Gracious Things

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan. This is a message from Pastor Don Filsack from the series

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Ready for the Storm on First Peter. If you'd like more information on Recast Church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch

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.com Here's Pastor Don. Well, good morning.

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Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here and we're gonna go ahead and get started. So if you could find your seats,

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I'm guessing that some more people are gonna filter in here. But grateful to be together as God's people this morning.

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Hopefully you've endured just fine the past week with the weather and now all the snow has melted and we know that there's more on its way coming back again and all that stuff, but a little bit of warmer weather here.

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Be sure to fill out the connection card you received when you walked in. Especially if it's your first time with us and you're willing to share your email address with us, we do send out a weekly email called the e -cast.

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It's got different activities and links and different stuff that's going on there. We call that card the connection card because it's the primary way to get connected with stuff that's going on here.

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There's a place to put a check mark, a check box to check on the back for different things.

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If you're interested in having a meeting with one of the pastors or you're wanting to join a small group or join this new class called

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Recast 101, you can check that there. And we do have some new small groups that are going to be forming.

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So if you're not currently connected in community through a small group, this might be a great time to kick that off starting moving towards the first of the year in January to kind of turn over a new leaf and get more connected here would be great.

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Remember that you received an offering envelope. Those connection cards and offerings go in the black box back there if you choose to give this morning.

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I want to say I say that every week and part of the reason I say it is I'm not super you know that I don't talk a lot about finances and things like that.

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But I've actually had people come up to me in the past and say okay, you don't pass an offering plate so what I do with this?

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So I just make that statement at the beginning. But there is a place to recycle those envelopes if you're not going to use it. We don't want anybody to feel pressured to give.

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We want your offerings to be out of the overflow and abundance of gratitude for what God has done for you.

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So if you choose to give that envelopes there, if not, there's a place to recycle the envelope right next to that.

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So we're going to be talking about 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 18 through 25 this morning.

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I'm going to read that here in a second. But I want to just kind of introduce the the subject for the morning and kind of thinking through it before we come to worshiping

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God through song and the band comes to lead us. The first statement that I want to just make in general is that injustice is all around us.

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I don't know if you identify that but there is a level of injustice that is involved in living on this planet.

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Really, it's a result of the fall and so injustice we even find it residing in us. If we search our own hearts, we know that we have judged others more harshly for their sins, even when their sins look an awful lot like our sins.

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Have you ever identified that in yourself? Sometimes, as a matter of fact, I would suggest to you that sometimes the sins that are closest to your heart that you struggle with the most, you more readily identify in others.

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Can you relate to that? You see it because you know it, but you hate it because you see it in yourself. And so it's easier to hate it when you see it in others.

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That's kind of unjust, isn't it, to treat others more harshly for the things that they do when we recognize that we do some of the same things.

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We also recognize that there's injustice even within our judicial system. When someone can be found guilty of a crime they have not committed and there's all kinds of stories out there of of injustices happening where somebody actually did not commit a crime but spent time in jail and then eventually they were exonerated through DNA evidence or something and somebody else was held guilty for that crime or whatever and you've seen those stories.

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We know that injustice works in the fabric of a broken world where very painful situations happen like a married couple who would love to have children but are unable and then you have some who are not married who seem to be able to get pregnant by glancing across a room.

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You know what I'm talking about. And I would suggest to you that the way that we process this concept of injustice in this world is central to the

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Christian life. It's central to what it means to be a Christian and don't take my word for it.

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Peter is going to say as much in our text that this concept of how we as Christians perceive and process and endure and work through injustices that we face is central to the

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Christian life. Christians are followers of Christ. That's what the word

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Christian means. And Christ was a man whose central mission was to come to this planet.

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Are you ready for it? And endure injustice. He alone was sinless.

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He alone deserved no punishment. He alone could stand on his own truly justified before his father.

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No blemish, no spot, no sin, no reason to accept any punishment.

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Truly innocent, worthy of no punishment, and yet he endured all of those things for you and me.

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Peter's message is so radical this morning that it's actually kind of difficult to preach. I'm going to be honest with you. This is a wrestling text for me.

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This is I think potentially one of the hardest things that I've had to prepare to preach at all.

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I can almost guarantee that you're going to struggle with this text this morning. That you're going to want to qualify this text this morning.

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Even as I read it, you're going to look for the qualifications. You're going to look to change it. You're going to look in your mind to soften what

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Peter is going to say to us this morning. What I'm preaching this morning is antithetical to American individualism.

