Bring greetings to you this morning from Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod. The elders there and the saints gathered there this morning, actually soon to be ungathered. We have a 10 o'clock service there. But thanks to your elders, your session for the opportunity to be here. I'm delighted to share the word of the Lord with you, to open the scriptures to you. Appreciate your prayers for me. And I'm fighting back a little bit of a cough this morning. Appreciate your patience. But let us open our Bibles together to 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5. Be reading verses 8-11. And bringing a word to you from verse 9. This is the Word of the Lord. Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Let us pray together and ask the Lord's blessing upon his word. Father in heaven, as we come to you this morning and as we open the scriptures together, oh God, we are delighted that it has pleased you to speak to your people, that it has pleased you to reveal yourself in the word for all ages. We thank You for Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word. And through Him, You have spoken to us this Word that we have read this morning. Through Him, You revealed Yourself unto us. And by Your Spirit, O God, whom You have sent in cooperation with Your Son unto Your church, we ask now that You'd open our hearts and our minds and our eyes and You would cause us to see the things, Lord, that You have prepared for us this morning. Soften hearts, O God, and bring unto us this morning words of encouragement and consolation and comfort, that we may be encouraged in our battle, that we may be encouraged in our warfare. And Lord, in all that we do, we may be strengthened this day and in days to come in light of the scripture that we have before us this morning. Bless, O God, your word that we thank you that it is not in vain that the scriptures are read and poured forth. Let it be unto us this day as you have promised, a means of grace. We ask all of these things for Jesus' sake and for the sake of His glory. Amen. We come into the middle of a passage this morning that I have read to you. We come to verse 9 out of verses 8 through 11. We come in the middle of a series that I have had the privilege of finishing up in my own congregation and I bring to you this morning a word that I have shared with them in recent weeks. A word of encouragement. A word of encouragement in the battle which we wage, in the warfare which we fight as Christians against sin, our own flesh, the world, and the devil. One of the things that greatly troubles our patience and that weakens us in our battle is the tendency to think that our troubles are worse than others' troubles. Indeed, we tend to think that no one suffers as much as we do. We tend to think that the trouble we face is greater than anyone in our sphere of influence, in our family and friends' face, and maybe greater than anyone in the history of the church has ever seen. We tend to hear amongst those with which we find fellowship, and maybe even on our own lips, no sorrow like my sorrow, we say. It tends to be the perpetual lament of some of God's people. And this mindset is not true, of course, but this mindset is such that it causes us, as we begin to think and speak that way, it causes us to actually swell our trials beyond its proportion. And in fact, we not only swell our trial, but we swell our struggle with it beyond proportion. We get ourselves into such a fit, our trial and our suffering turn out to be bigger than they actually are and we can hardly be encouraged by anyone. A word of encouragement from a brother or sister falls upon deaf ears. A scripture shared with us maybe through an email of some sort falls upon blind eyes. We find no encouragement at all because we are beyond being encouraged because our trial is too great to be moved. We can hardly be encouraged until we realize that it's not as bad as we thought, that others indeed have suffered greater than we are, and that our trials are not as bad as we had supposed at first. Well, here Peter lays out a great struggle. Peter is honest in his portrayal of our warfare. Indeed, he tells us to be sober minded, to be watchful. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour our lives, seeking to destroy. He tells us to resist the devil, stand firm in our faith. He paints a very accurate picture and who to know. But Peter, who himself fell at the hands of this great enemy when he boasted in his own strength, Well, we come into this passage in verse 9 this morning, and after Peter has told us about our struggles and the reality of our struggles against our adversary, the devil, he now seeks to lift our hearts. And he lifts our hearts, I believe, with three encouragements in the overall passage in verses 9, 10 and 11. And this morning, I want to share with you this first encouragement. His words are again, he says that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by our brotherhood throughout the world. That doesn't sound like much of an encouragement or consolation at first, does it? To say to someone, worry not. You are just one among many sufferers. Take heart. Doesn't sound like much of an encouragement, but there's more here than meets the eye. And I hope by God's grace to unfold it for you in three parts this morning. First of all, I want to share with you that our sufferings are the common lot of Christians. Secondly, that our sufferings are being accomplished by our brethren. And thirdly, that our sufferings are to be accomplished in this world. Well, let's begin with Peter's first point. Peter's first point is this, that our sufferings are the common lot of all Christians, despite how often we feel about our suffering that it is so unique and rare. Scripture is replete with testimony to the fact that our suffering is not peculiar. Speaking in a very general way, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, that no temptation has come upon you but what is common to man. Paul's point is very clear. The things that we face are the things that all men face. Nobody in life, no human being in all the world is facing a better