1 Peter 3 verse number 18, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God. by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him. We ask, Heavenly Father, as we consider a portion of this scripture, that you would open it up to our hearts and minds. May we make the proper application for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps, Father, this isn't earth-shaking information, message, and nevertheless, it is your word. We ask for your blessing on it and on us as we listen to your word. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. This is a tough question. Where would you prefer to live? On the planet Mercury? or on Pluto, whatever he's being called these days. Which would you prefer, Mercury or Pluto? Astronomers tell us that the surface temperature of Mercury is 354 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know if that's on this side of Mercury or on the Sun's side of Mercury. I would assume it's in this direction. But it really doesn't matter. You ask your Thanksgiving turkey whether or not 357 degrees is a good temperature in which to live. He'll say no. Those same astronomers tell us that the surface of Pluto is a minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit. You would freeze into a solid lump. before you actually suffocated for the lack of oxygen that is on the planet Pluto. It's not a good place to live. Ideally, obviously, the best place to live is somewhere in between those two places. Like the Earth, for example. Pretty good place to live. Peter mentions Christ's preaching to incarcerated spirits. But it's difficult to be sure exactly what he is describing. I will give you my opinion this evening. Not everybody agrees with me. John Gill, as he often does, lays out six or seven different explanations for the subject that we're looking at this evening. The most simple is, Jesus arose from the grave and in the Holy Spirit went to Hades to preach to the souls of those who had died during the days of Noah. You might compare that to the very hot surface of Mercury. Another interpretation gives rise to one of Roman Catholicism's doctrines. Christ died and visited purgatory to give the spirits who were there an opportunity, a second opportunity to be saved and released from their prison. That is the Plutonian version of the verse. It is extremely cold and thoroughly unbiblical. I hope to show you this evening that the truth resides on a very pleasant 72 degree planet somewhere in between those. According to Peter, what exactly was it that Christ did? What did he do? He went and preached under the spirits in prison. Pretty simple statement. In fact, it's so simple, It doesn't tell us very much. We're kind of left in the dark here. Leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. Without adding human opinions to the scripture, what does it actually say? Christ preached to spirits in prison. Preached is the common everyday word for the proclamation of the word of God. The gospel is preached, for example. Paul said to Timothy, preach the word and be instant in season, out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. Preach. And that's what Jesus did. Peter tells us that's what Jesus did to these spirits that are in prison. Somehow Christ preached to those spirits in prison, but we are not told what it was that he preached. It's just a blank. Since Peter doesn't tell us, some commentators have decided to answer for him. And thus we sometimes hear that he preached the gospel to those incarcerated spirits so that they could be saved. During the life of Noah, people didn't repent and trust Christ to be saved. So Christ, later on, came to them in their prison and gave to them the gospel in such a way that they could believe it and escape their prison. This, of course, is heresy. Not what we find in the Word of God. There is never, there is absolutely no second chance for salvation after death. Just does not happen, you can't find it in the Word of God. Nothing in this verse says that Christ preached the gospel. Now, he may have. But nothing here says that he did. His sermons or sermon could have been out of a hundred different subjects and we're not told what it was. About 3,000 years transpired between the flood and Calvary. but even a hundred times as many years would not transform that prison into some sort of place of spiritual purgation, purgatory. Another question arises. Why did Christ only preach to the spirits of the people in Noah's day? Why not the people in Abraham's day? Why just these? This is what Peter tells us. On the other side of the coin, some say that Christ entered hell, Hades, only to declare to those people what fools they were for not listening to Noah and repenting before God. By the way, the word disbelief or disobedient, excuse me, disobedient in verse number 20 is twice as often translated unbelief. The disobedience of those people was that they did not believe Noah's message and they did not believe on the promise or the exhortation or the word of God. Their disobedience was unbelief. But think about it. Did those people in prison need to be now told what fools they were? They have just spent many, many thousands, several thousand years in torment Do they need Christ to come along and say, you nincompoops, you should have trusted what Moses said, or Noah said. They didn't need that. The Lord