again be in First Peter, but join me first before we begin in prayer. God of heaven, we thank you, Lord, for gathering us here together today. And as Steve has already pointed out, just the blessings that are around us, the beautiful weather, the gifts that you pour out on us, the ones that we take for granted that are here every day. remind us that we live, we move, we exist, we continue to breathe all by your will. These are all blessings from you. And that you, on top of that, you pour out this beautiful nature for us to walk through, the provision you provide daily for us. We pray that you would keep these things in our minds, even as we turn now to your greatest provision that you've given to us for our day is the word here, and that we would have a reverence for it. We would always remember that it is a blessing, and we would take its wisdom and apply it to our lives, that we would diligently seek it out and find ourselves continually ground upon it, and that we would never stray from it. Lord, give us humility as we open the word today and as we delve into it. Keep us focused on you. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Okay. So we will be in 1 Peter 3 again. We're not gonna be going over where we were. We are moving to the next part. So we're gonna be starting in verse 13 if you wanna begin to meander your way there. In a great, several great acts of providence all coming together at the same time, And hopefully as we read through this passage and as we start to open it, you will see the immediate application of some of what we're talking about vis-a-vis the Lord's Table that we'll be taking at the end of this particular service. And kind of the play, the dynamic that we're gonna have there. Moreover, we will, We'll be talking back a little bit about some of the stuff we've already covered in Peter. And again, Steve saved me the trouble of having to go back and read the first chapter by doing that for us, that's great. And in my notes, I was laughing to Sarah, I'm gonna be talking about Psalm 22 a little bit as well, so. You guys already got to hear that and saved me a bunch of reading. That's lovely. So it's always good. It's almost as though the Bible all throughout it has but one author who ties everything together and keeps us constantly grounded and looking on it. But putting that Before us, let's move now. We're going to be in 1 Peter 3, 13. We're gonna go through four verse six. And that's an ambitious chunk of text, but don't worry, I'll explain my rationale behind that in just a second. Because we've reached a section of the scripture that I particularly very much love. Really from, 1 Peter's one of my favorite, favorite's a weird thing to apply to the Bible. It's like talking about my favorite children. It's not appropriate for me to say which one that is. But I will say that I really like 1 Peter a lot. I think it speaks a lot of encouragement and it has a lot of great lessons, but particularly when we hit this later half of chapter three, and really through the end of the book, is when a lot of the practical themes and outworkings that Peter's been building to begin to start to play out. The hardest part of preparing this particular sermon, and the sermons over the next few passages, for me, is it's the constraining, the deep flow that goes through them. It builds upon itself of these texts. And breaking it into smaller sections is difficult, because they grow, they build, they flow. And that is suffering, and how we interface with it. In fact, in this section, Peter is pivoting to spend the rest of this letter kind of explicitly burrowing into that topic of suffering. And actually, if you recall, and as Steve read even a little bit from today, it's already happened throughout the book a little bit. As Peter discusses tensions in chapters two and three, like we covered the last couple weeks over in these concepts of submission to the government, submission to masters and husbands and wives. If you actually look back to the beginning, Peter has already been setting a foundation for the theology to build into this conclusion of application and suffering. So, what I wanted to start by doing today in light of that is to back up a little bit before we get this text and read through it, to take a bit of a running start into it, just to do a little summary of some of the concepts that we've gone over so far. So, if you look at 1 Peter 1 through to 11. which is what we have been really working up to, kind of to this point, we see that Peter begins, again, as we looked at today, with a reminder of the incorruptible inheritance that we have in Christ. And he builds on this by using, even as we discussed in Sunday School a little bit, he brings in these Jewish terms to describe the church, and he's talking about these promises and applying them to the church. and his descriptions, and he sets forth this one plan of salvation, like Dan has been discussing, and the through line that that has. And because of that, he points to how this incorruptible inheritance was bought and paid for by the incorruptible price, which is Christ's blood. And that the promise of this payment is a sure hope. Since we're not saved by corruptible things, like our own works or our money, silver and gold being the thing that Peter alludes to, since that's not a sure thing, our payment is purchased with the sure thing, with Christ's blood. And then in light of that, in light of that, Peter exhorts us to live holy lives. We're called to gird up the loins of our minds, to immerse ourselves in the word specifically, as we've discussed many times here before. And he then goes on in that to reaffirm our calling and our savior. He goes on to discuss Christ as the cornerstone and us as the living bricks of the temple. He goes on then in those next chapters, which we