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I would even suggest to you that it's antithetical to self -preservation that we take for granted.

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The desire to save yourself. The desire to preserve yourself. The desire to avoid harm for yourself.

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And to be quite honest, at face value, it looks antithetical to what we would say is pragmatism.

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Does it really work? If you do what Peter says here in the text, if we live this kind of life, how's that going to turn out for you?

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How is it going to turn out? And so as we read it this morning, I want you to consider the challenge to all of us.

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When we encounter God's word, and it challenges our minds, and it challenges the way we think, and it challenges the way that we view the world around us, which are we going to take?

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Our perception of things? Our experiences? Or are we going to take the word of God as it says things ought to be and the way that we should live?

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Because this is going to challenge us. So I want you to open your Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Peter 2, 18 through 25.

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Quite a bit of setup there. If you have a Bible app, you can navigate over there. Remember, I'm reading out of the

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English Standard Version. If you don't have a Bible on your lap, I do strongly desire for everybody to have a copy of the word of God with them.

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If you need one, just raise your hand. Mike's got some that he's bringing around. We're not just trying to call you out just to provide you with a

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Bible, in case you forgot yours or whatever. There's someone right down here, someone back here who could use one.

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And take advantage of that so you've got a Bible sitting on your lap. But 2 Peter 2, 18 through 25, recast.

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As I read this, I want to remind you that this is the very word of God to us this morning.

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This is what He wants for us to hear. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust.

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For this is a gracious thing when, mindful of God, one endures sorrow while suffering unjustly.

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For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure.

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But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

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For to this you have been called. Because Christ also suffered for you.

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Leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps.

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He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled,

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He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten. But continued entrusting

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Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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By His wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

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Let's pray. Father, we come as a people who are, who need an encounter from Your Word.

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We need to hear from You and, Father, we are looking at a text here that talks about servants obeying unjust masters, and it rubs me the wrong way.

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It feels like an injustice to suggest. And so, Father, I pray by the power of Your Holy Spirit that You would, that You would speak through Your Word to our circumstances and our situations, to where we live,

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Father. We certainly live in a day and an age where I praise You and thank You that slavery is no longer a reality like it was in Peter's time.

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And yet, Father, we certainly endure and encounter injustices in our lives. And, Father, I pray that You would open our eyes to the reality of a radical submission to authority, a radical love and compassion for our community.

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And, Father, all of this would be worked out because of the grace that we see in our Savior Jesus Christ. That we would model our lives after Him who went to the cross on our behalf and did not open

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His mouth and did not slander and revile those, but rather said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they did.

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So, Father, in that place now where we have an opportunity to sing some songs and to raise our voices before You, Father, I pray that You would meet us here in this place by the power of Your Holy Spirit that rests in us to worship

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You in spirit and in truth. Father, with our emotions engaged, with the truth of these words of these songs filling our hearts with joy towards You, I ask this in Jesus' name.

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Amen. It's very important to set the context and understanding of where we've gone before.

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Whenever we're kind of jumping back in after a week, it's possible that you kind of lose that flow a little bit.

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And so, remember that Peter has already set the stage last week for the submission of believers towards all authority.

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He said, I urge you to follow all authority, including the governors and even the emperor himself, even a brutal emperor.

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But if that wasn't hard enough, he starts this week by dealing with slaves.

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I would prefer that the translators would have kept the original word and they've actually changed it, and they changed it for a reason.

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But the actual word that is translated there in your text, the first word in the English standard version of this verse, verse 18, servants, is much better translated.

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If you're going to just say exactly what the word means, it means slave. I'd prefer that they had kept it that way just so that when you're reading it, you have to tackle it head -on.

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You can't kind of squirm around it. How many of you think servant sounds better? Does servant sound better?

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It does. It sounds better. But the Greek word here is the Greek word for slavery in the

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Roman Empire. But the reason there, there's a reason, there's a good reason why the translators have kept it as or changed it to servant.

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And it's valuable for us to note, and I think it sets the stage a little bit for us this morning. In our modern context, slavery is a completely different beast.

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It's a completely different thing than it was in the Roman Empire. Now, I don't want to say that, I mean, being owned by a person, never a good thing, right?

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That's not, that's not cool at all. But, because we're all aware of the horrendous history of racial slavery in America, it becomes very important to distinguish between different forms of slavery down through history.

