This is the Sunday evening service at the 4th Presbyterian Church in Bethesda for February 15, 1987. Tonight, Dr. Nora speaks to us on Christian relationships, and it's the 18th in the series entitled Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones. The scripture reference for tonight can be found in 1 Peter, chapter 3, verses 1 through 7. We have been examining in the last week what is the life of submission, what is the call that we have and what is the strength that we have in being able to submit as unto the Lord. To this you are called, because Christ suffered for you, leading you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, for you will like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd, to the overseer of your soul. Amen. Again this evening, we will consider God's Word, we will listen to His Spirit as He opens that Word to us, and then we will go to prayer, to praise, and to our worship. And we will take time in response to His Word, and in response to His Spirit's movement through His Word, and we will worship Him as the climax of our service together and of our time. But we come before Him now, and we listen to His Word. Well, we have seen in the verses that precede this, the 21st verse, that there is the call, and the linked call in our life to the whole idea of suffering and of submission. Words that our generation doesn't like to hear, and yet there is a linkage between suffering and submission in the mind of the great apostle and in the heart of God. And they are calls for the Christian, and we saw last week that there were three questions that these passages posed to us. The first is, we examine the nature of submission, what is it? And then we looked at the reasons as to why we are called to submit as the Scripture gives them, and then we examine some of the ways as to how we might submit. And we saw that in this verse, the great apostle taught us that we need to learn how to fear God, how to honor the King, how to honor our brethren and to love them. We need to be able to do these things that are the practical outworking of our submission and the call of suffering in our life. So we come this evening to this 21st verse, and we see it begins with the example offered to us in the midst of our struggle to be the disciples. How is it that we can suffer? And how is the example before us going to teach us and how does he draw us into the place of submitting to the will and to the giving of God in his providence? As bad things as we understand them seem to touch our lives. How do we receive them? How do we deal with them? Well, this begins by telling us, for even so you were called because Christ also suffered leaving us an example that we should follow. His steps, who did no sin, neither was Gael found in his mouth when he was reviled, reviled not in turn. Here is the Lord, and the Lord Jesus Christ is given to us as the great example for the way in which we deal with God's dealing with our life. And Peter starts off by using one word, one Greek word, that is the most graphic and impressive of words, he uses the word huppogramus. This is how you were called to suffer, for he leaves you an example, huppogramus, the example by which you are to live your life. And he is making the point that the example of Jesus Christ is given to us in a number of ways, and there are three usages of this particular word in the Greek language, in the nature of an example. In teaching, when I was being taught how to write, I remember that one of the ways in which I had to learn was that we were given a line of writing on a blackboard and we were each presented, this was in the dark ages of education, we were each presented a slate and a piece of chalk, and we had to trace out the letters perfectly on our chalkboard after the teacher had first drawn them up, and we could then re-duplicate them. And that's one of the meaning that comes out of huppogramus, this is how we learn, this is the way in which Jesus is our example in which we are trained up, he sets for us for standard, he draws for us the alphabet, that then we draw perfectly in our own life. Jesus shows us, he teaches us by the life lived and the way in which he lived it, he teaches us how we might follow in the things that he's called us to. But again, there's a second way in which this is used in Greek, and it's the sense in which an outline is drawn, and you had to fill in the parts to that outline. That's the same huppogramus, a sketch, would simply include the bare bones of a scene requiring thought and care as to how it's filled out and how it's completed. And the word has that too, the Lord Jesus has given to us the outline of our life, and we fill it in as we walk through the pages of history, as you and I walk through this life filling in the flesh, filling in the ways in which the skeleton has been given flesh. The huppogramus, the example that Jesus gives to us, the skeleton of our life out of which we put the flesh of the circumstances in the 20th century. Jesus in that first century drew for us the model, we in our 20th century we put the flesh of following him of living in him in that way. But then there is a third usage of this word huppogramus, now I don't often bore you with Greek, but this is one of those rare times when it actually helps. And I would not advise that you all go out and you learn Greek just to be able to come across the rare examples of huppogramus. But this is a third one, and it is a very powerful way in which he is the example because it is the same word that he is used for a footprint. Peter goes to speak of us following in the steps of our Lord, and this is another image that is conjured, maybe it was pre-eninent in his mind. That the Lord has made footsteps through this world and the