situation than you are. Haven't we all said at one time or another, life is hard. Life is filled with struggles and difficulties. And Paul here says in that verse of the temptations and the struggles we face are being faced by all men. There's nothing peculiar about your trials when compared with the trials of everyone else. At Paul's point, therefore, it's no small consolation. But Peter actually brings a greater encouragement and a stronger encouragement than Paul does. Because what Peter says here is something more particular. Peter says the same kinds of suffering that you face are being experienced by your brotherhood, your brethren, your brothers and sisters. The sufferings which you're facing against your adversary the devil are being faced by every other Christian in the world, Peter is saying. In other words, your suffering is not only common, to fall in humanity's plight in this world. But your sufferings are common to that people whom Christ has separated unto himself. In fact, to push it a little farther, your sufferings are like that family badge which distinguishes you as the sons of God and the brethren of Jesus Christ, your elder brother. Consider the words of our Lord in John 15, 19. Jesus said, if you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. We may augment Christ's words in this way. If you were of the world, the prince of the world would not tempt you as he does. But because you are not of this world, he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking to devour you. This reminds us of Hebrews 12 verse eight, where we read, if you're left without discipline in which all of God's sons have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons of God, because God disciplines every son he receives. There's not a single son of God. There's not a single brother of Christ who doesn't suffer blows from Christ's enemies. We also are reminded of 2 Timothy 3.12 where Paul says, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Jesus assures us in John 16.33, in this world you will have tribulation. And Paul's words are just as clear in Acts 14.22, through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God. So what does this teach us? What does this teach us but that God has appointed and called us to these sufferings which we face these sufferings along the Christian path. Philippians 129 says it has been given to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake. And again in Hebrews 12 verse 10 we read God disciplines us for our good that we may share in God's holiness. So that rather than our sufferings being arbitrary, rather than the sufferings of Christians being inexplicable, our sufferings and our temptations are in fact appointed to us as Christians, as members of the body of Christ. They're part of that discipline by which Christian brethren here on earth are prepared to join Christian brethren there in heaven. It's part of the means by which the Church militant is conformed to the Church triumphant. Our sufferings are the furnace in which God removes our dross so that he can take us as pure gold to heaven in due time. And we should be encouraged by this, Peter would say. We should be encouraged that our sufferings are the same sufferings which Moses and Elijah bore, the same which David faced, the same which Peter and Paul faced, because our sufferings are indeed the sufferings. of Christians. The battle we wage is the Christian warfare. We wage it as those donned in the armor of Christ. We wage it as those who are on the path to the celestial city. We fight the good fight, not just any fight, but the good fight that all fight who await the Lord's coming. In fact, Our sufferings are the sufferings of those to whom suffering has been given by Christ as a legacy and as a family badge. Our sufferings are the bearing of that cross which marks us out in this world as His peculiar possession. And if this is the case, that our sufferings are common to all Christians, then how wonderful is the cordial empathy which we can expect from one another. Our brethren are able to comfort us as those who know what it is to be tempted, as those who know what it is to suffer blows, as those who know what it is to be foiled by temptation. And this is a great comfort to us. Think how hard it is to Take encouragement from someone who has no idea what you're going through. For how well intentioned the encouragement may be, it just may not be suited to our particular need. And we, too, then can come alongside our brethren, as Paul says in Romans 12, verse 15. And we can weep with those who weep because we have wept in the same way. We have wept for the same cause in our own path, in our own walk with Christ. We know from our own experience the pains and the hardships and the sufferings which our brethren face. And we are able then to offer real comfort from our own experiences, not only our experiences of the trial, but our experiences of God's grace in the trial. And this is exactly what Paul so memorably says in second Corinthians one verses three to five. Paul says, Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of all mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in our in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we have ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. In other words, the comfort God affords you in your sufferings is to overflow to your brethren who suffer in the same way as you do. Are you doing that congregation? Do you find yourself able? Do you find yourself mindful of such a blessing? Not only to draw encouragement from brethren who themselves are walking the same path, but do you find yourself equipped? Do you find yourself encouraged to give unto others that encouragement that you have received from the Lord? Are you sharing that comfort which God has given you? Are you coming alongside your brethren and bearing one another's burden in the Lord? This is our blessing as well as our charge. But as great an encouragement as this is, what is this compared to the greatest of consolations? And that is that Jesus Christ, who is the firstborn among many brethren, has himself experienced the temptations and sufferings which we face as Christians. You see, for all the encouragement that it affords us, that our brethren are facing the same sufferings as we face. Nothing can compare with this, that our Savior himself, who took on flesh to suffer for us, did indeed experience these same sufferings when he walked on this earth. For we read in Mark 1, verse 13, that he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness for 40 days. And how can that not sweeten the path we walk, beloved? How can that not indeed make the path more comfortable and more bearable that not only do our brethren walk this way with us, but our own elder brother Jesus Christ has walked it before us and now leads us in it. Indeed, he has left his own footsteps for us to trace them out. 