Speaker: Matthew 13 verse one.
You're like, we're in first Peter.
We'll get there.
That same day, Jesus went out to the house or out of the house and sat beside the
sea and great crowds gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat down
and the whole crowd stood on the beach.
And he told them many things in parables saying a sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path and the birds came and devoured them.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil
and immediately they sprang up since they had no depth of soil.
But when the sun arose, they were scorched.
And since they had no root, they withered away.
Other seed fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them.
Other seeds fell on the good soil and produced grain.
Some a hundred fold, some 60, some 30.
He who has ears to hear.
Let him hear.
This is the parable of the sower.
In the parable of the sower teaches us probably the, the core, central truth
of it is that saving faith, bears fruit, saving faith lasts, saving faith endures
and implied within that is maybe not the main point, but it's there and it's
something that we're gonna talk about this morning in first Peter, is that the
faith is going to encounter opposition.
In fact, that's what differentiates all three types of soils.
Uh, the first soil, which is the, the rocky ground, not, not the rocky
ground, but the, the hard path.
Uh, that's the person who is committed to atheism or to a false religion, that
they hear the gospel and they don't want anything to do with it from the word go.
And so it's just an outright rejection.
But then you've got these two middle soils.
You've got the rocky ground, and you've got the thorny soil.
In both of them, there's a sign of life, there's an initial hearing of the gospel
that produces a response that says, okay, yeah, I think I'm in on following Jesus.
I wanna follow Jesus.
And there's life.
There's signs of life that springs up there.
But in the rocky soil that life doesn't have any depth to it.
And so when it encounters the scorching sun, which Jesus goes on to explain
later on in Matthew 13, are the trials and the tribulations and the
suffering that we encounter in this world, because there's no depth to
their faith, they end up falling away.
There's the third soil, which is in the the thorny.
Patch, and again, this is soil that shows life, but this is the soil that
shows life, that is crowded out by other things that are there, that
are robbing it, of its vitality.
And that's the, the weeds and these weeds, these thorns begin to choke out
any of the life that was actually there.
At least in appearance at the beginning.
Jesus goes on to say of that soil that those thorns in the weeds that grow up
are the worldly pleasures, the worldly cares, the things that we love in this
world, that Christ has called us away from, that there are some that initially
come to faith in Jesus and are all in with Christ until it begins to cost
them the pleasures that they don't want to give up their idols, if you will.
And then you've got the fourth soil, and the fourth soil is good and it's
rich, and the roots go down deep and that plant grows up to bear fruit.
What differentiates the soils is the response to opposition.
How they press on, how they persevere.
How they endure.
The parable of the soils tells us the same thing that Peter's gonna
tell us this morning that is to be a Christian is to face opposition.
To put it a a different way, perhaps a mo more sobering way
to be a Christian is to suffer.
To be a Christian is going to mean suffering either through the trials
and tribulations that that led the, the rocky soil to fall away or even to
suffer through having to give up and put to death the idols and the earthly
pleasures in our lives, and to go to battle against sin and to deny ourselves
and to practice self-control and the, the suffering that can come along with
that, that that was what those in the thorny soil were not willing to, to do.
See, to be a Christian is to suffer because as Peter has
been telling us throughout the entire book, we are sojourners
and we are exiles in this world.
This world's not our home.
We're not meant to be at ease and comfortable here, and because of that,
we can expect and we should expect that as we live as believers, it's going to
prove to be something that is difficult.
The question we have to ask ourselves this morning, and each of us has
to ask ourselves this morning, is the question, is it worth it?
Is it worth it?
Because any sort of pursuit of Christ is gonna run you into
the opposition of the world.
The Bible's clear on that testimony.
Anybody who wishes to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
And so we have to ask the question, is it worth it?
And I think what Peter's gonna show us this morning is that, yes,
suffering is worth it, provided we suffer as God is calling us to.
Suffering is worth it for the believer.
Provided we suffer as God is calling us to suffer.
How is God calling us to suffer?
Let's look at our text first Peter chapter one or chapter two
rather, verses 21 through 25.
I'll read the whole thing and then we will start in verse 21.
It says this, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered
for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps.
He committed no sin.
Neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled.
He did not revile in return when he suffered, he did not
threaten but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and
live to righteousness by his wounds.
You have been healed for you were stray like sheep, but now have returned to
the shepherd, an overseer of your soul.
Verse 21.
He says, for to this, you have been called because Christ also
suffered for, you should beg the question in our minds, what is this?
To this?
You have been called well to what have I been called?
Well, if we back right back into the verse, right proceeding
this, I think we get the answer.
Peter said in verse 20, he said, for what credit is it?
If when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure, but if when you do
good and suffer for it, you endure.
This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.
For to this you have been called, so you see Peter is, is following and,
and it's, it's, he's not breaking thought, he's not meeting weekly to go
through this letter that he's writing.
This letter was read all at one time and so we know that he's coming off this
argument to say, Hey, you know what, if, if you suffer while doing good, which
the reality is as Christians we will, this is a gracious thing in the sight
of God for to this you have been called.
Meaning this is the reality of our life as believers.
You have been called, the word is colletto.
It means to be summoned by God.
And, and this should come as no surprise to us if we've been paying
attention to what Jesus has been saying, because we go back to the gospels.
