Would you please turn to 1 Peter chapter number 2. Thank you singers and musicians for leading us. 1 Peter chapter number 2, page 1488 if you need it in the Pew Bible. 1 Peter chapter number 2, page 1488 in the Pew Bible. This evening, it's supposed to rain, but we have a back entrance with a shelter drop-off, and I hope that you will, drivers, let your people off if you need to near the door, and then take an umbrella. Don't let the rain keep you from being faithful to the Lord's house on His day. And so make an effort to be here this evening. We'll be bringing a message on healing. Healing, what does the Lord have to say about healing in the New Testament? We're in 1 Peter chapter number two, we'll begin reading in verse number 18. 1 Peter 2, verse 18. While you are still turning, here in just a moment, by the way, I found a hole in my waders, so I did not have an accident, just so you know, all right? I thought I better get that out of the way or I'd be seeing people rocking to each other, talking under their breath and stuff. Nope, I'm not having those problems yet. These are hole in the waders. After the service, which we'll be preaching then at about, well, I won't tell you what time, we're gonna have the little ones join us up here in the choir. Their job is to watch how mom and dad worship in the Lord's Supper. There'll be deacons up here at all of these tables to hand you your juice and your bread. You're allowed to take it, you're encouraged to take it if you've been born again. And if you haven't been, you're taking unworthily and you could die younger than you planned. It'll look like a prayer request in a small group or in your fellowship or on a Wednesday night, but it might be the judgment of God. And I don't want you to have to face that. One thing is sure, if you'll take the Lord's Supper worthily, you can at least knock that off the list of reasons why you might be sick. So the second thing is you need to be baptized. And you say, why do you believe that? We preached an entire sermon on it. an April ago on why you need to have the sign of the covenant to take a part in the Lord's Supper. The third thing is if you're a Christian but it's been a while since you've had a conversation with the Lord about sin going on in your life, today is the day to have that conversation with Him. So if you cannot take it because of any of those reasons, you're not a Christian, we're actually thankful you're here because it proves that, in fact, you would come to church even though you're not really sure what it takes to be saved. So when everyone stands to take the Lord's Supper, you'll just let them go on by you on their way to the front. If you are not ready because you haven't been immersed or you're not following hard after the Lord as a Christian, we can have a conversation this afternoon. I have some appointments available. My cell phone is on the back of the bulletin. But you're not supposed to take the Lord's Supper. Just let people walk right on by you. Step out in the aisle. Let them get by you. Go right back in and have a seat. If you're physically unable to take the Lord's Supper because you're just not able to make the distance down the aisle, that's probably a few of us in here, just stay seated but raise your hand and a deacon will bring the elements to you, the bread and the juice to you. So let's go through that again. If I'm sitting in the center section here, one day we'll have all kinds of things in history, we actually pass the plates again one day. But if I'm sitting in this section here, and let's say I'm Steve Fulbright, which we can all thank God there's not two of you, brother, but let's just say, just kidding, Steve will step out into this aisle, Walk over here, get his bread and his juice, and head back to that aisle over there. I do know that that means the people over here, it's like having your last name begin with something like T, and you've been waiting your whole life to go first. It's just kind of get used to it over here, you're going to be last out of your pew. And you'll go over to that aisle, you'll come up over here, get your stuff. David Barham, you know, what are you going to do? Can you help me through this? You're going to go up this aisle here, because it's to the right of your section. Man, I think you've got it. And then you're going to come across the front here, because you're not helping serve today, are you? No? So you're going to come across the front here, and you're going to go back over there on that aisle and come in your pew this way. What do you all think you're going to do? Yeah, that's right. Tyler is pointing in the correct direction. He's pretty sure he's coming up the right aisle. I like what's happening here. All of you up there, you're just gonna kind of funnel down the stairs. It'll be super safe, no problems at all, and then just pick a line. All right. And don't look at my pants. All right. Let's begin reading 1 Peter 2, verse number 18. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle ones, but also to the harsh ones. This is commendable. If because of conscience toward God, one of you endures grief, suffering wrongfully, what credit is it to you? When you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently. But when you do good and suffer, if you take that patiently, that's commendable before God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps. Who committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Who when he was reviled or threatened, did not revile in return. When he suffered, He did not threaten, but committed himself to the one who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. That is the word of the Lord. Father, we come before you as people that need to hear from you in these next several minutes. There are people in this room that like me and don't like me, but they need to hear from you. There are people in this room that would love to hear something, who knows what, but they're gonna hear what you want them to hear this morning. There are people in this room that came maybe to see a baptism, maybe to just visit with friends. We're thankful that they're here. Give them more than they bargained for this morning. Help them to hear from another world. For the member in here that's feeling cold in their heart towards you and is hoping that there is something to be said about their situation, would you help them today as well? We know that there's a lot of obstacles in the way of this exchange that's about to take place. And I'm asking you, Lord, to capture our attention. You are certainly worthy of it because of what we read this morning. And so I pray that you'd help me to be really efficient in what I need to say, really effective but then to humbly acknowledge that no matter how effective and how efficient, nothing will be done of eternal significance in this room unless you supersede and intend upon it. So please walk up and down these aisles in between every row of chairs and every pew and have your way in our minds and in our hearts so that the whole world may honor you. We don't have much time left. This may be the last sermon some of us hear. It could be that everything that we know as of right now could come to an end this week. Help us to listen like dying people. Help us to remember, O Lord, that though we might wish for decades for our children to live, that there is an endless world coming where there will be no recovery from knee surgeries or deaths, separations, gallbladder removals, all manner of things that we face this week. I pray that you would glorify yourself in meeting needs we didn't even know we had. Take your big pointy finger, touch our hearts, calm our spirits, satisfy our souls, illumine our minds, and I pray that just for a moment, that person that's been experiencing physical pain this whole week will feel none. In Jesus' name. And the church said. We're in this passage for two reasons this morning. Number one, because of how Jesus is called in verse 25, the pastor and bishop of your soul. We've been talking about what it means to have pastors and bishops in our churches, and you can see in 1 Peter 2, 25, the passage we read, the last verse we read this morning, that Jesus is called a shepherd. The shepherd is the word that is translated pastor elsewhere in the New Testament. The first and best pastor in the universe is Jesus Christ. He's a good pastor. He's the best pastor that you'll ever have. I am just the stand-in, not because he's not here, because he is here in the person of the Holy Spirit, but he's not here in the body. He is at the right hand of the God, the Father, and will return real soon. But until then, we have one another, and we're expected to look after one another until our boss returns, and we're doing a pretty decent job. We're gonna let a few through the cracks because we're so imperfect, but as long as you have pastors with phone numbers and deacons that love you, there's no reason for you to go without this morning. You have small group leaders that care for you, and we've been charged with looking after one another and guiding each other to that shore, when we'll say goodbye for just a moment. I'm thankful we're gonna be in a place where everything will be made new. You leave me alone for a few minutes, I'm gonna start thinking about it. My goodness, what a good day that'll be. We have a good life now, don't we? We have our ups and our downs, but we're reminded that the great shepherd is taking us closer to the heavenly fold. And it won't be long, we'll be not left to wander anymore. It's a good thing. We're a part of a good life. And in this work, and in this world, we have tribulation. That's just unmistakable. But I'm grateful that there's an end coming. Here, you're also gonna notice that Peter has made quite a trip through Isaiah 53. We're gonna look at it in just a moment, but I want you to notice just so many things that he talked about. I'm gonna populate the slide so you can see it. Before this passage, he's talked a lot about Isaiah. For example, he quotes Isaiah 40 in his first chapter, Isaiah 28 in chapter eight in his second chapter. So it just makes good sense that the book of Isaiah is still on his mind. And in this passage, we see no less than five references to the book of Isaiah, chapter 53. The takeaway for you, brothers and sisters, or those of you who are not yet saved, is that the New Testament writers take the Old Testament truth, they believed the Old Testament, and they take that and see that it was prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth, and that Jesus, in fact, did fulfill these old ancient prophecies from the first two-thirds of your Bible. And that they expected that you and I would be so touched by these Old Testament texts quoted in the New Testament that, listen, it would actually affect the way you and I treat one another. Yes, in this very passage, you have the best example of a gospel-centered scripture, a gospel-centered ethic. You and I are not only supposed to be born again by believing the gospel, we're to have different lives because of this very same gospel. We're supposed to have a life that looks and sounds and smells different. Different. And so what are we going to see here? Well, before we get into that, I just want to mention one more thing. You're going to notice that not only does he quote the Old Testament, but he also journeys through the Old Testament to give you faith in the Old Testament. Work with me here for just a moment. Listen, I'm talking