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter 2, verse 21 says, For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps." And can we not gladly bring our hearts to comply and bring our feet to trod in those steps which our Savior has left for us in the sand? Can it not be easy? Ought it not be easy for us to walk in such steps as he himself has trod? But there's more here. Christ's walking the way we now walk enables him to meet us in this path with the consolations that we need. Hebrews 4 verses 15 and 16 puts it this way. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace in time of need. What an encouragement this is. Your Savior is not only able to sympathize with you, But he stands ready to encourage you. He stands ready with grace and mercy to minister to you in your time of suffering and need. Your savior is that good Samaritan who not only pours oil in your wounds, but he takes you up in his arms and he sees you through to a full recovery. What a glorious, what a glorious brother he is unto us, this elder brother, Lord Jesus Christ. It would be enough for us. It would be enough. If He were willing to help us in our sufferings, that would be encouragement enough. But Hebrews 2.18 says your Savior is not only able to help, not only willing to help, but He does indeed help. His flesh enables Him, His love inclines Him, and His faithfulness engages Him. Beloved, your Savior cannot but help you in your sufferings. He cannot but uphold and carry you through, for He is your elder brother." What a glorious blessing this is. And of course, He'll never let you down. He'll never let you down. He is your elder brother who has experienced the same kinds of suffering when He was in the world. And you can be certain that He will send you His Spirit to uphold you. He will indeed intercede with the Father to keep you. And He will rebuke the tempter when enough is enough. So be encouraged, brothers and sisters, in all your trials. Be encouraged that your sufferings mark you out as part of Christ's brotherhood. Be encouraged that your sufferings, being common sufferings, enable all your brethren here sitting next to you this day to share with you the comfort which God has afforded them in their sufferings. And be encouraged that your Savior is both willing and able and ready to afford you divine consolations as your faithful High Priest. And be encouraged even further that He chose your sufferings for you, that He has sweetened them for you with His own leadership and He now leads you in them with all the consolations of His own compassionate and tender Spirit. Peter makes a second point here in this first encouragement in verse nine. Look at what he says. He says, Your sufferings are being accomplished by your brethren. You see, the verb that Peter uses here for accomplished, it carries the idea of completion. So Peter's encouragement is that your brethren are not only undergoing your what you're undergoing, but they are in fact finishing them. They are completing them. In other words, they have gotten to the other side of them. What you are suffering today, though you feel you will be crushed by it, though you feel that you'll never be delivered from it, though you cannot yet see how it can ever work together for good, as God has promised. Peter says to you today, be encouraged that your brethren throughout the world are many of them already on the other side of the very same kinds of things. Be encouraged, therefore, that however bad your sufferings and your storms may seem to you today, they do have an end. They do have a positive and a glorious outcome. Your brethren have already found it to be so. And you will as well. Then why is this? Why can Peter give this encouragement that just as they have gotten to the other side of the stormy lake, so will you? Why can Peter land such an encouragement on our laps and expect it to stick? It's just because of this, beloved, because you belong to the same Lord God and Jesus Christ as they do. This means that as God oversaw their sufferings and as God brought them to the end at the appointed time. So he watches over your sufferings. He watches over all your trials. He tailors your sufferings to meet your need. He works your sufferings toward your sanctification, and he lifts your sufferings off of your shoulders as soon as they've done their mission. It means as well that your Savior who lovingly guides you into the storms will lovingly and efficiently bring you out of them when you've learned what he desires for you to learn in them. No wonder Jesus said to the disciples on the lake, Oh, you have little faith. When the storm came upon them in these experienced fishermen thought they would sink and drown and lose their lives. No wonder he said, oh, you have little faith, because what had he told them? It wasn't just, you see, that he, the Lord of all was in the boat because they saw him not in that fashion as yet. But what had he said to them? Had he not told them in the beginning before they even got into the boat? Had he not said, let us go to the other side? Had he not in his very commission promised them through the storm that they would see the other side of the lake. There was their weak faith. They had not believed him when he spoke to them. Let us go to the other side. And so it is for us, beloved. The Lord has brought many of our dear brothers and sisters to the