A Pattern for Suffering (I Peter 2:21)

Welcome to Sunday School. Come on in. Lots of really exciting, good energy here today.

You all must have had wonderful Thanksgivings together. I know that I and my family did, and we're thankful for you for many things here at KCC.

All right, as everybody's getting their seats, let's open in a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, it is with great joy and fervent expectation that we come to your word this morning.

We humble our hearts and our minds before you as we give ourselves to the study of this text.

Father, we know your word is truth, and we, your servants, we delight in hearing it, we delight in understanding it, and we delight in applying the truth to our lives.

Strengthen us in the task this morning. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear and minds that are sharp and strong.

And may your spirit guide us into all truth today in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen. All right, open your

Bibles up to 1 Peter 2, verse 21. We are in our eighth week of this series,

Walk by the Spirit. And so I think it's good and helpful for those of you who may have missed a week or two for me to just recap where we started, how we got where we are today and where we are in the next couple of weeks as we bring this series to its close.

So back in week one, we looked at the 10 reasons that I believe that we should study the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We looked at 10 of those reasons together. And if you recall, a couple of those reasons were kind of predictive of the reality of what was gonna happen.

As we started to look closely at the humanity of Christ, we were gonna go look at some very, very familiar passages of scripture, passages that all of us have known since we were little kids and studied before and could be easy for us to review, but we knew that as we looked at the man,

Christ Jesus, we were gonna stretch ourselves into some really tough questions. And I wanna thank all of you for your participation in this study.

It has been exactly what I envisioned. The body of Christ, particularly the group that comes on Sunday school hour, has drawn closer to Christ and to each other by virtue of our mutual effort in pushing ourselves back to the scriptures for the source of truth.

In our second week together, we looked at the book of Luke chapter two. We looked at the early years of Christ's life and we saw how he learned and demonstrated obedience to his parents in those early years and developed a wisdom that came from his study of the scriptures.

Week three took us to Hebrews two, five through 18, where we looked at four incentives, four motivations for us to pursue sanctification that we saw in the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And week four took us back to the Old Testament. We spent two weeks there, week four and week five, looking at the early prophetic chapters of Isaiah, Isaiah seven, nine, and 11, to see the

Holy Spirit starting to work prophetically to predict who Jesus was and what both

Jesus would do and the Spirit would do in and through Jesus. And that helped us gain some momentum as we looked at the later prophetic chapters of Isaiah, 42 and 49, the next week, where we saw the suffering servant prophesied.

We started to see Jesus' mission and his purpose being encapsulated and predicted for us in those chapters of Isaiah.

And that gave us everything we needed to dive right back into the early gospels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, because we saw

Jesus coming to John the Baptist in the Jordan waters to be baptized, to express his repentance or the nation's repentance, to join with them in corporate confession, and then to prepare himself for his ministry, which would start at his baptism and then immediately result in the

Spirit leading him out into the wilderness to demonstrate his obedience to the Father and to the

Spirit. That's where we left off last week. So this morning, we'll find ourselves in 1 Peter. Next week, we'll be in Philippians 2.

Last three weeks or so, we're gonna spend some time in some of the gospels and some episodes and encounters that Jesus had that further draw out the humanity of Christ.

But more essentially, we're not just looking at the humanity of Christ with an academic eye. This is not just so that we can define the doctrine of the

God -man and say, this is who he was and how he did what he did. That would be great. It would be an amazing study if that's all you did.

But doctrine by itself is not sufficient. We want the application. We're driving to the application of how shall we depend upon the

Spirit in the person of Christ, in our union with him, so that we can day -to -day demonstrate our faith and our reliance upon God the

Father through the Spirit. We are trying to walk by the Spirit. So this morning,

I have a question for you. As we prepare our hearts to look at 1 Peter, how many of you remember learning how to hand write, whether it was cursive or print?

Do you remember that process of learning how to write? Right, my kids are learning cursive these days.

And whether it was cursive or print, the process is essentially the same, right? It consists of tracing the shapes of the letters repetitively.

And this is where you're, when you're a English reader and speaker, you're really thankful that you don't speak Japanese or Chinese because you're like, man, that'd be a lot harder to learn all those little tiny shapes that they have to learn how to do.

