
Now; very often, following Jesus will lead us the way of the cross. It will require that we die to self. It will require that we suffer for Him. And so, I would say that truly ‘sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts’ means that we must also be crucified with Him. That’s the way that the Bible itself puts it. In Galatians 2:20, the apostle Paul wrote;
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).
Jesus Himself even said that this must be so. He told His disciples;
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works” (Matthew 16:24-27).
If we are trying to live according to our own agenda at the same time as we try to live according to Jesus’ agenda, then He is not truly enthroned on our hearts. To truly ‘sanctify’ Him in our hearts as He desires, we must die to ‘self’. We must be crucified with Him.
We must also be sure to walk in moral purity with Him. He only places His holy feet on sinless paths. If we would truly ‘sanctify’ Him in our hearts, then we must turn from the sinful habits and practices that nailed Him to the cross and walk in holiness with Him. We must confess our sins to Him and turn from them. As the apostle John put it;
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us (1 John 1:5-10).
This, of course, doesn’t mean that we must first be sinless before He can truly be enthroned in our hearts. If that were the case, then none of us could ever sanctify Him in our hearts. But it does mean that, if we want Him to sit on the throne of our hearts, then we need to listen to the Holy Spirit when He points out sin in our lives, trust in the payment Jesus made for that sin on the cross, whole-heatedly confess that sin to Him, and turn from it. John goes on to say;
My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world (2:1-2).
What’s more, to truly sanctify Christ as Lord, we must keep His word. I have often been surprised by people who say they are ‘Christians’, but who don’t feel obligated in any way to keep His word. Jesus Himself once asked;
“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock” (Luke 6:46-48).
Keeping His word is how we show Him that we love Him. He said;
“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21).
In fact, that’s the identifying mark of a disciple. He said;
“If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed” (John 8:31).
And finally; I would suggest that if we would truly ‘sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts’, then we must continually abide in Him. That means that we live in constant, continual, daily dependency upon Him. We turn to Him for everything; and we trust in His strength as we seek daily to live for Him and serve Him. We consciously let our roots go down deep in Him and draw our life from Him.
He said;
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (John 15:1-8).
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So; I suggest to you that those are the sorts of things we must do if we would obey Peter’s command to us and truly ‘sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts’. That’s how we enthrone Jesus in our inner-most being. It’s not—as I say—and exhaustive list; but I do believe it touches on the basics.
And there’s one more area I’d like to touch on in all this. Once we have enthroned Jesus upon our hearts, we must then be careful to . . .
3. LET NOTHING IN THAT WILL ‘DE-THRONE’ HIM.
Once Jesus has accepted our offer to Him to take the throne of our hearts, we need to remember that He will not share that throne with anything else we might bring in. I don’t want to be irreverent; but His throne is never a two-seater. It must be Him and Him alone.
What sort of things might we bring in that would de-throne Him in our hearts? First of all, I would suggest that we must be on the alert against the fear of ‘man’. This is especially important in dark days such as ours; when the prevailing culture around us is hostile to our faith. Being overly worried about what other people think or say about our devotion to Jesus Christ, or allowing ourselves to be controlled by the threats people may make against us because of our faith, will move the Lord Jesus to relinquish the throne we have given Him. As Proverbs 29:25 says;
“The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe” (Proverbs 29:25).
So, don’t let yourself be afraid of people. Jesus Himself once said;
“But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. ‘And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.’ And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
Another thing that would displace our Lord from the throne of our hearts is a prideful spirit. In order for Jesus to take the throne of our heart, that heart must be humbled. Pride is what causes us demand that He move over so we can share the throne with Him.
In Isaiah 57:15, we’re told;
For thus says the High and Lofty One
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,
To revive the spirit of the humble,
And to revive the heart of the contrite ones (Isaiah 57:15).
In Micah 6:8, we’re told;
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8).
Friendship with the world is another thing that would de-throne Christ from His rightful place in our hearts. By that, I don’t of course mean that we should not be friendly to the people of this world. Rather, we mean that we are not to love the values and priorities of this world that are set against God and His holy ways.
The apostle John made this very clear when he wrote;
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).
Those things are hostile to our Lord. We can’t be on friendly terms with such things and ‘sanctify Christ as Lord of our hearts’ at the same time. James put it this way;
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? (James 4:4-5).
And finally, we will ‘de-throne’ our Lord from His rightful place in our hearts if we hold on to bitterness toward others. The apostle John wrote;
If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? (1 John 4:20).
Jesus will not bless our sanctification of Him in our heart if that heart is unforgiving toward others. In what we call ‘the Lord’s Prayer’, He taught us to pray that the Father forgive us as we forgive others; and then said,
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
So then; if we would ‘sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts’, then we must avoid the things that would cause Him to step down from the throne that we offer to Him—that is, placing the fear of man over Him, placing ourselves in pride next to Him, making friends with the values of this world that are hostile to Him, and holding on to bitterness in disobedience to Him.
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And dear brothers and sisters; I hope you can see how much of a priority it is that we consider these things. The world around us needs to hear about our Lord! They need to see that He is real in our lives. When they see a genuine ‘hope’ in us—a hope that prevails even when we are made to suffer for Jesus—then they will want to know more about Him.
That hope comes from Jesus living out His life in us. And He lives out that life in us only as we ‘sanctify Him as Lord in our hearts’. May He Himself teach us to beware of the substitutes for Himself, to actively ‘set’ Him apart in our hearts, and to avoid anything that would de-throne Him from His rightful place in us.