just got done talking, to comment on submission, how we live before the world in light of this, submission to governments and masters and spouses. And within the context of that, we've already begun to see, like I said, this concept of suffering begin to play out. Well, even as in the passage that was read by Steve this morning, we hear Peter already beginning in chapter one to talk about how we have this incorruptible inheritance. So our fiery trials are something that we can endure. And he puts forth, he's beginning to put that forward because we have this incorruptible inheritance coming. But then even within these concepts of submission, and as I pointed out, where we have kind of a corresponding passage from Ephesians with Paul, and Paul appears to examine most of those relationships in light of Christian interactions. When he's talking about spouses, husbands and wives, there's an assumption that that's a family that is converted. He talks about slaves and masters. He has very specific language that denotes both of those tend to be saved, at least in the way of it. But Peter does not constrain himself that. He folds into this. But he does talk about some of those relationships as well. One of the things that we talked about was how Peter wants to really point out the fact that you act the way you do because of your relationship to God. Because he's dealing with people who are in a Christian, non-Christian relationship, primarily. And we talked about how that teaching also applies to Christians as well. But he's already got that in there. And Peter is clear in those passages, as he's going into that in two and the first part of three, that there will be suffering that goes along with it, with being a Christian in those contexts. So that's already here. Suffering as a concept has already been an element of this letter. And now Peter's about ready to pull it to the forefront and to really focus on it as a central theme. And it opens up, like I said, and a lot of corresponding doctrines begin to pull out from it. So what we're gonna do now is I'm gonna go ahead and read 1 Peter 3, 13 through four, six, and I'll invite you to follow along with me. And just keep some of those concepts that we've already spoken about in mind as we go into this text, and then we'll begin to open this one specifically. And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good. But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you, with meekness and fear. Having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh and made alive by the Spirit, by whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison, whom formerly were disobedient. when once the divine long-suffering waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us, baptism, not by the removal of filth from the flesh, but the answer of the good conscience towards God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone unto heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with that same mind. For he who suffers in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough time in our past lifetime doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lust, drunkenness, reveries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regards to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the gospel was also preached to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to the flesh, but live according to the spirit. All right. Amen. So there is a lot to unpack in these verses. And like I said, do not fret yourself. It is not my intent to do it all right now, because that would be a daunting task. However, what I want to do is I wanted to read the whole section, so we can kind of take some passes over it, sinking back into different parts and discussing different themes, similar to what we've done in the past in this book. The concept that I want to deal with today is the underpinning that kind of is dealt with in this entire section, which is Peter's theology of suffering. And it should be noted, this is a topic, again, we discussed how these various concepts of submission aren't things that we enjoy talking about when we talked about submission to the government, submission to other earthly authorities, to spouses, et cetera. Those kind of grate against us when we talk about that. But when we move, particularly in our context, to talk about suffering, we actually are moving to something that's almost alien for us to talk about. Because we avoid suffering. We avoid thinking about it. We avoid talking about it. We don't even really have a language to describe it in our setting. It's not something we, it's not something that we like to confront. But this has led to a fundamental, for most people nowadays, a fundamental inability to, as I will term it, suffer well. Our lives and the lives of the culture around us are a constant attempt to obliterate suffering as a concept. Christians have in a variety of ways adopted this mindset as well. And a failure to grapple with a true biblical approach to suffering has allowed errors to creep into the church. And we'll talk about that. But it's something that even, it's interesting if you spend time looking into this kind of thing and looking at the world, it's even recognized by some more thoughtful non-Christians out there who have realized that we live in an era, in a time here in America, where, again, we don't even really have a framework to talk about suffering. as something that we engage in. And so when it happens to us, we don't have a framework to even discuss it and to talk about it with other people. So the goal is to somehow just drown it out. So you watch your videos on YouTube or you go on TikTok or whatever, but none of these things help you to actually deal with suffering or to express it. It's just an attempt to get around it, even, and