But the goal is the same. It's to instill in your hands and in your head the ability to reproduce the pattern faithfully without having the shapes laid out for you as the model.

And the process of sanctification is very analogous to that process. As new baby believers, we need to be taught the patterns of righteousness and we need every step, every tiny detail spelled out for us in those early stages so that we get it right.

And frankly speaking, our first letters in sanctification are shaky, faltering, sometimes indecipherable.

Think back to what your first handwriting looked like. But over time, we grow more and more consistent in our ability as believers to follow the pattern and execute the steps in a manner that's faithful to the original.

But where does the pattern for holy living or sanctification come from?

Well, I suggest it comes to you from the man, Jesus Christ, through the power of the spirit as revealed to us in his word.

That's where we go for the pattern. That's what we're gonna do this morning. Now, tougher question, how many of you have excellent handwriting?

Like you wouldn't be averse to coming up here and demonstrating so we could all see it on the screen and kind of critique your handwriting a little bit.

How many of you would benefit from some practice on your handwriting to make it decipherable?

Okay, I would be in that crowd. I would not wanna demonstrate for you my handwriting on the board up here. Now, if your pattern of sanctification were on display for us all to see, like your handwriting, would there be improvements that you would wanna make before you demonstrated it to us all?

I would. So no matter how long you have been a believer, whether it's been 60 minutes or 60 years, you would benefit from retracing your sanctification pattern against the perfect example of Jesus.

So the title of today's lesson is A Pattern for Suffering. And being sanctified through suffering is part of the human experience, is it not?

And we have seen how both in the Old and the New Testament, Jesus' full humanity allowed him to set the pattern for how to endure human suffering.

Listen, as I just read for you briefly, Isaiah 49, four, which we studied a couple of weeks ago, it says, but I said,

I have toiled in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity.

Those are the words of the prophetic Messiah. Jesus says, he says, yet surely the justice due to me is with the

Lord and my reward with my God. He knew what it was like to suffer because he was fully human.

So today we're gonna be back in the New Testament, first Peter, to be exhorted by the apostle Peter, and he's gonna give us three encouraging reminders about sanctification so that we would follow

Jesus' example, his pattern in suffering. Three encouragements for us this Sunday morning from first Peter 2 .21

about sanctification so that we would follow Jesus' example in suffering. So let's read together.

I'm gonna read starting in verse 18 to give us some context and momentum before we zero in on verse 21.

We'll read all the way down to 25, 18 through 25. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.

For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.

For what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it.

This finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth.

And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

Whereby his wounds, you were healed, for you were continually straying like sheep. But now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

Now you might be thinking that not only in this series has Simon gone back and done two chapters from the book of Hebrews that Jim has already taught, but now he's actually doing something even worse.

He's getting ready to teach something that Dave Rich is gonna preach on in a future Sunday here, right? If you look back,

Dave's in 1 Peter 2, verse 10, so we're only 11 verses ahead of Dave here. Now, before you start worrying,

I did the math. I got my Microsoft Excel out, and I did a little forecasting. And based on the math, based on Dave's current pace, he will get to this verse, the 46th verse of 1

Peter on October 29th, 2028. Four years from now, okay?

So I feel quite comfortable in the reality that if I screw it up, Dave will fix it in four years, or you all will completely forget what

I taught by the time he gets there in four years. Now, I'm being silly there, but I am going to tread lightly on this passage.

I'm not gonna exposit 18 through 25 like I want to, because I really do want you to have the momentum of what

Dave has been developing from 1 Peter 2, 21 in the fullness of his exposition. We're gonna just dip into verse 21 today, but look at it as kind of an advertisement for Dave's Sunday morning sermon.

I do want you to come back and hear those in their fullness. Okay, so our first encouraging reminder that we see is gonna come from the first part of verse 21.

Look back at it. It says in verse 21, for you have been called for this purpose.

And so therefore, my first reminder for you from Peter is to remember your purpose in Christ's salvation.

Now, contextually, verses 18 to 25 are addressed by Peter to household servants of the first century.

