1 Peter: Christ Also Suffered

1 Peter 3:8–22 (CSB): 8 Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another, and be compassionate and humble, 9 not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing.

10 For the one who wants to love life
and to see good days,
let him keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from speaking deceit,
11 and let him turn away from evil
and do what is good.
Let him seek peace and pursue it,
12 because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against
those who do what is evil.

13 Who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear them or be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. 16 Yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.
18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 in which he also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison 20 who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. In it a few—that is, eight people—were saved through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

Hey everyone. I’m gonna be reading our passage for today, which is one Peter three 18 through 22 which says, For Christ also suffered for sins, once for all the righteous, for the unrighteous that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit in which he also went and made proclamation of the spirits in prison, who in the past were disobedient when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the arc was being prepared in it.

A few that is eight people were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you not as a remote removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscious towards God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to that passage if you don’t already. One Peter three, and actually we’re gonna start back in verse eight, so you have some time to get there. Just to set the tone, I am expecting 21 salvations after this service, . Thank you. That’s great. Hey, we’re continuing our series first Peter three.

Just picking up right where we left off. So we’re gonna dive in here in a second, but before we do that, would you would you just pray with me to prepare our hearts for for God’s word?

God, we give you this time,

we give you our fears, our anxieties, our worries, our hesitations. Our joy, our excitements. We ask that for the next 30 minutes or so that you would speak to us through your word, that you’d remind us of your love for us, despite our sin, that you’d give us hope in the midst of whatever it is that each of us is going through now in the season of our lives.

We thank you for your son. We ask this in your name.

Imagine with me, you’re sitting in a room with about 50 to 60 other people around you, and there’s not a lot of space in this room. So you’re huddled together, you’re sitting on the floor and somebody walks in. And they have a letter with them, and they’re gonna read it out loud to your community.

And this letter is from somebody named Peter. And you know the name and you know some of the stories, but you don’t really know what’s fact and fiction and it’s hard to tell of what was true and what wasn’t true about this, Peter. He is a big deal because you know that he walked with Jesus, He lived with Jesus, he ate with Jesus, he had conversations with Jesus.

He was. At 12. In fact, he likely started. You’ve heard this little gathering of Jesus followers that you have been coming to for this season of your. And this person’s gonna read this letter from this peter out loud to your whole gathering there. And as he waits to read the letter small talk dies down.

You start to think in your own mind about how you got here, that you were compelled by this person named Jesus. It took some convincing, but eventually you came to the point where you realized that he. Was who he claimed to be. That there was something about him. He did miracles that were logic defying and groundbreaking.

But more than that, he taught about a way to life that didn’t make sense for you. But the more that you listened and the more that you were engaged with these stories of this Jesus, the more you decided to reorder your life around him. And it started small. So you started to give away some of your old idols, your pagan idols.

You stopped going to the temple to make your sacrifice. And you started finding other people who had also given their life to Jesus, reoriented their life around him. And you started meeting with these people and fellowshipping with them in these weird sort of gatherings where you would eat bread and drink grape juice slash wine and you would share your life with them and open up the scriptures and learn all about this story of a God who isn’t part of many other gods, but who’s one God and who doesn’t need your sacrifice anymore.

And your friends have heard about this, and your coworkers and your boss and your family isn’t too happy about this either. So eventually you lose your job, Your friends start talking to you less and less, and your family has essentially shunned you. You’ve lost almost everything that you have so that now all you have is this small community of Jesus followers, 50 to 60 people who have become your best friends.

Again, you gather weekly, you look forward to it every day, or you get to meet with other people who. Given things up, lost things, but found a joy that surpasses anything that they could gain. But there’s a part of you that knows that things are getting worse. You know that there’s an emperor out there who’s not gonna last very long.