other side of the lake. They are already enjoying the other side of the storm. We may find ourselves in the midst of great havoc and great chaos and great storms in our lives, but has not the Lord said unto us, unto all of us, Let us go to the other side. Where then is our faith? Let us take the Lord at his words and let us take Peter's encouragement here in the same vein. Your brethren are accomplishing these same things throughout the world. So be encouraged, be encouraged by what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1 verse 5. that if you share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ you can't help but share abundantly in His comforts. See that you don't lose your heart in your sufferings because though your outer self may waste away in the midst of your afflictions, your inner man is being renewed day by day as God uses your troubles to conform you to the image of His Son, Jesus, and to prepare you for that day when, with the help of your sufferings, God will bring you indeed to the other side and present you before him spotless and without blame as the brethren and bride of Christ. But once again, don't miss this fact that for however encouraging it is, that our brethren are accomplishing these same sufferings in their own experiences. This is nothing. This is nothing compared to the fact that our elder brother, Jesus Christ, has indeed completed all of his sufferings and gotten clean to the other side of them all. If anyone has completed and accomplished his sufferings, it's Jesus. Indeed, what does his resurrection testify to but to the fact that it is all done and as he said, it is finished. Indeed, this morning we have the privilege of celebrating and remembering his death until he comes. But let us not forget that this death is done. It is finished and Christ has gotten to the other side. And if anyone is enjoying the harvest and the promised outcome of his trials, it is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And if anyone's completed sufferings should encourage us, encourage us as his people, then his should, because Christ It's more than an elder brother to us. He's our head. He's our federal representative. He's our bridegroom and husband. And in his sufferings, we now participate, Paul says, and therefore we shall likewise participate in the completion of those sufferings. For he himself was upraised as the first among many, and we who have died to him shall indeed be raised with him. even now in newness of life and on that day in the resurrection. So Christ's completed sufferings should therefore give us the greatest encouragement because they not only ensure but they guarantee that we, whom he is not ashamed to call his brethren, we also shall see the end and the completion of our sufferings. For Hebrews 2.10 teaches that Christ was perfected through his sufferings as the founder of our salvation in order that he may bring many sons or brethren to glory with him. And that leads us to Peter's third and final encouragement here. And that is that your sufferings are to be accomplished in this world. Look again at the verse, beloved, And notice where Peter says these sufferings are to be experienced and completed. Does he not say it in this world? You see that for all that God intends by our sufferings, for all that the file and the hammer and the furnace of affliction contribute to our sanctification, Peter says that their place is here in this world, not hereafter in the heaven for which Christ is preparing us and for which we're bound. This, this is the place. This is the place of our sojournings. This is our wilderness. This is the place in which we face the trials of temptation, the buffets of the enemy. This is the place where we face the drag of our sin nature. But the place to which Christ is taking us will have none of these things. Whatever we must suffer. as part of our participation in Christ's sufferings and as part of our sanctification and as part of our father's will that we grow in grace through these things. Peter is saying it must all be suffered. It must all be accomplished. It must all be completed here in this world. You see, we are the living stones of God's temple, the New Jerusalem, and we are being treated by God just as Solomon treated the stones which were quarried and shaped for the temple of the Old Testament. All the hammering, all the chiseling, all the banging, all the breaking, all the cracking, it all took place where, beloved? But in the quarry, listen to what he says in first King six, verse seven, we read when the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built. You see, God had determined that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of sanctification shall be heard in heaven, and therefore they must all be heard here. And the good news is they must all be heard and they must only be heard here. What a glorious encouragement this is for us, beloved. in this world, Peter says. Now think what this means for your Christian brethren. How many of your brothers and sisters are already beyond, already beyond temptation and suffering? How many even of your own loved ones have gone ahead of you already into glory? Neither hammer nor axe nor tool of iron can they find anywhere in heaven. There's no such sound of sanctifying afflictions in heaven, beloved. Satan has been bruised under their feet, and they have now become more than conquerors to him who loved them. They've exchanged the helmet of God's armor for the crown of Christ's victory. They've exchanged the sword of conflict for the palm of victory, and they've exchanged the cry of, Lord, save me, I perish. For that wonderful shout, salvation to our God and to the Lamb forever and ever. What an encouragement this should be to us in our battle. That this is it. Whenever you get beyond, whenever you get to the other side of any and every trial and affliction and suffering and temptation, you may say as surely as your brethren already do, I will never, ever, ever see that one again. and they are all apportioned. And when their number is finished, and you have been sufficiently quarried, the Lord will take you home. What an encouragement