I don't, Don't take this as a universal comment, because I don't mean it to be. There are times when chemical imbalances in someone require outside correction as just a physiological necessity. But it is telling that that is always, tends to be the secular culture's first response. is to just dampen it in that way. Again, because that's the only way we know how to approach suffering in our mindset, is to just obliterate it, to get rid of it. And like I said, that has pervaded even the church. Obviously, an air that most of us would immediately come to mind when I'm thinking of this, we would label prosperity gospel. And I'm gonna use that term a little bit, but I'm gonna use it a little bit broader than perhaps the technical definition of it. I'm going to use it as a catch-all term for a little bit to discuss certain theologies whose point is to just get rid of suffering. Because that doesn't, that's not the language that Peter uses when he's talking about suffering. That's not the approach Peter uses when he's talking about suffering. So while I don't, I'm going to assume that if I asked, no one in this congregation would stand up and say, yeah, I believe in a prosperity gospel. Good, great. But there are some larger ramifications that deserve, particularly in our culture where we live now, both of that actual concept and of a broader concept. I think we should look at some of the failures that even from this text spring up as far as that framework of an approach to suffering. And then we're going to circle back and look at some of them and push in a little bit more close on a biblical concept of suffering. So first, let me give you a point, a heading, if you're taking notes. You could write down the failure of prosperity, if you want your notes to look exactly like mine. And then you'll have, I'm gonna have three little letters underneath that that we're gonna talk about. The failure of prosperity. Prosperity gospel, again, using it a little bit broader in my sense, fails to recognize the incorruptible inheritance of the Christian. And this is interesting, because we just read about it, so you'd think this would be the great thing, right? This is what Peter tells you to focus on, is this incorruptible inheritance. But the focus becomes on a temporal security, an avoidance of suffering, and when that becomes your primary focus, you miss the true reward and the goal that Christ died for. When we looked at Peter, again, look at the verse that Steve read earlier in one, it's mentioned a couple times again, repeated in chapter two, The focus is that Christ's death, what Christ purchased, again, and we even see it here in 318, Christ died for sins and to purchase us an eternal reward, not a removal of earthly suffering. That's not what Christ died for. And so when we begin to have a theology that's based upon, well Christ died for these things that make me feel good. Christ died so that I don't have suffering in my life. That's not what Peter lays out. And your focus is shifted. And now it's on corruptible things. And if you're after corruptible rewards, you're not after what Christ actually is offering you. And then, as I've quoted several times in recent sermons, as Shilin has said, if you live your best life now, you're headed for hell. That's supposed to be your best life. But anyway. Well, that's a quick one that, like I said, is probably obvious to most of us. It jumps out straight up from the text. It's an easy thing for us to see there. But then I have the prosperity gospel fails to recognize that Christians can be chastised. Or if they do recognize it, they fail to recognize why Christians are chastised. Now, how do we know Christians can be chastised? Well, again, it's clear in our text. But if we look back earlier, we would have noticed in chapter one, verse 17, Peter contrasts suffering righteously and unrighteously. In 220, we see that as well. When talking specifically to servants in that case, he talks about you can be suffered, like it's better for you to suffer for good, not for ill or for bad conduct. And that of what account is that so Peter clearly puts forward that this is possible This is a thing that could happen that you can suffer for For chastisement, so even if we if we accept that Excuse me Sorry, derailed myself there, looking down and back up at my notes. But so we understand that Christians can suffer chastisement, but what we need to recognize, too, is that holiness, what this view, if you Like I said, some people even take that view that yeah, Christ will, and God will chastise his children, but they will turn holiness then into merely an avoidance of suffering. Because again, the focus is turned to an avoidance of suffering. So, and again, Sarah and I were at a, speaking at a marriage conference one time, and gosh, this is pushing back. This is probably six years ago at minimum. But one of the women who was on stage made a comment, and she's definitely of a different theological stripe than me, one that I would argue was not biblical, kind of based on this conversation, this line that she dropped, which was, man, if you really believe that God, you know, punishes you to teach you lessons, then like, man, learn that lesson so that the punishment stops. And I was like, or, Conversely, you learn lessons so that you're holier. The goal is not that I no longer am afflicted and in some kind of punishment. Now, might that happen? I mean, we're gonna talk about that in a second. But the goal, it fails to grasp why that chastisement happens. It's to make you more Christ-like. And then, ultimately, what it fails to recognize, again, and this is a connected concept, so this would be prosperity, this letter C, if you're trying to follow along there, the prosperity gospel would fail to recognize that Christians can suffer for good