There’s another emperor that might be coming to town who might not take as kindly to your little private religion. There’s pressure mounting on all sides from the world around you. You know that worst of all these Roman guards, these soldiers that are harassing you in the streets, might start doing things worse and worse, and you’re starting to get panicked and you hold in your hands two different opposing things that don’t really make sense.

And one you have. And you have peace and you have assurance, and you have hope in a sense, because you’ve banked your life on this traveling Jewish rabbi named Jesus to actually be the son of God and bring you life and life to the fullest. But on the other hand, you hold, You don’t wanna be dramatic, but you might call it suffering.

The things that you’ve given up the things that you’ve lost, the relationships, the job opportunities, and you don’t know how to make sense of this. And so as you’re hearing this letter being read, you don’t know what it is that you, you want to hear maybe a prophecy maybe a word that Jesus has come back, that he’s been resurrected and you know that he ascended into heaven, as crazy as that sounds.

But you know that he promised to come again. So maybe that’s what’s happening now, or maybe you are expecting, a part of you is hoping to read that this Peter Guy. Is is giving a call to arms to actually raise up a sort of small army and fight back against a suppressive government that is slowly discriminating against you and persecuting you because you’re pretty sure one of the stories is about this Peter who chopped off the ear of the guard that tried to arrest Peter.

You think maybe that’s what’s happening now, but that moment never comes. And as you hear this whole re letter being read out loud, the one thing that sticks out to you is this line. It is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing.

And if you’re honest with yourself, this is not the kind of thing that you were hoping to hear. If you’re here today, I this is probably not, this is not a great way to start a message that you’re gonna suffer and it’s not gonna be fun. Not only that, but it might actually be God’s will.

Not only is there no one size fits all solution for the problems in your life, the suffering, whatever it is, but that God might actually be willing it that in some sort of paradoxical arrangement human, the human capacity for evil and God’s sovereignty combined and mix to create a sort of chaos of a life where again, you hold in your hand two things, joy and suffering to hear that this is a part of God’s will is not on the surface.

Good news. . In fact, many people become Christians because of this sort of false belief that somehow when you start to follow Jesus, your life will generally get better, more up and to the right. And I believe that’s true in a sense that you have purpose and you have identity, and you have hope and meaning and satisfaction in all of those things.

But in a lot of ways, your life actually gets harder simply because you’ve chosen to follow Jesus. And in this passage, Peter actually gives us hope. What Brendan read is hopeful. There’s some weird stuff in there. We might get to that, I don’t know. But before we get to the hope, we need to face the reality that to be a Christian is to suffer.

And so according to Peter, there’s actually a few different reasons for this. So let’s look at first Peter three. Start with me at verse eight. We’re gonna cover a lot of verses tonight. I hope that’s. Okay, . We’re doing it anyways. I This is, I have the mic. All right. Verse eight, Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic.

Love one another, and be compassionate and humble. Not paying back. Evil for evil or insult for insult. But on the contrary, giving a blessing since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing for the one who wants to love life and to see good days. Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit and let him turn away from evil and do what is good.

Let him seek peace and pursue. Because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do what is evil. Now there’s a lot here. I almost did the whole teaching on just these few verses, but I want to get to the later part.

So essentially here, this is Peter wrapping up this section on how to live life with each other. So he talks about submission which we covered last week, right? Wives to husbands and all of that as a citizen, submit to the governing authorities of the place that you are in, even slaves and masters, which has a lot of different connotation to it.

But now he’s kinda opening up to everybody. So verse eight is about how we live in unity with each other. We pursue unity, pursue peace, and he highlights five different virtues to base our community on like mindedness. Which doesn’t just mean thinking the same thing. Like it’s not just about doctrine.

It’s about something deeper. It’s about literally it means united. Spirit. So theological differences aside, we are united in spirit based on the common thing of Christ and him crucified. So unite yourselves on that. Be like-minded and that is the thing that unites you. He mentions being sympathetic being loving, compassionate, and humble.

