Well, I am English, and we English love our sport. But we're not terribly good at it. In fact, that's my story. At school, I was particularly not good at sport. But for those of you who are not English — a good number of us here from a number of nations much better at sport than we are — let me just share with you what it's like to support England in sport.
For a start, we don't often win. Now, the reason for this is that we invented lots of the sports that are played around the world. We then export them to other countries and train people from other nations how to beat us at the games that we invented. Most of the English football teams are staffed by people who will play against us when it comes to playing internationally.
But on the rare occasion when England do win at sport, England supporters are made to pay for their loyalty. We're made to sweat. We are made to think, until right before the last minute, that we are about to lose — and then, only at the very last minute, is it turned around.
For those of you who watched the US Open Tennis Championships, this was what made Emma's performance so unusual. We didn't know what to do with her, because she won the tournament without having ever dropped a single set. This just does not happen.
Go back a few generations of tennis players, and England was represented by one Tim Henman. And when Tim Henman won at tennis, it went like this: he would lose a set six-love. He would lose a set six-love. He'd win six-five. He'd win six-five. And then it would be five-all, and it would go to match point and deuce, and match point and deuce, and match point and deuce — and after 45 minutes of that, he'd finally win two points in a row and win the match, by which point most of the spectators had had a heart attack giving up on him ever actually winning.
You see, we won, but we were made to pay for our loyalty.
That, friends, is what it feels like to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to feel like being six-nil down at half-time, and you're left wondering if this game is ever going to work and if you're backing the wrong team.
By the way, any Watford football supporters here? No? You see — well done! That was the one, wasn't it? A couple of weeks ago, wasn't it? Two — well, something like two-nil down, and it ended up winning at two — with two — five against Everton, wasn't it? The last five goals in the last ten minutes or something? That's what it's like.
You wonder, if you're a Christian, why you're backing the side. You're on six-nil down at half-time — this can't possibly go in your favour. Are you on the winning team?
There are two sides to that question. The first side of the question is: how do you know that Jesus Christ will win? If we're at half-time and he's losing six-nil, how do you know that he is actually going to win?
But then the second side to the question is: how do you know, if he does win, that you will be still loyally supporting him? So the side you're cheering on when the final whistle goes is the one that actually did win.
Well, we're going to look at those two questions together: how do we know that Jesus Christ will win? How do we know that he will be victorious, that he will be the champion? And how do we know that we will be on the winning side when that happens?
And we're going to look at that with the help of 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 19 to 22. We'll look at the two questions one at a time.
Jesus is Already Victorious
The first question was: how do we know that Jesus will win? And the answer is: Jesus is already victorious. Jesus is already victorious. This comes in verses 19 and 22 — the beginning and the end of that passage.
So he is talking about what do we do if life goes against us? What do we do if you suffer as a Christian? And he says in verse 18 that Jesus is your example. If we are called to suffer for him, we remember that before that happened, he suffered for us. And so we simply do for him what he has already done for us.
What happened next when he died? He wasn't just—it's no good if he's an example but a defeated example. If he's an example of defeat, that doesn't reassure anybody.
So what happened after he died? Well, says Peter in verse 18, he was put to death in the body, but made alive in the Spirit. Death was not the end.
But then what happens next? See, here's where it gets really interesting. You know it is — occasionally, you go to the cinema or you watch your film on the TV at home, and what the filmmakers like to do these days is to put a few extra scenes in with the credits at the end. So you, if you — kind of when the credits come on — you turn the telly off or you just, you know, pick up your popcorn cups and walk out, you miss the last bits they give you.
Well, Peter wants us to keep watching, because the camera is still rolling. After Jesus rose from the dead, there are two more scenes to come, and we really mustn't miss them.
So, Scene 1 comes in verse 19. And in that scene, Jesus announced his victory. Jesus announced his victory.
Let me read that — verse 19 again: "After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits — to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah."
And let's be honest — this is a tricky verse. There aren't many tricky verses in the Bible. Most verses in the Bible, the words on the page make perfect sense. That's not the tricky bit — yes, it always pays dividends to study carefully. Yes, the hard bit is living it out. But the actual words on the page aren't particularly difficult.
But there are a few tricky verses. I only mention that in general because I don't want a few tricky verses to put you off the regular habit of picking your Bible up and reading it — confident that God wants to talk to you, and he's not hiding.