way in which we learn both to be obedient in submitting to the way of God and to the people of God, the way in which we learn even to suffer for righteousness sake and in the things that Christ has given to us is to put our footsteps in the imprint of those that the Lord has already patterned for us. How do we do that? Well this passage tells us four things about the Lord Jesus. He tells us four ways about the example that he gives in suffering and in submitting himself to the plan of God. The first thing that Peter says about the Savior is that Jesus suffered sinlessly, decisively he testified that he who knew no sin bore our sins. He relates the entire earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, culminating in the crucifixion through all the agony of Gethsemane, through all the rejection of His ministry, Jesus never sins. And the example before us is one who has gone through all the excruciating pain and the torment that this world gives and does not sin, instead remains apart from it. You and I see the example of the Lord Jesus. We see the sinless Savior as he stands out in front of us, not that we are discouraged because we see Him and we look at our own hearts and we know that we are not without sin. This is no call to sinless perfection and yet here is our example who shows us that having given to us the principle and the life he did it in all his humanity and he did it without sin. And Jesus comes to us as the encouragement who says here is the life now live it, here is the way now walk in it, here is the path that I have already followed. Jesus took the abuse that the society cast upon Him. He took the lack of friendship that those that had gathered around Him gave Him for they deserted Him. He took the very sin of the world upon Himself and learned the grief in His own heart of separation from the Father and He did it without sin, without casting Himself apart. From Him there is our example, He died, He suffered sinlessly but the second thing that the Apostle Peter tells us is that the Lord Jesus gives to us an example not only of the sinless Son of God but also as the guile servant. In Peter's words there was no guile found in His mouth. A sufferer under the threat of pain or humiliation might well be tempted to say it's not my fault. Might well be tempted to use guile to deceive the oppressor and to escape from the torturer. Jesus never did those things. He didn't engage in any of the verbal trickery but sometimes you and I engage in. And with examples of ways in which we have skirted issues with careful language so that we never actually deceive or tell a lie but we are careful to be able to circumnavigate the truth easily. Our Lord Jesus never did that and He never resorted to verbal tricks to alleviate His situation. He remained committed to what was right and what was true. Would to God that we were able to do that. For we all confess the same thing. We get to heart races and we look for easier answers. We look for ways in which we are able to smooth the rough sharp edges. We seek to avoid some of these things. That's a part of the frailty of our life and of our witness. And yet Jesus, without the arrogance and without the massive nastiness that some people are able to use confrontation, never avoided by guile, never tried to deceive with duplicity. But simply accepted and moved forward and gently did that. Here's the example of how we suffer. Here's how we receive these blows to ourselves not by retaliating. That comes from the natural part of us to hit back when we're hurt. Or to be like the oyster. You know how oysters are formed. Secretion constantly because a piece of sand has got itself inside that shell. The irritating and so to deal with the irritation it smooths over the roughness of the sand and slowly it builds up a bigger and a bigger pearl inside of it to avoid the irritation. And we do that. We secrete. We try and build up layer upon layer so that the sand isn't rough and it doesn't score us and it doesn't hurt us. And Jesus didn't do it. We always say maybe we're wiser than he. Maybe we are. But that is not the way that the Lord Jesus dealt with his suffering. This is the way that he dealt with learning to be submissive. It wasn't that he tried to be a rough edge. It wasn't that he tried to deceive with smooth words. He simply dialously went forward and received what his God gave him. And here is that which drives us to our knees because we confess ourselves to be much less like him and more like the example of the world. For there are few of us of whom the Lord would say behold a man a woman indeed in whom there is no guile. There are days when we look at Nathaniel and we envy the words of the Savior about him. And Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile. He had other faults. But the master looked at him and said he's not like that with commendation. And this is how the Savior lived his life. This is how he walked through his world. This is how you and I are able to deal with the example. We trace it on the blackboards of our minds and our hearts. We fill in the skeleton that he has created within us. We put our footsteps in his own. We do these things as we learn from him, who was guileless in the face of all of this. There is a third thing. But when he was reviled, he reviled not again. Jesus as our example suffered silently. When he suffered, he didn't threaten to bring down God's wrath and judgment and all the legions of heaven upon these those that attacked him. He did not offer the creatures that abused him abuse in return. Rather, he received it all silently. Come back. Come back with me to this mighty apostle, as he pens these words. Come back as he stands, watching the man he had served intimately for three years, watching