As part of this larger section in chapters two and three, where we're looking at how all believers live in submission to authority.

And Peter acknowledges right here in this section that it is difficult. There's a real difficulty here for a household servant, a

Christian household servant, who would suffer when their master is unreasonable over them.

There's just no two ways about it. If your master is unreasonable, you're gonna suffer even if you're a

Christian. Now we are not first century household servants and we never will be.

But I think like many sections of God's word, we can rightly understand the primary interpretation of how

God wanted the original audience to understand and react and apply.

And then we can draw it forth and back to our current cultural context. So before we attempt to do that,

I want to help you try to understand what Peter wrote from the perspective of the original audience.

So put yourself into the position of a first century household servant for just a couple of minutes here.

And remember that the New Testament church consisted of a lot of different groups, Jew, Gentile, male, female, free men, household servants, and even bond slaves.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 12 .13. It says, for by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, we were all made to drink of one spirit.

It's not like you have two churches, three churches, four churches that are separate based upon a societal structure.

We're all combined together into one. And it's highly likely that in every community where the church began,

Christians could be found in all societal classes. But we know from the

New Testament and from the history that surrounds the New Testament that many early Christians were from the lower classes initially and found themselves free in Christ and yet not free to live or work in any way that they pleased.

They were still bound under their household masters. In fact,

Paul commands the slaves in Corinth not to use their Christian beliefs as a reason to abandon their current condition as slaves.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 7 .21 -24. He says, were you called while a slave?

Do not worry about it. But if you are able also to become free, rather do that. For he who was called in the

Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman. Likewise, he who was called while free is

Christ's slave. You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called.

So for Christian household servants, suffering was a reality. When your master is unreasonable, that causes suffering.

And Peter's exhortation for them is to bear up under the suffering with a patient endurance that characterizes all believers in Jesus.

Look back with me at verses 19 and 20. He says, for this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.

For what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience?

But if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

So let's remind ourselves, for this group of people, this group of household slaves, but for any believer, suffering has many good purposes in God's perfect plan.

The one that's highlighted here is that patient endurance under suffering declares something to the world around you.

When you patiently bear up under suffering, doing what's right, you're basically saying to the world around you,

I bring favor to God by obeying my conscience toward God and doing what is right, even when others around me do what is wrong.

I can't help but connect this back to our cultural context for just a second. If you look back at verse 16, this verse has really stood out to me in light of the recent election and all of the drama that we as a country and the world are really going under as we look at the fact that we are ruled by wicked rulers.

We have been, we always will be. And one of the tendencies when you're ruled by a wicked ruler is to use their wickedness as an excuse to sin personally.

And Peter doesn't allow that to happen. He says, look at verse 16, he says, act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil.

In other words, be free, live free, act as free men, but do not live in a way that covers up evil with your freedom.

So now that we understand the context, let's focus on the first phrase of verse 21. He says in verse 21, you, talking about the bond slaves here, you have been called for this purpose.

Well, what purpose? What truth does Peter and the

Holy Spirit use to support this challenging call for believers to embrace suffering, not to run away from it, but to embrace it, patiently endure it?

Well, he says, you were called. And the Greek word here literally means to call aloud, to summon, to call forth by name.

You have been called. Peter's saying that each believer, even the lowly household servant, has been called to a great purpose, to salvation and sanctification.

That is your purpose. Each believer, you and I, we are known by name to God, saved by his sovereign grace through faith and placed into the person of Jesus Christ, into a new life and a sanctification that we never could have enjoyed or imagined apart from Jesus Christ.

I want to contrast this here. Believers are not called to a religion. That's frequently what you hear in our world today, but we are not called to a religion, to a system.

We're called to a person, a relationship with the man, Christ Jesus. God's calling of these believers through salvation had oriented them towards this great purpose.

Peter's saying, you've not just been called so that you can just randomly do whatever the heck you want to do with your new religion.

He's saying, no, you have been called for this purpose. Even though they were going to have to continue walking forward as suffering servants, those who could not escape the sufferings of having unreasonable masters over them, they could do so with purpose, with a greater purpose.

Their sanctification process may seem more difficult on the surface, but God has faithfully provided them what they need to follow after him.