Even in John chapter 15, if you were with us back when we
studied the gospel of John.
This may remind you of this John 15 verses 18 through 19.
Uh, Jesus said this.
He said, look, if the world hates you, know that it has
hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you're
not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
So here Jesus is saying, look, you should expect the opposition from the
world because you're not of the world.
In fact, Jesus is saying the thing that should give you pause and
the thing that should give you concern is if the world loves you.
Because the world should recognize in you that you are my followers
and if the world sees that you are my followers, they're gonna know
that I chose you out of the world.
In fact, that's what the word church means, cia.
We are the ones called out from the world and because we've been called out
from the world, we are gonna stand out here and that is gonna draw the ire.
Therefore, Jesus says, the world hates you for to this.
You have been called.
And then he goes on and he says this.
He says, because Christ also suffered for you.
We are those that are following the example of the one that went before us,
the one that suffered on our behalf.
Christianity is the religion of the called out ones, the church, the cia.
We are the sojourner.
We are the exiles.
And so following Jesus will make you stand out as different
and the world is not a fan.
In this instance of difference.
Suffering looks different for.
Believers across different eras, across cultures, across geographic regions.
But what remains the same is that Christians will suffer because that comes
with the territory of following Jesus.
And that's really what Peter wants us to understand here, that comes with
the territory of following Jesus, because Christ also suffered for you.
And then he goes on to say this, leaving you an example so that
you might follow in his steps.
If Christianity is about being like Jesus, which I think all of us would
agree that Christianity is really about being like Jesus being made more like
Christ, and if Jesus suffered for us, we should expect that we will suffer as well.
When we're talking about suffering in this context, we could be talking about a broad
range of what this means in Christ's life.
You could argue, really, that the entirety of the incarnation was
a form of suffering for Jesus.
Think about it.
He went from the right hand to the father.
Never having experienced cold or hunger or thirst, never having
stubbed his toe, never having had any amount of of discomfort in his
entire eternity past existence.
So you could argue in a sense that the entirety of the, the incarnation was a,
a form of suffering for Jesus, but the suffering that Peter has in mind here,
and it's gonna be shown even more as he gets into some allusions to Isaiah 53 in
a moment, is the suffering of the cross, the unjust suffering that Christ endured.
And so this is the, the suffering that we have been called
to follow in his footsteps.
In fact, I, I love this.
He says, Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example.
The word example is from a Greek word that was the same word.
They used to talk about the, the stencils that would've been used with
children to teach them their letters.
And so the children would've been given this stencil and they would
trace the stencil to learn how to draw.
And how to do the letters, and so that's what Jesus's suffering is for our lives.
That means that we are meant to and called to for, to this.
We've been called, we are called to trace the suffering of Christ, our
savior with our lives and how we suffer.
This is not a, a cheerful message so far.
Is it?
This is not one that, that we're signing up to go.
Yes, I want to do that, but I hope to show us why it's,
it's actually a, a good thing.
For to this you've been called that you might suffer as he suffered
because he left you an example.
He says that you might follow in his steps.
So if we're following Jesus, that's gonna mean that we're
following Jesus into suffering.
Again.
To be a Christian is to suffer.
It's inevitable.
The question is, is it worth it?
And it's worth it if we, as if we suffer the way that God has called us to suffer.
Peter says it's, it's an example there.
There's.
Multiple theories of the atonement.
The atonement is, uh, broadly speaking, what we use to refer to Christ's death
on the cross and how it comes to bear on our relationship with the Father.
Okay.
And, and there are multiple theories of the atonement.
The one we most often think of, and, and rightly so, and I would argue it
is the most important theory of the atonement that we find in the Bible is
what's known as penal substitutionary atonement, penal from the word penalty.
Okay.
Christ bore the penalty on the cross.
He was suffering as a, a punishment.
Right?
Whose punishment was he taking?
Well, it, it's ours.
That's what we mean by substitutionary.
That Christ died in our place on the cross.
And so he suffered the punishment that we deserved by being
our substitute on the cross.
And then it was the atonement, meaning it took our relationship
with God and it reconciled the two.
It brought us to God.
Through what?
Through Him dying in our place on the cross.
Penal substitutionary atonement, second Corinthians 5 21, for he
made him who knew no sin to be sin.
Who sin.
That would be our sin, right?
That we might become the righteousness of God.
So it's the great exchange there and we often think about that, but there
are other theories of the atonement.
Some of them are valid so long as they don't undermine that.
Okay.
Let me give you an example of one that undermines that.
The ransom theory of the atonement.
That's one that we as Christians have to say, no, we're gonna reject that.
The ransom theory of the Atonement, at least in its most bare form, teaches
that at the cross, God was paying Satan a ransom to free you from his clutches.
And the reason we have to reject that is because nowhere does the
Bible teaches that Satan owns you.
Nowhere does the Bible teach us that, that God owed a debt to Satan.
When we think about the cross that way, we're, we're misunderstanding sin
and its nature and who we've offended.
And so the, the ransom theory of atonement is one that we need to set
aside because it calls into question again, penal, substitutionary, atonement.
But what Peter's doing here is he's giving us another theory that we
can embrace, and it's called the example Theory of the Atonement.