works. That kinda does not sound right at all to a lot of people's minds, that living righteously and justly, as Peter points out here, for example, in verse 14, when he says, should you suffer for righteousness sake, you are blessed. Well, that sentence doesn't make sense on multiple levels. If your approach is that God somehow died, Christ died, God's plan is that I not suffer. But apparently not only can you suffer as chastisement, but you can suffer for righteousness sake, according to Peter. So there's a failure on that to grapple with that. And like I said, so we can all think of a framework when I say prosperity that very evidently gets represented in those statements. But what I would like to do is to shift and to kind of pull forth that suffering as chastisement and suffering for righteousness in this verse and lean into a more, rather than just pointing out that they're mere existence, highlights the failure of the prosperity gospel. Let's look at what the scripture actually says about them, kind of sink into them a little bit. So if we had a big one, the failure of prosperity gospel, we're now moving on to our big two, suffering as chastisement. Again, a concept that is within here. it's alluded to, Peter has repeatedly throughout this book up to this point, that's why we summarized to get here, he has repeatedly shown that Christians are not exempt from suffering as a consequence of immorality. While Christ died, again here in 318, the righteous for the unrighteous, Peter has repeatedly pointed to and said look, There are consequences for things. If you are a servant, you can suffer for wrongdoing. He puts that out. He repeatedly talks about both in living before the world and living before the government, talks about your conduct needs to be in such a way so that when people try to speak ill of you, it has to be slander, that there's no other context in which it happens, implying that you could do that, and he's calling you away from that, and that if it happens, you will likely suffer consequences for your actions. And this is something that we realized. Peter calls us sons earlier in the book and that we've been made to be inheritors and that we are sons now through the work of Christ. It was part of his purchase for us. And so what's actually interesting is far from Christ's purchase of us exempting us from suffering, in fact, kind of opens us up to it. And what I'm gonna do, keeping in mind that again, Peter calls us sons, let's flip over to a passage that I thought I had marked. You know how that goes. I'm gonna go to Hebrews 12 real fast. Because what we will see here in this context is suffering as chastisement, God to his children. Verse 12, I'm gonna go ahead, we could read a lot. I'm gonna start in verse five and just read through eight for the sake of time, rather than the whole chapter, which if he were here, Josh could just quote it for us, but we'll go with it like this. And have you forgotten this exhortation in which he speaks to you as sons? My son, do not despise the chastising of the Lord. Do not be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastises and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God will deal with you as sons. For what son is there that his father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which you have all become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. So this is interesting, because again, like I said there, we actually see becoming a son of God doesn't just exempt you. It's not that it doesn't exempt you from suffering. In fact, opens you up to a whole new type of suffering. The New Testament will also talk about how sons are punished now, non-sons, everyone else in the hereafter. Suffering, in this light for chastisement actually takes on a bit of an encouraged mean role in our lives. If you sin and you suffer for it, suffering for sin is an assurance of sonship in Christ. I'm gonna qualify that in a second. But it can definitely be seen that way, being convicted of it. And as Peter says here, And he points to having a good conscience before Christ. And that plays into this. That if you sin, you suffer, you feel convicted. Not sorry for the state that you're in, which is what that prosperity gospel was saying. Get out of the state that you're in so that, you know, like fix your ways that you can fix your state. Instead of saying that, instead of looking at it and realizing, oh, no, wait, I'm suffering. My conscience is bothering me because I am called to be holy. Not I am called to avoid suffering, but I'm called to be holy. The fact that all those factors came together in your life should encourage you that that sin wasn't the end of your salvation walk, that you somehow got yourself out of sonship with Christ. Rather, that is an expression of your sonship in Christ. And it's a great place to find encouragement, even within the midst of realizing, I need to repent, I need to confess, and I need to move on. And the encouragement is, yes, you can do all of those things, because you are a son in Christ. So again, that is, and it's just the, when you cut yourself off from this concept of suffering and you take a more worldly approach to it, you lose that encouragement. It's no longer there. And so you've gutted part of the hope that should be within you when you hit these times. And then kind of going along with that, just to mention, as I said, how I had it written down in my notes is that suffering is a call to holiness, not a removal of happiness. That's not the point of what's happening here. And again, to allude back to that woman who was at that conference and saying, hurry up and learn the lesson so that this suffering stops. That's not our desire. Our desire is not to avoid suffering. Our desire is to be woken to our sin and to see it and to realize that sometimes