Well, the text before us is deep and difficult indeed. I had intended to put this off another week to find time to study and read. However, providence canceled the alternatives that I had arranged and thus we must confront the text before us head on. Please understand that I will be very cautious with the doctrinal aspects of this passage. As our creeds would instruct us, Jesus did indeed descend to the place of dead! Yes, I made a small edit of the confessions and substituted "place of the dead" for the word "hell". The Apostles' Creed does indeed read: "he descended into hell." The Nicene Creed, however only declares that "he suffered and was buried."

Chapter thirty-two of The Westminster Confession is more extensive in its comment. "The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them; the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none."

Now we have to be careful here, we must avoid saying too much or too little even as we affirm the confessions of Christ's church. Dr Keener outlines three main views on verses eighteen and nineteen:

1. that between his death and resurrection, Jesus preached to the dead in Hades.
2. that Christ preached through Noah to people in Noah's day.
3. that before or after his resurrection, Jesus proclaimed triumph over the fallen angels.

Of the three views, the first was popular with the early church fathers, the second with the Reformers of the sixteenth century and the third is more common in our time. A.A. Hodge notes that "Calvin interprets this phrase metaphorically, as expressing the penal sufferings of Christ on the cross." He continues with the observation that our own confession "affixes to the Creed the explanatory clause, 'continued in the state of the dead.'" Dr Hodge's final comment is the wisest counsel that I have read: "Christ was a real man, consisting of soul and body, and his death was a real death, his soul leaving the body and going into the invisible world of spirits, where it continued a separate conscious existence until his resurrection."

So let us leave these difficult verses with this understanding: Jesus Christ descended to the dead before He rose again from the dead on that first Resurrection Lord's Day two millennia ago! Unfortunately, whenever the passage before us is studied, it is usually these two verses that have the full focus of attention. There is a lot more going on in this passage than the true doctrinal statement that Christ descended to the dead!

Dr Keener brings us to consider the literary brilliance of Peter and Mark in this section. "Ancient writers sometimes communicated points through special literary forms; one of these is called chiasmus, an inverted parallel structure, which seems to occur here:" His comment reminds me of a college book on paragraphs. The purpose of that book was to demonstrate the various methods of crafting a paragraph to serve a specific purpose. A sort of an unseen outline behind the text which so many writers in our time have failed to master or even appreciate. There are many places in the Scriptures where modern scholars of lesser ability miss the whole point of a text because they little understand that the writers may be more talented than what our public schools (even up to the University level) are able to produce today!

Now for the chiasmus identified by Dr Keener in the text. I am using his outline since he is more talented in this regard than I ever will be:

"A. Your slanderers will be ashamed (3: 16)
B. Suffer though innocent, in God's will (3: 17)
C. For Christ suffered for the unjust (3: 18)
D. He triumphed over hostile spirits (3: 19)
E. Noah was saved through water (3:20)

E. You are saved through water (3:21)
D. Christ triumphed over hostile spirits (3: 22)
C. For Christ suffered (4: 1a)
B. Suffer in God's will (4: 1b-2)
A. Your slanders will be ashamed (4: 3-5)"

Our New King James Version translation heads its two paragraphs in a similar fashion. Verses thirteen through seventeen are entitled "Suffering for Right and Wrong". Verses eighteen through six in the fourth chapter focus on the thought "Christ's Suffering and Ours."

My title today of "Why Christ Suffered" is therefore an attempt to get to the crux of this text. My short answer to that assertion is simply this: He suffered for our sake, so that as Peter tells us "that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit." You should not be surprised because this is the whole purpose of Scripture to show us the amazing love and grace of our Father God, who has literally (verses 18b-19): "having been put to death in the flesh, having been raised to life in the Spirit. in which also to the in prison spirits having gone he preached." Or as the psalmist well asks and then affirms: "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in [Sheol] (the place of the dead), behold, You are there ... And your right hand shall hold me."

Now let us look at the details of this section and consider the several verses as they apply to our thinking on this passage. I know the bulletin begins with verse eighteen, but let us push back to verse sixteen and even take back to verse thirteen in context.

Here we see that even as we walk in the world and hold fast to Christ, the world will notice. Some of course will be attracted to our Lord and Savior, but the majority will not. In fact as we see and hear in the Media - those who follow our Lord are at best tolerated, but more likely made fun of and persecuted for standing against the world and its sinful attitudes. Once when a student asked me a theological question, another piped up that I couldn't answer that question since it might be offensive to them. I quickly asked the protester if there were any chance that I could convince them that what I had to say could change their mind. Being none, I suggested that if that was the case, there was no harm in answering another person's honest question. After all, I told them - it is always more important what God thinks of a person than what any person thinks about God!

But still, the worldly are too easily offended, they would rather the whole of mankind follow them to hell than to have a chance of being saved! This brings us clearly to verse seventeen: "For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil." I am reminded of a story of a Christian Nanny who worked for an atheistic Jewish couple. The little girl was dying of cancer and asking all of the right questions, for which the Nanny had all of the right answers. The parents forbid discussions on pain of being fired. Yet the little girl persisted and was able to get a Christian testimony for her own benefit. The Nanny was of course fired, and her future clouded by aggressive bad references. Yet, the little girl believed in Christ!

We are not to join in the mad lemming like stampede for the gates of hell so encouraged by the Media and culture in our land. No indeed, there are lost to be found and to be witnessed to so that our Lord's suffering for their sake and ours may be known.

The first part of verse eighteen assures us that "Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." This is the whole Gospel purpose of His death on the cross! Do we, in this twenty-first century completely fathom what Peter just said? In the context of this passage, Jesus Christ literally went to hades on our behalf. There by the power of the Spirit of our Creator God, the power of death was destroyed and God's people saved from that finality! Death and the spirit of death are defeated. Let me be careful how I phrase this, but the idea of death is always more fearful than the experience itself. The worldly are scared to death of death, because they have no hope beyond that experience. Yet, for the Christian, we know what lies across the river, if I may speak symbolically, death has truly no sting because Jesus Christ waits on the other side for all of those who belong to Him.

Verses twenty and twenty-one compare the "baptism" of Noah's generation with the baptism which is ours in and through the ministry of Christ's Church. The water baptism of Noah's day destroyed all flesh, but the baptism in Christ, even as Noah experienced salvation in the Ark - is for our good and for our eternal hope and destiny.

"Therefore", Peter begins chapter four, "since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God." Even as Christ triumphed over death, we have no worry for what the world can possibly do to us, because our hope is in Christ who is now in heaven! The last verse, verse six gives us the focus of this whole passage: "For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."

What this means is that just as everyone must give "an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead", so the worldly will be judged according to God's righteous decrees, but those who are in Christ will be saved precisely because Christ suffered and died on their behalf. May we believe that and count on it for our eternal benefit. Amen.