It's incomplete by itself, but it is something that in addition to
understanding that Christ took our place and died for us on the cross and
paid the penalty our sins deserved.
It's helpful for us because that's what Peter's saying here, that part of what
the, the cross was there to do was to give us an example of how we should suffer.
For, and not just the cross, but also all of the things leading up to the cross.
How Jesus endured the opposition, how Jesus endured the mocking, how
Jesus endured, uh, the, the false accusations brought against him.
Uh, Peter saying all of this is an example that we might trace our lives on.
The example that Christ has left for us.
And so Peter holds this up in our passage and calls us to follow this example, and
I wanna just encourage us this morning rather than despising that to say, man,
I don't want to suffer as a Christian.
On the one hand, I, I get that that's just natural to being a human being.
None of us want to suffer, but rather than despising it when we do.
I wanna suggest that perhaps we can embrace it as a true mark of discipleship
and come to see it not as something to be dreaded or, uh, to be escaped,
but something to to be embraced as a privilege of following Jesus.
Point number one this morning, along those lines is this, suffer as a
privilege of belonging to Jesus, suffer as a privilege of belonging to Jesus.
It's like that badge that tells you and tells those around
you that you belong to him.
Alright.
That's what Jesus said, if the, the, the world is gonna
hate you because it hated me.
And so if you're facing the hostility and the hatred from the world, if you're
suffering for your faith, then you should find some encouragement in that.
And there's a privilege there because it means that you're following
Jesus, that you belong to him.
It's like the people that have the 26.2
decals on the back of their cars.
I remember seeing that for the first time and thinking to
myself, what in the world is that?
What, what club is this?
That you have a 26.2?
And then I found out it's club.
I never want to join.
If you don't know what it is, it's, it's those that ran a marathon, 26.2
and, and they put that sticker on the back of their car.
Now, if, if somebody who has done that were to go, or if, or let's just
say if I was to come up to you after service and say, Hey, um, I know it's
lunchtime, but why don't we go run 26.2
miles real quick?
You're gonna laugh me out of the room, right?
Most of you would, some of you are, are unique people and we love you.
But the rest of, you're just gonna laugh me outta the room.
You're gonna be like, there's no way I wanna do that.
Right.
But for those that have done it, that 26.2,
that we look at that and we think you're crazy for putting
yourself through that to them.
They look at that badge and they say, man, that's, that's a badge of honor.
I belong to a club that's unique.
I belong to a club that not many other people do.
And yeah, it was hard and it was painful and I had to go
through a lot to get there.
But was it worth it in the end?
Yeah, it was worth it in the end.
Christians, our suffering for Jesus is that badge for us that says
we belong to Christ, we're his.
And, and, and that's something that, that we can have a, a, an appropriate, a godly
sense of pride in, of saying, I'm his.
And so it marks us out as it, it calls us out as different.
And it, and it's different in the sense that we belong to him, that we are part
of the called out ones part of the church.
And that when we suffer, we can think of that as a privilege.
In fact, Paul in Philippians 1 29, he calls it a gift of God.
He says, for it has been granted to you.
That word granted is, it's the word that means it's a grace gift of God to you.
It's a grace gift of God to you for the sake of Christ
that you should believe in Him.
Okay?
We can get there, right?
Faith is a gift of God.
Amen.
Praise God for that.
But then he goes on and says this, but also that you should suffer for his sake.
So God is giving you not only the gift of faith, but he's also giving you the,
the, the gift of suffering for Jesus.
Man, before we get to, to why that's a gift, and we will in just a second
here, it's probably helpful at this point in time to stop down to talk
about what suffering looks like for us.
If you've been paying attention to world events right now, you know
that, that for Nigerian Christians suffering looks far different than it
looks like for you and I this morning.
I mean, we're not, I don't think, concerned that somebody's
gonna come in here with guns blazing and take us all out.
We can't be a hundred percent certain of that, but we're not
waking up nervous about that this morning, the way that they might be.
Or you think about the suffering of Christians in
China and what they're enduring.
And here's the thing I wanna suggest this morning, and, and this is something
I had to be reminded of this week too.
We have to be careful not to judge the quality of suffering based
on the quantity of suffering.
In other words, when Peter says to this, you have been called.
God understood that, that that was going to be read and experienced in
different cultures, in different times, in different seasons, in different ways.
And so I, I understand that we would look at the suffering that's going on in
other parts of the world and think, wow, that is suffering to a totally different
level than I've ever experienced before.
But I just want to tell you that doesn't negate the significance of the suffering
that you are going through for your faith.
Different Yes.
Less, not necessarily.
God's after the same thing.
He's after the same thing.
And we're gonna see what that is in a little bit here.
But what might suffering look like?
Well, maybe it is that you're getting mocked for sharing
your faith by your coworkers.
Or you're getting family members that have gotten angry with you and
stormed out of a conversation with you or cut off relationships with
you because of your faith in Christ that's suffering for your, your faith.
Or maybe you're a wife who's in a difficult marriage where you're
submitting to your husband, but your husband is not leading you well.
And so you are suffering because you're not being led the way that you,
you would wish that he would lead.
You're not being led spiritually, you're not being led in a way
that is, is, uh, God honoring way.
And so you're submitting to him because that's what God has called
you to do, but you're suffering in the midst of that because you are
lacking what you really wish would be there that's suffering for your,
your faith, or maybe you're a husband.
In a marriage where you're trying to lead spiritually, you're trying
to lead as God would have you lead.
But you've got a wife who's cynical.
You've got a wife who's who's unforgiving.
You've got a wife who's bitter.
You've got a wife who doesn't want to do that, and yet you're trying to
do what God has called you to do, and so you're suffering for your faith as
you're trying to lead in that context.
Or maybe you're an employee who has missed out on the progression of your career
because the, the room where that happens, if I can put it that way, is the bar that
all of your coworkers go to with their boss after work, and they all end up
going up and, and having too many drinks.
And you just don't wanna put yourself in that circumstance because of
your convictions as a believer.
So you're missing out on situations where you could have been, be endearing yourself
to them and to your supervisors, and, and as a result, you're not advancing
as fast as you might otherwise be.
You, you're suffering for your faith because you're.
Making decisions based on that, that are sacrificing things.
Or maybe you're the parent of the unbelieving child and you've
been praying for that child.
You've been weeping, you've been wrestling with the Lord over the faith of that child
for years, and you are suffering in a way that an believer is not suffering over
their kids because they're not concerned about their spiritual state where you are.
And so you're suffering for your faith as you labor for your child.
Maybe you're the single person who desires.
I, I, I just want to be in a relationship.
I want to be married.
And yet your faith says that you have a standard that you will not
compromise on for what that looks like.
And so that means that maybe you've passed up opportunities for relationships
because you know that that would not be a God honoring relationship.
And in your singleness, you're learning to be content though what
you would really rather have is somebody that would be your help.
Meet somebody that would be your spouse, somebody that
would be that companion for you.
You're suffering for your faith there.
Maybe it's missing out on worldly pleasures because of your faith.
Maybe it's you're walking through a trial and you're committed to who God
is, and yet even though you know who he is, there's things, there's questions,
there's unresolved tensions in your life as you're looking at your circumstances
saying, this doesn't measure up to who I know God to be, and I don't understand.
That would be another example of suffering for your faith.
And so to be a Christian is to suffer.
It doesn't mean that you're gonna suffer the same way that Christians suffer in
every part of the world or at all times as you look back across world history.
But just because your suffering is different doesn't make it less or
doesn't mean that God is not after the same thing through the suffering
in your life, but that suffering wherever you fall on that spectrum.
And that suffering is a privilege.
It's a grace gift of God.
Why is it a grace gift of God?
I wanna suggest at least four reasons why.
First, it affirms your position in Christ.
When you suffer for your faith and you hold fast, you're not the rocky soil.
You're not the thorny soil, and that affirms your position in
Christ that you belong to him.
And that's why you're suffering right now is because you belong
to him, because you're his second.
It increases your reliance upon Christ.
When we suffer, when we go through the valley of the shadow of death, man, we
are drawn closer to the Lord as believers.
We recognize how keenly we need him and we need the spirit of God.
It's those seasons whereas Peter opened up the epistle by saying,
you are being guarded by God's power through faith for salvation ready
to be revealed in the last time.
Man, it's the seasons of suffering in your life that you experience that more
often than any other time where you think, man, ire, I know God's holding onto me
right now more than I'm holding onto him.
Thank God for that.
It increases your reliance upon Christ.
Third, it stirs your affections for your future with Christ.
When, when we go through difficult times in this world, it makes
us more hungry for the next one.
And when, when we realize that this world is, is not all it's cracked
up to be, how much more are we ready to go and be in the next world, the
world that that will be satisfying to us, the world where Christ is gonna
wipe away every tear from our eyes.
And so suffering is a privilege because it makes us long for home.
Again, as those Sojourner and aliens.
And then finally, it pleases the father as you submit to him like Christ.
That's another reason why it's a privilege is this is another way for you to
please the Father as you submit to him.
Like Christ.
And this really leads us into this next section because
what did, did it look like?
What?
How did Jesus suffer?
How should we submit to him like Christ?
Look at verse 22.
He says this, he committed no sin.
Neither was deceit found in his mouth.
When he was reviled.
He did not revile in return when he suffered.
He did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to him.
Who judges justly.
Here we find, uh, Peter wading into Isaiah 53 through direct
quotes and some illusions as well.
And again, Isaiah 53 was a passage written about 700 years before the
cross that predicted prophetically, the sufferings that Jesus would endure
through the cross for you and for me.
And Peter's pointing back to Isaiah 53 to remind us of how Isaiah said
that the Messiah would suffer.
And Peter now looking back at the cross, is saying, yes, indeed, this is how he did
suffer and this is how we should suffer.
And he begins by saying this.
He committed no sin.
Neither was deceit found in his mouth.
This is an illusion.
It seems to Isaiah 53 9, which says, although he had done no violence and
there was no deceit in his mouth, the word for violence there, which by the
way is the word Hamas, if you think about that for just a second in the the current
world geopolitical scene, but the word violence or Hamas means wrongdoing or.
Violence.
And Isaiah was saying the, the suffering servant, the, the
Messiah was not gonna lash out.
He was not gonna return, he was not gonna sin, but also he was not
going to commit any sort of deceit.
Jesus, our Messiah, suffered under immense physical, emotional, and
spiritual turmoil, and yet not one time.