But there are a few verses that people seem to find tricky, and this is one of them. Tricky, but not impossible. But because they're a bit tricky to understand what the words on the page mean, occasionally people latch on to those verses and they use them to build some really elaborate set of ideas — all hinged on one or two really tricky verses, despite the fact that the rest of the Bible is really clear that the idea someone's cooked up can't be right.
So, for example, take this verse here — verse 19. Okay, what people — some people like to do with this is to say: what Peter is saying is that after Jesus rose from the dead, he paid a visit to some people who had died many generations ago, and he preached the gospel to them. He told them that if they repented of their sins and trusted him, they could still be forgiven. They're not out of time. And maybe some of them did so and went to heaven rather than to hell. That's what Jesus did — a kind of an after-death opportunity to repent and be saved.
Now, nice idea. Trouble is, the Bible elsewhere is really, really clear — and really clear in lots of places — that it doesn't work like that. That we have the whole of our lives on earth to respond to the good news of Jesus. At any day, from your birth to your death, you can turn to the Lord Jesus and say, "Lord Jesus, I trust you. Thank you for dying for my sins. Please forgive me. Please give me your Spirit to give me new life. Please help me to change." And at that moment, he miraculously puts you on the path to glory, and for the rest of your life will forgive you and change you. You can do that all of your life.
But when Jesus returns, or when you die, that is the moment when the opportunity has ended. The offer is withdrawn, and you are stuck with the choice that you made during your lifetime. That is the consistent and clear message throughout the Bible.
But that's quite hard to hear. We like the idea there may be more opportunities to be had after we die. So people read this verse and go, "Oh, that's what he's saying here then. It's not as difficult as we thought." But you can't build some wishful thinking based on one slightly obscure verse when many other passages speak plainly.
We used to live, before we moved here, in the county of Kent. And where we left the motorway to go home — at our local motorway junction — there were some signs on the exit. And the reason they put those signs there is we were about an hour's drive from the channel ports at Dover and Folkestone, so lots of traffic comes off the continent straight onto the motorway network, would leave at the junction that we left at. And there's just the risk that you momentarily got confused, thought you were in France, drove on the right-hand side of the road rather than the left-hand side of the road.
So they put these lovely signs up that said this: Drive on the left – links fahren, tenez la gauche, kör vänster.
Now, imagine you look at that sign and you think, "Okay, drive on the left — yep, know what that means. Drive on the left — okay, links, fahren — my German's a little rusty, but yeah, I think I know — yeah, links — left. Okay, gauche — well, if I'm honest, in French, I did always get my gauche from droite mixed up, but yeah, I've mastered now — that sounds a bit like right, so gauche is left. So I'm going to drive on the left. Kör vänster..."
At this point, you have two thoughts. You think, number one: which idiot at the council thought, when they tried to pick a fourth language to put on that sign, that they shouldn't use Flemish, they shouldn't use Dutch — they should use Swedish? I mean, how much Swedish traffic comes off the Channel ferry?
Once you've got past that, you then look at kör vänster, and you think to yourself, "Yes — now, my Swedish is probably the rustiest of my modern languages, but I'm pretty sure that vänster means right — so I'm going to drive on the right."
You see what you've done? You've taken the one language you can't speak — the one set of words that you're not quite sure what they mean — and you've used that to hang on to something that the languages you do speak tell you very clearly is not the thing to do.
And that's what people like to do with this verse. They ignore what is plain elsewhere to build on it something that they wish it might say. Let's not do that. Let's look at what's here.
I'm going to try to explain to you what Peter is saying, but I'm going to try and do so without getting too bogged down. If you want to ask me more about the details later, feel free.
The thing to notice is this: Jesus is not speaking after his death to people; he is speaking to spirits—angels, perhaps.
Which spirits? Which angels? Ones who rebelled in the years before the flood, while Noah was building his boat. If you're taking notes and want to look it up later, go and have a read of Genesis chapter six, verses one to four.
These spirits, these angels—they're now in prison. Again, another cross-reference you could look at later, if you want to, would be 2 Peter, his other letter—chapter two, verse four—which tells us that these spirits are imprisoned on remand. They're waiting their final judgment and sentencing. They're waiting for Jesus to come back and pronounce them guilty. They're just waiting in prison until the day comes. They weren't granted bail; they have to stay inside until their sentence is passed.