the man whose life he had lived with suddenly facing his death. Come back and see Peter looking at his master's last week of suffering. The appalling scenes when Jesus had the robes stripped from him and he stood naked in front of those society that despised him. When they spat upon him, when they humiliated him, they robbed him of his dignity. They placed a crown of thorns upon his head. They lifted him on a cross. They mocked him and said, if thou be the son of God, come down. And Peter, with that picture indelibly imprinted upon his mind, says when he was reviled. He reviled not again. The Savior didn't abuse those. He didn't run to his own defence. He didn't pass all the acne to another. He didn't shout. He didn't scream. The Savior suffered silently. And we are faced with the awesome spectacle of the sinless, the guileless son of God, unprotestingly receiving and unjust treatment from the hands of you and Roman. And there is a princely self-possessing silence. There are times when we are attacked. And we have no words to say that that silence demonstrates the grace of God for the first thing that leaps to our minds and to our lips is not silence. It's retort. Maybe it's abuse, maybe it's defence, maybe it's an effort to explain or to pass on the responsibility. It's words that will somehow extricate us from our situation and Jesus was silent. And this is how he suffered. And this is how he submitted to the providence of God that never changes. There's a fourth thing that the greater boss or Peter says of him. And that is the Lord Jesus endured all this, believingly. Listen, he committed himself to him, but judged righteously. He refused to meet evil with evil. We discover that his primary thought and mood was that of confidence in the Father. He was able to bear all the blistering indignities and sufferings inflicted by his pose because he believed. He really believed that God was the righteous judge and that ultimately he would take care of the judging of the world. He would vindicate his son and he would leave to him that which was his task. And he suffered believing that God would be his indicator. He didn't need to hit back. His was not a passive yielding to men who had beaten and cornered him, but the active positive commitment of himself to God knowing that the same God was the judge, that he was the righteous judge and that concerning anything about suffering and indignity he trusted God. And this is the hardest of all things, to believe that ultimately God will be our indicator. We need others to be that, but Jesus did not. And as we come to this word who program us again, as we set this example before us, we begin to see how we reflect the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in our midst. But we come to the last two verses of this chapter and we see as the apostle builds his argument and he says, here is the example to you as you would learn to follow him. Here is the way in which you receive God's judgment, God's gift, God's providence. These are the means by which your soul follows him, who is the example to you. Then he goes on and he says, look at this saviour. Look at what this example has done for you, for this Lord Jesus Christ has produced for you, that which is remarkable. And he says, and I conclude almost by sharing three things that the apostle establishes the Lord Jesus Christ as having done. For those three things touch us and they touch our lives. For having been our example and daring to suffer and going through this agony, Peter says of him, he bore us in. And there is almost a stillness come upon every year for this Lord Jesus Christ bearing all that God could pour upon him. Says Peter, he bore us in. That is the guilt that separates us from God, the guilt that separates us from one another, the things that would divide us. He has already overcome. He who his own self there are sins in his body on the tree. We've moved away from the features of our Lord suffering which appear here and we encounter that whole unrepeatable anguish whereby Jesus made it possible for men and women to approach God. I don't think there is any point in Christian theology or Christian thought that is so difficult for us to accept. The language and the concepts of modern man kind are far from this. The very mention of sin bearing is enough to bring the whole wrath of a theological world crashing down upon our ears in one stroke for what men have come to dismiss with arrogant pride. With all their intellectual superiority is that which drove the inspired writers of the scripture that they did not even quibble about it, never once does the apostle argue. They were clear that Jesus bore in his own flesh, your sin and mine. He is the sin bearer. Our world has come to tell us that every man and every woman has her bearer's own responsibility and her responsibility for actions. It is inconceivable that one should bear the punishment for many, oh there is a question in our minds about the very fairness of this whole idea. Indeed this afternoon as I was speaking with some people, one of the things that we were talking about was this whole idea as they were asking the question, can God really be fair? How does God send us, fit into all this wealth? God is not fair. If he were fair you and I would be bound for a godless eternity. He is not fair for one has died and bore our sins. If you would have God be fair then you would all be condemned and be with you. He is not fair for he gave his own son to bear your sins and to bear mine upon the cross. Our world with all its plan for modern justice and fairness and for all the things that go with it fails to understand that God placed your sin and mine upon his own son. And the Old Testament never quibbles with that idea. Look at the liticus 