Not one time in all of that, did he compromise?
Not one time did he ever use deceit or to lie in order to avoid the consequences
that he knew the truth was going to bring.
He suffered sinlessly and that's what we're being called to as well.
But not only did he suffer that way, he, Peter goes on when he was reviled, he did
not revile in return and when he suffered, he did not threaten the word revile.
There means abuse.
Reproach to suffer, reproach, to be insulted or to be slandered
or to threaten in return.
In Acts four 17, that word threaten is used there when the religious
leaders with the, the apostles threaten them or warn them not to continue
preaching in the name of Jesus.
And so you think about our savior in his suffering, he could have threatened
those, mistreating him to say, uh, just wait until the judgment seat,
just wait until the day of the Lord.
And yet that's not what he did.
Isaiah 53, 7 runs behind this one.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.
There were many times during Jesus' earthly ministry where he suffered.
As I mentioned earlier, many times he was disrespected.
Many times he was mocked.
Many times he was challenged, but it all came to its climax at the crucifixion,
his betrayal, his arrest, the beating, the suffering, the mockery, even leading
up to and through dying on the cross.
In fact, in Luke chapter 22 verses 63 through 65, we get a, a sense
of, of some of that suffering there.
It says, and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him.
Saying he saved others.
Let him save himself.
If he is the Christ of God, that his chosen one, the soldiers also
mocked him coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, if you are
the king of the Jews, save yourself.
There was also an inscription king of the Jews over him.
One of the criminals who were hanged, railed at him saying,
are you not the Christ?
Save yourself and us.
And you think about that.
You think about.
The, the courtyard of CA's house when he was being beaten and the crown of thorns
was being shoved down on his head, and, and not once did he return any of that.
Not once did he revile and return.
Not once did he threaten what was he doing, because he could have, I
mean, he, he, he had every reason in a resource at his disposal, he could
have called down the angels that he was being challenged to call down.
But he didn't.
Instead, what did he do?
It says he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
He continued, it's in a, a tense in the Greek, which suggests a,
an ongoing repeated action, which is why this is again, the example
that, that Christ is leaving for us.
There's gonna be times that you are suffering that it's gonna be
a minute by minute, having to go back to remembering that God is
sovereign and you can trust him.
There's gonna be times in turmoil and suffering where it's not a once.
Moment, once in time moment where you go, well, I entrusted myself to
Jesus at conversion, so I'm good.
Now.
The, the, the pain that we go through, much like the pain that our savior went
through, looks like continually entrusting ourselves to the one who judges justly.
In fact, in our daily Bible reading, we're coming up to it, but Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane, I think this is a perfect example of this.
Three times.
Have you ever thought about that?
Three times.
The son of God in the garden, under the weight of the anxiety and the
turmoil that was facing him at the cross three times, he implored the father,
saying, father, if there's any other way, please let this cut past from me.
And yet for Jesus to entrust himself to the one who judges justly, was to
say every single time, yet, not what I will, but what you will be done.
And so our savior left us this example.
Continued entrusting himself.
It's from the, the word in Greek that means to, to hand over, to give over.
In fact, it's the same word that's used for betraying.
So there's an interesting word play there in that the one who was betrayed
kept handing himself over the one that was handed over to the Jews, kept
handing himself over to the father.
Whatever the world has handed you over to suffering, be it at work or at home, are
you handing yourself over to your father?
The one who will judge justly, though Jesus suffered greatly, God's
assessment of him had not changed through all of his suffering.
He would've still said, well done, good and faithful servants.
This is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.
And this is the example for us to follow as we think about walking
in the footsteps of our savior.
So we think about tracing our lives over the, the stencil
of the suffering of Jesus.
When we look to Jesus, we see a, a savior who suffered patiently
while trusting his father.
And that's our second point this morning.
As you think about what it looks like for us to suffer in the way
that God is calling us to suffer, it's this way, suffer patiently
while trusting like Jesus suffer patiently while trusting like Jesus.
There's something I think innate in all of us that when we suffer,
we want our pound of flesh.
We want the person making us suffer to suffer.
We want the suffering to stop, but then we also want justice to be done.
And so the example Peter's, uh, calling us to follow the example
we see in Christ that he didn't revile, that he didn't threaten.
It's not it, it doesn't make us feel good.
Think about the road.
I, I, I know I, I go to the road often, but it's such a good place
to find examples of where we can be less sinful, at least in, in my life.
When, when you're cut off on the road, what, what do you think to yourself?
Do you think, oh, well maybe his wife is in labor and he has somewhere to get
and it's really important and I just need to extend him grace in that moment?
I try to think that sometimes, and there's a lot of people giving birth
apparently out on the road these days.
But, but when, when you're cut off on the road, you think to yourself,
can I get around him and cut him off?
Or when you got somebody tailgating you, right?
What do you do?
Do you think, oh man, I should get over, they've got somebody somewhere
really urgent to get to, let me get over and let them pass by.
Or do you look down and go, I could slow down five miles an
hour on the road right now.
Maybe you're holier than I am.
Hopefully you are.
I read an article this week that Dallas is the 14th worst city
in the nation for road rage.
By the way,
it doesn't feel good to suffer the way that Peter's calling us to suffer.
In fact, we even teach our kids to stand up to their bullies at school, right?