And what did Jesus say in this remand prison to these spirits who are there? Well, we're not told. We're simply told that he made proclamation—verse 19—which is just the words for announcing something huge, bringing a good news, an announcement of good news, something—a momentous announcement. That's all it means.
Interestingly, Peter elsewhere does talk about preaching the gospel, telling people how they can become Christians and be saved. That's not the word he uses for that. He uses a different word when he's talking about that. This is just a big announcement that Jesus has.
So what's he announcing? Well, given we're not told, we have to piece it together from the context. And it's much safer—it fits with the rest of the Bible, it fits in particular with verse 22, that we'll get to in a moment—to say that Jesus is preaching, is announcing, is proclaiming that he has done it. He's paid for sin. He's defeated evil and death. He's risen from the dead, and so he's the one appointed to judge the world. And he's going to go and tell these spirits that their time is up. They picked the wrong side. Jesus is the victor, and they have lost.
He's not quite thumbing his nose at them—but almost. That's the kind of sentiment. He's announcing his victory.
That's the first scene as the credits roll after the resurrection.
But don't pick up your popcorn and leave just yet. Peter has another scene of the film post-resurrection, and that's verse 22.
Jesus Rules Heaven and Earth
Here's the next scene: Jesus rules heaven and earth. Jesus rules heaven and earth. Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand, with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
If you read the book of Acts, you discover that 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven. We just said it as part of our creed. And he quite literally went to the Mount of Olives, east of the city of Jerusalem, and went up, up, up into the sky until a cloud hid him from the sight of those watching.
And then we're told here that he's sitting at the right hand of God the Father. So there's God the Father on his throne, ruling heaven and earth. And there's another throne on his right-hand side for his number two, his assistant, his representative—the one who is to rule with him. And the Lord Jesus takes his seat next to God the Father, ruling over heaven and earth.
How do you know Jesus will win? The answer is: he already is victorious.
Just to return, then, to the world of sport for a moment—just imagine in some parallel universe for a moment that it was the European Football Championships 2020, played in 2021, and the final was a match of England against Italy. And it went to penalties—and England won on penalties. Just imagine that that is the way it played out. We won.
Being a Christian may feel like you are six-nil down at half-time. Actually, we're at a very different point in the match. It's actually as if the final penalty has been taken. Our victory is assured. The person who took that tournament-winning kick has done a lap of the pitch to celebrate and cheer—first to the home fans and then to the Italians to make sure that they know that we've won—and then has returned and joined the rest of the team on the hastily assembled podium where the awards ceremony will take place.
And any moment now, the trophy will be lifted. It's not lifted yet; our country's name is not yet engraved on the trophy. But any moment now, that will happen, and it will be lifted. And our team are on the podium ready for the awards.
That is where we are. It just feels like we're six-nil down. Okay, England supporters of football—we can dream, okay? But it doesn't hurt to dream a bit, does it?
But that's the picture here.
Now, not everybody recognises that Jesus rules now—no. But that's not the same thing as saying that he isn't ruling. He is. It's just not recognised by everybody. He is, as IJ was just leading us in our prayers—mighty Jesus.
How do we know that Jesus will be victorious? He already is.
Second question: if living like a Christian feels—living as a Christian feels—like you're on the losing side, how do you know you're going to be part of the winning team?
Answer: you are already saved. You are already saved. This is verses 20 and 21.
Now, if you've been with us over the past couple of months as we've worked our way through this letter of 1 Peter, you know that the Christian life is about being on our way home. We're not home yet. The day is still future—when we live in a world free of suffering, when we live with the Lord Jesus here on earth, when we're gathered, we're free of sin, when there's no more death, when there's no more sickness, when all is good and only. That day is still future.
Nothing I'm about to say changes that. We still have to wait for the full enjoyment of everything. But look at verse 21 closely:
"This water symbolises baptism that now saves you."
Now—and present tense—saves. Not "then will save", but now saves.
He's saying if you trust Jesus, you are saved now, not will be. I mean, yes, you will be—but that's not his point. His point is: it's there now. It's here now.
But the way we're saved may surprise you:
"This water symbolises baptism that now saves you."
Which water? The water of Noah's flood.
Apologies, by the way, for what English people call pathetic fallacy—I did not arrange the weather forecast when we agreed to preach on a topic related to Noah's flood. God has promised never to destroy the earth in that way again, so the rain will, at some point, stop.
But the water of Noah's flood symbolises baptism.
Now, that's odd. It's odd because when we talk about baptism, we normally speak of baptism as a symbol. Here, the flood is the symbol, and baptism is the reality to which the symbol points. It's the other way around from what we would expect.
So let's just slow down and look carefully at what he's saying—asking questions like: how does baptism save you? What's all this got to do with Noah and the flood? And how does this reassure a Christian who feels like they're six-nil down at half-time?
Well, how does baptism save you? Well, he tells us.
Look: not by the removal of dirt from the body.
So baptism—the water itself—doesn't do it, okay? The water's not magical.
I've met many people who said to me that they wanted to be baptised or to have their children baptised so that—quote—"if they were to die, I know they'd be okay."
Baptism is not some kind of cosmic insurance policy that automatically just washes you clean. No, it doesn't do that at all.
Not the removal of dirt from the body—but what?
Well, but—end of the verse—by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It's Jesus who saves you. He rose from the dead. And what matters if you want to be saved is that you're attached to him—so that as he rises to new life, he takes you with him, and you're raised to new life as well.
In fact, that's how the letter started, wasn't it? Chapter 1, verse 3:
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
So you're saved not because the water magically does it, but because Jesus rose from the dead. And the risen Jesus does it.
So why bother being baptised at all, then?
Well, because there's another positive—the negative: not the removal of dirt. The positive: the resurrection. The other positive: but the pledge of a clear conscience towards God.
That's to say, Jesus rose from the dead. To be saved, you need to respond. You need to attach yourself to him. And the way to respond—the way to attach yourself to him—is to repent, to turn your life around. So instead of running away from God and fighting him, you resolve to go his way from now on. Repent and trust him.
Say:
"Lord Jesus, because you died, please count me free of guilt for all the things I do wrong."
And as you repent and trust, so you are forgiven and made new. That's how you respond to Jesus rising.
Now, repenting and trusting like that is not only something to do privately. Please do it privately. If you have never done this, do it. Go home. Find somewhere really quiet where you won't be disturbed, and say to the Lord Jesus:
"Lord Jesus, I'm sorry that I have made so many mistakes in my life and that I've not treated you as I should. Thank you for dying to pay for my sins. Please pay for mine. Please give me your Spirit to make me new, and please help me to live for you from now on."
If you've never done that, please do it today. But it's not just something to do privately, because we need the pledge of a good conscience, of a clear conscience, towards God. It's a public thing. Baptism is the public declaration that you want to follow Jesus, you want him to wash your conscience clean and change you from within—the public as well as the private.
If you want to train to be a soldier in the British Army, you might do, typically, six months of very hard training, at the end of which you need to be fit, you need to be signed off as having completed your training, you need to pass. You also need to be willing to serve. But that's not all. You also need to take part in a passing out parade, in which public, senior-ranking officers will watch you pass from civilian life into military life in front of a huge gaze. You publicly sign up to be a soldier in the British Army.
Now, this is a healthy view of baptism, and we need Peter's help, I think, to think clearly—because you do meet people who think, as I said, that baptism is kind of an almost magical thing that just by itself does the works, without any need for you to trust and know Jesus for yourself. Forget about Jesus, just—just be baptised. That'll look after you.
Friends, if that was what baptism did, then Lee and I are wasting our time here, talking to you about Jesus. We should be in the centre of Scarborough with a fire hose, pumping water out of the sea and onto everybody we can, because by doing that we'd be saving people in their thousands. But that's not what we're doing, because baptism doesn't work like that.
But then some people react to that the other way and say, "Well, because baptism doesn't work like that, you don't need it. You can dispense with baptism, it's not important." But that's not what Peter says either. And if you listen to the same Peter preaching to a crowd of many thousands on the day of Pentecost—seven weeks after Jesus rose from the dead—he said to them at the end of his speech to do two things to respond: repent and be baptised. You need both. You need the public and the private.