that takes pain for that to happen. And I think there's an interesting note here, Francis Schaeffer said, the way that he puts it down. that is an interesting way for us to approach this, because what this means is that when we start to go through a trial, Schaeffer liked to say, and again, he pinned these words when he was very much in pain, struggling with cancer, and said that we need to remember that all, he's like, not all suffering is for a direct, specific sin. but all suffering is because of sin. So that means there's a generic call to holiness in all sufferings. Now maybe you're suffering and you're like, oh man, is there some sin in my life? Well, sometimes it's obvious. I mean, if you do a very specific sin, that's gonna have a very specific consequence that follows after it, and we can all think of your own example there, there are plethora. That, That is definitely a case where you can be like, oh, suffering directly related to that sin. But it's also noted, all suffering is the cause of sin, just in general. And so it can always be a call to holiness. Even if you're sitting there and it's great to have sin cause you to reflect, or to have suffering cause you to reflect on your life and on your walk. And maybe as you look through it, it drives you to realize, wow, I have a problem with discontentment with my spouse. Is that why you were suffering, like in a direct one-to-one comparison? Maybe, probably not. But that suffering drove you to that point, to make that evaluation. Because again, the concern biblically is for holiness. And so that opens you up to just look and see how you can be more holy. And again, that kind of is what Schaeffer was pointing out there, that we can, we can utilize these times, these trials, the suffering, as Peter says here, to evaluate and make sure that we have a good conscience before God as we go. But let's move on real fast then, kind of because related to that, we have suffering for righteousness. which is actually what Peter's main focus is. And again, this is something that makes absolutely no sense in a prosperity mindset. And it actually kind of seems weird to us, too. Like, let's be honest, we don't like this concept. That suffering as innocence in God's eyes, as innocent in God's eyes. Again, using some qualifiers around that. But it's already been mentioned several times in Peter he goes through and talks about this, of having trials, being slandered against, again, specifically, I was thinking of, you got 221, 212, one verse six. These are all times when Peter's talking about trials and struggles that are coming into our lives there. And what's interesting to me, and this is something that I think, particularly we as Americans, can, we can get our way around certain things. But it's important to note, in my mind, that Peter calls out all types of suffering. He specifically mentions beatings and threats. He talks about fiery trials, which given the context he's writing in, where Nero's literally burning people, he's mentioning both probably trials in general, but then you can see a threat of death as very connected with that in Peter's mind. But then here's the other thing. He talks about slander a lot. He talks about social rejection. That's coming up here just a little bit later when He talks about how these other people, you used to join and do these things with them, and they find it strange that you don't do them now. Bullying is built into all of this. And these are types of suffering that we tend to trivialize, particularly when we look like in the context of 211 through 312, when he's talking about, for example, your relationship with your boss. or your relationship with the government. We like to be like, well, suffering, persecution, suffering for righteousness, the way Peter's talking about it, that's like Christians in China, right? Who the government busts in because they're all praying together and literally starts detaining them and potentially worse. And yes, that is very true. And those people are called to suffer a specific way and submit a specific way in light of Peter's letters. But then we're like, well, us though, We have people talk bad about us and we don't like it. We get pushed out to the fringes of society and we don't like that. And we fail to recognize that's specifically an element of suffering Peter's talking about too. And the thing is is that we can, not everybody, but I have done this before, I can lay aside how Peter says to biblically suffer because I don't define what I'm going through as suffering, so then I get to go through it in my own wisdom as opposed to, what God called me to do. Again, as I pointed out with the sermon, anytime I've had trouble with any kind of like authority over me or something, and somebody's saying something, and I'm like, well, yeah, but this guy is, he's a health inspector from the city. That doesn't count as like suffering in that sense, right? No, that counts as suffering in that sense. So I don't get to do how I, I don't get to act how I want to. I still have to act how Peter's calling me to act here. And so again, recognizing that when Peter's talking about suffering for good, he's encompassing a large thing. And so the question might become, if we all do have to go through this at some point, why do the righteous suffer? Well, and there's a couple reasons. We could go back and read chapter one, six and seven, which I was going to do, but thankfully Steve already did that for us, as I've mentioned. It's the building of our surety. When we see these things happen and we understand what Christ bought for us, and Peter talks about the refining of your faith into an incorruptible faith, mirroring the incorruptible purchase and the incorruptible reward. So that's why these things are going on. We can see this that way. We can also