So why shouldn't we stand up to the bullies in our lives?
I wanna suggest something just as a point of clarification.
W Peter's not calling us to roll over and be a doormat to the world.
Okay?
Peter's not calling us to suffer silently when something needs to be done.
In other words, lemme just give an example.
If, if you are in a relationship, let's say that you are in a, a, a marriage
where there's a physical abuse taking place, sometimes it's appropriate to
call the police and get the authorities involved in a situation like that.
And that's not wrong.
That's not disobeying what you've been called to here.
Or let's say you're in a situation at work and, and you've been suffering
silently as you've just been continually neglected and passed over for promotions.
Whether it's because the boss knows that you're a Christian, despises your
faith, or because you're just missing out on opportunities and you're sitting
there going, okay, do I stay here even though man expenses are mounting?
I've got kids that I need to send to college and, and I just,
I don't think I'm stewarding my family well by staying in this job.
Sometimes you need to change.
You need to get out of that job and go find another job.
Or if you're in a marriage with a professing believer and that
professing believer is sinning openly in front of you, that sin
needs to be confronted to suffer.
The way that Jesus suffered is not ignoring sin.
So all that's to say you're not called to suffer silently.
You're called to suffer sinlessly, and that's the point here.
How we respond needs to be in keeping with our christlikeness.
If our response to suffering hinders your walk with Christ, if your response
to suffering leads you into sin and how you're going to respond, which in
Peter's instance here would be to revile when you've been reviled or to threaten
someone, then we're not suffering the way that God's calling us to suffer.
Again, it's not about suffering silently necessarily, but sinlessly.
So what does that look like and, and how can I get there?
I wanna suggest two things that help us get there.
How we suffer patiently while trusting like Jesus.
Uh, two truths that help you do that.
First, God knows what you're going through.
God knows what you're going through.
The Father knew every step of Jesus' life exactly what he was enduring.
The Father knew as Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, praying
that the cup would pass from him.
That father knew what that cup contained.
In fact, he knows us so well.
This is how David describes his knowledge of us in Psalm 1 39.
Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up and you discern my thoughts from afar,
you search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways,
even before a word is on my tongue, the hold, oh Lord, you know it all together.
And here's this, the language of the loving father, the knowledge of our
Father as he leads us and guides us.
You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
It is high and I cannot contain, attain it.
Or think of the, the Psalm 23.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil for you are leading me, right?
So the father knows what you're going through, and so you can trust
him patiently trusting that he's going to bring justice because he
knows what you're going through.
He's heard every harsh word that's been uttered towards you.
He's aware of and familiar with the discouragement that you felt when met
with SEP skepticism or cynicism from a spouse that doesn't want you to lead
the way that God's calling you to lead.
He knows how many tears you've wept for your unsaved kids.
He knows how many negative pregnancy tests have been taken.
He knows about the coverup at work that you're being asked to participate in.
He knows the questions you wrestle with late at night, seeking to resolve the
tension between who you know him to be and what you're experiencing right now.
God knows exactly where you are, and that's comforting for us, in fact,
so deep as his knowledge of us.
Look at Psalm 56, 8.
You have kept count of my tossings.
Think about that when you've been suffering to the point of losing
sleep at night, tossing back and forth and back and forth.
David knew what that was like, and he's saying, God, you know the number of
times I turned on my bed last night.
But then he goes beyond that.
He says this, you've put my tears in your bottle.
Think of that church that God loves you so much.
It's as though he's keeping count of your tears in his bottle.
The father knows what you're going through, and that's comforting
because of what he says.
After that, you can continue entrusting yourself to the one,
not just who knows all things, but to the one who judges justly.
The second reason why we can suffer patiently while trusting
like Jesus is this, God is the ultimate arbiter of justice.
God is the ultimate judge.
He's the ultimate ruler.
Why didn't Jesus call down the angels?
Because he knew that God was gonna see that justice would be done.
It's not our job as much as we feel like it is, and as much as sometimes
we want it to be, it's not our job to see that justice is carried out
against those that make us suffer.
It's our job to trust the one who will see to that there's two sides of this.
First God will punish all sin.
He, he will punish all sin as being the arbiter of justice.
God will punish every sinful thing that's ever been done to you.
And that's such a comfort because you don't have to see that that's done.
And sometimes that's hard for us because the people that
sin against us are believers.
And so in the end, the, the sin that's been committed and carried out against
you, ultimately God saw the justice was satisfied at the cross for that sin.
And that just reminds us of how significant what took
place on the cross was.
The wrath of God poured out against the sins that were committed
against us, but also the sins that we committed against others.
God is gonna see that all sin is punished either at the cross or in
an eternal torment under the wrath of God for all of the eternity in hell.
So that allows you to trust him as the ultimate arbiter of justice.
But the second reason we trust him as the ultimate arbiter of justice is
that he will reward your faithfulness.
Not only will he punish all sin, but he will reward your faithfulness.
You may not get the payoff for your endurance, this side of eternity.
Remember, Jesus submitting to the Father as he suffered, led
him to the cross in the garden.
He was praying, God, take this cup from me.
But it was the father's will that he should drink that cup.
And so as as you go through the valley of the shadow of death, the light at
the end of the valley may be the light of eternity, not the light that you're
gonna find, this side of eternity.
