Buried and Busy

in the last few weeks and shared
that perhaps there were times where either the quotes that
I use or some of the 50-cent theological words that I use
perhaps have a tendency to go over some people’s heads and
that perhaps I could adjust it down a bit. And so given the
passage at hand, you may think that given that counsel, I’m
disregarding my brother’s admonition by even preaching this passage.
I will tell you that it is one of the most difficult passages
that I’ve ever studied with so many different takes or interpretation. And in that sense, almost forces
me to be deeper than I would even like to be. In fact, even
Martin Luther was no great expert on this particular passage. It
is said, Martin Luther is quoted as saying about this very passage
before us today, he said, a wonderful text is this and a more obscure
passage perhaps than any other in the New Testament. So that
I do not know for a certainty just what Peter means. So if
you’ve been praying for me and you weren’t sure exactly why,
now you know. This is the passage that I’ve
alluded to for several weeks now, asking you to pray for me. So if you were actively praying
for me, I thank you. If you are one of those who is
very familiar with this passage, I’ve even given you a clue what
direction I’m heading when I entitled the passage, Buried and Busy. So that given your particular
perspective, you either have the privilege now to settle in
and relax and listen to the sermon, or you may depart given perhaps
your differing perspective on the passage. This is a doozy. And in order to really set it
back in its context, we need to go back to verse 13. Verse 13, where Peter started
in order to give the church another of a series of encouragements. Peter didn’t want them discouraged. He didn’t want them labored by
burdens of thinking what might happen to them, or how much worse
could it get, or poor me. He didn’t want them wallowing
in their own pity. And so, if you would, go back
to verse 13, where Peter began these encouragements. When he
said, and who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for
what is good? But even if you should suffer
for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. You may remember
that He said that you are to be assured. You are to remember
constantly who it is you serve. God is watching you. God has
placed you in service. God is sifting all of your varied
circumstances, even the trials, through His loving hands. Even
if you suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.
Be assured, Peter says, the smile of God awaits this difficulty
that you’re going through. And do not fear their intimidation
and do not be troubled. Be composed. Don’t let the world rattle you.
Don’t let them see you shaken by the circumstances that you
face. Be fearless, Peter says, in the face of opposition. Even if you should suffer for
the sake of righteousness, you are blessed and do not fear their
intimidation and do not be troubled. But sanctify Christ as Lord in
your hearts. And we spent no little time detailing
what that was talking about, what it means to sanctify Christ
as Lord in your hearts. It means to be devoted to Christ
and to be yielded to Him to such a degree, it is a submission
that issues forth proclamation. Where Peter says we are so submitted
to God and His plan, including the difficulties, including even
the trials, even persecution, we are so submitted that we cannot
keep silent. Always being ready, Peter says,
to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account
for the hope that is in you. That’s what the world lacks.
They lack hope. And when they see us enduring
what they cannot, they want to know why. And Peter urges them
to do so with gentleness and reverence. And finally, in this
great section of encouragements, Peter says, and keep a good conscience. Keep a good conscience. We talked
about the conscience and the function of it. And we talked
about what it is to maintain a good conscience. Not to let
the world issue forth unbiblical standards to us. Not to ignore
the God-given conscience and drift into sin. Keep a good conscience
so that even in the thing in which you are slandered, those
who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
For it is better.” And only a Christian can really
know and embrace this statement. When Peter says, it is better
if God should will it so that you suffer for doing what is
right rather than for doing what is wrong. Only the Christian
can know that. Only the Christian can truly
experience that and embrace that. with the vigor that Peter urged,
it must be embraced. It is better, if God should will
it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for
doing what is wrong. The whole reason that I took
you back through all of that is by way of review. In order
to set the context and establish that in your hearts and minds,
that unless you know that, you too, as many others have done,
will drift from the true meaning of the words in front of us today.