As an illustration, I just want to imagine with you that you and I are caught together in a blizzard, right?

The snow is blinding us, and it would be even worse if it was dark, right?

If you were in a dark night blizzard, you're stumbling and you're falling repeatedly, and you're just incapable of seeing, hearing, or guiding yourself based upon your own senses.

There's no hope for you. Now, imagine that you're suddenly provided guidance through a loud voice with a big light crying out to you and shining this light through the snowstorm in such a way that you can hear it, you can see it, you can stumble your way towards safety.

You would still need to walk over and through whatever obstacles would be in front of you, but you would have a purpose and a direction to follow.

So let's step back and apply it. We are not household slaves of the first century in Asia, the original recipients of Peter's letter.

We are 21st century believers in the United States. We don't have the same sufferings as they do, but we do suffer at the hands of unjust authorities.

Now, let's get really practical here. If you are a young man or woman in this room, you might suffer at the hands of the unjust authority of your parents.

And sometimes it's hard for you to bear up underneath that. If you're a wife, sometimes your husband does not lead you in a way that is kind, just, loving, and you have to bear up underneath that.

If you're a man, sometimes your authority, your boss at work, your local city government, your state government, your national government, do not always lead you with kind, just, loving authority.

So wherever you find yourself this morning, you find yourself in a position where God has given you the opportunity to embrace suffering at the hands of unjust men or women with a purpose, because at times our sufferings can seem purposeless.

It can seem like accidental vestiges of a world that should be already fixed by now.

We're like, look, we're believers in Jesus Christ. Shouldn't he have taken care of all of these problems in my life by now?

Why do I need to go through this particular suffering? So as you evaluate your past, present, and your future sufferings, you can apply

Peter's admonition to these servants to your context, and remember your calling, your purpose in salvation.

Remember that your suffering is just one piece of God's big, perfect, sovereign plan for your life, and it's intended specifically for you, for your good, as Jesus leads you along the path of sanctification.

So let's pause there. That was our first encouragement. Are there any questions or comments that you guys have from that first section?

Joe, do

I know how masters is translated? That's a good question.

Are you trying to... Yeah, what would be considered a master today?

Yeah, so Joe's question is if we're looking at it contextually, servants, kind of household servants, be submissive to your masters.

I think that that immediate context starts right there. The master had authority over his household, right?

So what was under his authority? Well, his wife, his children, and his household servants. So if we extend it by analogy outwards, we would be making application based upon the layering of authority in general, which

I think comes from the context here, because if you go back to verse 13, he says, submit yourself for the

Lord's sake to every human institution. So Peter starts big and broad before he narrows it down to the specific context that we're looking at here.

Good question. Other comments, questions?

Okay. So the first encouraging reminder that we saw about sanctification is to remember your purpose in Christ's salvation.

Now we're going to look at the second part of verse 21, and we're going to rest in the perspective of Christ's sufferings.

Rest in the perspective of Christ's suffering. So the second phrase says, since Christ also suffered for you.

And Peter continues his instruction here to these suffering servants of chapter two, by seeking to provide them with a little bit of perspective about their suffering.

Peter does not deny that suffering is a reality, but to help them endure, he points them to Christ and says, here's a little bit of a perspective that will help you endure.

Now, suffering here is exactly what it sounds like. It's to feel, to be affected by, to undergo a difficult, painful experience, and to experience it to the fullest, to experience the sensations and the impressions that produce pain in your life.

So we have to remind ourselves that Jesus was not exempt from human suffering.

It wasn't like this partition of humanity, where it's like, okay, you're fully human, but not over here.

You don't have to experience this piece of humanity. You can be like them in many ways, but you don't have to be human in that base reality.

I'm using hyperbole here to draw out the contrast. We know that Jesus' suffering, we know from scripture, was a real human experience.

And we saw how last week that was critical to God's plan. Hebrews chapter two, verse 17, leaves us no room for categorical separation.

It says he had to be made like his brothers in all things.

And when he says in all things, we can't negotiate that scripture and say, well, what about this thing?

What about that area? No, he had to be made like his brothers in all things, yet without sin.

So when we hear the word suffering, our minds rightly go where?

To the height of his suffering, the cross, and the immediate days and events leading up to the cross.

And we should go there. That is a type of suffering that Christ himself dreaded and understood, right?

Listen to Luke 22, 15. It says, and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this

Passover with you before I suffer. Luke 24, 46 says, and he said to them, thus it is written that the

Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day.

Jesus knew from his study of the Old Testament that he would experience great suffering.

And it's important for us to remember that he didn't somehow just float his way through his 33 years of life of humanity without experiencing real sufferings all along the way as part of God's plan to prepare him to experience the fullness of the suffering that in ways we cannot experience, right?

So I'm not preparing you to suffer the way that Jesus did, right? In several senses, he suffered in ways that we can never imitate the pattern, right?

He had to choose to become a frail human being. We don't choose that, right?

We cannot suffer and die on the cross with the just punishment of all sins of all believers poured out and the wrath of God poured out onto us.

We can't experience that. We cannot experience the depth of his pain in the garden as he encountered the reality of how our sins and his bearing them would affect his fellowship with the

Father. But in this context, I think Peter is not just pointing solely to the sufferings on the cross and saying, since Christ also suffered for you in this awful, horrific way, you can surely bear up underneath a small little hangnail like what you're going through right now.

No, I don't think that that's the contrast. Look at 1 Peter 2, 22 and 23. He explains this by saying who committed no sin nor was any deceit found in his mouth.

And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

Peter's point is that Jesus was able to respond to the sufferings inflicted by unrighteous men by refusing to sin and instead entrusting himself to the sovereign care of God, the

Father, him who judges righteously. So Peter's admonition here to us when he says, since Christ also suffered for you, he's pointing us to a suffering that's like what we are experiencing, not unlike what we are experiencing.

Think about how many layers of authority Jesus had to deal with. Human parents, who

I'm sure as good as Joseph and Mary were they were more like parents, you and I, than unlike us.

He had to deal with the local leadership in a town of Nazareth. May or may not have been good, kind or just.

He had to deal with the national leadership exercised by the scribes and Pharisees in the Sanhedrin.

He had to deal with the puppet rulers that were over the Jewish people but under Rome and he had to deal with the ultimate authority of Rome at that time.

He had lots of layers of unjust authority over top of him that he had to choose to bear up underneath.

So by comparison, the suffering household servants could compare their sufferings to Jesus and find encouragement.

God was not asking them to suffer in ways that were unlike Jesus.

That's true for us as well. We know that we are told in Philippians 1 .29

that we are granted the opportunity to suffer. It says, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake.

That's our opportunity. We shouldn't run away from it. We should seize it, take advantage of the opportunity.

So implications of this section are that as we encounter sufferings in our daily lives, we can and we should reset our perspective on our suffering by looking at Christ and looking at his sufferings.

We can remind ourselves that suffering is insignificant. Our suffering is insignificant in comparison to his.

We can refuse like he did to return evil for evil or to revile those who are inflicting evil upon us.

We can steadfastly commit ourselves to refuse to revile and return evil.

We can imitate Jesus' example and entrust ourselves to the care of God the

Father and his righteous judgment that will be revealed whether it's now or in the future.

We know God will not leave injustice unpunished. We can embrace suffering as our identification that we are sons and daughters of God through the man,

Christ Jesus. And we know, we've studied this quite a bit as a body, we can learn obedience through suffering just as he did.

And we can see suffering as proof for us that he loves us.

We know when we suffer, he is proving to us that we are his. Let's stop, see what questions or comments this section has sparked in your minds.

Peter, Peter's question is, is there a qualification for the type of suffering?

In other words, does it have to be righteous suffering and how it plays out in our day -to -day lives? I think from the context here, we can absolutely say that he's not giving us the solution for sinful suffering, right?

We had the contrast here, if you suffer, if you bear up under sorrows when you're sinning, what credit is there?

So we're not looking at suffering that we bring upon ourselves, but I think we are looking at any type of suffering that extends to us living out our

Christian faith in obedience, and specifically that which is brought when we are submitting under unjust authority.

Any other questions or comments? Okay, so we've seen two very encouraging reminders for our sanctification process.

First, we are to remember our purpose, our calling in Christ's salvation. Second, we are to rest in the perspective of Christ's suffering, rest in that perspective.

Now we're going to give our attention to the third reminder in the last phrase of verse 21, leaving you as an example for you to follow in his steps.

So our third reminder is we're going to retrace the pattern of Christ's steps.

Now, when Peter wrote this to these first century household servants, Jesus was no longer on earth, and it's unlikely that the household servants to whom

Peter wrote had ever met Jesus personally or had been able to observe and watch him live his pattern of life from a baby all the way up to a 33 -year -old man.

But Peter still commends to them and to us by extension, one more resource that's available to us, to aid us in our growing, in our sanctification process through suffering.

And that example, that resource is Jesus' example. Look at it again.

He says, leaving you an example. God has given us in Jesus Christ an example for us to follow in his steps.

The word example here, the Greek word here is the inspiration for this whole study, right?

If you had to say, why did you pick 1 Peter 2 .21, Simon? Well, it's this word right here.

This example, it's the Greek word for a writing copy, an underwriting.

You would take the copy of what you wanted to learn how to write, and you would put it underneath something semi -transparent, and then you would copy by basically retracing the shapes of the letters.

They gave it to beginner alphabet students to learn how to write their alphabet out.

So when we have an example to follow, what kind of an example is

Jesus for us? Well, he's an example for beginning students in sanctification.

Those who are just beginning the process of learning how to walk in holiness with Jesus Christ by virtue of their relationship with him.

Now, all of you conceded that you would benefit from a little bit of work on your alphabet and your sanctification process.

So it's not just for the beginners. It's for any follower of Jesus Christ to go back and follow the example.

So Peter is pointing out that all believers can retrace the pattern of Jesus and his fully authentic human life, every step of it.

Jesus' life provides us a pattern that can be used as a template for our lives as believers, and for those to whom

Peter wrote as well. These early household slaves, they may have heard of Jesus, right?

Orally, there might be some tradition because they're still in the same generation. They might have had access to some of the early copies of the gospels that were written as a record of his life, but the life that Jesus lived provides them the example of how to bear up under suffering.

What does the pattern for enduring human suffering look like in the life of Jesus?

You're probably already way ahead of me here. The Spirit has probably already brought to your mind tons of examples from the gospels of what

Jesus patiently endured, that you're already saying, yeah, I could see that. I could see that connection.

That's the beautiful part about this study is it changes how we read our scriptures, both Old and New Testament, is you see the humanity of Jesus jumping off the page at you as you reread it.

But let me just suggest for you a couple of examples here. In Luke 4, verse 16, where we have not yet landed because we stopped in the early part of four,

Jesus is rejected by his hometown of Nazareth. He goes into the synagogue and teaches to them and they say, look, are you the same guy that we just grew up with?

They were shocked at what he said and they tried to throw him off a cliff. They rejected him in his hometown.

Many of his disciples who followed him for a significant period of time in his early stages of ministry, left him, abandoned him and rejected him as recorded for us in John 6, 66 through 71.

How disheartening that might have been for Jesus. His own brothers who he grew up with refused to believe what he stated to them in John 7, verse five.

People who watched him grew up in righteousness, said, away. And we know that he bore the repeated insults, not just objections, but insults by the

Jewish leaders as recorded for us throughout the book of John. They hammered away at him and he bore underneath that.

So through all these sufferings, Jesus responds in a righteous fashion that is worthy of our imitation.

How did he do it? How did he lay down the pattern for you and I to follow?

Well, I'm gonna suggest for you a couple of things here. He chose a life of suffering rather than seeking to bypass it.

He knew he would and he chose to go down the path that God had for him. He entrusted himself to his

Father and to the Spirit. He trusted in God and the

Spirit. And we know that because he prayed. In his full humanity, he prayed and he calls out to God the

Father for assistance when he encounters difficulty. He read the

Old Testament scriptures faithfully, memorized them, and then applied them to his own life to help him explain the circumstances that he encountered and how he was to act in the light of those scriptures.