The hope, though, is that you will have the light and that faithfulness
that you're demonstrating by suffering like Jesus suffered suffering
patiently like that, that faithfulness will be rewarded by your father.
'cause he knows what you're going through and he is the ultimate arbiter
of justice to punish sin into reward.
Faithfulness.
Some of you may know the name Joni Erickson.
She, uh, at a younger age, suffered an accident when she
dove into a lake that was too shallow and she ended up paralyzed.
And she tells a story about some suffering.
She's endured and, and now her suffering is, is different than your
suffering or my suffering or the suffering of the Nigerian Christians.
But I would still argue that, you know, she's suffering as a, a believer, as
she's suffering her paralysis, realizing, okay, Lord, this is how you want to use
my life and my testimony to bear witness to you as I suffer through this physical.
Malady that I have, and she tells this story of being at a, a, a
message that was being preached.
She says, as at at at the close of the message, the speaker asked
everyone to do something unusual.
He asked us to push our chairs away from our tables if we feel comfortable in
doing so, and to get out of our chair and kneel on the carpeted floor in prayer.
Well, I sat there in my wheelchair and I watched as everyone in the room,
there had to be maybe 500 or 600 people.
All of them got outta their chairs and they got down on their knees
for a brief time of worship.
With everyone kneeling in the banquet room.
I sat there kind of standing out.
I looked around and I was sticking up way up.
The only one sitting there in the huge room and looking around.
I could not stop the tears.
Uh, and I was not crying out of pity.
I mean, I wasn't crying because I felt strange or different
that I was the only one sitting.
I know my eyes were wet because it was so beautiful to see everyone kneeling in
prayer, and it made me think of the day when I too will be able to get up out of
this wheelchair on new resurrected legs.
I can't wait for that day because when I get my glorified body, the first thing I'm
going to do with my resurrected legs is to fall down on grateful glorified knees.
I will once again have the chance to say with Psalm 95, 6, come
let us bow down and worship.
Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.
As you think about whatever the suffering that you're going through
right now is, I think, Joni's, right?
It may not be that you're looking forward to glorified legs, but maybe
it's the, the restored relationship.
Maybe it's the vindicated integrity.
Maybe it's the satisfaction of a heart that's been longing for something
that God has chosen in his wisdom not to provide for you right now,
whatever it may be.
I think that day when we step foot into his presence and we see the
faithfulness rewarded for how we suffered for him here, I think we will
be so overwhelmed, just like Joni, that we will fall down and worship him
when we experience the relief.
When we experience the freedom, when we experience the the, the knowledge
that we will never again feel pain or sorrow, I think we'll be so
overwhelmed with gratitude that we will fall down and worship our savior.
As we entrust ourselves here, though, to the one who judges
justly, we do still hurt, and we do still suffer, and we do still weep.
But as we continue in our passage, what we'll find is Jesus
went before us in suffering.
And it's his suffering that not only saves us, but it, it's his suffering that
gives purpose and meaning to the suffering that we're enduring right now as well.
Look at verse 24.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, by the way, that again is.
Penal substitutionary atonement.
He bore our sins in his body on the tree.
Peter uses the word tree there as well, which calls to mind.
Deuteronomy chapter 21 and Galatians chapter three and Deuteronomy
chapter 21, we find the law cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
Paul, in Galatians, chapter three, says, he became a curse for us again.
He took our place, he became our substitute.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that notice the
purpose here, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
And so here we find that that Jesus' death on the cross was
not only for our justification, but also for our sanctification.
Not only that we would be justified because he satisfied the wrath of
God that our sins deserve, but also that we might be sanctified as now
we live differently as his followers.
And that's going to involve how we respond to the suffering in our life as well.
He says by his wounds, you have been healed, healed of our, our sins,
healed of our, our sinful ways.
And that was begun at the cross.
But that's continuing in, in, in a sense, we are continually being healed as God
continually cleanses us and sanctifies us.
And honestly, suffering is a, is a large part of that.
I, I love the story of Michelangelo's David.
Because it was carte out of a, a block of marble that was twice
rejected by Master Artisans, and it was left out in a courtyard to the
exposure of all of the elements.
And in fact, they had multiple other artisans come forward and they said,
Hey, will you use this block of marble?
And they all said, no, I, this is good for nothing.
It's worthless until Michelangelo came along and he said, I'll do it.
And so Michelangelo began with hammer and chisel in hand to
carve out of this twice rejected.
This, this despised block of marble, one of the greatest
statues of the world has ever seen.
But if you think about that process, that process was oftentimes violent.
The hammer in the chisel, that's not a, a calm endeavor.
And, and, and even after all of the, the large chunks are taken off,
there's still the refining that still needs to take place to that statute.
The polishing, the sandpaper, the, the, the finer smaller chisels and
tools and implements to make sure that there's no imperfections left there.
Y'all.
God is the master artisan with the hammer and chisel in his hands through the spirit
in our lives, making us look more like Jesus all the way until we get to heaven.
And sometimes that's a painful process.
Sometimes it's the, the big chunks that need to be taken out of our life.
Sometimes it's the refining, it's the smaller implements, it's the sandpaper.
It's still abrasive.
And so as we look at suffering, we can realize that suffering also has
a sanctifying impact on our lives.