Now, Peter, in an attempt to encourage them, takes them to
the highest example, as we looked at several weeks running, the
highest example that he can take and that is Christ. Christ also
suffered. Look at verse 18. For Christ
also suffered. Christ died. for sins, once for
all, the just for the unjust, in order that he might bring
us to God. Suffering, Peter says, has purpose. And he takes us to Christ’s example. Not that we are going to suffer
in that same kind. But our suffering, too, has purpose
and meaning. And he takes us to the Savior.
We looked several weeks ago and for several weeks, leaving off
several weeks ago, At four benefits that accrue to the one who has
faith in Christ, we saw that Christ’s sacrifice was satisfactory.
It paid the penalty. It was sufficient. It was enough
to do so once and for all, not repeatedly as the Old Testament
sacrificial system demanded. It was substitutionary. It was
in our place. When Peter writes here, the just
for the unjust, he’s speaking of Christ on our behalf, your
behalf. And finally, Christ’s sacrifice
was not only satisfactory and sufficient and substitutionary,
but it was saving. It really did something. It solved
the greatest problem that mankind has ever faced, and that is his
alienation from a holy God. It saved us. And when it says,
when Peter says, in order that he might bring us to God, that
is the salvation that we now enjoy. We now enjoy not only
the privilege of prayer, but the free and confident access
to a holy God. And it is in that context that
we take on the remainder of this passage. When Peter wrote, he didn’t just
lay out Christ as having accomplished this grand thing called salvation. He wants us to understand the
breadth of the victory that Christ experienced. And that is what
the remainder of this whole passage is about. Even in all the depths
and shadows and obscurity, as Martin Luther called it, there
is great truth here. And we cannot, without cowardice,
avoid this passage. Look again at verse 18. For Christ also died for sins
once for all the just for the unjust in order that he might
bring us to God. Having been put to death in the
flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he also went
and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison. who once
were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days
of Noah during the construction of the ark in which a few, that
is, eight persons were brought safely through the water. That’s not the only difficult
passage, and you probably even see an even more difficult passage
on the horizon, so you can keep praying for me. One pastor said that the emphasis
here on Christ’s victory was intended to point believers back
to that great reminder that is carried through as a continuing
strain throughout this book. To remind believers that the
troubles of this present time are temporary. that victory is
on the horizon, it is sure and certain because Christ has triumphed. You know, the tendency is for
us to celebrate Easter as we did last week, and then to get
right back about muddling about our circumstances the following
week. I think it’s in God’s providence
that we come back to this and we realize that the resurrection
was a victory, but that wasn’t the only victory. And it isn’t
the only occasion in which we celebrate and rejoice in the
victory that Christ accomplished. The theme of the passage in front
of us isn’t an urge or a plea by Peter to get us to follow
or to emulate Christ. It is to get us to ponder and
to worship at the victory over evil which Christ accomplished
in His death on the cross. Peter basically here is encouraging
his readers by reminding them of Christ’s victory over evil. And it’s a great, great thought. What I want to look at this morning
is Jesus Christ’s entombment ministry. You say, well, I’m
unfamiliar with that. I’m familiar with the Sermon
on the Mount and I’m Familiar with his Galilean ministry, and
I’m familiar with some of the other ministries that Christ
had. I’m unfamiliar, however, with the entombment ministry. This is for you, then. Because
while Christ in his body was buried, I believe that this passage
lays out for us that Christ was very active. Did Christ went
about and conducted an ongoing ministry of sorts? And I believe
that’s laid out for us in verse 18. First of all, I want to look
at the occasion of this ministry. When? When did it occur? Christ also died for sins once
for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring
us to God, having been put to death in the flesh. There are
many that have suggested that the resurrection is a hoax and
they come at the resurrection with all kinds of arguments.
And if they can only dismantle the resurrection, that would
do it. And one of those arguments, you
remember, is the swoon theory. That Jesus didn’t really die. That He was merely either faking
it or that He was just faint. And they laid him in the tomb
and then he, you know, after some rest, woke and came back
to life normally. Some have sought to make the
resurrection null and void by stating that Christ never really
died. That’s not what Peter believed.