Actually, the word he uses for humble in the Greek humility was not a virtue that was popular in the Gco Roman world. The word he. Is a derogatory word. It means low mindedness, like you consider yourself like the lowest of the low. And humility has become like a popular, We all like humility now, even, non-Christian whatever.

Servant leadership is really popular. Back then, it was not popular to be called to live in humility. Was, it shocking to hear that you were supposed to serve other people and pursue their wellbeing above your. And then verse nine kind of takes a shift. So most people agree. Verse eight is about how we live with each other in the context of our own churches and community.

Verse nine is then how we live based on other people, how we treat people outside of the walls and we live by one rule. Bless those who curse you. It was popular among Greek thought to ignore people who insulted you or to generally well wish wellness on them. But this actually goes a step further because to bless someone literally means to call God’s grace upon them.

This is not just. Ignoring the haters or whatever. I don’t know what the lingo is. This is not just ignoring people that hurt you. This is literally Jesus on the cross saying, Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. This is P sorry, Steven, as he’s preaching in public and then getting murdered, stoned by the people with rocks, praying out, crying to God, Father, do not hold their sin against them.

That’s the way that we are called to live in this hostile world, and this idea carries on to verse. who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good. He’s being a little tongue in cheek here is in one sense, it’s kinda what’s the worst thing that can happen to you? You serve God, you be kind to people who hurt you, and they’re generally gonna like you.

I actually think he’s doing two things here. I think he’s being really practical and I think he’s being really pastoral. So practically. This is just good advice. The less trouble you cause, the less trouble you’ll find, right? When you live in a world in a society and you’re committed to doing good to other people are gonna try and find dirt on you.

They’re not gonna find anything. They’re gonna look at you to accuse you of something and they can’t. If you are genuinely committed to blessing those who curse you, eventually, they have nothing to accuse you. , and so it’s just good practical advice. Don’t fight back against people that antagonize you and hurt you.

Learn to bless them. But I think Peter’s also being really pastoral here because if you are serving the God who exists and rules over everything and in your heart, you have pure motivations, you’ve gotten to the point where you can bless those who curse you, then who can say anything against you, who can harm you?

What? What is the worst that can happen? . It would be nice if it stopped there, but you and I know that’s not really how this works. Verse 14, But even if you should suffer for righteousness, this is the kicker. You are blessed. Do not fear what they fear or be intimidated, but in your hearts regard, Christ the Lord as holy.

Ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and respect. Keeping a clear conscience so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame for it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing.

In other words, you might actually be punished for doing the right thing, and I know some of you know what that’s like. You’ve lost job opportunities that have been passed up because of your commitment to following Jesus. You’ve had family relationships strained because of your commitment to turning the other cheek, to blessing those who curse you.

You’ve had friends lost. And again, I don’t think we’re experiencing government-wide persecution, at least not even close to the level that the early church is going to experience. But to some extent, we have all experienced this level of suffering. We know what it’s like to lose something because of our devotion and our commitment to Jesus.

And we like to compare levels of suffering. Sometimes we like to either de-legitimize somebody else’s because we think that we have it worse or we de-legitimize our own because we see someone else that has it worse. But we have to remember that suffering is subjective. That you can be objectively looking at your life and holding two things in both hands, joy and just general discomfort.

You, you are experiencing a season of suffering. Again, to be a Christian is to. And so Peter quotes actually in verse 14, he says, Do not fear what they fear or be intimidated. He quotes Isaiah 12 and 13, and here’s what Isaiah says. Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy.

Do not fear what they fear. Do not be terrified. You are to regard only the Lord of armies as holy notice, Peter quotes that, but he substitutes Lord of armies for Christ, the Lord Jesus. Only he should be feared. Only he should be held in law in awe. Now the main idea here is this when we refuse to play the world’s, when we refuse to give into the world’s fears and to live by the world’s paranoia, it generally messes with people.