did not go to sling this stuff into their face. That doesn't make any sense at all. Jesus didn't do that. And nor is the scripture talking about the final judgment when these people are cast into the lake of fire. That is something yet to come. So this is not Peter's subject. By the way, some preachers slip away from these verses here in Peter. Nevertheless, they take this as their text. They slip away and say that Christ went to paradise to take the Old Testament saints out of paradise with him to his father's house. While that may or may not be true, that's not what Peter's talking about here at all, obviously. What would Christ preaching to these people have to do with his deliverance of righteous souls to heaven? The reference to the disobedience of those people permanently destroys that idea. It has nothing to do with 1 Peter chapter 3. That leads to our next question. Where did Christ do this preaching? Did he mount some fireproof pulpit there in the midst of hell and preach to those people? Does Peter use the word hell or Hades or the Old Testament word Sheol? He does not. He certainly could have. He knows these words. And in fact, in chapter 3 of 2 Peter, chapter 2 of 2 Peter, he speaks of hell. And it comes from a different word, Tartarus, but it's still translated hell. Peter uses a relatively common word, which means, guess what? Prison. Prison. 40 out of 50 times, this Greek word is translated prison. And the rest of the time, it is in some form of the word watch. Watch? Well, what does that mean? At Jesus' birth, there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. They had their sheep in protective custody. Their sheep were in prison, so to speak. They were protected. Peter doesn't say that these souls, to which he refers, are in hell. He says they are or were in prison. However, I have to be honest with you, I don't want you second guessing me. Revelation 20 in verse number seven says, and when the thousand years are expired, this is toward the end of the book, when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed from his prison. Now that's not the lake of fire. That's yet to come. However, Satan deserves hell. And he was certainly locked away. He was in some sort of prison. No matter where and what kind of incarceration Satan endured during the millennium, it was first and foremost a prison. These spirits are in some sort of prison. I don't believe that I have any authority to say that Christ went to hell and preached to these spirits. If some other good brother wants to take that position and that responsibility, I will let him do so. There's nothing I can do about that. But I will try to remind him that even though Peter could have spoken of hell, he did not. He said prison. In a couple of minutes, we will address when Christ did this preaching and how or wherewith he did. But in the meantime, where do we read this statement? What is the context of this statement in verse number 20? I've mentioned several times that I have relatively few commentaries on the book of Peter. I have to go to my computer and do some research and I probably have six or seven commentaries that I could find if I wanted to do that research. Usually, I consult them only when I have serious difficulties in understanding a particular verse. Most of the time, I like to use my lexicon and my concordance. I compare scripture with scripture. I try to let the Holy Spirit lead me into the understanding of the scripture that we are examining. But when the scripture is difficult, I do open up those other commentaries, and I did so in this particular case. I looked up them, all of them, and something that I noticed in every one of them, without exception, was that they ignored the context. They examined verses 19 and 20 as though they were disconnected parentheses or footnotes down at the bottom of the page. They said nothing about verse 18. Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. The rest of our text, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. Doesn't that just flow right out of verse number 18? Isn't there a connection there? Do you see a period? Of course, there weren't any periods at that point, but nevertheless, I don't see any here in my Bible. They just come right out from each other. Doesn't the text flow directly from Christ's substitutionary death for people's salvation? Peter had just mentioned being brought unto God. through the death and the resurrection of Christ Jesus. I wonder if some people look at verses 19 and 20 as a parenthesis in order not to consider the context. Maybe it makes more sense to them not to keep it in the context. We need to remember that the subjects here are the gospel and the blessings which come out of the gospel. With that, I'll ask, whereby or wherewith did Christ preach to the spirits in prison? We're clearly told that it was through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brought Christ out of the grave, verse number 18, quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached under the spirits in prison. So it's the Holy Spirit that's doing this. Christ also had once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. The word quickened, as in quickened by the Spirit, speaks of Christ's resurrection. is brought back to life, meaning of quicken. There are plenty of scriptures to authenticate that particular thought