5, 17, Numbers 18, 21 and 22, Ezekiel 18, 20, and the scriptures are bound with this whole idea. The meaning is clear that the penalty that follows wrongdoing is born by another. And Jesus did that. Jesus bore our sins, sinless hating sin, yet in grace he was made sin for us. He was guiltless and yet he bore our guilt. You know, the fact is that when the Lord Jesus Christ stood before God he could not stand before him sinless because he bore the sin of the world. You and I will never understand the anguish that he has, the heart of the Savior, for he knew that before his father he now bore all the guilt and the sin and the dirt and the grime of us. He was a representative, but he was a substitute. And when you and I are declared not guilty before the throne of grace, he is declared guilty. And it's that that drove him from the breast of the father on the cross of Calvary. He bore our sins with no fear, with no anger. And yet you know it is my own conviction that it gets him any. There was a cold shutter that passed for the first time in eternity through the heart of eternity. His father and son knew a separation that was caused by the guilt and the sin of the world that came upon them. He is the bearer of our sins. And if we would keep them to ourselves, we know no peace and we know forgiveness, not in slightest measure. But there is a second thing that the fossil Peter tells us about this. He who is the bearer of our sin is also the transformer of our souls that we, being dead and to sin, should live until righteousness. You say it's a very hard to be transformed, of course it is. And yet here is the Lord Jesus Christ saying that he is the one who actually can change and transform our lives. He can take that which is broken and he can change it into that which is whole. There is a story of Michelangelo taking a flawed piece of marble. Everybody else had tried to chisel something out of it and instead they had simply come across the floor that was a part of the marble itself and that chisel simply made it worse. And so it was scarred and it was broken and it was factored. And he built a little house or this great piece of marble and he spent weeks libering and the touch of this unique genius upon this marble floor, though it was, was to create the masterpiece of David that stands in the city of Florence. And in precisely the same way Jesus takes the transforming power of flawed lives like yours and mine and out of them he will create masterpiece of his grace. He will change the floor, he will take the marble that is scarred, he will take the memories that are hurt, he will take the pain that nothing else can change and eradicate, he will take the needs that are written deeper upon us and he will transform them. For he causes us no longer to live in sin, being dead until sin will live until righteousness. But Jesus does that. He does it for you, he does it for me. And the third thing that this passage says of him is that by his stripes he will heal. But you are sheep going astray but now you are returned unto the shepherd and the bishop of your souls. And here is the picture, the healer of our souls, the consequence of our spiritual ill health has touched us. And yet Jesus takes the bruise and the scar and the pain he takes the agony that comes from foolish sheep who have gone astray and wandered away from him. He wandered away from his way and have been caught in every agony of their own foolishness. He gathers them back to himself and he heals them. Once they were dispersed now he has drawn them in. Once they simply wandered wild and now he has drawn them back. You know the first characteristic of a sheep? Absolutely stupidity. I tell you if you drive through the mountains of Wales you will see these miserable sheep wandering, unfenced everywhere and let your heart tremble. Because these stupid animals will run in front of a car and you will hit them full force and you will have this terrible mess of car and the sheep will get up and it will shudder and it will go running off stupid animal. First it doesn't even recognise it's hurting, it goes running off leaving you in a battered wreck on the side of a road. Stupid! By his stripes you have healed you who were sheep who were outside of his fence, you who had wandered away from the great shepherd of your soul. He has taken your bruises. By his stripes as Air 53 you have been healed, he is the healer. He draws you back. And the Lord will heal that. He will heal the stupidity of your own action. He will heal the stupidity of your rebellion, your hurt and your anguish. And he by his inward power will heal the soul that is bruised. What he brings life for that which was dead. With these three pictures of the power of Christ available to you and to me, we come as slaves for those of the first readers of this lesson and we listen to what Peter has said and we gain a new dignity for our lives are transformed and our experiences renewed for we have the promise of our power coursing through us that is greater than all that the world will ever know. For we daring in submission and in suffering know his grace as we lock our lives with a saviour, a built up and a founded upon the rock that does not change. So in our grace and the slave, the slave is transformed. This is how you do it and this is what you get. This is what the apostle says, oh walk therefor in it with the assurance that his power belongs to his people. That's right. Our Father we pray that by your blood you will cleanse us from every sin and stain that our souls being renewed, our minds being remade before you. We might know your grace and worship you following in the steps of our saviour whose perfect example calls us yet to submission even to suffer. In his grace and by his power. Amen.