Peter, an eyewitness to the whole thing, says Christ died for sins
once for all that He might bring us to God. And then he points
us back and says, having been put to death in the flesh, he
leaves absolutely no room for ambiguity there. Jesus Christ
in His physical body was killed, murdered. On the cross, Jesus
Christ in His physical life ceased. You remember the scene on the
cross. Those who were crucified by an innate desire, regardless
of their crime, regardless of how much they may have even acknowledged
their desert of death. There was an innate desire to
prolong life and what criminals on the cross would do would be
to elevate themselves, standing on the nail driven through their
ankles. They would elevate themselves
in order to gasp for breath to prolong their life. And that
is why the two thieves on the cross, crucified next to Christ,
had their legs broken. The Roman soldiers came and did
that as an act of hastening their death. And when they came to
Christ, they didn’t need to do that. Why? Because he was already
dead. Christ was put to death in the
flesh. And Peter says it almost offhand. It isn’t even his main point.
He just acknowledges that Christ was really and truly dead. But he also acknowledges a different
equation, that He was made alive. And I almost preach this. I was
so tempted to preach this as a resurrection passage, but I
don’t believe the further I looked at it, I don’t believe it’s a
passage about the resurrection at all. That little word, those little
words made alive in the spirit lend themselves, they certainly
lend themselves naturally to the conclusion that this passage
is talking about the resurrection of Christ and what a joyous occasion
it was. made alive in the Spirit. And the suggestion is that it
is the effective action of the Holy Spirit here who is the motivating
force of the resurrection. And you know what? That much
is true. We don’t have an argument with that. Romans 1.4, He was
declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from
the dead according to the Spirit of holiness. We know that the
Holy Spirit was attendant there. We know that the Holy Spirit,
as part of the divine action there in the tomb, raised Christ
from the dead. We don’t have a problem with
that. But that’s not what Peter’s talking about. Romans 8, 11 says
it, too, and you could say, well, here’s all this evidence. If
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in
you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life
to your mortal bodies through his spirit, which dwells in you.
That’s true. I don’t discount that during
the time of the resurrection, the Holy Spirit was essential
to the resurrection of Christ. The problem is you cannot translate
this passage that he was made alive by the Spirit. Because the definite article
isn’t there in the Greek. It was literally made alive or
quickened or enlivened in spirit, not the spirit. There is no definite
article. And that suggests that Peter
was referring not to the Holy Spirit, but that the Lord was
spiritually alive even while his body was dead. In contrast,
the contrast that’s set up there is that his body lay dead while
his spirit is alive. Quickened in the Spirit is not
and cannot be a description of the resurrection. I don’t deny
the resurrection. I preached just last Lord’s Day
the resurrection. I believe in the resurrection.
I don’t believe that it’s here in this particular passage. The
spirit here doesn’t refer to Christ’s resurrection body because
If the resurrection body is only a spirit, then where is the resurrection? They never really killed Christ’s
spirit. The resurrection wasn’t just
a spiritual reality. It was a physical reality. It
was Christ’s body that was raised. That’s what the miracle was.