He took the Word of God, studied it, memorized it, and applied it to his own life.

He refused to return evil for evil. And he refused to take justice and matters into his own hands.

We saw this when he encountered Satan in the wilderness. He refused to bypass God's plan and basically say, look,

I'm gonna be king of this world already, I know I am, so I can just do it right now. He chose to wait obediently for God the

Father's perfect timing to be played out through his life, even though that meant more suffering.

And then he persevered in the face of extended suffering. Weren't like these little moments where he had to just bear down and get through this moment, and then the rest of it's gonna be easy peasy.

He chose to persevere through long extended suffering. And how did he finally do it?

He used suffering to increase in wisdom and obedience through dependence upon the

Spirit. Listen, as I just read to you a passage we talked about last week, Hebrews 5, verses seven and eight.

In the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death.

And he was heard because of his piety. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered.

We are to follow in his steps. That's what first Peter tells us.

Leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. And we are to repeat and bear forward for the rest of the world, the pattern of Jesus.

This can only be done if we contemplate the pattern of his humanity.

So this morning we've seen from this one verse in first Peter and its context, three encouraging reminders about sanctification from the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We were able to observe that Peter's exhortation to the household servants of his day contains truth for all believers in all ages.

We all can grow in sanctification through suffering because Jesus has provided us in his perfect life, the perfect pattern for us to follow.

Now be careful here, be very careful. This has been one of the most sobering topics to address because there are ditches all over the place for me to dodge and walk carefully on.

What I am not telling you to do is in your own power and your own strength and your own wisdom, just be like Jesus.

Just get your, what would Jesus do bracelet out, put it on and just think to yourself, gosh, I'm just going to get through life by just following Jesus.

That is insufficient and you will fail. And you know that because you have failed in that regard.

The only way you can follow his pattern is if you are in Christ, if you have been saved by him.

If you're here this morning and you've just been listening to these words and the words that are taught every Sunday from this pulpit and just thinking to yourself, well, that's good advice.

If I follow it, I'll be a better person. You're missing the point. Jesus Christ died, was buried, rose again, and now lives as a human man so that his righteousness could be yours.

He has called us, called us as believers out of slavery to sin and put us on a new path with a new purpose.

And as we walk that path, if you are his, you will not only encounter suffering, you will choose it.

You will choose suffering. It's part of who you are. It's your new identity in him.

But the sufferings that you encounter are not evidence of failure. They're evidence of fruit.

When you suffer for Christ righteously, that's fruit. They remind you, they remind us of who we are, who we are to follow and where he's leading us.

So let's make some applications here. Here are some practical things that I want you to do in light of this truth this week.

This is the hard part. The Spirit's taking hold of your heart. What are you going to do? I want you to ask yourself the question, what are some ways that you are currently suffering or have suffered in the past?

You might want to talk about that with your wife, your kids, your friends here at KCC. How are you suffering right now?

How have you suffered in the past that you're bearing that forward? How do these sufferings compare to the sufferings of Christ?

Are they similar? Are they different? How do they compare? Ask yourself that question.

Ask each other that question. I want you to discuss your sufferings with other believers and rather than complaining, which is easy for us to do, talk about the ways that suffering is enhancing your sanctification.

When you encounter new suffering, you know it's coming, when you encounter it, immediately pray that God would help you endure like Jesus and follow his example by bearing up righteously under injustice.

Refuse, steadfastly commit to one another today that you will refuse to accuse

God of injustice when you suffer. And rather, remember that sufferings are a sign of his love.

Make that mental commitment. I'm not going to accuse God of injustice when I go through suffering. And finally, very simple, read the

Gospels regularly and remind yourself that Jesus lived a fully authentic human life that is more like your own than you could have ever imagined.

Let's pray. Well, Father, thank you, thank you, thank you for Jesus and his perfect example for us.

Father, as we gaze into his life, into his humanity, we are encouraged, we are heartened, we are strengthened that you would give us the opportunity to embrace suffering as a part of your good, perfect plan for us.

May you equip us with the ability to follow Jesus' pattern. We entrust ourselves to you, the

God who judges righteously and to your grace through your spirit, amen.