Our sermon passage this morning is from 1 Peter chapter 1, chapter 2, and I'm going to be reading verses 13 through 25. Some of these verses we read last week. This passage this morning is a bit rough. So what I'd like to say, before we pray and read, is that after the service, if you want to talk about it, pray about it, ask questions about the text, I'm going to be right up here. But let's pray and let's read God's Word. Lord, what can preaching accomplish if you do not bless it by your Spirit? What comfort, courage can the words of men give if they do not come from you? You have given to your church, your spirit, and Holy Scripture so that we may increase in faith, hope, and love. And all of us desperately need you to accomplish that this morning. You are our shepherd. We are your sheep. Let us hear your voice. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. 1 Peter chapter 2, and I'll be reading verses 13 through 25. Please give your attention to the Word of God. Therefore, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. unto the king as supreme, unto governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. This is commendable. If because of conscience toward God, one endures grief, suffering wrongfully, for what credit is it if when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, This is commendable before God. But to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow His steps, who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth, who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously. who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." Now, friends, Peter is writing to vulnerable people. By vulnerable, I mean Christians who are likely to be abused, exploited, mistreated. And this would have been the case even before becoming followers of Jesus Christ. From verse 13 in chapter 2 all the way to the first verse of chapter 3, we hear Peter saying, Chapter 3, wives, submit to your husbands, some of whom do not obey the word. Slaves, submit to your masters, not only the good and gentle ones, but those who are harsh. And then he says to the free citizens, these poor citizens, under Roman rules, submit to your rulers. The church that Peter is writing to is not strong. not wealthy, as it relates to the world. And you know, when you read through Colossians, you see that Paul is addressing masters as well. Not so for Peter's congregations. There are not people who own slaves, but he is certainly writing to people who are enslaved. We also have Philemon, where a master is addressed. In 1 Corinthians, Paul says to slaves, if you can obtain your freedom through manumission, do it. But Peter gives no such words here. He is writing to poor, oppressed, vulnerable people. Being free in the Roman world was much better than slavery. That's about as much as you could say. It's better than being a slave. In fact, slaves actually had more access to opportunities, education, than most of your free poor. Most of them went into business for themselves. If they were farmers, Rome would lean heavily on the fruit of their labors and leave them just enough to keep it going. If you wanted stability or the dream and you were a free poor citizen, you were hoping one day to be adopted. It worked a little bit differently than adoption today, but someone in a higher position with rank and power would bring you into their family. and this would open all kinds of doors for you. Life is difficult, because in addition to the obstacles of just nature, your crop could get destroyed, you also have people that are out to get you. And again, this isn't Christian persecution, this is just simple, I don't want you to buy from that person, so I will gossip about that family. I'll do something to make sure I get the sale and not you. It's obvious to us that life would not have been easy as a slave. You are a living tool. In fact, ancient readers would be surprised that Peter is even addressing slaves. You don't address slaves and wives. You address the masters and husbands. Slaves don't have that necessary thinking ability to hear instruction. They need to hear it from their masters. And wives, they think more or better than slaves, but they don't have any power or authority to get things done. This is the world. This is the people that Peter is writing to. And since they've become Christians, life has gotten incredibly difficult, even more so than it originally was. You think about our poor citizens who, instead of using family connections or doing whatever it takes now to advance, now have to object. No, I will not pray to this god or perform a sacrifice to this false god to conduct business. And so you lose money. And you think about your children who you have to feed. you break away from the pater familius, the rule of the father. Because he says, if you're going to be in this family, son or daughter, you need to worship our gods. And so you break with the community, you break with your family, to form your deepest bonds with a group of people who scholars would estimate make up less than 1% of the Roman world. As a slave, now when your master says, go and fetch that animal so we can perform our family sacrifice, you have to say no. Do you think slave masters like hearing no? Because you're a Christian, when your master is trying to use you for sexual exploitation, which is very common for household slaves who Peter is addressing. He doesn't use the Greek doulos, but oikos, right? Household slaves. Well, now you have to experience the wrath of your master because you are resisting righteousness. Peter is writing to vulnerable people. And vulnerable people who are suffering could certainly benefit from Peter writing a full-scale defense of the wrongs of slavery. The Bible will be used to do that very thing. Or to offer a political theory about why an emperor is not the best situation for government. But are those the kind of questions you ask when you're suffering? The question you ask in suffering is, where is God in this? That's what poor citizens under Roman rule, beaten and tired slaves, fearful wives, that's what they are asking. Where is God in this? And so the Holy Spirit inspires the Apostle Peter to write to them to address that question. He says, this is what your suffering means. And he does this in two movements. He takes them to the sufferings of Jesus Christ, then the sufferings of his brothers and sisters. And along the way, he steps on a lot of lies that we believe about suffering. So if you could turn with me or look with me at verse 21. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example. that you should follow His steps. There's two aspects of this verse that I want to focus on this morning. It's the idea of, for us, and an example. You know, it's very easy to read verse 21, Christ suffered, and then just go, like, yeah, every Christian knows that. Jesus died on the cross. We say it in the Apostles' Creed. Crucified, died, right? And it doesn't do anything to us. We have the same response to it if the statement was, it's going to rain tomorrow. One of the things that terrifies me when I read the Gospels is when I get to the crucifixion and I read about Jesus suffering for me and I'm unmoved. It just becomes another factoid or thing that I know as a Christian. But Peter is holding the sufferings of Christ before these poor, these slaves, these fearful wives, and saying, this is what Jesus has done for you. He exposes a lie that if God loved me, I wouldn't suffer. And we would never question the Father's love for the Son, and yet, Jesus is that man of sorrows. When we read verse 21, we hold Jesus' suffering just close enough to get those benefits of his suffering. This is verse 24. That we have died to sin and now that we can live for righteousness and that the wounds of our soul due to our sin and being dead and Adam, these have been healed. But we keep those sufferings at a distance. We don't really feel the weight that Jesus was rejected by friends and family for you. Jesus was constantly under the threat of being stoned, being pushed off a cliff for you. He was called a drunkard, a glutton for you. He went to an unjust trial, was lied against, smacked, his face greeted with spit for you. This is the eternal son of God, the one who the Lord delights in, and he subjects himself to humiliation and suffering for you. This is what Peter needs, these slaves. for these poor citizens to understand that you are not far from Christ in your suffering. But when you are suffering for righteousness, you are near to Jesus. And as we'll see later, you are being like Him. Peter is wanting us to do what the author of Hebrews says in chapter 12. Consider Him. who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. Jesus is the shepherd who was struck so that we could be saved. He is the overseer, this ruler who dies a slave's death so that he can ruin our lives with grace, with love. We're confronted with this for you aspect, because it makes us have to take serious the claims that for you to belong to Jesus, for you to have peace with the Father, someone needed to suffer. Blood needed to be shed. Jesus needed to hang on a cross. naked, bruised, bloodied, pierced, so that we could take delight in all the things that Peter's been saying to us earlier, that we are priests, that we are being kept by the power of God, that we have been called for obedience, that we do belong to the family of God. Verse 21 also says that Jesus is suffering as an example. Now, the idea of getting examples based off of Jesus' life is not necessarily foreign to us. In the Gospels, Jesus says to his disciples, love one another as I have loved you. That's an example. Paul says to Christian husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, laying down his life for her. But this is different here. You see, what Jesus is urging his disciples to do is to love one another. And so your fellow brother and sister is not going to be your oppressor or your persecutor. It might get on your nerves sometimes, but you do the same to them. The Christian wife is not going to be the persecutor of her husband, but here, Peter is saying, suffer for doing good. Unjust suffering. The suffering that when you're experiencing, you get that knee-jerk reaction, that stomach feeling of this is wrong. It shouldn't be this way. And Peter uses a very striking image to bring this point across. In verse 21, the Greek, under that example aspect, is the idea of actually teaching children the alphabet, right? As this Greek word is used in non-scriptural context, you would have the letters of the alphabet written in huge, bold relief. And then what do children do? Well, they go under it, they try their best to get it. You know, we have these today. You have the huge letter H, And then under it you have the H with the dots, and you watch your child slowly try to match it. Friends, Peter is saying that we are to look at the sufferings of Christ, and to have His sufferings written on our lives. That the way we learn what the Christian life looks like is not to make a decision, what do I want? What would be best? What does the world have? But we look to Jesus, we look at his crown of thorns, and by his spirit we trace that into our lives. That we too would walk in that path from suffering to glory. suffering for righteousness until we share in the exaltation of Christ. He actually says, you're called to it. And this is a second lie that we believe about suffering. I shouldn't have to suffer. Friends, if there was anybody who didn't have to suffer or shouldn't suffer, it's Jesus. We belong to him. We share in His sufferings. We are called to this. When we are participating in this life of suffering for righteousness on the path to glory, we are following God's call over our lives. We should not be surprised. Peter writes later, Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though something strange happened to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed. For the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part, on the part of your persecutors, He has blasphemed. but on your part, he is glorified. There's two aspects that Peter is highlighting about Jesus' example, his life of suffering. But before we focus on those, I have to ask you this morning, will you partake in Christ's suffering? Will you know about Jesus' sufferings and not partake in them? Will you attempt to do this Christian life without sharing in the sufferings of Jesus Christ? And I know you may be thinking, Hunter, that's obvious. Yes, we all know we're supposed to say yes. Get on with the sermon. But friends, there are so many Christians who have rejected a Jesus who wears a crown of thorns. They've asked for a macho Jesus, a Jesus that gives sanction to me being tough and better than everyone and letting everyone know that I'm better than them in this world. Some have wanted a passive Jesus who run from suffering when it means standing for righteousness. There are so many different little Jesus's that people follow today. Don't make that mistake. Share in the sufferings of Christ. There are two aspects that Peter highlights for us to know how to do it. One is to suffer for the right reasons. Verse 19, suffering wrongly. 20. What credit is it to you if you're suffering for bad behavior, sinful behavior? You know, earlier I read 1 Peter 4, and what's the rest of that? Let none of you suffer as an evildoer. Suffer as a Christian. Suffer for the right things, in verse 19. Always be mindful of the Lord. You're conscious toward God. And in this very difficult command of making sure you're suffering for the sake of righteousness, Peter gives us an incredible promise. He actually takes us into the presence of God, into the heavens, and gives us the God's eye view from when Christians suffer for righteousness. And he uses charis, you know, our Bible's just commendable, verse 20. But under that is the Greek word charis, which we get for grace. And all throughout Peter's letter, grace has been something that God gives. He gives grace to strengthen us, mature us. He gives us gifts to give to other brothers and sisters. But here, this is a grace that the Lord witnesses. It is a grace that the Christian puts on display before the eyes of the Lord. You know, this is one of those words that's gonna vary a lot between translations, because how do we really capture that it's a gracious thing before the eyes of the Lord when you say, I will suffer as Christ suffered? This is favorable. And of course we're immediately challenged by that. Because something that is wonderful and worthy of praise before the eyes of God is something that is terrifying to us. Something we want to recoil from. Something I want to recoil from. But isn't the Christian's goal to be pleasing before the eyes of the Lord? Isn't this why we catechize our children and drill that first question, what's our chief end? To glorify God and enjoy Him. And here we are called, it's no secret. What does God look down upon and say, you see my servant who is conquering the world through righteous suffering, who's sharing in the sufferings of my son. My servant who has said that others may pursue comfort, pleasure, all of these things, but if it means I can't have Jesus, I will suffer. This is a delight to him. And Peter wants us to remember this, to know it, so that we don't fall into the lie, the third lie. Your suffering does nothing. Your suffering is just pain, hurt, and disappointment for you. It accomplishes nothing. Your friends hear your older brother Peter saying to you, that's not true. We picture our brother and sister in the ancient marketplace being mocked and surrounded because they refused to give sacrifice to those empty gods. And the Lord is saying, this is favorable, this is commendable, this is gracious before me. But God also promises justice. And this is the second aspect, and it takes on our fourth lie about suffering. For those who have wronged you, those who have committed horrible sins and actions against you, your persecutors, your oppressors, all of their actions have been forgotten by God. They've been swept under a rug and it's never gonna come up again. But that's not what we get from Peter and this is certainly not what we get in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. You remember that the path of a Christian life is righteous suffering and then vindication and justice. And so Jesus did suffer and did not retaliate. He did not have a violent response or get even. But friends, this does not mean that Jesus was a pacifist or non-violent. These aren't the words of a pacifist. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming on clouds of heaven. He's quoting from Daniel 7. that one like the Son of Man will come riding on the clouds to establish his kingdom, crushing those who would oppose him. When Jesus suffers, he entrusts himself to the Father that he will be vindicated. This language that Jesus gives ensures that he was not under disbelief, that those who had wronged the Son of God and refused to repent would get off the hook, that the Lord would not forget his sufferings. You know, we get these descriptions of Jesus that we emphasize on, the Prince of Peace, he's the Good Shepherd, and we forget how he's described in Revelation 19 as this conquering king, clothed in a robe, dipped in the blood of his enemies. That is also Jesus. And so Peter says to these poor Christians, these slaves, your suffering is not going to be forgotten. The wrongs that you have experienced will not be swept under the rug. If your oppressors, your persecutors will not turn to me in faith and repentance, they will face my wrath. Peter doesn't tell Christians to get revenge, to get even, or to drown in bitterness, but he promises justice. And one of the realities in church life is that we think everybody who fills the pews comes back or comes to the pew with nice, wholesome, happy homes, backgrounds, families, history. But you know that's not true. Many of you fill the pews with scars, wounds, suffering, righteousness. Suffering that you did not cause because of sin or rebellion. Pains and hurts that were done to you because you were there and available. Entrust yourself to the God who judges righteously. Do not let your life be defined or determined by those sufferings, but entrust yourself to the judge. Now here's what's scary. Maybe the whole thing's been scary. Peter is writing to slaves and poor Christians And he's saying, submit to those who are over you, and suffer rather than sin. Would Peter say anything less to us? We are not slaves. Actually, we are slaves, right? Earlier he calls us bondservants, that's in verse 16. We don't have earthly masters. And many of us are doing well, praise God. but have we committed to sharing in the sufferings of Christ? To living a life where everything we do, our thoughts are towards the Lord and what would be pleasing to Him? Do we fear rebellion against the Lord more than the rejection of the world? Peter is calling you, friend. to a life where you would rather suffer rejection than sin. Do not believe the lies that suffer. Remember that when you are suffering, you are being like Christ. And that you, your actions are commendable before the Lord. And that the wrongs that you suffer will not be forgotten. Church, we must be consistently in prayer for strength to answer this call, to walk as Jesus walked, to follow His example. Let's pray. Lord, Why would you suffer for sinners? Why would you experience humiliation, beatings for sinners? Why would you lay down your life for those who would rather worship so many other things than you? Give us strength, Lord Jesus. Give our brothers and sisters overseas strength who face beheadings, imprisonments, losing their children, their businesses. Give us strength to join our brothers and sisters in resistance against this world, willing to suffer for righteousness so that the Lord Jesus may be exalted. We pray, Lord, that you would return you would consummate your kingdom. We pray that you would reign forever and ever. And while there is still time, that those who are in rebellion against you and persecuting your people would turn and give themselves to you. Give us strength, Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.