Here's a layered question from the inbox from a podcast listener named Scott. "Pastor John, in our current day we see a spectrum of persecution developing for Christians, from beheading by ISIS to the suing of bakeries by gay rights groups. In preparing his disciples for persecution, Jesus noted that this persecution would be, quote, 'your opportunity to bear witness'" Luke 21, 13.

Clearly, persecution is an opportunity to glorify Christ. However, Jesus goes on to instruct this, quote, "Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand. How to answer? For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict." Luke 21, verses 14 to 15.

And yet, the apostle Peter, in a similar context of instruction on responding to persecution, notes this, quote, "Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you." That's 1 Peter 3, 14 and 15.

As we seek to make much of Christ while enduring persecution, how do we reconcile the apparent contradiction between Jesus saying, "Don't prepare," with Peter saying, "Always be prepared." How would you put those two pieces together? Well, let's get the whole textual picture in front of us. There's one other piece that I'd want to stir in besides those two apparently contradictory passages, and that would include Matthew 10, 19.

So, all three of the texts that I'm going to mention, two of which Scott already mentioned, all three of them picture the Christian life in a hostile setting, given the opportunity to testify about our faith. That's what it's addressing. So, incredibly relevant, incredibly relevant for our day. Luke 21, 14, "Settle it, therefore, in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer." I'm going to come back to that because there are alternative translations than the word "meditate" there, but there it is, "not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand." And the one that Scott didn't mention is Matthew 10, 19, which says, "When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say." And then comes the one from 1 Peter, "In your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy." Always, always, always being prepared, not just getting ready the night before, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason that I hope that is in you.

So what Scott sees, rightly, is an apparent tension or contradiction between Luke, "not meditate beforehand how to answer," and 1 Peter, "always be prepared to make a defense." So let's state the obvious first and make sure we don't miss the forest for the trees. The aim of these texts is to bear a faithful witness, that we bear a faithful witness to the truth and the glory of Jesus Christ.

This will include facts about him, and it will include some kind of explanation for why we believe in him. It's also clear, it seems to me at least, that we approach this chance to witness in our lives, we approach this with trust in God for his help because he has promised that he would help us.

"I will give you a mouth and wisdom," and so on. In that way, then, we will honor him. He will get the glory, not only for what we say, but for the fact that we've trusted him to help us say it and to show us what we should say.

Now, to me, the most difficult question here is not first how 1 Peter 3 and Luke 21 fit together, but what does Luke 21 14 even mean? The ESV translates "settle it, therefore, in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer." Well, it's not completely clear where the emphasis falls here in this Greek word, "prameloton." It might carry a heavy emphasis on "don't practice your speech ahead of time," because that's what the word was used for in some context.

I looked them up yesterday just to see if that was so, that this word was used for practicing your speech before you gave it. So it might have an emphasis there. Or it may carry a connotation of anxious preparation because the world is going to hate you and not care at all about what you have to say.

And the word "prameloton" has that "melaton" word in it that does mean "carry a special care" or "be anxious." Now, in view of those possibilities, I'm inclined to let Matthew 10 19 shape the way I see Luke 21 14. So Matthew 10 19 says, "When they deliver you up, do not be anxious." Luke didn't say anxious.

Luke just said don't meditate ahead of time or don't practice ahead of time or don't give a lot of attention ahead of time to how you put everything together. This says, "Don't be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for the Lord will give you in that hour what you are to say." So it seems to me that Jesus is warning against excessive, anxious, overly scripted, rhetorically planned preparation.

I think it's a good exercise to think about yourself lying in prison the night before your trial. What would God want you to be thinking about and praying about? I mean, ask that question. Put yourself there. Well, he probably would not want you to be thinking about the Olympic Games.

You're going to die tomorrow. All right. It wonderfully focuses the mind if you're going to be hanged, someone said. So not the Olympic Games probably that you attended a few years ago. He probably doesn't expect you to be thinking about how good or bad the food in the prison tastes or about how cold it is in the cell or whatever.

Surely God would want you to be meditating on his word, his promises. I love you. I'm going to take care of you. And you would be thinking of sustaining promises in this worst of all crises in your life, and you would be praying. Well, what would you be praying?

You would be praying the Lord's Prayer. At least you'd say, "Oh, God, let your kingdom come. Let it come in this room right now to sustain me with your kingly power. Let it come tomorrow morning when I face the judge, oh, God, so that I would speak the truth." In other words, you cannot not pray about that event tomorrow morning.

It would be absolutely irresponsible not to be thinking about the word and to be asking for God's help in view of his promise that when you show up before the judge in the morning, you would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and he would bring to your mind the words that you would speak.

In other words, it seems to me that it would be sinful not to be thinking about the very things that would be the kind of preparation that your heart and your mind would do for tomorrow's challenge. So when 1 Peter 3 says, "Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ as Lord, as holy," I mean, always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you.

That's not a contradiction of Luke 21 or Matthew 10. This is not a command to get all your books out the night before your trial and write a careful defense and memorize it thoroughly and practice it in front of the mirror and nail down your rhetorical devices and think of all the ways you can sway the judge or the jury tomorrow morning.

That's not what Peter has in mind at all when he says, "Always be prepared." When he says, "Always be ready to explain why you are hoping in Jesus," he means live in a constant awareness of the all-sufficiency of Christ by his promises in your life, and so that you're always ready.

Cultivate such a relationship with Jesus and such a knowledge of God and his Word and such a deep dependence on the Lord moment by moment, so that anywhere, anytime, anybody asks you about Jesus, there's the overflow of your constant communion with him and awareness of him and his promises.

So I think that's the main lesson of these texts. Live in such constant, clear, open, sweet, authentic, humble, Bible-saturated, faith-filled communion with Christ that you will have the spiritual resources to speak on the spur of the moment or to spend the evening meditating for your soul, not out of fear for the judge, but that you need the promises of God.

And then when the judge says, "Why do you believe on this?" Well, that's what you've been thinking about all night, but not in an anxious way, not in a defensive way, but rather for your own soul. Wonderful. Thank you for that challenge, Pastor John. And tomorrow we're going to look at suffering again, and we will hear from a musical duo who recorded a song on suffering for saints, and you will not want to miss this song.

Well, for everything you need to know about this podcast, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. I'll see you tomorrow.