to some of you who have windows of doubt in your week. Today, you're full of faith. People are singing songs that make you feel good. You even feel good. You're gonna leave this building and you're gonna be like, man, it's cloudy, I had no idea. And it's gonna feel amazing until you get to your car and you think about Monday. And you're gonna wonder, I wonder if anything that I just sang about and heard about is actually true. I want you to notice the apostle Peter not only quoted the Old Testament, but then later died for what he believed it taught. Because Jesus told him what it meant. Jesus got up from the dead and spent six weeks with his 11 disciples and told them about the Old Testament and how it spoke of him. Are you with me? So far, so good. So here we are now in this passage, and you're gonna notice in verse number 18, he says to these servants, these slaves, this is not the word doulos, this is the word for household servants. These are people that might be hired, but they also might be people that are owned by their master. And you notice how Peter says, he says that servants need to be told to be submissive to their masters. Now, you can rest assured, Everyone in this room has probably had a jerk for a boss. And if you haven't, hold on for double jeopardy. It's coming. And what you need to know is that nobody in the room needs to be told, hey, be super obedient to your excellent boss. We think that we've got that pretty well down. Be really obedient to that person you love working for. We find it, frankly, very easy to be obedient to a good boss. He lets us off when we ask for it. Good boss. I'll do what he says. He gives us bonuses at Christmas. Excellent boss. I'll do what he wants. We have a boss that appreciates our gifts. We think he's a great boss. You see, we find it very easy to like people who are good to us. Notice in the passage, however, in verses 18 and 19, he says he makes the case not just to your good and gentle boss, but also to the one who is harsh, end of verse 18. Now, I do know that we as Christians need to be told this kind of thing. As indwelt as we are by the Holy Spirit, we still rightly have a survival instinct that doesn't like to be mistreated. Isn't that good? I'm thankful that we have a will to fight and we don't want to be mistreated. I'm also thankful that many of us in this room have a desire to stand for people who are mistreated. In this passage, Peter says, I want you to do something that the unsaved world will notice. I want you to do something that Jesus himself did. I want you to do something that Christ set the example for you and I. It takes the example of Jesus. It takes a special attention in the heart and in the mind to look what he says in verse 19, be good to the one who makes you suffer when you didn't deserve it. Okay, so you and I often are not facing this. Hey, let me get this. Let's just level out here. I work for the congregation, the membership of Sandy Ridge Baptist Church. If I feel like it's too hot in the kitchen, I can quit. I just gotta give 30 days notice. Don't look at me cross-eyed, you know it's just that easy. If you don't like your boss, you can probably quit. If you don't care, in fact, if you don't like your husband, you can quit your marriage. If you don't like your house, you can go to the bank and say, it's all yours. You can quit a lot of stuff. In here, we're talking about people that are being told in verse 19 to endure, endure. Look at that verse, end of the verse, you need to endure grief and suffer wrongly. So they apparently have a choice. These are people that are probably owned. These are people that are at least working for someone who basically owns them during the workday, at least that. But they still have to be told, with their limited freedom and their limited society, they still have to be told how to, even as Christians, they still have to be told to act rightly. They still have to be told how to act when they're treated wrongfully. We have precious little in our world where a person can't get away from a situation if it's really uncomfortable. I mean, there are some situations, abusive situations, like where a wife can't leave her abusive husband because she has no financial resources. There are times when a husband can't leave his wife because she will stick him with the kids and he doesn't have the ability to pay for child support. There are not only these issues, but a thousand others that I can't possibly name them all. So you'll just have to be merciful to me if I didn't mention your situation. There's precious little that you and I are trapped in and can't get out of. I remember I joined the army because I found out that I would go to prison if I quit that job. I talked about this last Sunday night. If you want the full story, go there and listen to that message. But here's what I found out. Even after I got there, I found out there was a thousand ways out of the military. Back then, you just had to claim Okay, back then there were more ways to get out of the military than there are now. I'm trying not to offend people with something that's not gospel related. So, as we get to verse number 20, you see that Peter says, if a person takes what they have coming to them, and they take that patiently, so what? All right, work with me here. We're working through the passage. Verse number 20. In other words, so what? You had it coming. I mean, I admire people that know what they did requires a payment and they take it like a man. I like that. I like it when a person goes to court knowing they deserve everything. They don't mess with plea bargains. They don't mess with claiming insanity. They just know they did it. They know they did it and they know they have what's coming to them. I think highly