Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How You Live Matters | New Testament | 1 Peter 3

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Your life can make the teaching of Jesus attractive to other people. Do you make people want to believe in Jesus? Do you have relationships with people who don't know Jesus? In today's episode, Keith shares why the way you live is important. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Peter 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I want to talk about one verse in 1st Peter chapter 3. It's verse 15. Here's what Peter writes. But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who ask you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect. Behind that phrase to give a reason for the hope that's in you is the Greek word apologia. From that word we get our term apologetic. But this kind of apologetic isn't the feeling you have when you do something wrong. No, this apologetic is a defense of the faith. Defending the faith or apologetics is a good thing. But I think we need a paradigm shift in how we think about Christian apologetics. Stephen Covey talks about a mini-paragetic.

paradigm shift he experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York City. He describes people sitting quietly, some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed. The man sat down next to Covey and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling and running back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people people's papers. It was very disturbing. Yet the man sitting next to Stephen Covey did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. Mr. Covey could not believe that the man could be so insensitive

to other passengers that he would let his children run wild and do nothing about it. Everyone else in the subway car felt irritated too. So finally, Covey turned to the man and said, sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you could control them a little more? The man lifted his gaze as if to be aware of the situation for the first time. Then he said softly, oh, you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think. And I guess they don't know how to handle it either. It's easy to get locked into a certain perspective on a situation, to have a certain perspective on life and hold to it fiercely without ever realizing that that perspective is wrong. You see, sometimes we need a paradigm shift,

a new way of seeing things to help us shake off inaccurate perceptions and grasp the truth. So when Stephen Covey got all the information, it radically changed his perspective on how he saw the children's behavior in that subway car. Well, we need a new way to see apologetics, a new way to defend the faith. The traditional approach to apologetics is through making arguments or building a case. And there are a variety of good arguments that Christian theologians and philosophers have put forth to answer questions ranging from the existence of God to the resurrection of Jesus. And those arguments help defend important Christian truths. My problem with them, and the reason I think we need a paradigm shift, is that I don't think the average Christian can remember all the

arguments. They can't remember all the elements of the case. And I don't think the average non-Christian really wants to hear an intellectual case for why they should believe. So apologetic arguments are really important and helpful in some situations, but for most of us, we need a new way of thinking about how to defend or how to explain our faith, how to make our faith compelling to our friends and neighbors and coworkers. In 1st Peter, we've seen that one of the most compelling arguments for Christianity is how we handle suffering and respond to trials and difficulties. Our life is the best apologetic, the best defense, the best explanation we have. In many instances, our life will prove the faith more than building

an intellectual case. Here's how Paul talks about this in Titus chapter 2. He said, then they will make the teaching about God, our Savior, attractive in every way. Our life can make the teaching of God attractive to other people. God teaches us that there is amazing spiritual power in a life well lived. See, God's major plan to spread the faith is through person-to-person relationship, one person influencing another person. Who influences you on the most important issues in your life? I mean, imagine a total stranger calls you out of the blue and says, hey, you need to refinance your house and I'm the guide to do it with. How much? How much many of you're going to sign up on the phone? Or suppose somebody you've never met walks up and says to you,

I know the person you should spend the rest of your life with. It's my cousin. And I've set up a blind date for the two of you this Friday night. That's the day he gets out on parole. You can trust me. He's the one for you. Are you going to go ahead with that? Or what about parenting? Whose advice do you take there? See, when it comes to what really matters to us, finances, relationship, future, family, we don't usually put ourselves in the hands of total strength. We don't usually put ourselves in the hands of total strength. We listen to people that we trust. Friends influence friends. And if this is true in general, and I think it for sure is, then it's most especially true when it comes to the ultimate issues in life, our spiritual destiny. If people are going to become lifelong followers of Jesus, for the most part, not all the time, but for the most part, they will not be reached by strangers.

They won't be reached by people on TV. They won't be reached by radio ads. They'll be reached primarily through family and friends. That's how it's been happening for 2,000 years from the Book of Acts right to our present day. But here's a problem. Far too many churches are filled with Christians who don't have significant relationships with people who are far from God. Joe Aldrich has been writing on this topic, and he said after being a Christian for two years, the average Christian no longer has a significant relationship with a person who's not a Christian.

If you just spend one minute thinking about how Jesus lived, you quickly realized that he spent a lot of time with people who are far from God. He loved being around people who didn't understand his message, people who rejected his teaching, people who lived by very different moral standards. And Jesus didn't just love them because that was his job. No, I mean, he really liked them. He enjoyed being with them.

He sought them out and they sought him out. You just couldn't keep Jesus and lost people apart. That was his plan for his followers. It's just about that simple. When you love Jesus, you'll love the people that he loved. You'll want to spend time with the people he spent time with. You'll be committed to the same mission he was committed to. So First Peter says that we should give a reason for the hope that is in us

and that we should do it out of gentleness and respect. See how we live matters. Jesus says in Matthew 5, in the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven. People can't see God. So they're going to look at our life to understand what he's like. This is a reminder that people are always watching us. And what they see will either attract them to Christianity or push them further away. There is a lot of power in a life well lived. In 1994, President Clinton invited Mother Teresa to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Now, President Clinton was famously known as being pro-choice on abortion, and Mother Teresa is fiercely pro-life. But Mother Teresa had given her life to serve the poor and the indigent all around the world. And when she got up to speak, she went off on the pro-choice policies. With the president sitting right there, she did not pull punches. She gave a great explanation of how God calls all people to be pro-life. When she sat down and the president was to follow her, what does he say? How does he argue with Mother Teresa? What President Clinton said is that there is power in a life well-lived.

In other words, he didn't try to argue with her. You can't argue with a life well-lived. if we want to explain what Jesus looks like, if we want people to understand who he is and come to faith in him, I think the place it starts, not necessarily a place it ends, but the place it starts is to live our life according to Jesus's words, to love him and to love our neighbor, because it is through that that he will attract people to himself.

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