And ultimately it's that he might, in verse 25, here, take us who were string
like sheep, and return us now to the shepherd and overseer of our souls.
See, Jesus died for you to redeem you and to redeem the
suffering that you're enduring.
Jesus Death means the pain that you experience is not pointless, that
your suffering is not meaningless.
It has a purpose, and that purpose is that you might be more like him.
Our final point this morning is this suffer purposefully becoming like Jesus
suffer purposefully becoming like Jesus.
In a way, this third point really ties in the previous two.
Because it's Jesus's death for us that enables us to say that it's a privilege
of suffering for him because it's Jesus's death for us that causes us to be able
to belong to him, and, and it's Jesus's death for us that allows us to suffer
patiently while trusting like him,
because it's Jesus's death that begins to conform us and begins
that process of growing in sanctification and christlikeness.
In a sense it's, it's like getting a trainer and finally understanding the
purpose behind all the different workouts.
As you get ready for that marathon, that 26.2
that I was talking about earlier, before you have a trainer to help, you're just,
you're kind of hating every minute of it and it feels aimless and you're not
quite sure if you're making any progress and you don't know where you're going.
But then you get your trainer and they show you the plan, and they
explain how all of this is gonna work together to get you to where you
want to be across the finish line.
When we come to faith in Jesus and understand that he went before us
as our model, as the stencil for our lives, the one whose example we're
following after then there becomes this sense that, oh man, this,
this suffering that I'm enduring in this world, there's a point to it.
It's to make me more like Christ, as Peter says, to cause us to die
to sin and to live to righteousness.
And so we can take that paradigm and apply it to our suffering.
That Jesus died so that we might die to sinful responses to suffering and live
to righteous responses to suffering.
For example, that we might die to self-pity that we might die to feelings
of despair and hopelessness, that we might die to a thirst for vengeance, that
we would die to retaliatory acts that we would die to passive aggressiveness,
that we would die to sinful anxiety.
We would die to bitterness and anger and resentment.
Christ's death is so that we would die to those things as we encounter
suffering in this world and that we would live to righteousness.
That we would live to trust God's goodness that we would live to encounter
suffering by trusting in God's sovereign plan that we would live to encounter
suffering by forgiving those who wrong us, that we would live as we encounter
suffering, to roll over our desire for justice to, to him, and to trust him.
That we would live as we encounter suffering, to stay faithful to God's word,
no matter our situations that we would live as we encounter suffering to hope
that this life is not all that there is.
That we would live as we encounter suffering to destroy the idols that have
a grip on our lives, that we would live as we encounter suffering to show mercy to
others as we have been shown mercy that we would live as we encounter suffering as a
witness of our faith in our living hope.
Christ's death for us was not only the example, but it also
has redeemed our suffering for a purpose to make us more like him.
Your suffering has meaning and purpose.
Whatever that suffering looks like for you, the suffering of the Nigerian
Christians has meaning and purpose,
whatever that looks like for them.
And so it's not grin and bear it until you cross the finish line and feel relief.
Relief is waiting, but the miles you're putting on right now, as you run the
race of God before you, the suffering you're enduring while running is going
to result in a swer reward in more crowns because you're being made more like him.
To be a Christian is to suffer.
There's no getting around that fact.
The comforting reality is it's worth it.
If we suffer the way that God is calling us to suffer, we suffer as a privilege.
We suffer patiently and we suffer purposefully.
We do have a lot to be grateful for in this nation.
We're, we're, we're, we're not suffering to the same extent as others in the world.
We're not going through what the, the Christians and other places are going
through, but like I said earlier, the quantity of our suffering does not have a
bearing on the quality of our suffering.
Your suffering is real where you are, and it has a real purpose
in God's plan for you ultimately to make you more like Jesus.
And it's a gracious thing of God that we have a savior who understands
what it means to suffer and left us.
A perfect example that we might trace that stencil with our own
lives as we suffer for our faith in Him To be a Christian is to suffer.
And yes, I believe as long as we're suffering the way that
God calls us to, it's worth it.
Let's pray together.
Father, I'm aware in a room like this that people are suffering in ways that
that I don't know, or ways that I can't imagine, ways that I've never experienced.
And vice versa.
And yet, Lord, we, we want to no matter where we are, no matter
what our suffering looks like as individuals, we wanna suffer faithfully.
We wanna suffer the way that you have left us.
An example through Christ.
We wanna suffer for your good and for your glory, Lord, ultimately, we
long for the day when you're gonna wipe away every tear from our eyes.
We long for the day when suffering is gonna be gone.
When, when death, and, and pain and sorrow, and sickness and disease,
all of it are gonna be gone.
Lord, we want to be with you and we would pray.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
But in the meantime, Lord, help us to grow in our trust of you so
that we wouldn't despise suffering, but that we would welcome it.
Even see as, as Paul wrote in Romans chapter eight, that we
will be glorified with Christ provided that we suffer with him.
Lord, we can't wait to be with you.
But in the meantime, Lord, we wanna be faithful.
And we wanna exalt you and glorify you in how we live and how we respond, and how
we doubt a sin and live to righteousness.
So we pray that you'd be pleased with the way that we conduct our
lives here while we await the return of Christ or you calling us home.
We pray this all in Jesus name.
Amen.