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What happened in the Roman Empire was a bit different, quite a bit different, than racial slavery in the south of the

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United States a couple hundred years ago, or not even quite that long ago. Estimates suggest that up to 25 percent of the population of the

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Roman Empire were comprised of people who were slaves. All of a sudden, when you're going to kind of diverge with this next sentence, you're going to start to see some of the differences between slavery in America and slavery in Rome.

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Slaves could own slaves in the Roman Empire. Slaves could own their own property in the

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Roman Empire. Slaves could save up money and pay for their own manumission, their own freedom in the

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Roman Empire. In some instances, they did indeed buy their own freedom.

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Many slaves were very educated, sometimes more educated than their masters, and were actually hired on as tutors, or,

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I mean, brought on and actually owned for the purpose of educating their children and things like that. A lot of them, a lot of slaves in the

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Roman Empire, voluntarily entered into slavery so that their lot in life would improve.

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They accepted that role and entered into servitude to somebody who would cover their meals in exchange for their labor and their work.

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In that culture and society, slavery, in some instances, was not far off from modern day employment.

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And some of you do slave for your employer as it is right now, like you kind of notice that some of you are working 70, 80 hours a week, and you feel like you're owned by the company that you work for.

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But before we get all too rosy and all sign up for slavery, I certainly don't want to oversell it.

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It wasn't always peachy. Certainly, there were cases of significant abuse. Certainly, there were those who considered slaves as property or chattel.

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So please don't go out from here and quote me as saying, you know, Pastor Don says slavery is awesome.

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Don't say that. But we do need to have in our mind a correct understanding of what the

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Bible is saying. Now, you can kind of hear how sometimes we take a word, and we take our modern understanding of it, and we can just kind of go, oh,

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I know what that is. I studied slavery in history, and I know exactly what we're talking about here. But you can see how understanding what it meant when the author was writing about it is very important.

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And just to clarify, just one final statement to help us to understand the distinction and the difference between these two forms of slavery.

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In Rome, a black person from Africa could own a Caucasian slave who cooked for them.

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You get it? There's a difference. It was not about race.

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It was about status and economics. Now, I say all this to set the stage because Peter doesn't over overturn this entire societal structure of his day and age.

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What would we love for Peter to say here? Slaves, rise up against your masters.

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Rise up and defeat them and gain your freedom. How many of you kind of think like that's kind of the expectation of our society and our culture would be that that's what

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Peter is going to say? But rather than speak out initially against this societal issue of his day and age, he runs with it.

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And right away on in verse 18, he tells Christian slaves to submit to their masters.

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He tells Christian slaves to submit to do what their masters tell them to do.

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He told Christians last week, remember, to submit to the brutal emperor. Now, he tells slaves to submit to their masters.

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I want to point out that we should begin to see a pattern forming here in the things that Peter is encouraging of the

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Christian life. According to Peter, the life of a follower of Christ ought to be characterized by submission to authority.

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By a recognition that there is indeed a hierarchy and a structure in society and in culture and that authority.

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I think we live in a day and age where we might think that the ideal is that there is no authority.

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There is no hierarchy and uh, it's it's becoming more and more prevalent in our culture that all authority is bad authority and that's not true.

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There is always going to exist at least one distinction in authority and that's that there's God and we're not him.

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So do you acknowledge that there is authority in the created order of the pattern of life even in even on the new earth there's going to be some semblance of authority structure.

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But the life of the Christian should be characterized by a radical, should not be characterized by a radical independence.

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We should not look like rebels to the culture around us. We are to be strangers of this world regarding sin as we saw last week, but we should do good for the sake of Christ in our culture.

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But certainly, certainly Peter is only talking to slaves who have a kind master, right?

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I mean if you're if you're if your master is kind then you do what they tell you to. If they're if they're rude or they're cruel or they're mean then you don't.

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Is that what he says in the text? No. A Christian slave is to exhibit all due respect not only to the gentle master, but also toward the unjust he says.

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Right there. That's where Peter gets me. Does that get you there?

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Anybody? Raise your hand if that that just strikes you kind of a little bit uncomfortable. Is that a little uncomfortable?

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Submit to an unjust master. What? I'm an

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American. Right? Submit to an unjust master.

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No, sue an unjust master. I'm an American. Sue them. Take them to court. Right? What do you?