It was God giving life again to a dead being. One said it this way, Christ
died in body and was quickened in soul or spirit. Peter does
not mean that the spirit had died. The divine spirit of Christ,
which was in the prophets, cannot have been subject to dissolution. Christ’s spirit could not have
been killed or diminished in any way. We can hardly suppose
the meaning to be that his human spirit was first destroyed and
then recreated at the resurrection, for there is no trace of any
idea in the Bible. The next verse shows that in
Peter’s view, there were spirits of some sort alive to whom he
would go and preach. Are we to suppose that there
are all these dead people who have their spirits alive and
in some kind of prison, but Christ’s spirit, meanwhile, had to be
killed and then brought back to life? There’s nothing in the words
here that presents or suggests some kind of interval between
the killing and the enlivening. One was dead and one was alive
at the same time, at the same moment. And so another interpretation
of this deep passage suggests that this occasion points to
something that took place in that brief period between Christ’s
death and his physical resurrection, that Christ was active, that
he was buried, but he was busy during those hours in the tomb. Christ was put to death in the
flesh really and truly, but his spirit remained always alive. And Peter’s point here was that
even though Jesus’ body was dead, he was alive and active in his
spirit. How so? This event, as I have said, took
place between the crucifixion and the resurrection after the
Lord’s death and before he is resurrected in the flesh. In the physical realm, he was
the victim of a murder. He really and truly died. That
is Peter’s point here at the outset. But this quickening of
spirit, this enlivening of spirit in that part of his nature that
belonged to the supernatural sphere was very much alive. Christ’s Spirit during the burial
of His body was quickened, enlivened, motivated, if you will, to a
special kind of ministry. This is Jesus’ inner person. This is His eternal Spirit which
has always been alive. And so that was the occasion
of this ministry. It is that occasion from when
the Son was darkened by clouds and Christ died to the time at
the tomb on that first Sunday when Christ was raised. What
did he do? Jesus Christ’s entombment activity,
we see not only the occasion of his ministry, but the purpose
of his ministry. What did he do? Look at verse
19. having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive
in the spirit in which he went and made proclamation in which
that is in spirit. He went in spirit and made proclamation. Now, there are, as you might
assume, several interpretations of this. Some said that What
they’re referring to here, what Peter’s referring to is just
kind of in our own idiom, spiritually speaking. Or just kind of some vagary that
suggests that in some way, shape or form, Jesus Christ has had
a ministry down through the ages, as we’ll see here in a moment. There’s another interpretation,
though, that says, and this is absolutely the way that I lean,
it is in spirit as opposed to in the body. In other words,
outside the realm of the physical body in the spirit world, Christ’s
human spirit was disengaged for a time with his physical body,
which lay in the tomb. And it refers to what occurred
with his living spirit while his dead physical body lay there.
in the tomb. Now, I see your furrowed brows
and I understand that. Because this is a passage that
most of us would just as soon read past and move on and let
the Lord explain it to us along with Martin Luther in eternity. But I think we can get there. What was the message What did Jesus preach when he
went and made this proclamation, whatever it was? You know, the bottom line is
it depends largely on the interpretation of who the spirits are, who the
audience was to which Jesus went to make this proclamation. And
we’ll do more about that in a minute. What was the substance of the
preaching? We’re not even given a hint. The word literally means to publish
or proclaim like a town crier. In the olden days, they didn’t
have the Internet. They didn’t have the five o’clock news. They
didn’t have the newspaper. And they would have a crier that
would go through the town and herald or proclaim the news of
the day. We don’t know exactly what Christ
said, we just know that he went about as a herald, he went about
to proclaim Some news, some message. Since the spirits in this passage,
as we get ahead of ourselves, are said to have been disobedient
and in consequence, they are in prison, some of belief that
Christ went to proclaim to them the certainty of their damnation.
Or that Christ went to proclaim to them some kind of gospel message,
some second chance. Some have believed that because
it says prison, they take it so literally that somehow Christ
in the Spirit went and preached in the prisons, the physical,
literal prisons of the day. Christ’s work of redemption was
already accomplished, but it still needed to be proclaimed.
And that’s what this is about. Even to the disobedient angels
who could not in the real sense of the term repent. We’ll get there in a moment.
We’ll come back to his heralding, what it is he preached. But first,
as I said, you’ve got to figure out to whom he’s preaching. And
so the third point in Christ’s entombment activity is not only
the occasion of this ministry and the purpose of it, which
was simply to preach, but the audience of this ministry. Look again at verse 19. in which
he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison
who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting
in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark in which
a few, that is, eight persons were brought safely through the
water.” There, that helps. Here too, there have been a variety
of interpretations, two primary historical interpretations. of
Christ’s preaching. It says that he went and made
proclamation when he said when it says in which it points to
the spirit that either somehow Christ spiritually went and preached
through Noah to the people of Noah’s day. Which is really a
curious interpretation. The spirits there are imprisoned
because somehow they rejected Christ preaching while they were
on the earth. That’s the thought. And that Christ spiritually or
somehow mystically, even though not actually, went and preached
to these people of Noah’s day. That’s the actual one of the
strong interpretations of the passage. that Christ can somehow
be foreseen in all the activities of Noah, crying out to the disobedient
of his day, crying out to the sinners to repent and to get
on the boat, as it were. And so the passage is said to
be to refer to Christ preaching through Noah to those who lived
while Noah was building the ark. And according to this view, Christ
even wasn’t personally present, but he spoke by means of the
Holy Spirit through Noah. That these spirits aren’t literally
in prison, but they refer to those who were snared or spiritually
in bondage, spiritually imprisoned in sin in Noah’s day. And we
use that kind of language even now. Paul does. By that which
a man is overcome, that he is enslaved, right? And that part
of it is true. There are many of us, all of
us were in some degree or another enslaved to our passions, our
sins. That’s what Christ liberated
us from. And in a sense, that’s true, but that’s not what’s being
spoken of here. Christ, through Noah, preached
repentance to these people. That’s the suggestion. The only problem with that is
it says that Christ went and preached. It doesn’t say that Christ intonated
through Noah or that Christ worked through the spirit, through Noah,
Christ went and preached. This prison. was a term, not a term used in
relation to sinful human beings after death, because if you take
that, you basically have to begin to believe in purgatory. These sinful beings that are
in prison are not humans, as we’ll see in a moment. Christ
really and truly went to these beings and he preached to them. The second interpretation, and
this is obviously the way that I drift, concludes that the Lord
Jesus wasn’t idle during his entombment, and it refers to
what the Lord Jesus did while his body lay dead and buried.
That much we’ve already established. This makes this phrase, made
alive in the spirit, it gives sense to what we previously didn’t
understand. What does it mean to be made
alive in the spirit? It says that Christ was active,
living and active in His Spirit during those days. And that His Spirit went and
engaged these spirits. The spirits were in prison at
the time when Christ went and preached to them. And in doing so, Christ gave
proof to the new powers that he had in this spiritual action
by going off to the place or the state or the condition where
these disembodied spirits were. You can call it hell, you can
call it whatever you will, but Jesus Christ in his spirit went
there and he heralded a message. Who are the spirits? Now, you might have already concluded
that there are a couple of different interpretations. Some have said
that these were men who were once disobedient and easily to
go to the passage and to suggest that they were men of Noah’s
day who constantly plugged their ears and ran afoul of God’s law
and refused to heed Noah’s call to repentance. One said so eloquently, our Lord
preached to the whole class of spirits in prisons of all times
and all races. Are we to suggest or are we to
understand by this suggestion that Christ went to hell to preach
to every person who’s ever died outside of Christ in order to
give them some kind of second chance? Paul said it is appointed for
man once to die. There are no second chances. Who are these spirits then? Are
they human or are they angelic? There are those that insist that
these are human spirits that somehow have, in some strange
way, the gospel preached to them, even though there is absolutely
no evidence that any of them ever responded. Can you imagine the scene of
those who know the reality of hell and eternity? and separation
from God to all of a sudden again be given some incredible second
chance at the gospel, another run at it. Can you imagine the
flood of response? Some suggested it. They said
the spirit referred to here are those to whom Noah preached.
And in spite of their disobedience, Christ, after his innocent and
sacrificial death, went in spirit and preached the gospel to them.
A gospel. Another said it this way, the
statement regarding the long suffering of God serves to heighten
the guilt of the poor sinners to whom Christ preached in prison.
