This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to 1 Peter chapter 3, day one of our look at this chapter.
The last two weeks we began to look at how you can live a cut above in the world
below in your relationships and how it begins with the choice to be humble, to
be unselfish. What the Bible calls an attitude of submission.

The word submission in the Bible does not mean unwilling compliance as we use it
sometimes today. In the Bible the word submission means unselfish choice. And
last week we looked at some difficult relationships to apply this principle of
submission.

Our relationship with the government, the relationship they had even as slaves
that in every relationship we are to have humility no matter what the
relationship even towards our enemies were to have humility. This week we're
going to look at what may be some even more difficult relationships because
they're the everyday relationships. The places where we have to be unselfish,
humble every single day.

It's hard to be unselfish at home because it's with you every single day. And as
Peter talks here he's talking about more than doing something, one thing,
unselfish during every day or every week. He's talking about having an attitude,
a lifestyle of unselfishness.

And at the beginning of this chapter he talks to wives and he talks to husbands.
Now as you hear these truths if you're married they're going to be very
applicable to you. If you're not yet married there's still the application of
you being unselfish in your relationships in your home but there's also the
application of you praying for wives and husbands because of the importance of
marriage.

The importance of those relationships, the importance of raising kids, the
importance of the strength that it brings to churches and to culture and
everything. So be praying and also be applying this wherever you are in your
life. He begins by talking to wives and he simply says, "Wives, be unselfish
towards your husband.

" Now Warren Wiersbe calls this section wedlock or deadlock. And whether our
choices are selfish or unselfish is really what makes the difference between
those two. Listen to what he has to say, what Peter has to say beginning in
verse 1.

"Wives, in the same way, be submissive to your husbands so that if any of them
do not believe the word they may be won over without words by the behavior of
their wives. When they see the purity and the reverence of your lives, your
beauty should not come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the
wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your
inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is of great
worth in God's sight.

For this is the way the holy women in the past who put their hope in God used to
make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands like Sarah
who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do
what is right and do not give way to fear.

" As Peter talks here, he just walks through what it means to be unselfish as a
wife. Let me just walk through with you four or five things that Peter points
out it means to be unselfish as a wife. Number one, he tells us it means that
you prayerfully release your expectations back to God.

You prayerfully release your expectations back to God. You stop trying to make
your husband into what you wish he was. You trust God to work out his best plan
for your husband's life rather than you trying to nag him, to make him, to form
him, to cause him to become your best plan for what you think God's best plan is
for his life.

What I'm saying here is resist the temptation to take on the role of his
personal Holy Spirit. Ruth Graham, a couple of great quotes from Billy Graham's
wife Ruth, she once said, "God gave a woman to a man to make him happy and gave
him the Holy Spirit to make him good, not the other way around. So recognize
what your relationship is.

" And then she also said, and this is a truth here for both husbands and wives,
both men and women, "I pity the married couple who expect too much from one
another," Ruth wrote. "It is a foolish woman who expects her husband to be to
her that which only Jesus Christ can be, always ready to forgive, totally
understanding, unendingly patient, invariably tender and loving, unfailing in
every area, anticipating every need and making more than adequate provision.
Such expectations put a man under an impossible strain.

" So what you do is you dump the perfect man of your dreams, because there's no
such thing as a perfect person, and you do number two. Number two, you build his
faith. That's one of the things that you do in being unselfish is you help to
build his faith.

Now Peter is very clear about this to wives of unbelieving husbands. He says,
"As you live out your life for Christ, you're going to allow him to be one
without a word. Let your example," he says, "of unselfishness build him toward a
place of faith in his life.

" This is also true of those of us who believe. Shondell, my wife's example of
faith, has built my faith in innumerable ways. Her unselfish choices have taught
me again and again and again how to be unselfish.

Now I know as I'm talking about this, you might be thinking, "Well, that works
for some guys, but some guys just don't get it. " If you're unselfish towards
them, they just soak it in. They think, "Well, that's what I deserve," and they
never learn to be unselfish themselves.