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Really? Submit to them. He gets me. He didn't leave it to us to determine which masters we can submit to and which ones we can rebel against.

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He outright declares the Christian role is to respect those who are over them. Straightforward.

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There is no question in my mind that what Peter is saying here was radical in his culture. It's even more radical in our culture.

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The funny thing is that in Peter's culture where slavery was prevalent, this would not have struck their ears as radical as it does ours.

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To show respect to the unjust seems kind of unjust. But Peter, I'm grateful.

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I'm grateful that Peter doesn't just drop this bombshell and then leave the mess for me to clean up, to defend, to try to explain to you why, but he does it for himself.

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And I'm grateful that Peter goes on, that he doesn't just stop there and say, okay, you know, I just want, if you're a

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Christian and you're a slave, you just need to submit to whatever your master tells you to do. And that's that. But he is going to defend this in very strong terms.

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Peter defends his own state and he goes on to explain this radical respect towards authority that he is calling us to.

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Look at verse 19. Verse 19, for this is a gracious thing.

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A gracious thing? You think so, Peter? You think that that might be gracious?

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A little bit? I'd say so. I'm struggling to think of anything more gracious than showing respect to someone who has treated you unjustly.

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That is a high point of grace. But Peter even qualifies this.

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He says that's not enough. It's not enough that you just endure and show respect to an unjust master, but there's something else that, a component for it to be a gracious thing.

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There's a component that needs to be present there. Just being kind towards someone who's unjust towards us is only a truly gracious thing when the injustice is endured with a mind towards God.

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When you endure hardship or you endure suffering at the hands of another person with a mind towards who?

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God. In other words, enduring injustice patiently with hopes of retaliation.

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If that's what's fueling you, if that's what your strength is, I'll just bide my time and I'll be a good submissive person until I can get back at them.

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Is that a gracious thing? Is there all different kinds of motives? Can you see what I'm saying? There's all different kinds of motives why a person might endure during suffering, right?

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And not all of them are gracious. But when you do so for the sake of God Almighty, when you do so being mindful, as he's going to paint for us here a picture of the cross, when you do so mindful that it is that suffering and sorrow is part and parcel of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, all of a sudden that is a gracious thing.

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Enduring suffering at the hands of a master because you have no other place to go or you're not strong enough is not just strictly speaking a gracious thing.

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Verse 19, for this is a gracious thing when mindful of God one endures sorrow while suffering unjustly.

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Well, I want to confess that as much as I want to tiptoe through the tulips and keep referring to the ill treatment of this master towards this slave as unjust, and I'd like to keep it in general terms, right, like it would be more comfortable for us to just talk in general terms about injustice and not flesh that out a bit,

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Peter fleshes it out just a little bit. He actually says that this master who is treating the slave unjustly is producing sorrow and suffering for the servant, for the slave.

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This is, this is not that the master has withheld cable tv. You get it?

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There has been sorrow and suffering as a result of the treatment of this master to this servant.

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This is a harsh master. Now I'm mindful at this point in the text of the words of Paul in Philippians 2, 14 through 15 who tells us do all things without grumbling or questioning or grumbling or complaining that you may be blameless and innocent, listen to this, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.

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How many of you think that this type of gracious thing shines out bright in our culture when a

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Christian endures injustice for the cause of Christ? Is that counter -cultural?

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Crazy counter -cultural. That's going to grab people's attention. When you endure a hostile or a mean employer who has it out for you and you do so with grace and kindness without reviling, without returning, without backbiting, without talking about them behind their back or trying to win other people to your side or whatever, that is a gracious thing.

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That stands out in our culture when that happens. We can shine out grace to the world in the way we handle sorrow and suffering inflicted towards us by others.

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In verse 20, Peter qualifies that enduring suffering is literally of credit to God when it is encountered because of the good that we have done.

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He goes on to say if you sin and then you get punished, if you sin and then you spend time in the slammer, that sorrow and suffering is not a gracious thing in the eyes of God.

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You got what's coming for you. Are you getting what he's getting at there in verse 20? If you're just enduring suffering because you sinned, well, that's on you.

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But if you're locked in the stocks and beaten like say Paul and Silas, for example, because they shared the gospel with others, they were doing something good.

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That's a gracious thing. You endure suffering for doing good. And to prevent us from thinking that Peter is just giving us a secondary teaching like, well, okay, you know,

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I'm not a slave and so what's this got to do with me and uh, you know, if if there were slaves still then

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I mean this is just kind of a side note of you know, something to them. He clarifies in verse 21, look at verse 21, for to this you, it's a plural you, y 'all, for to this you all have been called because Christ also suffered for you.

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If you're sitting here and you say Christ suffered for me and he's talking to you. If Christ suffered injustice for you and he is talking to you.

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And from this point on in verses 21 through 25, he launches into a clear and central call for each of us, even though we're not slaves, each of us to adopt a submissive, gentle, meek, and humble attitude toward authority in our lives.

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Why should the slave of an unjust master show him respect? Because Jesus is your example.

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Jesus suffered for you, recast, Jesus suffered for us.

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And he did so in part so that we would follow in his steps. Remember the call from Jesus that anyone who wants to be his disciple must take up their cross and follow him.

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Do you think he meant that? Not literally, not picking up that cross. And carrying it around with you.

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But do you think he meant for us to lay aside our lives? To count our lives as nothing for his cause?

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He did. Or do you think that when he talked about taking up his cross, he's talking about the jewelry that you wear, the light cross to carry, isn't it?

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He's talking about something a lot heavier. And here's the way that Peter explains Jesus as our example.

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He says while suffering for you, Jesus committed no sins. He never deceived.

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He was reviled. That is he's insulted. He was mocked without insulting and mocking in return, without reviling back.

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He suffered without threatening those who were abusing him. And he continued to entrust himself to the only one in whom justice is found.

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Where is true justice found? In the Father. In God. For this very purpose, the reason he suffered there and he carried our sins and he bore our sins on that cross for the very purpose that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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In other words, the cross is indeed an example for us. But it's much more than just an example.

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It's not like he said, okay, you know, just I want to show you the way of sacrifice, so I'm going to die on the cross so that you can learn how to sacrifice.

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There's part of it. There's much more going on. On the cross, Jesus both showed us how to endure suffering and injustice while giving us victory over sin and the power to walk in righteousness.

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In other words, if you just take this metaphor a little bit further, you can kind of see it. He didn't only, he's not only the signpost.

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You're walking through the woods and you're trying to figure out what direction should my life go? And there's two, there's a fork in front of you and there stands

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Jesus pointing this way. He's a sign. He's a, he's an example.

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He's a model. He's showing us the way and he says go this way. But you are all, all of us at that point when we encountered

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Christ, we were so weighed down with our sin that we had no hope of walking that path.

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We were being crushed by the weight of our own sin. So what else did Jesus do there when we met him and encountered him at the cross?

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He took our burden from us so that we could walk. He took our sin on himself.

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And then you go, well walking down this path in the forest is going to be rough without the proper equipment.

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So then he has equipped us, clothed us, given us his righteousness that we might walk in the way that he's pointing out.

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Are you getting what I'm saying in this? He has, he has pointed the way, demonstrated the way, shown the way.

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He is our guide. He is our leader all the way through it. He takes off our unrighteousness that weighs us down and gives us his own righteousness that we might live in it.

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That's the picture of what Christ has done for us on the cross. It's by his wounds.

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You ever thought about that? What does it mean that it, Peter starts to quote and the majority of the rest of these verses are a quote or at least a paraphrase from Peter out of Isaiah chapter 53.

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He's now quoting the Old Testament. What does it mean that by his stripes, you've heard that, by his stripes we're healed, by his wounds we are healed?

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Think about this. Had Jesus refused to endure those blows, had he refused to endure that whip, had he refused to accept those nails in his hands and feet, you would have no healing.

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Had he refused? Had he sat there in the garden of Gethsemane and said, you know what, God, Father, no.

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No, enough of this. I will not do this for these people. We would have no healing.

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That he willingly chose to endure injustice helps us to understand how in the world could

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Peter tell us to endure injustice. How could he dare? Because his son did so for us.

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Does that change things? Does that make it more clear why he might tell Christian slaves in the

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Roman Empire to endure under harsh leaders?

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According to verse 25, I feel like Peter knows us. For you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your soul.

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He knows me. I once was lost. I was straying like a sheep without a shepherd. What that kind of implies is

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I was once out doing my own thing. I had no model, no pattern, no example. Nobody to guide me.

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Nobody to lead me. Nobody, no shepherd to bring me to water or to green pastures. Nobody to carry that burden for me so that I was pressed down by the weight of sin.