see, as Peter kind of more philosophically branches out over this whole thing, a training to rest on God's wisdom rather than our own. Because we don't see suffering as good, but God clearly does. In fact, the word that gets translated bless here, When he says, blessed, you are blessed, that could also, the concept is that it is an honor. It is a privilege that you have suffered for righteousness sake. And so Peter's putting it forth that way because, again, part of this is you receive this, something that we would not see as a blessing or an honor. Well, God does. Why? He's more wise. He has more control and he's more wise in this situation than you are. Again, to go back to Schaeffer in that interview, when he was talking about his cancer at the time, and this is just something that, again, It shows a lot of wisdom, because he was taught, the interviewer had asked him a question, and he was like, so if there was a button in front of you that you'd press it, and it'd just take away your cancer, it'd be gone. And Schaefer said, and something's like, I might have at one point, he's like, but now, I wouldn't trust myself to push that button. God could take away my cancer if it was his plan to do so. And I should be resting in his wisdom, not mine. Obviously, he was receiving medical treatment for his condition. This isn't saying that you can't engage in some of the common blessings that are out there that God has provided us. But it shows where his focus was, that God is wiser than I am, and that when I am in this trial, one of the things I begin to see is that God has the wisdom to understand what's going on here, and I do not. And of course, another reason that Peter specifically calls out here is to suffer before the world. That's why the righteous are called to suffer, is that we are to suffer before the world to be seen. Peter has talked about your conduct before the world several times to this point, and then he hammers back into it here while discussing suffering. And we see two things kind of grow out of this as he goes. So we're now done with our three points, and we're into two new points, okay? We have two points. We're gonna have two things that grow out of this suffering for righteousness, and that is two things that should flow are good conscience and good conversation. Good conscience. Conscience, it's hard for me to say that word. I was not cast as Jiminy Cricket for a reason, and that's one of them. Knowing that, good conscience is knowing that you have, by your actions, brought glory to your father. And knowing that you are justified before your father. Peter talks about that in the passage that we read here. that you have a good conscience, and so that even when people outside you seek to defame you as an evildoer, you can rest in knowing that you're justified before your father. I don't have to be justified before whomever is hearing this slander. I need to be justified before God. And if I'm suffering correctly, and I'm analyzing my own heart in the way that Peter puts forward, I realize I am justified before God. I have a good conscience in that way. And knowing that my actions, my conduct within that, have brought glory to God. Peter talks about that several times. And this leads to, or at least it should lead to, good conversations. Now, many people are aware that when Peter talks here about always ready to have a hope, to give a defense to anyone asking for the reason, the hope within you, that is where we get, the Greek there is where we get our word apologetics, a defense of the gospel. And this is where Peter leans into this concept that he's had throughout this, that your actions, how you conduct yourself, again, that good conscience, knowing that you are Pure before God and knowing that your actions are pure before God leads you to be able to suffer in such a way that will cause people to look at you and realize that you act differently within suffering than they do. You have a different concept of suffering and you have a peace and a hope. Why? Because your hope is the incorruptible that is yet to come. It's not an alleviation of suffering here and that shouldn't and doesn't make sense to the world. And they're gonna wonder about that. So it leads you to this, and this is why I have, you have a duty, a calling, and as Peter uses here, the word, it's a blessing, and an honor, and a privilege to suffer, because it's the primary way, avenue, that you're gonna take the gospel to the world, according to Peter. That they're going to see you suffer, and they're gonna see how you respond to that. And then they'll ask you, how can you do this? And the answer is given to you right here. Because Peter immediately then connects it with Christ's suffering, which is what you should be immediately connecting your suffering to, which means when somebody's asking about it, your first response is not a discussion of, well, God promised me that if I obey him, he'll take away my sickness. If I say enough prayers, I'm, fill in the blank happens. But it's rather that Christ also suffered and that when Christ suffered, the only truly innocent suffering that ever happened, that a miraculous thing happened. That the unjust became just. So Peter's focus then moves to and becomes grounded on defining suffering in terms of Christ's suffering and victory. Christ suffered for the righteous, we know this, for righteousness. And it's interesting that even as Peter has been opening up, submission to government, submission to family members, submission to masters. He repeatedly points to Christ even in there. He's already setting this concept out. Slaves, when you were beaten unjustly, remember Christ was beaten unjustly. So when you suffer the same way he did, When your master sees that, he will see Christ. And you can open that up to him and explain that. And that is your way to attempt to set those free. What we've seen throughout Peter as well up to this point is that Christ's suffering buys salvation and has victory. We see the victory in here as well. And that that is unquestionable. It's incorruptible, and it's set in stone. And in such way, our suffering helps us to engage into that mindset for the incorruptible reward that is coming. So Christ is our example, or he is our answer to what is the hope. He is the example of how we should suffer, and he is the conversation that we have with those people. And again, we look to Christ as this example. In 315, I already had mentioned... that we would be ready because of that focus. 