And you think about, it is a basic human instinct, I think, at all of us, but really just not nice. People tend to pick on people that are kind the most. I was thinking about my own elementary school. When I went to, to like the playground or whatever, the bullies always tended to pick on, not the kids who were like weird or easy to pick on, but the kids that were actually really nice.

And kind and virtuous the kids that were like the teacher’s pets that always did their homework and I don’t know why that was. Maybe I just went to a terrible high school, or sorry, elementary school in high school too, probably. Or maybe they were just easy targets. I don’t know what it is, but I think that these people that, that get picked on, what happens when you display virtues that other people don’t have, like peace.

Like joy, like hope in the midst of suffering and chaos. When you refuse to give into paranoia and fear you put a target on your. At our core, there is some kind of intrinsic human instinct to lash out against people, not only who aren’t like us, but who seem more put together than us. Less anxious, more generous, more at peace, and okay with things.

And here’s the thing that matters for us, is when you become a Christian, this is what happens to you. Something changes inside of you. The very, it’s not just a an intellectual belief. It’s not just a philosophy or a worldview, but Ephesians says that something happens to you on the inside.

The very. Makeup of who and what you are changes. You are brought from death to life. And what that carries with it is the fact that we start to no longer think, look, and act like the world around us. And later Peter’s gonna say in verse, or sorry, chapter four, that it’s this that brings you suffering.

That people aren’t just weirded out by the things that you do. Gathering on Sundays like you’re doing now, or eating bread, drinking grape juice, or giving money, tithing generously giving money to a religious institution. For most people outside the church, that can all be explained by the contemporary philosophical mantra you do, you boo.

As long as you’re not hurting anybody else, that’s fine. But what really irritates people is not what you do, it’s what you don’t. . It’s what you abstain from. It’s what you refuse to do that the culture around you does. It’s the idols that you refuse to worship. It’s the sacrifices that you refuse to make.

It’s the priorities that you refuse to change. It’s the devotion to false ideologies and empires that you refuse to give our refusal to bend the need to fear and paranoia, to pleasure, and to vice, to idolatry and secularism paints a large target on our backs. Again, to be a Christian is to suffer. So Peter says, Don’t do.

don’t live or think or act the way the world does. Don’t give into that fear that paranoia instead regard Christ, the Lord as holy. Meaning realize that whatever it is that’s causing the world to panic, to get anxious to antagonize you or attack you, understand that only Christ is holy, meaning only Christ is set apart, that Jesus is above all things.

You think about that famous line. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow. Peter wants us to let that truth sink so deeply from our heads into our hearts, that we actually begin to see the world differently. We begin to act in a world that is hostile, in a way that does not make sense, where we actually do the impossible, bless our enemies,

do whatever it takes to get that truth into your muscle memory so that it completely changes and alters the way that you live. Why do we do that? Because this is the. I don’t have to fear what the world fears because I’m actually fearful of something much bigger. That is God himself. Jesus actually says this in Matthew 10 28.

He conveys this idea. He says, Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. That is everything that the world is afraid of. Rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. In other words, God is the one who has ultimate control over the physical world and over your own soul.

I think of Aslan and the Chronicles in Ania Cheesy. I know, but you think of that. I haven’t read the books or the movies, seen the movie in a long time, but they ask. I think they asked the beaver’s, explaining this Aslan character. These kids are in naa, they don’t know what’s going on. There’s a talking beaver and they’re trying to figure out what’s happening.

And the beaver’s describing Aslan as this lion, this ferocious, terrible, fearful, lion, they ask him, is he good? And they say or they say, Is he tame? And they say, Of course he isn’t tame, but he’s good. Cheesy. I know, but that’s essentially what’s happening here. God is above whatever it is that you’re afraid of.

We’ve heard this before, but whatever it is that you are afraid of, God is ultimately to be feared more than those things, and we could stop there, but Jesus actually continues the next verse, Verse 29 says, Aren’t too sparrows sold for a penny, yet one of them, not one of them falls to the ground without your father’s consent, but even the hairs of your head have all been count.