What Peter is saying here is the best opportunity for you to change those you
are closest to is through your example, not through your words, but through your
example. We are oversensitive to words of rebuke from those who are closest to
us. Now every relationship is different, and some have matured to be able to
take more constructive criticism than others.

But in every close relationship, the most powerful agent for change is your
unselfish love towards that person, your actions. This is true in marriage. It's
also true towards your children.

If you have a child who needs to change, yes, you need to say that they need to
change, but the most powerful agent for change is going to be in your unselfish
actions. This is also true on the level of personal evangelism. He's talking
about being one without a word, one through your actions.

He's not saying you should never speak the truth. He's saying your actions do
speak louder than your words. There is a time to stop pressing someone for a
decision and just pray for them as you're helping them to come to know Christ.

The truth is, if you continue to share with someone too urgently, too often, who
is not willing to hear, you're actually increasing their resistance to the
gospel. You need to stop and pray until the door is open. Those we are closest
to know that we believe, and they are often one to faith by seeing the reality
of that belief in our everyday lives.

So you build their faith. A third thing that Peter talks about here is one of
the things that you do to be unselfish is you express true beauty. That's one of
the great expressions of this chapter.

The truth is we chase after beauty in all kinds of ways. Just look at the makeup
aisle in the store. You can count literally by the thousands the number of ways
that we chase after beauty.

These verses are not saying, as some say that they are, that it's wrong to look
good on the outside. It's a good thing to look good on the outside, only that
that's not where true beauty is found. It's more important to care for the
beauty on the inside.

Peter says here, don't get caught up in the adorning of yourself with these
outer things. It's interesting, that word adorning is the Greek word cosmos, and
we use that word sometimes still in English to talk about the order of the
universe. It's the opposite of chaos.

The cosmos is the orderly arrangement of creation. So he's talking about here
the orderly arrangement of your clothes and your makeup and your face. But what
Peter is saying here is if your face is in order, but your heart is a mess,
there's no real beauty in your life.

Beauty comes from the heart, not from the store. And so he talks about the
beauty, the true beauty, the inner beauty of a gentle, a quiet spirit. And that
spiritual change, that kind of beauty, it can only come from knowing how deeply
loved you are by the Lord.

Jesus had a gentle and quiet spirit. And so when you know how deeply you're
loved by him, you're able to have that kind of spirit. And as Peter talks
through here some practical things that it means to have this spirit of
unselfishness in a marriage.

He talks about it being about building someone's faith, beauty in your life, but
he also says it means that you do not give way to fear. So you do not give way
to fear. You take the example of the women of the Old Testament.

Now, we're all, every one of us is warned against fear throughout the Bible
again and because we can easily be overwhelmed by fear. Verse six here is a word
especially to wives. So much can go wrong in a family.

So much can go wrong with your house, your husband, your kids, with the
realities of life that you can become overwhelmed by the fears of what could go
wrong. You can hang on to those fears so tightly that they actually cause you to
become selfish rather than unselfish. You feel a right to be selfish because
you're afraid, you're worried.

Fear, it tears at you and it turns every decision into a nightmare. How do you
overcome that fear? Because so many of us face it.

So how do you overcome it? Well, one way is to literally close your eyes when
you're feeling overwhelmed by worry or fear and visualize yourself and that
circumstance in the hands of the Lord. Picture yourself, that circumstance in
the hands of the Lord.

Realize you are not alone. You're not carrying through with this alone. And
through doing that, through that moment of trust, you're able to begin to put
aside fear in your life.

Trust destroys fear. Now as we pray together, I want to pray for God's strength
for unselfishness in all of our lives. Jesus, we come to you and we ask for a
strength only you can give.

If we're going to be unselfish, not focused on ourselves, we've got to be
focused on you and know that your love is given to us. I pray for wives,
particularly today, as Peter has just talked to wives, that God, a gentle and
quiet spirit, a true beauty, an ability to trust instead of fear would be put
into each heart. And through that, God, you just give wonderful blessings in
these women's lives, in their husband's lives, in their kids' lives.

Wonderful blessings that come from our trust in you. We ask this in your name,
Jesus. Amen.

Now don't miss tomorrow, we're going to talk about how husbands can act
unselfishly towards their wives.