of that person for taking the beating for what the scripture says is their faults. But Peter says, if you get beaten for something you did, let's just make it Americana, early Americana, if you smite your servant, your master on the plantation and get whipped for it, and you take that like you should, so what? You should have gotten that. But the point of the passage is, what happens when you get what you didn't deserve? What then? What's the cure for that? And again, the answer is that there is Jesus Christ in verse number 21. He set an example for us. It says that three times in the passage that I've counted, look at there, suffered for us. Do you see that? Verse 24, bore our sins. So what does this mean then? He bore our sins in his own body. And you might notice in verse number 21, he suffered for us. If in fact, the Lord is our example, then he is, Peter is taking what we know to be true that we're gonna celebrate this morning. Jesus is suffered for your sins, your law breakings against God. The worst thing going on in any person's life is what they do to God. And when God was impinged upon, when God was wronged, He took yours and my offenses against Him, and He struck His Son with them. So what you have the Apostle Peter doing here, friend, is you have him taking that truth, God beat Jesus with your sins, brings it over here and says, listen, servants, listen, some of you are being beaten with other people's sins. Different level, lashes across the back for the servant. Peter turns it around and says in verse 24, Christ knows what it's like to be the servant of God and get, look at the end of the verse, stripes or lashes on his back for things he did not do. Okay, so work with me on this. Over here, Jesus whipped for sins that are not his. Over here, you and I whipped sometimes for poor choices others make. How do we deal with that? Answer, verse 21, follow the example of Jesus Christ. Okay, what was the example of Jesus Christ? According to verse number 22, a quotation of Isaiah 53 10, he committed no sin. So there it is, the second of three times. Number one is found in verse 21. He suffered for us. Verse 22, he committed no sin. Verse 24, he bore our sins in his own body. I think Peter is trying to make a point here. He didn't commit a crime, but he suffered as a criminal. There are people in this room today, you are demonically attacked by other people and some of them may even, you feel like be in this room today. What is the healing for your soul? Ah, the healing for your soul, the healing for your wounded soul is that someone heals your wounded soul. Who can do that? The person who, according to verse 25, has set himself in these years to protect your soul. Look at it, verse 25. You are like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the pastor and bishop of your soul. Do you see how the Lord is designing your leadership in your local church? You are supposed to have people that, although they're concerned for your bodies, they actually have help to do that called deacons. They, meanwhile, are bishops and pastors who care primarily not for the needs of your body, but for your wounded soul. Just before the service, I had someone ask me if they could meet with me this afternoon. Yes, that's why I'm in Hickory, to preach to you and to help your soul. I didn't come here to make more money. I didn't come here to have a legacy. I came here to heal your soul. with the help of the bishop of your soul. Everything else, if it's a bonus at all, it's a bonus and that's it. I came here for one purpose. And so Jesus can heal your soul. Now here's the thing, things done to your body, things done to your brain, things done to your history, you can't get rid of. Abuse, negligence, loss, simple loss, trauma, all of that happened to your soul and it affected your physiology. You are different chemically. You lose sleep. You haven't slept well in years, some of you. Why is your wounded soul affecting your body? Because they're connected. We're not dualists. We have a brain that works with our mind. We have a pumping heart that works with our spiritual heart. We have a body-shaped soul that is wounded when people mistreat us and there's no answer. They're actually happy that we're wounded. They're spite-filled and love the fact that they can control us with their spite. Oh yes, oh yes, you just thought about one. They're thrilled that they hold your forgiveness in the palm of their hand and it crushes your soul. They know that you'd like to solve the problem today and they're not going to allow it because they love the control they have over you. What do you do? You do what Jesus did. Whereas we're mistreated in the body and it affects our soul, Jesus Christ was mistreated in the body to heal our souls. You see how he did this. It's not like Jesus was hatched in Bethlehem and then no issues. He had no hurdles, no mental problems to deal with as it applies to how people treated him. I sent a verse to one of you all this week about Judas. How that the thing that crushed Jesus' heart the most about Judas was not the betrayal, but that it was a friend that betrayed him. Someone who sat with him in the pews of the church house, it says in the Psalms, and he wounded his soul. Our Christ knows what it's like to have his soul crushed. How did he deal with people that he came to love? Look up here. Come on, friends, naptime is after church. How do we deal with the fact that people mistreat us and crush our souls? How do we deal with that? How do we do that? We do it the way Jesus did it in verse number 23. Look at the end of the verse. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. You and I know the temptation of wanting to give a good answer. You and I have the sneaking suspicion that if we had the opportunity to explain ourselves one more time, everyone would understand our point of view. No, sir. We live in a fallen world where there are people who don't understand and won't understand and frankly don't want to understand and one more explanation won't fix the problem. And so, when they say, if you do this, I'm gonna do this, and we come back with, no, I'm gonna outmaneuver you and outpoliticize you and I'm gonna do this. Oh, listen, listen, listen, listen. He who could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the entire little group of 600 soldiers in the garden suffered patiently and committed, says the end of verse 23, himself to the one who judges righteously. The Lord Jesus had the opportunity to answer for Himself. He could have come down from the cross if it were not disobedient to His Father. He had all the power in all of heaven and earth to do all that He wanted to do. But there is one thing that kept Him on the cross. One thing... Don't beat me to it. No, no, no, no. I'm not going to say that it was love for you that kept Him on the cross. You see in the passage what it was that kept Him on the cross. It's not love for you. It is submission to His Father. It says in verse 23, he did not threaten, but committed himself to Him who judges righteously. He said, this crowd doesn't understand. They've nailed me to wood that I didn't earn. They've whipped me with stripes I didn't earn. They've given me grief I didn't earn. They've misunderstood me. underappreciated me, underestimated me for 33 years. I did good, they returned it for evil. I spoke to them with kindness and they spat on me. I kissed them on the foreheads and they plucked out my beard. If anyone had a right to write anyone off, it was our Lord and Savior. But in fact, he said, I'm gonna take all this End of verse 23, committed to the one who judges rightly. He said, I have my day in court. Judgment day is coming, judgment day is coming, judgment days. And everything will be made right. Jesus Christ took all of the grief that he bore for sins that were not his own, and he took it patiently and put it in the father's hands. Now, you and I usually think that if we will slander back, that'll solve it. If we accidentally find someone who will help us get out of that situation, that'll make it better. If we tell the right person that we know has flapping gums, and we're hoping they leak back my secret that I know they're gonna break. Oh, we're funny people, aren't we? We find the awfulest, awfulest secret keeper, the one we know is gonna spray it like a hose, and we tell them because we know they're gonna flap their gums, and it's gonna get back to the person, and that'll fix them. In fact, my heart, deep in its fibers, is so potentially wicked that in fact sometimes I'll tell someone good things about the person so that they'll leak it back to them and they'll feel bad for saying horrible things about me and I said good things back to them. I have a lot of work that needs to be done in me. Probably, probably none of you do. But I'll bet that if you peel back the onion, there's a chance that you and I are gonna find out that when we say, I'm just gonna put it in God's hands, we really don't. We want to solve our own problems. We get on the phone and we say we're sharing things with people. I just gotta vent, I gotta place this on. No, Jesus vented one direction. He gave it to the one who judges rightly. So what is the cure for your wounded soul this morning? What is the cure for your wounded heart? People who barged into your life and then left without your permission. They stole your heart, didn't they? They stained it, they stomped it, and then left without so much as a sorry, not even a conversation. The man that I protected in Baghdad in 2003 committed suicide in 2012. I talked to his wife in 2014 and she said, the worst thing about it is that we never talked about his decision and we talked about everything. What do you do when someone hurts you so deeply and they're not even around to smack? They're not even around to hurt. There's no evening the score here. In fact, if they go to the same place you go after you die, you really can't say anything to them. Who's gonna set that right? Only Jesus. So someone in here today needs to remember Jesus didn't just die for your sin that you committed before you got saved. He died for the sin that people have sinned against you. And if he didn't, there's no healing for your soul. One of the beauties of the gospel is not just that he died for the worst things you've ever done. He died to heal you of the worst things other people did to you. By his stripes, your souls are healed. They say it doesn't feel healed. Well, he says it is. You can argue with gravity and you can call it something else and you can say it's a Copernican conspiracy all you want, but John Newton, Isaac Newton, all the Newtons, Fig Newton, whoever was wrong about it, they's all wrong. No, they weren't all wrong. Denying a truth doesn't make it untrue and Christ either paid for your sins in his body on the tree or he didn't. Now, I wanna ask you a question there. If you've not yet trusted this Jesus Christ to be your Savior, if you've not yet put your faith in Jesus, do you believe what we read this morning? He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. Did he fail? Did he fall short? That thing that you don't want to confess to anyone because you'd lose your job, did he die for that? That secret you don't want to tell your spouse because you're pretty sure she'll never want to stay with you. Your husband will never want to stay with you. Did he die for that? Did he suffer for that? Was he lashed for that? Then believe it and find your soul's healing today. Father, thank you for