that He does and begins a good work in us, and He will see it complete until the day and the coming of the Lord Jesus. So, we have already experienced a blessing today. We've had the opportunity to sing praises to His name. We've had an opportunity to baptize a new believer in Christ. So, this day has already been full, but we look forward to sharing God's Word with you this morning together. And so, as is our custom, before we get into the message, we'll take just a moment give a verse of confession, if you will, to allow us an opportunity to seek the Lord's face, ask Him to forgive our sins, ask Him to prepare us for the message today. And so I'm going to read to you from Psalm 25, verses 6 through 7, and then we'll take a few moments to just ask the Lord to prepare our hearts to forgive us and ready us for whatever He has to say to us this morning. So Psalm 25, verses 6 and 7 say this, Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. Lord, we are thankful today that you remember your people, that you know every detail about us, and yet you would still come seeking us, desiring a relationship, giving your sons life so that we might be reconciled to you. Lord, we could never repay the debt that we owed, and you don't ask us to, but you humbly call us to obedience and surrender And Lord, we want to do that today in every area of our lives. We want to give ourselves to you. We want to ask that you would lead us where you want us to go, that you would take us and use us for your glory. So, Father, have your way in this service. May you increase and I decrease. May your word go forth with power in your spirit. Use it to accomplish whatever purpose he sees fit. And we'll give you praise and honor for all of it in Jesus' name. Amen. if you would like to turn with me this morning back to the book of first Peter we've been in that book for several weeks now will be in it for a few more weeks in a series that we have been going through Peter has spent the first few verses in the first chapter really talking to us about holiness not just our own personal holiness but God's holiness imputed to us and what that looks like and how we are to live our lives and now in this next section we've started to look at how that practically plays out last week we talked about the government's role in our lives and how we are to submit to the government but there are times when We don't obey the government. When the government crosses the line and asks us to do things that are unbiblical or against God's commands and wishes for us, that we would obey God rather than man. And so we're going to continue looking at that theme this morning. The title of my message is Suffering Like Jesus. Suffering Like Jesus. None of us like to suffer like anybody. But if we're going to suffer, we ought to know how to do it and who to model that after. And there is no one greater to do that as a believer than the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we will model our suffering after Him because, Church, suffering is coming whether you want it or not. Whether you seek it out or not, you are going to be CERTAIN to have suffering at times in your life. And it's unavoidable, but it is not something that has to ultimately destroy us or defeat us, and as believers it cannot. So I want to use this message to encourage you more than anything, that if you are in the midst of suffering, or you're coming out of suffering, or you're getting ready to go into suffering, that you can withstand and endure and you can suffer with hope and peace in the midst of that. So 1 Peter chapter 2, I'm going to ask if you're able one final time. If not, you don't need to. But if you're able, would you stand with me and we're going to read verses 18 to 25 from 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 18 through 25. The Word of God says, Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 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. This you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so 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 the one 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 straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." Father, we thank You again for Your Word and we thank You most of all for Your Son, Jesus Christ. We're gathered here today as believers only because of Him and what He has done in our lives. And Lord, our prayer today is that if someone watching or someone here in our midst doesn't know you that today they would see their great need and see the great provision that you have made in Christ and that they would come in repentance and faith to receive him Lord we promise to give you praise and glory for everything in this service and in our lives it's in Jesus name we pray amen thank you you may be seated this morning I appreciate you standing for God's Word there was a Christian who spent a lot of time in nature and he would often observe things that he saw in nature and try to use those to make a parallel, if you will, about the Christian life. And as he was out walking one day, he was observing the massive oak trees. If you've ever stood next to some of those giant oaks, you can really feel a sense of how small we are. Those things can grow to such great heights and widths. And he was looking at these trees and he saw these vines. that had grown up around them and were clinging tightly to the oak. And he said this, The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Although the violence of nature may uproot the oak, the twining tendrils of the vine still cling to it. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection. If it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses the vine closer to the trunk. In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us. While in others, He allows us to be exposed so that we will be pressed more closely to Him. The storms will come, and sometimes they affect us in different ways, but they're always accomplishing a purpose in our life. Even though, when the suffering comes, we most often than not just want to get out of it. We just ask God to deliver us from the suffering, rather than thinking about what the lesson and what the purpose is in the suffering. but if we could somehow focus our hearts and our minds on what God is doing and understanding that God is still in control in the bad times we often say God is good all the time and all the time God is good but we normally say that when things are good right when the suffering comes it's not as easy to say God is good all the time and all the time God is good but he is regardless of our circumstance God is good because of his character of who he is not just because of how things are panning out in our life at any specific moment and so when we look at our text today Peter is going to shift gears and he is going to be speaking to a large portion of the culture at that time. And so in that sense, what he is saying and who he is saying it to is a bit different than what we might at first see on surface level for us as 21st century Americans. He says to them, servants be subject to your masters with all respect. So here's the thing. We need to take a step back for just a minute and think about the culture and what Rome was like during the time that Peter wrote. Obviously we understand that Rome controlled the entire known world. And Rome had built an empire largely by going out and defeating other nations, other countries, other cultures. and bringing them back into and under Roman rules. So we talked last week that Rome was made up of lots of different ethnicities, lots of different religions, and they allowed you to pretty much do your thing as long as you didn't attack Rome and as long as you didn't worship something over Caesar. You'd worship all the gods you wanted to as long as Caesar was number one. If you followed those two rules, you really wouldn't have much of a problem with Rome. And so for slaves, when you were in another country and you were defeated and brought back to Rome, you were pretty much a slave. And so as a slave, there were roughly 60 million slaves in Rome. So pretty much two-thirds of the population were slaves. just to give you an idea of what's going on. And when we think about slavery, we have to detach our mind from what we think about with the American and the English type of slavery versus what this indentured servitude would have looked like, if you will, in Roman times. Because slaves weren't simply folks that did menial tasks. Roman culture was built around the idea that if you were a Roman, you were privileged. If you were really a true Roman, You ought to be waited on. You ought to be taken care of. You shouldn't have to do much of anything. So slaves weren't just doing menial tasks. Slaves were lawyers. Slaves were teachers. Slaves were actors. Slaves did everything. So it wasn't just that slaves were necessarily these folks that were uneducated and didn't have any abilities. They pretty much functioned as doing any kind of work and every kind of work in society. And more than that, If you were a slave, you had zero rights. Matter of fact, the law didn't even recognize you as a person. You were an object. You were a thing. You were owned. You were property. And that was where it ended. So when Christianity comes on the scene and it starts to talk about slaves not being property, but being people that were made in the image of God, that was revolutionary. It was a revolutionary idea that nobody at the time and in that culture thought about. And that's what's going on with Peter. He is addressing the slaves, but he will also address the masters on their treatment towards the slave. That it ought to be one of mutual respect and adoration and love if they're both believers. Now that wasn't always the case. And in that case, look at verse 18 again. He says servants, and he doesn't use the normal word there, doulos, which would have been translated slave. He uses a more generic term that would cover not just slaves, but would cover everyone in the idea of serving one another. OK, so he's intentional about the language, the inspiration. The Holy Spirit assures that he uses a word that would cover everyone, not just slaves, if you will. And so he says, servants be subject to your masters with all respect. Now look what he says, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. So let me try to personalize this a little bit for us today and get us to think a little bit. Have you ever been done wrong? I'm just going to put it in old hillbilly talk. Has somebody ever done you dirty? Yes. Amen. We all have experienced times where someone has done us wrong. We've been treated unfairly. And it hurts. It hurts. And a lot of times when those types of actions are carried out against us, we want to respond in a whole lot of different ways. And a lot of times those ways aren't always Christ-like. Right? We go through the whole gamut of emotions. We're sad. We're discouraged. We're angry. We're frustrated. All those thoughts and all those emotions are pulling at us. And if we dwell on any one of those wrong thoughts too long, wrong actions are sure to follow. So how then do we respond? Because Peter's saying, listen, you be subject to your masters with respect, not just to the good ones and the ones that treat you right. But he says to those that are unjust. That word there, unjust, is scolios. It's where we get our English word, scoliosis. So if you think about scoliosis of the spine, it's a curvature. We could say Peter's talking about folks that are crooked. They don't treat people justly. They don't treat people the way that they ought to be treated. And then he goes on in verse 19 and tells us why we need to do this, why we need to be submissive to good and bad treatment. He says, it's a gracious thing. when we are mindful of God we endure sorrows while suffering unjustly let me paraphrase that in my own language that verse could say for this is grace this is how we show grace we make a conscience decision so this has got to be a choice this won't just happen naturally for us we have got to intentionally make a choice that when we are treated unjustly that we are going to show grace and we are going to honor God by our actions we make a conscious decision to honor God and to bear up is what that word means to bear up under this affliction it's painful it hurts we don't we don't just try to intentionally say well this this doesn't bother me I'm okay we don't put on a fake face we don't try to pretend to be somebody we're not if you're hurting it's okay to say I'm hurting right that's one of the problems that I have with people that come to church on Sunday is you come in the door and you pretend to be something you're not And I don't know why we feel like we gotta do that. If we just sang a song, I come broken to be mended, everybody comes in here and acts like they're okay. I know you're not okay. There's times I get up here on Sunday and I'm not okay. So why do we have to pretend? If this is the place where God meets with us and God's people are here to encourage, to edify, to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, then why do we come in here and pretend that everything's okay? Because when you come in here like everything's okay, you take your burden and you tuck it away, and you hide it, and you shuffle on out of here, and you walk right back out with the burden. And if you would have acknowledged the burden, if you would have confessed the sin, if you would have put it out in the open and exposed it and dealt with it, hopefully when you leave out of here you're a little bit lighter and you're a little bit lifted up because you dealt with the issue. Right? It'd be like if you were sick and you went to the hospital and when you got in you just kind of snuck in the corner of the ER and you sat there and watched for an hour and then you went home and never saw anybody, never talked to the doctor, never got any medicine. You walk right back out of the ER in the same condition you came in. That's not why you're here today. You're here to let God do work on your heart. If there's sin in your life, let Him take care of it. If there's struggles in your life, let Him take care of it. If there's burdens that you're trying to carry, lay them down, let Him carry them. That's why we're here today, to worship God and to allow Him to have full control of our life. We sang last week, we sang, I Surrender All. Sometimes I wish we'd never sing that song, because I don't think we believe it. I don't think we really believe it when we sing that song. We want to hold on to certain things. When he asked us to give ourselves and all of us to him, and he will do with us what is best. So he says in verse 19, we endure these sorrows, but look at the last two words, while suffering unjustly suffering unjustly suffering wrongly sometimes in life you're going to suffer and it wasn't your fault sometimes in life you're going to face situations that weren't because you made dumb choices sometimes you're going to suffer in life and things are going to happen to you that were completely out of your control and you didn't ask for them and you didn't see him coming and you didn't go looking for him but here they are And in those moments, it's easy to respond and say, this is not fair. This is not fair. And if we're not careful, a lot of times that conversation can get pointed towards God. And we can say, now wait a minute, God, I didn't sign up for this. Wait a minute, God. We talk about your goodness and your love and your grace and your mercy. And if you are all of those things, then why am I suffering? We channel that emotion towards God. We might have a bad boss, a bad spouse, a bad neighbor, a bad parent, and if we're not careful, we can get consumed with the suffering and the negativity, and we can miss what God is doing in the midst of our suffering, and we can miss who He is. All the time. And so it's such a it's such an easy shift in our minds that happens if we're not careful and we're not intentional. Remember what he said in verse 19. This is a gracious thing when we make a when mindful of God or we make a conscious decision. Take every thought captive. Paul writes in first Corinthians. We have to be careful that we are constantly guarding our thoughts because our thoughts will drift down into our hearts and what's in our heart will come out in our actions. Right? And so, as we think about this, as we think about the struggles, the suffering, the tribulations it will face, the trials that we face, and a lot of the times, it isn't fair. It isn't fair what a lot of people have to endure. At least from a worldly, earthly perspective, I see suffering. Sometimes it happens in people's life and I say, man, I hate that for them. They've got enough going on right now. They don't need that. You know, that's my estimation. I'm not God. I'm finite. I don't know all things. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts and His ways are higher than my ways and He certainly knows much more than I'll ever know. But sometimes, just from a worldly perspective, I've felt like I've suffered unfairly, and I see other folks that I love and care about that appears are suffering unfairly. So what do we do in those situations? How do we handle that? Paul says in Philippians 4.11, now remember, he's writing this letter, which is all about joy, he's writing it from prison. So that tells you a little bit alone about his attitude towards things, that he can be in prison, possibly facing the loss of his life, and writing about how to have joy. But he says not that I'm speaking of being in need for I have learned in whatever situation currently in prison and it wasn't prison where you know a nice jail where you got television and you could go work out at the yard and got fed. It was a dungeon basically is where he was. I've learned in whatever situation I am to be content. Paul that's great. Good for you. But I'm not there. I haven't figured that out yet. I'm not to that point yet in my life. This is the Apostle Paul, and I'm not there where you are. So why do we struggle? What is going on with us? Why can't we say, in whatever situation I'm in, I've learned to be content. I can suffer wrongly and be okay with that. I think that one of the biggest reasons we struggle with that is that there is still, in each and every one of us, no matter how long you've been a Christian, no matter how long you've been walking with Jesus, no matter how much you're in the middle of God's will, there will always be this side of glory for us, as long as we have this flesh, a measure of pride and unbelief. in all of our lives. All of us carry around pride and all of us carry around unbelief. And it's those two things that cause us a lot of heartache and a lot of difficulty in this Christian life. Because lost people will suffer. and believers will suffer. We talked a little bit about this in Sunday School. Both will suffer, but both won't suffer the same. Both will suffer, but both won't respond the same, or at least they shouldn't. And like I said, I've talked to wonderful Christian people who are going through trial, after trial, after trial, and it seems like that they don't ever see the sun shine on their life, that every day, what was that peanut character that had the cloud that followed him everywhere? It seems like that's been their lot in life for a long time. And I've talked to them, and in those moments, I've heard them, out of frustration and despair, say things like, I just don't understand. I try to do everything that God asks, and the more I seek Him, and the more I try to serve Him, the worse things get. The worse things get, the more I do good, the harder my life seems to turn out. And it's in that conversation that I try to gently explain to them that it's not a give-and-take relationship with God. There's never been in the Scriptures a guarantee that says, if you do this, this, and this, that God will automatically do this, this, and this for you. Otherwise, you're putting it back under to a contractual obligation where God says, OK, if you if you make sure that you do this for me, I'll do this for you. God is under no mandate to respond to anything just because you did it. You're not God. He is. And so you have to understand that God will deal with each one of us according to what he decides is best for us. And that isn't always comfortable to think about. Because our pride wants to say that, God, I've done my part, and now I'm waiting, I'm waiting, and I'm waiting for you to do your part. And you seem to have forgotten about me. You seem to have ignored my requests for some time now. You seem to have dropped the ball, God, and I sure wish that you would get on track with things. And behind that is pride and unbelief. It really is. And I want to say that gently because I understand the struggle and the frustration that builds up. We are frail human beings and we face that emotion. And so I want to be gracious. If you're in that place, I want to be gracious towards you to say that I can understand as a human being those emotions, but don't let those emotions change your perception of who God is. Our feelings are often wrong. Our experiences can even be wrong. They may seem real to us, but our experiences don't determine truth. If our experiences determine truth, then what I think is true, what Tavish thinks is true, is based just on our experience. There is no absolute truth. It's just what he and I observe or have experienced as truth, and that's not the case. God's Word is truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Truth is grounded in a person. That person is Christ. Truth is grounded in His unfailing, unchanging Word. Not our emotions, not our experiences, but those things are so powerful in our life that they often consume us and we lose sight of the truth and just base our reactions, our thoughts on feelings. How we feel in the moment. Suffering hurts. And hurt people will often hurt people. I've said that many times. When you're hurt, you will hurt others, even when it's unintentionally. And often you hurt the people that you love the most when you're hurting. And you don't mean to do that. But in the moment, those emotions well up and you react emotionally rather than logically. And you have to guard yourself against that. John Calvin said this he said so deeply is pride rooted in the hearts of men that they think wrong has done them and complain if God does not comply with everything that they consider to be right pride is so difficult to identify in our own lives it's one of those sins where we all have it but we rarely see it usually someone else sees the pride in our life and if we try to point that if they someone tries to point that out to us guess what We get proudful. Who do you think you are? Take care of your own house. Don't throw stones in glass houses. You got your own mess over there. Right? And so our pride keeps us from receiving admonition when we need it. And that is often a slippery slope where we don't ever get over that pride. So he goes on then. after he's talked about submitting even to those that are unjust towards us suffering unjustly and in verse 20 look what he says for what credit is it when you sin now remember he's talking in in that culture of the slave and in the those that would have been in slavery specifically he says if you uh what credit is it when you sin and you are beaten you endure it so if you did wrong if you stole something from your master and he came and beat you you deserved it right you did wrong the consequences said this is what is going to happen you broke the law the consequences came end of story but he says if when you do good and suffer for it you endure this is a gracious thing in the sight of God so when we when we're at fault and the consequences come it's sometimes easier us to say well you know what I deserve that I did I did wrong I deserve that but again when we suffer and we feel it was unjust and we didn't deserve it Peter says that our response ought to still be the same. It ought to be the same as whether we did wrong and deserved it or we're suffering because we didn't deserve it. And that's where it's really tough because we don't want to suffer at all. But we sure don't want to suffer when we didn't do anything to bring it on ourselves when it was outside of our control. This is where the Christian life calls people to do something that we cannot do in our own strength and that is self-denial to die to self pride makes us think much highly of ourselves we think so highly and and what is further compounded that problem is so many churches today have turned their messages into a self-help build up the self-esteem, focus everything on man and not God, so that we become the center of the universe, and God is just crazy about us, and He's so glad to have us, and He just sits up there and just lavishes His love on us. And while those things are true, God does love us, and God does care for us. Those aren't untrue. But, when that is the message that is constantly driven home without any focus on who God is, it's easy for our pride to grab hold of that, because we all have it, and say, yeah, I am a pretty big deal. God sure is lucky to have me. Boy, that church is really, really blessed that I grace their presence. You know? And we start to think highly of ourselves. So, again, we've got to guard our hearts against saying, yes, there is truth that God loves us, and God is for His people, and God will not leave His people, and God cares about His people. But all those things are true because of who God is. Not because of who we are. There was nothing in us that God looked and said, man, that guy is amazing. And I sure wish that he was on my team because the kingdom of heaven would be a lot better place if he was here. That's not how it works. None of us deserve heaven. None of us deserve grace. None of us deserve anything from God but condemnation. Listen, the Christian life isn't one that just seeks to beat people down so that you walk around and feel miserable about yourself. I don't stand up here to try to tell you that you ought to just walk around and constantly feel like you're worthless. But your worth comes from God. And so much of the message today in the world is, look in yourself. Look within. Yeah, you should look within, and you'll find a whole lot of mess. And when you look within, and you say, I am a mess, but there is a God who is great, and He cares about me, even with my mess, just as I am. This morning, if you're here with all kinds of mess, God is not going to turn His back on you and say, well, you are just way too messed up. I'm looking for the all-star team, and you wouldn't even make it on single A team. That's not how it works. God comes for the broken. He comes for the lost. He comes for the hurting. Those are the people that He seeks out, but He does so because of who He is, not because of something in us. And it's just that subtle shift where we start to lose focus and we have to redirect it. And when we think biblically, I'm not saying that suffering is fun. I'm not saying that we pray for suffering. I'm not saying that we enjoy it. But I think we'll endure it a lot differently than we do when the focus is on us. And it's something that, well, I don't deserve this because, God, I'm really awesome. I'm the all-star on the team. And I don't know why I'm suffering when I'm your best player here. That's not how we ought to think. Listen to what Jesus says in the Beatitudes when he's speaking to his disciples. He says in Matthew 5, verses 10 through 12, listen to this language. You talk about counter-cultural to what we believe in society. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. When you're persecuted for righteousness sake, he says, those folks that endure that, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The reason why we struggle so much is we've got so much of our kingdom here on earth. He says, you're blessed when you suffer, when you're persecuted, because you are kingdom-minded, you're kingdom-focused. That's why you can say, I'm blessed to go through this, because this is not my home. But when all your focus is here on this earth, and you lose something worldly, or someone in your life, a human being that you've Attached your whole life to walks out or that chapter closes you fall apart completely Because you've attached all your hope and all your energy to someone or something And again, I want to be mindful that I get it. We all have folks that we love immensely. We all have things that we care for deeply. And there's nothing wrong with that. But none of those things and none of those people should be greater than God. And when they are, it's very difficult to look at a circumstance of suffering and say, I don't know how anything good is coming out of this. God, I don't deserve this. He goes on to say, Blessed are you when others defile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad. I don't want to do that, do you? Listen to what he just said. Blessed are you when others revile you, when folks make fun of you and talk badly about you, and they persecute you and slander you, say things about you that aren't true. I don't know about you, but the old Chris wants to respond differently. I want to go over and have a conversation with that person. I want to post something on Facebook that I would later regret. I want to send a text and an email that wouldn't be so nice. That's what I want to do. And I've done that before. And then I've had to go and repent and apologize that I didn't act like Christ. But he says, Rejoice and be glad. Why? For your reward is great in heaven. Because they persecuted the prophets who were before you, this isn't anything new. You're going to suffer, and these things are going to happen to you if you are a believer. You might as well not be caught off guard and say, I never saw that coming. It's coming. Just be prepared for it. If you live for Christ, if you really want to live out your faith, That's going to happen. And when it does, you can rejoice because God is keeping a record. He sees everything that happens in your life, good and bad, and everything that you do for the kingdom of God is being laid up as treasure in heaven for you. You can mark it down. God will not let you go through any amount of suffering for his namesake and not reward you tenfold for it. But still, that doesn't always make it easy, does it? In the moment when we're going through it. And He gives us this greatest example of Christ, and I want us to see that this morning. Verse 21, For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, here it is, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps. When He says there that He's left us an example, It's a Greek word that's not used very much. It's hoopogramos. And here's the best way I can describe it. If you were trying to teach your child or your grandchild how to write, maybe you did this. And you take a piece of paper and a pencil and you trace a letter real lightly on the paper. And then you'd have them come up and write over top of it. Or maybe the alphabet. That underwriting, if you will. You're giving an example and they are to follow it. They are to trace out what you wrote. That is exactly what that word means. Christ left us an example to follow and we are to walk exactly like He walked. That's great, but I'm not Christ. Is what you say. I can hear you saying it subconsciously right now. So he is the example. Our thoughts and our emotions want to go this way. We have to consciously make an effort to say, I need to redirect my thoughts to be like Jesus. But I have to know how Jesus responded if I'm going to imitate him. If I don't know anything about Jesus and how he reacted and how he lived that life and allow the Holy Spirit to control me, I'm not going to be able to do these things when the suffering comes. When we think about Christ. Here's the example that he left. Verse 22, he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Remember back in verse 19, those two words suffering unjustly. You want to talk about somebody that suffered unjustly. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered unjustly. He did it willingly. He came to obey the Father. He did it for you and He did it for me. But He sure didn't deserve it. It wasn't His sin He was dying for. It wasn't His sin He was being mocked for. It wasn't His sin He was being beaten for. It was yours. And it was mine. You talk about somebody that suffered unjustly, and did it willingly, and did it patiently, and did it in such a way that He didn't respond. Look at what He says in verse 23. When he's reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. But he continued entrusting himself to the one who judges justly. Literally, he gave himself into the Father's care. When you are suffering, especially when you are suffering for all the wrong reasons in your mind, you have got to get to the place where you say, if God delivered His Son, He's going to deliver me too. And I'm going to trust Him with this, even though I don't understand it, even though it hurts, even though everything in me is suffocating me right now, I'm going to trust that God will not let me ultimately be destroyed in this thing. You've got to. And I know that goes against everything that your mind is screaming, your emotions are screaming, that your circumstance is screaming, and that's where faith has got to take hold of something. That's where faith has really got to step in. When everything around you and in you is saying, this won't work, you've got to say, God is for me, who can be against me? You've got to trust Him. and you will see Him move in a way that you will never, ever, ever have experienced without faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God, and you've got to trust Him. The suffering that we go through involves every part of our being, doesn't it? It involves the physical, it involves the emotional, the mental, the spiritual. Suffering, it literally permeates every part of our being, just like the Lord Jesus. We think about suffering, and we think about the crown of thorns, and we think about the beating that he took, and the nails in the hands, and that was certainly part of the physical suffering of the cross. The horrific suffering, physically, of the cross. When he was up on the cross, didn't he also cry out, I thirst? I thirst! He was experiencing all the physical feelings of suffering. But what about before the cross? What about the night before in the Garden of Gethsemane? when he fell down on his face and cried out in sweat like it were great drops of blood, Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me. That was emotional anguish and agony. He wasn't going through anything physical at that moment, per se, in the sense that he hadn't been beaten and the crown on his, thorns on his head. But he certainly was suffering. He was suffering emotionally. He was suffering mentally, the thought of being forsaken by the Father and bearing the sins of the world. What a battle He was facing. And then spiritually on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, Jesus was suffering all of that. And He understands we suffer the same way. When we're sick, when we're in pain, we suffer not just physically, we suffer mentally and emotionally too, do we not? And spiritually. All of that comes into suffering. That's what the word suffer means. It means to be affected, to experience something. To have a sensible experience is literally what that means. And it involves every one of our senses. All of them in suffering. But here's the thing. Sometimes, enduring suffering, enduring pain, leads to something greater. Let me give you a great example of that. It's childbirth. If you've been a mom, you know that it's not fun to get that epidural. And some of you ladies, God love you, I don't know how you do it, but you've done it naturally without the epidural. And I've had kidney stones and they say that's the closest a man will ever get to experiencing childbirth. And if it's anywhere near that, my prayers go out to you because that was the worst pain I've ever had in my life. And so having children hurts. but you endure it because you know the joy that's about to happen. Right? The joy that is coming through childbirth. And in Hebrews 12 too, it uses an example of enduring pain for the joy that's coming. It says, look to Jesus, focus your eyes and your heart on Jesus, the author and perfecter, or the author and finisher, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. The victory was coming. The victory was coming. The ascension was coming. Seated at the right hand of the father ruling and reigning was coming. But all that had to pass through the cross. and god has things in your life that he has ordained that will be good your whole life will not always be awful trust me i know sometimes we fall into that road we think that nothing ever good happens to me i'd say that there's been a lot of blessings if you stop and really consider it but right now maybe you're in something you think i've just i've lost all hope i've just lost all hope i'm not who i am i i want to worship i want to have faith i want to have joy but it's gone right now it's gone i can't find it i'm just in the middle something right now And I cannot believe that it's ever going to get better. The cross proves that things can get really bad on Friday and change a whole lot by Sunday. There is joy that will come through your suffering. But you have got to trust that it is God that is doing the work and God is going to bring you through. And you've got to stop trying to figure it out, fix it, adjust it, work it out in yourself. And just trust Him with it. Trust Him with it and refocus your thoughts. Don't let those emotions consume you. Don't let those feelings drag you down. When they come, look to Jesus. Look to the example that He left. And say, this hurts. I don't like it. I don't want to be here. But I know that God is going to bring me through it and I'm going to trust Him nonetheless. Romans 8.18 says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us. Suffering in this life is inevitable, but I'm telling you that when you get to heaven and you see the glory that God has prepared for you, it will be incomparable to what you've went through. David Paulusen, who is a Christian writer and author, he said, in the hands of a loving God, sorrow and suffering become the doorways into the greatest and most indestructible joys. Hold on, my Christian brother or sister. God has not forsaken you. God is going to do something in your life amazing. But you've got to go through the valley of the shadow of death sometimes to experience the joy of real life. Trust him. And then Peter closes and I'll close with this. He echoes Isaiah 53, and he talks about the work that Christ did on the cross as the suffering servant. It says there, Peter says, He Himself bore our sins in His body. That word bore means to literally carry as a sacrifice. It's saying there to us, and to you if you're lost today, this is what Jesus has done so that you could have a relationship with God the Father. He carried as a sacrifice whose sins? Our sins. He had no sin. He carried our sins in His body. He was the substitute. That was you and I that deserved to be on that cross. That was you and I that deserved to die the death a criminal deserved. Because we are criminals against the Holy God. We have sinned. We have broken His laws. We have rebelled against Him. And the wages of sin is death and we deserve it. But God sent His Son to bear our sins and be our substitute. It says that He bore our sins in His body on the tree. That's literally the cross. The Jews didn't crucify people. The Jews stoned people to death. But if you were a horrific criminal, they would hang your body on a tree until the evening. That's what they would do. Deuteronomy 21-23 describes that. It says, "...his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him in the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance." He says, if you hang on a tree, you're cursed. Jesus Christ took the curse on us. Galatians 3. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. He quotes Deuteronomy 21, 23 that I just read. What does that mean? It means that the law is a curse. It can only condemn. Under the law, you are guilty, you are condemned. If you are here today and you say, I think I will go to heaven one day because I'm a pretty good person. My friend, you are deceived and you are lost. Because you might be a really great person in the eyes of me and the church and your friends and your family. You might do great things. You might treat people with respect. You might follow the golden rule. But my friends, you are a sinner and all your good deeds can't pay for that debt. Jesus had to bear the sin in His body, because He alone was sinless, and He was the sacrifice that God demanded. And you must place your faith in Him to receive forgiveness. He took that curse on Himself. And He says that He did so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Do you know that when you trust Christ, not only does He forgive your sin, but He gives you all of His holiness? Oftentimes Christians struggle because they say, well, I got saved, and I still sin. And I don't know how God could still love a sinner like me. I don't know how God could let someone like me into His kingdom because, sure, He's changed me and the Holy Spirit lives in me, but I still don't always live like Him. And I often think that maybe He wouldn't let me in. The only reason why God looks at you as a believer and has any merit towards you is because He now sees Jesus in your place. He doesn't look at you and say, boy, that guy cleaned up nice. He was a little rough around the edges, but we got him looking pretty good now. She got her hair done and got her makeup on. She looks okay now. That's not how this works. When he looks at you, he sees Jesus now. And so no matter what you do, the blood of Christ covers you. And if the blood of Christ covers you, God sees you as righteous. He sees you as holy. He sees you as a saint, even when you don't feel like those things. God says, my son has paid the debt for you. And that's what he says, by his wounds you have been healed. Faith healers use this scripture to say if you have any physical ailments, if you're sick, His wounds have healed you of your physical infirmities. That's not at all what this scripture is saying. God is a great physician. If you're sick, I would seek His face and ask Him to heal you because He is able. I'm testimony of that. But He won't always heal you physically. But when you come to Christ and you give your life to Him, I've never yet not seen Him heal somebody spiritually. I've never yet found a person that came and said, I came to Jesus, and I cried out to Him in sincere repentance and faith, and He said, I don't want you. Never found that person, and you never will. Because when you turn to Christ in faith, truly from the heart, as the Spirit draws you, you will find Him always willing to receive and cleanse you and forgive you. And that's how He closes. And I'm going to invite the praise team to come, and this is how I'll close. He says in verse 25, We were all like straying sheep, We were all going the wrong way. Maybe you're here today, maybe you're watching online and you're still going the wrong way. You can turn around and come home. You can come home today. He says, we've returned to the shepherd and the overseer of our souls. We have someone who gently loves us and leads us as a shepherd, someone that watches over us and cares for us. His name is Jesus. If you're a Christian and you know him, My friend, I encourage you to trust that He is shepherding you, that He is watching you, and that He is with you. And if you're suffering greatly today, that you would ask Him to hold you up in that. If you need strength and if you need comfort, look to Christ as the example. And if you're lost today, my friend, He calls you to come. He calls you to give your life to Christ. And I promise, according to the Word of God, if you'll do so, you will find that He is willing and He is able to save you and make you a new creature in Christ. As we pray, Father, we thank You today for Your Word and for Your truth. Many of us know this Christ, and we've experienced His grace and His goodness. And now, Lord, we pray that in this invitation, You would work in the hearts and the lives of those that are suffering, those that are lost, those that are in need of Your touch. God, that you would have your way in this invitation, that you would draw men to repentance and faith, and that they would seek to follow you, not just have an experience of emotion, but to truly seek your face and allow you to be preeminent in their lives. Lord, we love you and we thank you for what you've done and what you will do in this church and in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. As we stand and as we sing,