or interpretation. John 5.21, for example, for as the father raises up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the son quickeneth whom he will. And if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Christ was quickened by the spirit, and we shall be quickened by the spirit someday. But there are scriptures which tell us that God the Father raised Christ from the dead. I have no problem with that. But there are others which declare more specifically that he did it through the power of his spirit, the Holy Spirit, corroborating what Peter tells us. If the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. It was by the spirit who raised Christ from the grave that Christ preached to the spirits in prison. Now ask yourself, Since Jesus has just been resurrected, assuming some interpretations, why didn't he just go physically and preach to these spirits in prison? Why was it that the Holy Spirit did it instead of himself? Why are we told that it was the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, that Christ preached to the people who lived in Noah's day? Before I try to answer that question, I will raise one final question for my outline. When did Christ do this preaching to those souls that were then incarcerated? With this, we begin to come to the interpretation which I think makes the most sense. By the way, I'm not the only one to reach this conclusion. There are even some smart people who say the same thing. Notice the word sometime in verse number 20, which sometime were disobedient. The Greek word is often translated in time past, or aforetime, or once. It appears to me that the spirits to whom Christ preached were in prison when Peter was writing this letter. But their unbelieving disobedience was committed earlier, before they were incarcerated. So the question again is, when did Christ preach to them? Was it sometime between the crucifixion and when Peter picked up his big pen to write this first letter? Think about this. On those occasions in this auditorium, when hearts are stirred and when the lost are convicted of their sin, It is not through the eloquence or the logic of the preacher involved. It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to break through people's depravity and bring dead souls to Christ. And this has been true of gospel preaching from the days of Enoch before Noah through to Paul and Peter and down to us today. The preaching of the gospel, the success of the preaching of the gospel is the Holy Spirit working through these people. When Noah stood on the bow of the unfinished ark, telling his neighbors to repent and turn to the Lord, he was preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit. He was preaching in the Spirit of God. He was preaching in the spirit of Christ. I believe that is what Peter is telling us here. In the context of bringing us to God, Peter is saying that the spirit of Christ preached the same kind of message to those disobedient and unbelieving people of Noah's day. Do I have any scriptural right to say that in some way Christ preached to those people? That's what Peter is saying. And I say, yes, I do have that right. Please turn to Ephesians chapter two. Ephesians chapter two, verse number 13. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. You've been brought to the Lord. Isn't that the subject of Peter right here? For he is our peace, Christ is our peace, who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between the Gentiles and the Jews, having abolished in his flesh the enmity brought us to the Lord, I should say. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, to make in himself, in Christ, of Twain, one new man, so making peace. and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that are nigh." Who does Paul say came and preached peace unto us? It was the one who made reconciliation with God possible. The one who went to the cross and gave his life. When God's messenger is enabled to touch the heart of a lost man, it is only through the Holy Spirit, or if you like, the Spirit of Christ. If that man rejects the truth of the gospel, eventually ending up in the lake of fire, it could be said of him that he rejected the ministry of Christ through the Spirit, even though he lived in the 21st century. It was still the ministry of Christ that he rejected. When did Christ do this preaching and by whom or whereby? It was in the days prior to the flood. through the Spirit of the Lord who empowered Noah in his preaching. Noah's message was essentially the same as ours. God's judgment is coming. Repent and be reconciled to the Lord before the death angel arrives. Sadly, only seven others in Noah's day responded. Just as it is today, millions did not repent. So they drowned, or in some other violent fashion, they died. Their souls, their dead spirits, were then committed to Sheol, to hell, to prison, awaiting the day of their ultimate execution in the lake of fire. Is there any practical application to all of this? I believe there is. We must saturate the gospel ministry with prayer for God's blessings. The preacher needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to properly convey the gospel, the need of the gospel. And ultimately, it's only when God opens sinners' hearts and blesses them with faith that they will be saved. I think that's what Peter is telling us here.