that your brethren are free of such things. And what an encouragement, knowing that where our brethren are, we shall soon be. You know the words of our Lord, in my father's house are many rooms, If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. We have a brotherhood in this world who are suffering as we are, and that, Peter says, should encourage us. But Peter goes one step further and tells us to draw a further encouragement from the fact that we have a brotherhood in heaven who are now beyond all suffering. And it's a brotherhood that we shall all soon join by faith in Jesus Christ, because according to Revelation 19, verses six to eight, there is soon to be a gathering of this brotherhood, a gathering from which none of us shall be missing. A gathering of the bride in the body of Christ. for the marriage supper of the Lamb. And it's to that fact that Peter directs our attention at the close of this ninth verse. At our utmost, at its utmost, our time in this world where our sufferings are to be accomplished is short. And when that season is completed, Christ will gather us into heaven where we'll see with our own eyes the glorious results of His infinite wisdom worked out by our sufferings. And we'll join that eternal chorus of praise which many of our brethren have already begun to sing. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood and has made us kings and priests to God, to Him be glory and dominion and power forever and ever. Amen. But more than that, More than that, still beloved, let it be your greatest encouragement once again. That where your elder brother is, you shall soon be. We long to be with our brethren who have gone ahead of us, but our brethren is not what makes heaven heaven. Jesus is what makes heaven heaven. And John 1724 was and remains his prayer for us all. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, that they may see my glory. And since the prayers of Christ can never fail, so you who now suffer the sufferings of Christ, along with all of your Christian brethren throughout the world, cannot fail to very soon be where He is. So let us rejoice this morning. Rejoice that in yet a little while all our sufferings will be over and we will soon be safe and happy in our Father's house with our elder brother and all of our brethren forever where neither hammer nor file nor furnace can be heard or found. And until that time, We must take Peter's encouragement that all our brethren are not only experiencing the same and coming through the same kinds of sufferings which we face, but they are in fact completing the time of their sufferings and are being taken home to be with our Lord and Savior. And if our brethren are, then we too shall soon follow them. For we are all alike, Christians, the body of Christ, the bride of the Lamb, and not one shall be left behind. Father, I desire that they also whom You have given Me. And has He not said, All that the Father has given unto Me shall come to Me, and I will lose none? How can He say such a thing but that He draws us all home by His own power? taking us to be with him both now as many have gone on and under the end of time when we shall all be gathered and be with him forever and ever. Take heart, beloved, and be encouraged in the midst of your battle, in the midst of your warfare. The Lord has not left you without encouragement nor himself without witness. Amen. Let us pray together. Father in heaven, we rejoice. We rejoice at the good news that you have put before us this morning, reminding us of your great and your abundant grace. Lord, we confess that great is the battle and great have been our losses. Great has been our weakness. But oh Lord, we are reminded this morning of our encouragement in the battle. And we do confess, great has been your strength. Great has been your grace and your love and your forgiveness. And great, O Lord, is our adversary, but greater still is our advocate. Thank you, O Father, for the Lord Jesus Christ, our elder brother, who has traced out this very path for us, who has left behind us his example that may walk in his footsteps. but who himself more than that is our comforter and our guide by his own spirit, who is our head and federal representative, whose victory ensures our victory, whose completion of his sufferings ensures our own. And therefore, oh father, we give you praise that you have put before us this morning, great encouragement in your word, reminding us, O Lord, that though the battle rages on and we find ourselves in the midst of great difficulties, caught betwixt two. Yet, O Lord, we thank you that we are not without strength and encouragement in Christ. Thank you for the comfort and the consolation that we receive from one another. Teach us to weep with those who weep more than we do. Teach us, O Lord, to share our comforts with those who are suffering in like ways as we have. Teach us, O Lord, to bear one another's burdens better than we have. Teach us, O God, to be strong for our brethren and to bear with the weaker brother. Teach us, O Father, to be an example and an encouragement to our family members, our spouses, our children, and our brethren alongside here in the church. Thank you, O Father, for your blessings to each one of us, and thank you that many of our brethren have finished and completed their race. Thank you, O Lord, that they have received that glorious affirmation from you already, that you have been pleased with them and your son. We long for that day when Christ shall return and we shall all be taken safely home. Indeed, we do pray that the Lord, our Savior, would come quickly. and that he would return for his bride and take us home. For, O Lord, the way is hard and difficult. Give us grace and sustain us in the midst of these things, and let us, O Lord, not fight or labor in vain. For we thank you that the end is promised unto us, for we have begun in earnest through the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the author and the finisher of our faith. Let us fix our eyes upon him, and all will be well with our souls. Thank you for these encouragements this day. Bless us now we pray in Jesus name. Amen.