Now, just suppose you wanted to press me: "Go on, which is more important—the public baptism or the private trust in the Lord Jesus? Go on, pick one." I would push back against you quite hard. I would not—I would want to refuse the dilemma. I wouldn't want to be pushed to pick, because almost certainly, you have an opinion that you, in asking that question, that one of them is more important, that one of them is really the only one that matters, and you want me to say your one as a way of saying the other one doesn't actually matter.
But Peter won't do that. He wants us to insist on both. But if push comes to shove, the private's more important, okay? If push comes to shove, of course the private is more important. Because if you have a living faith in the Lord Jesus but weren't baptised, he'll welcome you into glory with open arms.
As he died on the cross, there were two criminals hung next to him, one on his right and one on his left. And one of them turned to the Lord Jesus and acknowledged him as king as he breathed his last breath. And Jesus assured him that when he woke up the other side, he would be with the Lord Jesus in paradise. That man did not have time for baptism, but he was still wonderfully and gloriously saved.
Whereas, if you've been baptised but lack any personal faith in the Lord Jesus, all you will hear on the final day are those terrifying words: "Away from me, I never knew you." So of course, if you have to pick, yeah, the private's the more important. But they both matter.
Now, you only become a Christian once, so you only get baptised once. And in this church, we work quite hard to respect the fact that Christians hold different views on exactly when and how baptism should take place. And we want to make absolutely sure this is something that we understand each other on carefully, and we don't fall out with each other—so important.
Some share the view that both Lee and I have: that where you have a Christian family, it's good and appropriate to baptise their young children not long after they're born, as a sign that God includes them in his purposes. Others take a different view.
But if some of you would have been baptised as babies, wouldn't remember it. But if you've never been baptised, and if you want to follow the Lord Jesus, please speak to me or Lee, and we would love to explore with you whether that's something we should set up.
So baptism saves you. And here's what that means: it means that Jesus saves you, but you need to respond both privately and publicly. And Peter's encouraging these Christians to look back on their baptism as their kind of passing out parade—the day they publicly took hold of the Lord Jesus.
What's all this got to do with Noah? Well, there are several parallels between what God did for Noah and how he saves Christians.
And it was delayed. God was patient. He gave Noah time to finish the boat—that would have been a big gutting if the rain came before the tower was on—and to give others time to join him in the boat. And so today, he delays. Why did God not send Jesus back to this Earth last week and just destroy all the evil—get rid of the persecution, the hatred, the suffering, the Covid—get rid of it?
He didn't do it, say, six months ago, because if he had done, there are people in this room that six months ago, you were on the other side, and you would have been swept away in the flood. He delays because he's patient.
Another little parallel: only a few get saved. In the day of the flood, it was eight. Now, one day there will be a great multitude that no one can count, gathered around the throne of the Lord Jesus. But today, things feel pretty small, don't they? We are 80 or 90 here, out of a town of 60,000.
And another little parallel is that the same water that brought the judgment to the world was the water that floated Noah's boat and brought him to safety. And so, the water of baptism symbolises Jesus dying and rising again—the means by which we are saved, but the means by which he is appointed as the judge of the living and the dead.
Peter would say, if you are a baptised Christian, you are in an analogous position to Noah in his boat. You're on the boat. The boat's not landed yet on Mount Ararat. Jesus has not yet returned. You may feel small and fragile. Life may feel vulnerable. But if you're in Christ, you're safe. You're floating. Your future is certain. You are already saved.
Conclusion
Sometimes, being a Christian can feel downbeat, hard work, discouraging. The hardships of life can get on top of you. You can even get opposed and disrespected for being a Christian. If you've not yet begun to follow the Lord Jesus, it's important that you know this is what it can feel like. Otherwise, you'd fall at the first hurdle—throw in the towel the minute life gets difficult.
If you're expecting following Jesus to be a magical pill that solves all your problems overnight, you'd never last more than six months following him. We need to know this is what it's like if you're going to set out following him.
But if you are on the road to heaven with us, then take heart. Jesus rules now. He's already victorious. Not just one day he will conquer—he's already conquered. And one day, the world will see it.
And you are saved now. One day, you'll enjoy the full benefits of that. But you're safe now—as surely as Noah was safe on the boat. And as frail as you may feel in your life, as you look at the troubles of life—the storms, the difficulties, the hardships—when you feel that you're six-nil down and there's still half the match to play, you can have absolute confidence: God has got this.