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But now by God's grace, I have returned to the soul shepherd. To the one who is rightly called the overseer.

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And as shepherd, he is the one who truly cares and relates to us as we are enduring injustice and suffering.

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The general call in this text is that Christian slaves are to willingly endure injustice. And when they do this, it's a gracious thing in God's eyes when they're mindful of him.

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And so what does enduring look like for us? It looks like Jesus.

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Jesus who did not revile. It looks like Jesus who did not threaten. It looks like Jesus who entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

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What do we assume is going to happen when a slave responds with humility and deference to a harsh and hostile master?

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Well, when you think about it pragmatically, it sounds like a recipe for a dead slave. You agree?

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I mean, if you've got a harsh and hostile master and it's... But consider the history of non -violent protest that was actually used effectively in the south surrounding the civil rights era of our nation's history.

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Or the non -violence of India ousting the British under Gandhi. Common sense would say if you lay down on the the railroad tracks in front of a train of your enemies, what's going to happen?

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What does common sense say is going to happen in that context? You're going to die. And that's not what happened historically.

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An appeal to a higher standard is often what ends... ends up affecting true change, ends up ending injustice.

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Race riots never accomplished half of what non -violent protest has produced in the face of harsh and hostile treatment.

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Think about that historically. And so how do we apply this? I think it's fair for us to move as quickly away from the topic of slavery as Peter does in the text.

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He really only spends a couple verses on it and then digs down deeper to talk to all of us. We're not slaves.

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Are they still going to communicate? And I think what he's saying is the slave, it was the lowest common denominator in his society.

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He's saying I'm telling them to submit so you all should. If I'm telling them in harsh circumstances too, all of us should.

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And then notice that he immediately goes to identifying Christ as the slave. Jesus became slave of all when he willingly laid down his life for his sheep.

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But I think it's important to recognize that this Jesus who endured suffering without reviling, endured suffering without threatening, and even uttered,

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Father forgive them for they know not what they do, will one day return to judge injustice and righteousness.

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He's the same one coming back. And that's where there is an important distinction.

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There is an important qualification between slavery and our culture today.

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We don't need to stay in that job situation where we're being abused. And the text doesn't say you have to stay in that when there's a cultural way out.

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But we need to avoid reviling, threatening, and retaliation.

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I would advise you to run from a situation in which you're being physically abused by a spouse, but I would not encourage retaliation, reviling, or threatening.

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In other words, the thoroughly trapped nature of slavery in the Roman Empire has very little crossover to our culture.

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A slave cannot get away from his abuser. And so Peter tells a Christian slave what to do while we all get to glean the principles of a radical kindness towards all through the example of Jesus Christ.

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So in what ways will our lives shine out gracious things like Jesus did? Peter's saying we are to have a radical submission towards authority.

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From employer, to police, to teachers, to parents, if you're still at home. And that when injustice comes our way, we should act like Jesus did.

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But now the brass tacks. Many of us are sitting here going, okay,

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I'm not a slave, not only that, but I really don't suffer injustice. And I haven't suffered really at all.

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I haven't been persecuted. But I would point out that our attitude towards suffering is something that at least at the bare minimum probably needs to be corrected.

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Do you agree with me on that? Our attitude towards suffering needs to be corrected. Not that we have to go out and and drum it up.

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I'm not suggesting that we go out and try to stir up some injustice towards us so that we can apply this text. Is that the application point?

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Go get some injustice. But I want to tell you a true story. During the whole, it's funny how it ties in because it just happened to be the circumstance or the situation.

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But how many of you remember the Rodney King race riots? Do you guys remember those? I was in South Carolina.

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I was attending Bible college at the time. I went down there. I graduated from high school in 91, and that's when it occurred.

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And it was that very first semester while I was down there that the race riots were going out on the west coast.

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But they also took place in other cities. I don't know if you're aware of that. But in Columbia, South Carolina, there was one particular weekend where everything was pretty up to the boiling point.

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Me and a group of my friends went down to a place by a University of South Carolina campus where we'd normally, we would often go down there and just strike up conversations and do evangelism and just kind of street stuff with people and get into conversations and things.

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And we went down this one particular night because it was supposed to be really like a lot going on. And it sounded kind of fun and get a chance to talk with people.

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We went down to a place called Five Points where five roads come together. There was always people there, you know, playing music and doing all kinds of stuff.

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Well, it was pretty tense. There was actually riot gear. There were helicopters flying over. They were kind of trying to keep things in line.

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But in one particular corner, right up next to a pub, there was just a just a short sidewalk between a pub and the street.

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There were two guys standing there in suits with bullhorns. Anybody have any guess who what they were doing?

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Preaching hellfire and brimstone. They were there just shouting down the crowds, preaching a

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Bible in one hand. They were taking turns. So one would kind of lean up against the wall until the other one got a little bit hoarse and then he'd go get something to drink while the other guy would.

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And they were just shouting, shouting, shouting. Well, we were observing this and it was really a great opportunity for me and my friends because we could work the crowd.

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Like we're working the crowd going, what do you think of these jokers? You know, and we had an opportunity to kind of talk to them about, you know, this isn't all that it's about, you know,

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I mean certainly what they're saying, there's some truth to what they're saying. But so we had a lot of good conversations that night. But what was really interesting is that the owner of the pub right there came out a handful of times to say to these guys, dudes, we're trying,

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I'm trying to run a business in here. And you're three feet away from people who are just trying to enjoy a nice meal in here.

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Could you go across the street? Well across the street is a gas station. You're not going to bother anybody there. You could just stand there on the, on the, across the street and, and, and do the same thing that you're doing, reach the same people with the same message, but they refused.

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Well, eventually the owner called the police and they came and they actually handcuffed these guys.

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And as they were processing the one guy, the other guy standing there leaning up against the wall with handcuffs,

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I got a chance to talk to this guy. He's about to get arrested. I said, God, dude, why don't you just go across the street?

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And his comment has always stuck to me to this day. It applies right here. He said, we want to be arrested.

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We wanted to get arrested. What? What? Like that, that, that was their mindset.

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That was their ideal. Their, their, their mind was we're going out tonight to get arrested. Our goal is to face injustice for Jesus.

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Is that, does that strike any of you just a little bit strange? Like when they could have been law -abiding and instead of disturbing the peace have just gone across the street and got their message out.

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They were not there to get the message out. They were there to get persecuted, not arrested.

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Is that, is that the way that we're supposed to live in light of this? Are we supposed to be looking for and searching for opportunities to face injustice?

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Not at all. We don't go out and look for it. But I would suggest this to you that where we lack suffering because we have protected ourselves or disobeyed our calling to proclaim the glory of Jesus, that must be corrected.

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Where you might say to me, we don't suffer in America for the cause of doing good. And I would suggest to you that we might, if we were as bold as scripture calls us to be regarding the gospel.

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You hear me? Oh, we don't face any persecution here. Maybe that's because we're just not bold.

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Maybe that's because we're not sharing the gospel as we ought. So I'd like to highlight four things that I believe that get in the way of the suffering for the cause of Christ here in America.

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Four things real quick. And these are kind of reverse applications. So what

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I want you to do is as I say these things that are blocks to us suffering, things that get in the way of us actually legitimately, not trying to drum it up, just if we were doing what we were called to do, we wouldn't, we would suffer some.

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The first is we've succumbed to materialism. This teaching this morning is calling us,

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Peter is calling us for a radical willingness to shine out grace towards others. But instead we bought into a self -centered, me -pleasing life.

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Think about it from these terms. It is hard to suffer injustice when I have been courting the thought that my life is all about me.

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If I think it's all about this guy, am I gonna, do you see how that might get in the way of me suffering?

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Do you see how that might get in the way of me being bold with the gospel? The second thing, we have forgotten the value of sacrifice.

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Christ looks strange in a world where sacrifice is seen as weakness. And I'm talking about here in the church. I'm talking about inside us as Christians.

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We've got to wrestle with these things. Do we understand the value of sacrifice? If we are always valuing the strongest, the fastest, the wealthiest, the healthiest, then the cross will lose its wonder.

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But God is saying what really gets his attention? The sacrifice for his cause even in the face of injustice.

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The third thing, we have stopped viewing evangelism as sacrifice. Another way

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I can say this is we have thought that evangelism is about making friends rather than just sowing seeds.

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We've bought into the concept that it's just just about being friendly to people. So we decide what is at stake before we share the gospel.

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We protect ourselves from being rejected by just not even sharing.

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Often I would suggest that assuming that someone will reject the message is the reason we don't even share it. Are you getting what

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I'm saying in this? It's like asking, well, you know, would they be receptive or not receptive? I, you know,

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I've made up my, I've made up their mind for them. I'm not, I'm not going to share that. Are you getting what

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I'm saying? I mean, they're, they're closed off anyways, or they probably, they probably heard it before or you see how we can talk ourselves out of having an engaging conversation with somebody that could end up,

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I mean, could it lead to some suffering? Could it lead to some rejection? Yeah. I liken this to the guy who won't ask a girl out on a date until he knows for sure she'll say yes.

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So he sends one of his friends over to her friend to see if she's into him or not, and if she's into him, then, then he'll ask.

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But otherwise, he's just going to kind of like, no, I'm not even going to ask. You, you getting what

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I'm saying in this? We take, we take it kind of like, well, is there a chance they'll say yes? Then I'll, then

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I'll share. Then I'll talk about the gospel. The apostle

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Paul, in encouraging one of the young men he was mentoring named Timothy, said these words,

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So do not be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of me, his prisoner.

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Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.

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He acknowledged that suffering was something we could join in just simply by not being ashamed of the gospel.

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Don't need to go out and seek an opportunity to get arrested and, and go out with that intention.

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But if you are bold, if you are unashamed with the gospel, are there going to be some people who get frustrated with you?

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Sure. And that's okay. But if we're doing what we're called to do, we're gonna have some, you can have some people who don't like you.

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Oh, that's so uncomfortable. But it's reality, and by the way, I'm not trying to make fun of you.

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This is, this is the way, I've got, I've got to process this myself. I got to work through this. I want people to like me.

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I, I think we're probably, raise your hand if you want people to like you. Just being honest. You like that? I love, I like people to like me, and I, I kind of would like to share the gospel in a way that people would like me afterwards.

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And so, you know, if I, if I feel like maybe you're going to be receptive to it or whatever, then that's really comfortable.

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That's good. I feel like, you know, I already saw the Bible on your desk. And so I've got a good chance that how many of you know that the people who need the gospel are not the people who already have the

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Bible on there? I mean, some of them do, but you know, there might be, might be the guy who's got like the, um, you know, a little

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Buddha on there or something like that. And you go, oh, I already know where he's at. So I'm not gonna, they need the gospel.

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Lastly, the last thing that's gotten in the way of our suffering is we've explained away the tough passages like this one.

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Surely, Peter doesn't mean that we need to suffer at all, right? That's not, he means something different than that. This passage is for slaves.

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Last time I checked, I'm not a slave. Awesome. This isn't for me. But Jesus didn't mean that he wanted us to take up our cross and follow him.

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Certainly, that's just a, it's a metaphor for something, and then we never get down to what the metaphor is for. Peter wants us to draw attention, wants to draw attention to Jesus as the example for our lives.

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His compassion, his kindness, and most importantly, his willingness to endure suffering by entrusting himself to God.

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Jesus bore our sins in his body. He who is sinless died an unjust death so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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And we celebrate this amazing sacrifice each week by taking a cracker that represents the body of Jesus that was broken for us, and we take the cup that represents his blood.

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And at this time, every service, we remember the great suffering he endured for us. The only just one, endured ultimate injustice, that we might be declared justified.

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He who knew no sin bore our sin that we might be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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So if you've asked Jesus to save you, if you believe he is the master and the king, then come to one of the tables during this closing song.

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And as you come to the table, consider that Jesus willingly endured unjust treatment for you.

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And now through Peter, Jesus is calling all of us to follow him. To follow him in this sacrifice of our lives so that we can be made gracious things to a world that is dark with injustice.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the injustice that Jesus Christ endured for me.

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Father, my sin before you was great, pressed down and weighed down.

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I thank you for the suffering that he took, the crown of thorns.

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He took that horrible beating. He took those nails.

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And he hung there suffering for breath, struggling with each and every labor breath for me.

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So fathers, we have an opportunity to come to communion today. I pray that you would help us to recognize that it is no, it is no major calling that we would be called to suffer alongside of our

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Lord. I pray that we would take this calling seriously to be bold, to be direct, to be fearless, because Jesus faced the cross for us.

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We thank you that we have a shepherd and overseer of our souls who is watching over us and that no injustice goes unnoticed.

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Father, for those who are struggling right now with unjust situations in their work or in their family or around them is swirling a sense of injustice and unfair treatment,

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Father, that you would empower them to recognize your mercy and your grace. Father, that you would help us to shine out as gracious things to a culture that has no framework for suffering under injustice.