Now we pity them. Not only did they die a judicial
death for their extreme sensuality, not only did they disobey an
isolated call to repentance from Noah, but continuously through
all the time of building the ark, they went on refusing to
listen. And now, now they’ve been given
this special chance. If you only act now. These spirits aren’t human beings. If so, Peter would have used
the Greek word likely for souls, not spirits. The New Testament
never uses the word spirit to refer to people, except in rare
qualified cases. And this is not one of them.
The word spirit is a phrase used of angelic beings, both good
and evil. Hebrews 1.14 speaks of ministering
spirits. In Luke’s Gospel, chapter 10,
verse 20, Luke records, Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that
the spirits are subject to you. He wasn’t talking about the people
in the various towns that the apostles visited. He was talking
about the demons. The devil’s henchmen. The whole
world of demons is regarded as alienated from God because of
the rebellion of the heavenly hosts. The majority view of what
godly biblical scholars, when they look at this passage in
our day and age, it describes Christ’s proclamation of victory
to these beings, that He went to them not gloating in some
kind of crass show, But he went to them and he declared, I am
risen. I am alive. You have no victory
over humanity. I have victory over death. These angels, according to Genesis
6, had intimate relations with women and they were imprisoned
because of their sin. We’ll outline that in a moment. And so when
Peter says to the spirits now in prison, he talks about an
actual place of imprisonment. These are beings, angelic beings,
spirits who are bound and in prison for a time. And it was to these bound demons
that Christ went to announce his triumph. The book of Revelation
calls this prison. It has a name. It’s called the
bottomless pit. They said that’s where these
demons are. That’s where they belong. And that is their current
abode. Look down, if you would, at verse
20, when it begins to characterize these beings, these spirits,
it says who once were disobedient. And for God, that’s all it took.
It doesn’t mean that this occasion was their only sin. It just means
that on this occasion, God saw what they did and enough was
enough. And this occasion was enough
for God to bottle them up and send them to an eternal prison
forever. Who once were disobedient when
the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah. You see,
ever since the beginning the earliest pages of Scripture.
Satan and his demons. There was this ongoing conflict,
right? Ongoing conflict between the
angelic forces of good and evil. We see it in Job, in the opening
chapters of Job, where Satan goes about. We see it throughout the Scripture,
even continuing to the New Testament. where we are called to take up
the shield of faith so that we would be able to extinguish all
the flaming fires and flaming arrows of the evil one. There
is a spiritual realm and it is active. It is living and it is
active. And it is those spirits to which
Peter refers. After the devil tripped up Adam
and Eve and caused them to sin, God told the evil one that he
himself was going to eventually be destroyed by the Christ, the
Messiah, that he would triumph. But Satan didn’t give up. Satan
didn’t just run and roll over. Satan dug in his heels and began
a long series of battle maneuvers against Christ in his kingdom,
didn’t he? He sought to prevent that by
killing off the Jews, by the destruction of the messianic
line. He thought that if he could only wipe that out, he could
wipe out Christ himself. And when all that didn’t work,
he even attempted to kill the Christ child, the baby through
Herod. After that, when that didn’t
work, he tried to tempt Christ himself, that if he could only
get Christ to trip up, then this whole plan of redemption of God’s
was null and void. And when that didn’t work, he
incited the Jewish leaders to thwart Christ and dog his every
step and ultimately to capture him and kill him. And so you can imagine. The demons,
even though they’re in this bottomless pit, they were having a victory
party. And Christ goes to them not to gloat, but to declare,
to herald the fact of his victory, that he had conquered death,
that God wins, that Satan is vanquished. I mentioned this account in Genesis
6. speaking about those who once
were disobedient. And he points to this disobedience
as a specific occasion, the final straw, as it were. What kind
of disobedience had such tremendous consequences? Peter’s readers
would have been aware. They would have understood what
he was alluding to by the specific sin that was
committed by these demons that now found themselves in prison.
It occurred in Genesis six, one through four, and it gives an
account of that demonic disobedience. Listen to it. It came about when
men began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters
were born to them that the sons of God saw that the daughters
of men were beautiful. The sons of God isn’t referring
to men, and this isn’t a romantic tale that unfolds. The sons of
God refers to angelic beings that you and I would probably
more accurately call demons. These demons occupied eventually
human flesh in the form of men, and they took on wives. The story
goes on. They saw that the daughters of
men were beautiful and they took wives for themselves, whomever
they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit
shall not strive with man forever because he is also his flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall
be one hundred and twenty years. The Genesis six account here. Details. A sin that was so horrible
in God’s eyes that at that minute, He said, that’s it. They had tainted the God-ordained
institution of marriage and they had procreated and they had created
this mutant race. Demonic forces. It is the first occasion in all
of Scripture where true demonic possession is even intimated.
The sons of God took for themselves daughters of men. This led God to the conclusion
further on in Genesis Genesis 6, 5 reads, the Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great on the earth. It’s one of the
great understatements in all of Scripture. It couldn’t have
been any worse. And yet you read how mildly that
flows. The Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was
sorry that He made man on the earth, and He was grieved in
His heart. And the Lord said, I will blot
out man whom I have created in the face of this land, from man
to animals to creeping things to birds of the sky, for I am
sorry that I have made them. This is the genesis of the flood. This is the beginning of the
end of creation, unless God intervenes. Genesis 6 goes on to say in verse
11, the earth was corrupt in the sight of God. The earth was
filled with violence. God looked on the earth. Behold,
it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their
way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, the end
of all flesh has come before me. For the earth is filled with
violence because of them and behold, I am about to destroy
them with the earth. This was for God the last straw. Satan, his lie is nothing new. He’s always said that if man
can, if he’s open to the spirit world, it continues to this day,
doesn’t it? When you have palm readers and
ball readers and all kinds of other readers. And if it’s this
constant invitation into the spirit world, isn’t it? Satan’s
always said, you know, if he can that if we’re open to the
spirit world, we can circumvent all these other things of God, judgment and the
like. False religion’s always taught
it. It continues down to our day.
But in spite of Satan’s involvement in his promises, Those angelic
beings, those spirits of Genesis 6, even though demonized, they
were only human beings. They could be killed and the
spirits could be imprisoned. And that is exactly what took
place. God sent an overwhelming flood that destroyed all the
creation, the animals and Noah’s family notwithstanding. And the spirits were dealt with
separately. In Peter’s passage here, what
happens is that the Lord proclaims His triumph over Satan. And Peter
tells his people because he wants them to know the great victory
that Christ has accomplished. It isn’t just a rising from the
dead, although that is the great miracle of the resurrection.
It is the fact that Christ has triumphed, period. Christ has
triumphed over everything. Christ has triumphed over good
and evil. Christ has triumphed over men
and nations. Christ has triumphed over death.
Christ has triumphed over Satan himself. What did Jesus preach? He heralded
not salvation, Because contrary to Scripture, which everywhere
states that man’s death is irreversible, there are no second chances,
nor is any mention made of conversion of any of those spirits, as I
said, nor is the phrase here that he preached the gospel.
He didn’t preach the gospel. It says that he went and heralded.
He made announcement of his finished work. One pastor said that this passage
suggests that Christ purposefully went to an actual place to make
a triumphal announcement to captive beings before he arose on the
third day. There was no spiritual thing
that God did through Noah. Another said it this way in closing,
Christ preached, he heralded his triumph. In the ancient world,
heralds would come to town as representatives of rulers to
make public announcements. This passage is not saying that
Christ went to preach the gospel. He went to proclaim his victory
to the enemy by announcing his triumph over sin and over death
and over hell and over demons and even over the devil himself. People, Christ’s victory was
far greater than just arising physically. Christ was granted
victory over all. Everything. All were placed beneath
His feet. Let’s worship that Christ. Let’s
pray. O merciful God, these deep words
ring with truth. that You are alive and that You
are in charge. You are sovereign over all. Be glorified, Christ, we pray,
in our lives and in our worship and all that we do, because You
have finished. You have won. We pray these things in Jesus’
name, Amen. so