So don’t be afraid. So on one hand, fear God. In the other hand, don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. It’s for Jesus. The natural result of fearing God is not paranoia, anxiety, worry that he’s going to punish or destroy us. The natural result of fearing God is peace is assurance. It’s comfort.

It means that we can come as close as we want to God, because God came as close as he could to us through Christ regard Christ Jesus as holy. This is the hope that we have when we anchor our souls to this promise that there really is a God above us who deeply loves us, cares for us, and promises to provide for us.

What then do we really have to fear as the world around us equates, we remain. As the world around us seeks to medicate with pleasure and with vice, we refuse and we commit to following Jesus in the long and steady obedience in one direction. And as the world sees how we live, while they’re panicking, while there’s chaos ensuing, and we remain stable, they’re gonna ask us about our hope.

So that’s a key word here is. All of this, the end result of all of this, your fear for God, how you see yourself in the midst of a chaotic and anxious world is hopeful, and the world sees that and they ask you about that, and then we have a chance to explain the hope that we have now that’s all well and good.

And we could stop there and you could probably implement some of those practices throughout this week, blessing those who curse you, praying for your enemies, being non-anxious, committing to stability, anchoring your hope in the fact that something better is on its way. But this only works if there’s actually something better.

And this only works if there’s a verse 18. So Peter goes on verse 18. For Christ also suffered for sins, once for all the righteous, for the unrighteous that he might bring you to God, that he was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. Christ also suffered. It’s the name of what I decided to call this message or teaching, or whatever you wanna call it.

Christ also suffered words that we are more than familiar with, but that we have lost sight of. Because in these three words is almost a full encapsulation of the gospel. In these three words, the Christian faith is set apart from every other religion, every other worldview, philosophy, idea, or every other way of life.

In these three words, Both the problem and the solution to the human condition are specified that Christ also suffered. Recognizes that the one commonality between every human to ever live is our shared experience of suffering. Christian or not all lives at some point or another are disrupted by the intrusion of pain and of loss.

We experience evil done to us by others, evil done around us, by others, and worst of all evil done by us to others. Regardless of your worldview, your religion, your philosophy, all of us have to face the reality that not only is it to be Christian is to suffer, but to be human is to. But that it was Christ who suffers with us gives us the solution to our problem.

Notice Peter doesn’t say Jesus died for your sins, which is true. I believe that, but he specifies that Jesus suffered for them. In other words, the hope of the Christian life is in a God who bleeds. In fact, in the early church, if you are sitting in that room with 50 other, Hearing this letter read aloud, this is the line that captures your heart and your mi mind more than any line about suffering being God’s will, because the scandal was not that Jesus claimed to be God.

The scandal was that Jesus claimed to be a God who could suffer. Who had the capacity to enter into our world and experience the lowest depths of what it means to be human and come out on the other side. It wasn’t only God’s will that you might suffer, but also God’s will that he won’t ask you to endure any kind of pain and suffering that he has not also endured on your behalf.

That Christ, Christos and Greek, or Macia and Hebrew both mean anointed. One, meaning the one that God would send as a solution to the world’s suffering. God himself in human form, lowering himself from his place of privilege in order to live in the depths of humanity as the lowest of the low healing and raising up to his own royal table.

Those whose sins would put him on the cross. Not only that, but also the reason that the anointed one sufferers notice is to bring us to God. Now, your fundamental problem is not just that you are sinful. It is that you are separated. It’s not just that you’re spiritually dead. It’s also that in your spiritual death, you are cut apart, cut off from the source of true life, and so to pay the penalty of your sin and to pay the penalty of my sin, God enters.

Jesus endures, the very slander, the mistreatment, the hostility, and the persecution that you and I face every single day. And he solves our problem of sin and suffering, not like a math equation, distant and formulaic, but more like a disease. I love the gospel. Writers describe Jesus as a great physician.

Who enters into the encampment of the sick and the disease, and he infects himself with the very thing that we have in order to cure us. It is exactly through suffering that Jesus heals suffering. It’s by going through the darkness of our souls that God forgives us and reconciles us back to him. This is what our hope is Really.

Now the end of the passage if you were paying attention is very weird. What Brendan read has some weird stuff in it. Right after that, it says that he was made alive in the spirit, right? So he’s put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit, meaning that he was put to death in the flesh and resurrected, not in a spiritual sense, but by the power of the spirit.

We believe that Jesus physically resurrected. And then verse nine. When he did this, he also went and made proclamation to the spirits in. Who are those guys who in the past were disobedient? What does that mean? When God patiently waited in the days of Noah, while the ARC was being prepared. So now Noah is being brought up.

This doesn’t make any sense in it. A few that is eight people were saved through water baptism. So now we’re bringing up baptism, which corresponds to this now, saves you not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience towards God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.

This is weird. I most, to be honest, I didn’t wanna do this. Most of my sermon prep was on trying to figure this out and I heard somewhere that if you add up all the different interpretations of what this means, that Christ proclaimed something to the spirits in prison during Noah’s day, you get something like almost 130 different interpretations based on who the spirits are when Christ did this.

What? And honestly, it’s really cool stuff. So you, if you wanna know about this, come and talk to me afterwards cuz I. Talking about this stuff. And we don’t have time to go through all of this to explain it. And honestly I know that would bore you. I’m not I know who you are. I get it. Here’s why this matters.

This is the basic idea. This is one interpretation. Let me just say also, this is my understanding of this passage and why I think it matters to us. Essentially what Peter’s trying to communicate. First off, this was a story. I know I said I wasn’t gonna explain it. This is a story that would’ve made sense to the people in Asia Minor, which is what Peter is writing to churches that exist in Asia Minor.

So is he’s saying all this, It’s almost it’s just like how Jesus went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison and Noah, and they’re like, Oh yeah, no, I know that guy. And Oh yeah, I know about the spirits and, Oh, that makes sense. Oh, baptism. That’s great. Good idea. Peter. We’re good suffering’s.

Great problem solved. They would’ve gotten this story more than we. . But here’s the main idea. Not only did Christ join us in our suffering, but he conquered our suffering that in his resurrection, Jesus announces his victory over all of the spiritual forces of evil that have been working to twist and bend the world out of order since the ancient days of Noah.

And if that sentence was weird to you, it’s okay. It was weird to me. to face the reality that at some level, the suffering that you endure at the hands of other people in authority or people with power, that there is a spiritual element to that. That it is not just against flesh and blood that we wrestle, it is against the powers and the principal, as Paul would say in Ephesians that we struggle against that there is something far deeper at play than just your neighbor being mean to you than your friend ostracizing you, or that your family member shutting you out.

That since the beginning of time you have these angels. Peter talks about this in second. Peter Jude talks about this as well, that somehow rebelled against God and brought other people with them, and they interact in this realm that exists between the physical and the spiritual, that we can interact with that realm.

That’s what prayer is, by the way. So that’s not weird, but when you start thinking about demons and stuff, it gets weird. At whatever level you experience suffering, there is a spiritual element to it, and that’s not good news for us unless Jesus does something about those power. And that’s what Peter is trying to say, that at this present moment, Jesus has defeated those powers and he’s let them know it that he has announced his victory over them and he is now ruling over everything that could possibly work to bring you apart from him.

Nothing can separate you from God. Now that’s the take. There is no force in hell or heaven or anything if you are in Christ Jesus. This is the good news. This is the answer to your suffering. This is the reality beyond what we can see. Taste, touch here and smell that Christ died for you. He defeated the powers of sin, Satan, and death, and now nothing can take you from his grasp.

Jesus, the suffering king has defeated your sin and the spiritual powers working to corrupt and twist the world that we live in. Whatever it is that you are afraid of, whatever’s making the world paranoid, what makes you anxious, Jesus wins over it. That’s what this. So as we end, is there something that we can implement from this passage?

Is there something that we can put into to practice to use the language that we like to use here in our church? I wanna give you two things and one of ’em is more of a next step. And the second thing is more of a practice. So the first thing is you can get baptized. Peter mentions baptism.

Again, go back and read this on your own and come back with all your questions, and we could just talk about how confused we are together. But one thing Peter does highlight is the fact that somehow, if you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, but have never taken the next step of baptism, this is one of the best ways that you can respond to suffering.

And he says something interesting. He says, Baptism saves you, and what he’s not saying is that you’re not saved until you get baptized, or that it’s baptism itself as an act that gets you God’s love and favor. What he is saying is that just like Noah was brought out of an evil world through waters that you and I are brought out of our evil, Death and suffering through the waters of baptism.

And then when Noah comes out of the flood on the other side, that he comes out as a new creation, that God actually reestablishes a covenant with him saying that I will never do this again. Nothing can take you away from my grasp. When we get baptized, we are declaring to the world that no matter what suffering exists out there or even in here, that nothing can take us out of the grasp of God that we’ve been brought, as Ephesians says, from death to life, we are something new entirely.

That’s what baptism does, and this is not a next step for everybody. If you’ve been baptized before, we believe that you, that’s you’re good. You don’t need to do it again and again. But if you’ve never taken that step of faith if you’ve never been baptized as an adult, we think it’s important that you do it.

We say on this side of your convert. So like you, you choose to follow Jesus as a conscious choice and then as a result, you get baptized. If you’ve never done that before or if you have questions about what that means please come and talk. or talk to Pastor Trey when he comes back next week.

If you like him better, that’s okay. Or take a blue box. You can just grab one of those. Take it on your way out, read through it. It has everything that we believe about what it means to follow Jesus, to be saved and to get baptized For the rest of you here’s the second thing. Learn to preach the gospel to yourself.

Okay. The daily practice of preaching the gospel to yourself can actually look like a lot of different things. In fact we think of preaching the gospel more as like an evangelistic thing, as something that we want to do to the loss to bring them into the family of God. And that’s certainly true, but we cannot preach the gospel to others that we haven’t already integrated into our lives ourselves.

The practice of preaching the gospel can look really simple. It can look like breath prayers throughout. If you’re familiar with our church, we’ve talked about breath prayers before. Just simple things that you pray throughout the day. One line or two from scripture that you carry with you no matter where you go in and out of work in meetings and parenting and all of those things.

Something like nothing can separate me from God’s love. The more you repeat that, the more it gets ingrained into your psyche, your neuro pathways. If you’re familiar with cognitive science, which I’ve been reading a lot about lately, you literally rewire your brain around that truth. There is no condemnation for me in Christ Jesus, or the ancient prayer.

Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner that is the gospel. In one sentence, Jesus, the Son of God, displaying his mercy for you, a sinner, willingly and joyfully preaching the gospel to yourself. Can look like a meditation in the morning on a gospel passage like Romans eight, John three, or Ephesians two.

Or it can look like the prayer of examine another prayer that we’ve talked about in our church before where you pray in three phrases. You reflect phase one on your day, on your sins. You acknowledge and confess your things before God. You repent from those sins and then you rejoice that God’s love covers those sins.

You don’t have to earn anything that God is not punishing you for your sins through your suffering. That is not what’s, The point is to get the gospel so deeply ingrained into your psyche, into your neuro pathways again that you literally, it just becomes second nature that you think live and act through the lens of the gospel that Christ suffered for you.

That though you’re a sinner contributing to the, your own suffering and the suffering of the world, that Christ died for you because he love. In your suffering, Christ is with you in your pain. Christ is nearest to you because in your sin, Christ suffered for you. Let’s.