18, obviously, likens our suffering unto Christ's suffering. And then in four, verse one there, we see, since Christ suffered for us, this is critical here, because we're about ready to move into some practical conclusions. And it starts here in verse one of four. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with that same mind. For he who suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. So we are to arm ourselves. How do you suffer well? And how do you build these conversations? You suffer the same way Christ did. Because that should be a logical question to ask at this point. If we're sitting here and we're like, okay, God has sovereignly brought us to suffer for righteousness. We realize we're supposed to suffer as he did. What is the mindset there? How do we do that? Well, there's a couple different ways that we can point to that. First of all, contextually, Peter's, you go back, listen to what we talked about with Peter's exhortation to submit to these various things and how you do that. That's kind of how you suffer for righteousness. If you wanna talk about the heart, which is the key part, that good conscience, again, Peter tells you to get in the mindset of Christ. And this is where I was gonna go to as we read this morning, Gary opened us with Psalm 22. Because again, if we wanna know what Christ's mindset was for suffering, we read the book. The answer is always read more scripture. And here it definitely is. Read the scripture of Christ. What did he actually do? Read of his sacrifice that we have. in the gospels. Christ was the psalm that captures kind of the mindset and the heart that was going there was that Psalm 22. Which again, I won't read since we read it this morning. But as you go back, and I would encourage you all to read that again today at some point. and to meditate on how does Christ approach suffering when we see it in there. The focus continually comes back to God. The focus continually comes back to how does this perform God's will. And obviously we know from 318 right here that Christ was suffering so that the unjust could be brought to him. Now Christ does that in an effectual, authoritative way that we don't. I'm not drawing a one-to-one comparison. But again, that's the mindset that Peter has put forward. Wives, submissive to your husbands, even the ones who are awful and horrible people, in the hopes that they will be won over, that they will be saved, that your suffering will be the just for the unjust. Again, not in the way that Christ was, obviously. You're acting as a conduit and a proxy there. But it's the same mindset, that people will be won through that suffering. And again, he goes on in the next verses, down through six, and we're gonna be wrapping up here, but we'll come back to some of these more esoteric-sounding concepts in here. But he goes on to reiterate that just as Christ suffered in this way and lives righteously now, we suffer and should live righteously. So again, the call, to understand the mindset of Christ, to put that forward as you suffer, and to live holy lives in light of it. And again, we have a great opportunity right now, a great reminder, because right over here is the Lord's table that believers will be partaking in after this. after we pray, and I'll say more about it in a second, but right now, just think, when you're thinking of the suffering of Christ, of the words Christ uses to describe this, and we're gonna read them in a little bit. But he talks about a body being torn, broken, blood being poured out. Suffering isn't, and the suffering of innocence is not contrary to the theology of scripture. In fact, it's the core of it. that an innocent person died, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. All right. Join me, please, as we pray. Father in heaven, we pray, Lord, that this day you would keep us mindful of how to suffer well. And we ask that because that means that our focus as we normally pray will remain on you and be on you. We suffer well by looking towards your example, to following your holiness, to following the example that you laid forward. We thank you that you came and lived such a life That as, not that it was hidden away and that we now have to parse through esoteric teachings, but rather that every apostle can point and say, you know how Christ lived. He is your God, live as he lives. Look at that example that is written for you. We thank you, Lord, for giving us that. that that is the way that you chose to express yourself in a way that we could understand, in a way that we could not just understand but follow after and be called to live in that way. Lord, we ask now that you give us that spirit of humility to suffer well. That we use sufferings in our lives not as a time to despair, but rather as a time to be reminded that we are called to a blessing. And that that suffering can be the way in which we speak with others. That it can be the way in which we are reminded to live holy. and that ultimately we're drawn by your spirit back continually to you and the peace that makes no sense to the world around us. It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen.