All right, let's pray everybody. Heavenly Father, as we come before you tonight looking to the second half of our time together in this class, we ask yet again that you would give us the ability to turn our thoughts, turn our hearts to a deeper appreciation of what you have done for us in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Lord. Tonight we're going to talk about suffering among other things. And as we do, we will be reminded of the various things that come our way in life that are unpleasant or difficult. We're mindful of the words of Jesus in this world. You will have tribulation. We know it's true because we do have tribulation. Thank you, Lord, for not simply telling us or warning us in advance, for giving us your spirit and for giving us the example of Christ who suffered before us and showed us the way. We're called to this because you, O Lord, suffered for us. Giving us an example that we might follow in your steps, even though you committed no sin, and no deceit was found in your mouth, when your adversaries hurled their insults at you, you did not retaliate when you suffered, you did not threaten back, instead you entrusted yourself to the one who judges justly, even your father. And, Lord, I pray that we ourselves would be the same when we suffer even unjustly, we would not retaliate or threaten or complain but entrust ourselves to you. And, Lord, even when we fail in that, we are also reminded that you bore our sins on your body on the tree so that we might die to sin, sins even such as grumbling against our fellow man or against the provinces you send us. That we might live for righteousness. Lord, when we fail to do this, we are healed by your stripes, by your sacrifice. Lord, I pray that you would give us then the privilege of living our lives in the light of yours. Thank you for your example and your strength, O Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen. Tonight we are going to spend the book of our time looking at the book of First Peter. Before we do, I would like to just pause for a little while at this midpoint of the course to remind ourselves where we are going and why. Specifically, early on, our first night, perhaps, even, I pointed out that the New Testament has a multifaceted or manifold witness to Christ. We tend to see the gospel, to see the work of Christ through Paul and I. Seeing the gospel, seeing things through Paul and I's means, that we look especially for things like justification by faith, substitutionary atonement, death and resurrection, the formula of the indicative and the imperative, most of you know what that is, but let me just remind you, the indicative would be because God has done these things for you in Christ, the imperative, therefore you ought to do these things in response. That's a valid formula found throughout the Bible, but it's especially Pauline. It's understandable that we would think first and last, perhaps, of Paul, because after all he wrote 13 to the 27 books of New Testament, his works, therefore, the largest number, the sheer mass of Paul's works, is the greatest, the number of pages is only rivaled by acts and Luke together, the writings of Luke are close and linked to those of Paul, but Luke's writings are not as systematic, they're historical and if you want a systematic summary of the Christian faith, you would turn, first of all, probably the book of Romans, maybe second, more briefly to Ephesians, if you want the essence of the gospel itself, you might turn to Galatians. So there are reasons why when we go to structure our thought, when we go to structure what it means to be a Christian, we turn to Paul first. It's not that we don't care about the gospels, of course we do, but the gospels aren't as systematic, they are, they're an narrative, they're a story, they're not a system of thought. So we turn to Paul. The theme of this course, largely, is to try to attend to the rest of the New Testament as the rest of it, that gives its varied and, of course, excellent testimony to the work of Christ, especially when it comes to proclaiming the work of Christ, we could even say specifically that it's probably easiest to do that from the gospels and from Paul. Gospel, because they simply tell the story of Christ, Paul, because so full of the death and the resurrection, the atonement and all those things. Hebrews is probably easy to use, to proclaim the gospel because there's so much in chapters 5, a little, then 7, 8, 9, and 10, about Jesus' great high priestly ministry in chapters 2 and 12, about which some of you wrote essays, chapters 2 and 12, about Jesus as our hero, the trailblazer of our faith. So Hebrews isn't so difficult and probably the one that's hardest would be the book of James. James is hard because there is no description of the cross or the atonement of Christ and that gives us a test case that we can use in following the goal, seeing how all the New Testament books outside of Paul proclaim who Jesus is. Let's just do a quick review if I can ask you to follow along with me, then how does the rest of the New Testament give unique testimony to the work of Christ? First of all, just again Hebrews, Hebrews says these unique things, not against Paul, but we might say beyond Paul, or things Paul barely mentions. First, that Jesus is our champion, our trailblazer who defeats the foe, the central foe, Satan, and also the subsidiary foe, the fear of death. He clears the path so that we can run the race to the end of the course regarding suffering, he says, fix your eyes on Jesus, the author, the champion, and the perfector of the faith that is to say he not only clears the path, but he enables us to run. Second, Jesus is our great high priest who offers the perfect and final sacrifice for sin. Now, tonight, we're going to look at Peter and see his testimony. His testimony is going to have some things very much in common with Paul. He does have a notion of the atonement, which we'll see in chapters 2 and chapter 3, so he says Jesus is our toning sacrifice, but he also says something else. His testimony of Christ is especially focusing on the incarnation of Christ, and the assumption he doesn't even ever say it, but he assumes that Christ's pattern, life is a pattern for hours. The way he suffered, we should suffer. The way he endured, we should endure, and he never even actually says that. He just says, it's almost as always says, well of course, the life of Christ will be your pattern because he is the perfect man. Moving to the future, first John also has a theology of the atonement. It says explicitly that Jesus is a sacrifice of atonement rendered for our sins. It says that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sins, so John has that. It also has another way of testifying a little bit like James. John says that we can have assurance. John's interest is that we should be assured, first John's interest, is that we should be assured that we'd be long to Jesus, and he gives three tests, not at all the same three tests, as James does, although of course they overlap a little bit. They are true doctrine. We have a true and orthodox concept of Christ, true doctrine, true love for the brothers and true obedience to the laws of God, to the will of God. Those are the tests that he gives and John writes to assure people that they do indeed belong to Jesus, the one who offered this sacrifice for their sins and dwells in them. Book of Revelation also has a really very rich testimony to Christ. Some people think that the book of Revelation is mostly about the future, but I don't really buy that. I'm not saying there's nothing about the future. You'll have a chance to hear me out and get angry at me if you will, and tell me that you're sure that it's all about the last seven years, but I think the book Revelation is mostly about Jesus, and one reason is because the book itself says so. Revelation 19 verse 10 says the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus, and the book of Revelation is a prophecy, and the essence of it is testimony to Christ. The first vision in the book is a vision of Christ. Chapter one of Revelation, the last vision, chapter 19, is a vision of Christ, or if you want to say there's a vision of the New Jerusalem in 2021, it's a vision of the habitation that Christ has prepared for us. It's a testimony to Christ. The book of Revelation has a very rich Christology. It has actually more titles in book Revelation for the Lord than any other book. He's the son of man. He is the living one. He's the one who holds the keys of death and hateys. He's the protector of the church. He's the line of tribe of Judah. He's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He's the lamb who is slain. He's Lord of lords and king of kings. He's the rider on the white horse who wages war with his enemies. He's the eternal God who gives eternal life. He's the judge of Satan as allies. He's the root and the offspring of David. He's the bright and morning star. He's the alpha and the omega and I'm just getting started. The book of Revelation is full of descriptors of Jesus. But now what about the book we just finished, the book of James, which is arguably the hardest of the bunch to look at. What can we say about the book of James? How does it testify to Jesus even in all of its rich ethical teaching? First of all, primarily, it is a book that testifies to a living faith in the Lordship of Christ. That's what James is all about. It's not about the atonement. It's not about Jesus' death and resurrection. Those things are not mentioned. But he is deeply imbued with the idea that Jesus is his Lord. He's the teacher and the Lord of the church. James 1-1. He says right away that he is himself a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Even if he's Jesus' brother, half brother, of course, by physical descent from the same mother, he calls himself a servant or a slave of Christ to his Lord. He says in chapter 2, verse 1, that we cannot hold on to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ and should still show favoritism. So if he really believed Christ is Lord, you can't commit that sin that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. He says at the end of the book a couple times that the Lord will come and return and bring an end to history. That the Lord is able to heal those who are sick or cry out to him and ask him for healing. He says that the disciples have to follow the royal law, the law of the king who is, of course, Jesus. So it's a meditation on the Lordship of Christ. It has this specific form and that is that the Lordship of Christ especially has referenced to his ethical teaching, the description of the way a Christian ought to live. And I'm going to ask you to, you might want to follow through, open up the book of James, just kind of follow or look at a few of the places that I'm going to talk about. And I'm going to ask you to notice, or see if you can remember if you have this kind of a knowledge of the Gospels, how many of these teachings that we're going to look at are found in the Gospel of Matthew. I'm going to give you the references, but even before I get them, maybe you'll kind of listen to two things at once. The majority of them are actually from the Sermon of the Mount. It's almost as though James meditated upon the Sermon of the Mount so much that, although he never quoted it, when he went to describe the Christian life, it just, it flowed out of him organically because it was his. Chapter 1 verse 2 tells us that we should rejoice in trials. Rejoicing and suffering is mentioned almost immediately early on, Chapter 5 verses 11 and 12 in the Sermon of the Mount. When Jesus says, blessed are you if you are suffer because of persecution from my name's sake. Chapter 1 verse 4 says, the goal of the righteous is that they come to maturity or perfection. And Matthew chapter 5 verse 48 says that we should be perfect or mature come the perfection. That's the goal of the teaching. Chapter 1 verse 5 says, we should ask God to provide us with our needs and ask him to give us our good gifts. 117 says the same thing, which is what Matthew 7, 7 and 8 say, ask and it will be given to you seek and it will be and you will find. Chapter 1 verse 22 says, you must be doers of the word and not hearers only, which is exactly what chapter 7 verses 21 to 27. A Matthew say, different words, but there are those who call Lord Lord, but the wise man is the one who builds his house in the rock and hears his words to obey them. Chapter 2 verse 10 says that it's obligatory for the disciple to keep the whole law. If you break one part, you're guilty of all. And that's what Matthew chapter 5 19 says. Jesus says, don't think that I came to abrogate the law. I came to fulfill it every jot and tiddle the whole law. Chapter 2 verses 14 to 26 say, if you profess faith, you've got to act on it. And that's what that's what Matthew chapter 7 21 to 23 says. If you call me the Lord, you've got to follow me as Lord, or else I'll say, depart from me. I never knew you. Chapter 3 verse 2 says, not many of this should be teachers because we all stumble in many ways. And the more we talk, the more we err. Jesus also said first that we will have to render account for every word we speak, whether good or evil. Chapter 12 verses 36 and 37. Chapter 4 verse 4 says, you can't be a friend of the world and a friend of God both. And Jesus says, no man can serve two masters in chapter 6 verses 19 to 24 of Matthew. Sometimes not only is the theme the same, but even the words are virtually identical, well, are very similar, maybe I'll say, between James and Matthew. Chapter 2 verse 8, James says that love of one's neighbor is the center of the law. And that's what, of course, Jesus says, the love of neighbor is the second part or the second great commandment. In chapter 4 verses 6 to 10 of James, he says the one who exalts himself must be humbled. We've got to humble ourselves before the Lord and he'll lift us up. There's almost exactly what Jesus says. He says, humble yourself before the Lord and I will lift you up. He says that in 23, 12 of Matthew and also several times in the gospel of Luke. He tells us not to judge in James 4 verses 11 and 12 and not to judge or slander our brother, which is what Jesus says. Judge not. West you be judged. Matthew 7 verses 1 to 5. Both Jesus and James single out, moth and rust as the things that destroy our wealth and this age. Chapter 5 verse 2 of James and Matthew 6, 19. The Lord is coming, James says, 5, 8 and 9, as does Jesus throughout Matthew 24 and 25. James speaks against taking oaths in 5, 12, which Jesus does in the sermon amount. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, take no oaths. They say in very similar language and really this isn't even the whole list. The list is longer. So what happens here is that James has meditated on the teachings of Jesus and it's almost as though it penetrated every pore of his being. When everything's about the Christian life, he thinks about the words of Jesus and that's the way in which James testifies the Jesus by testifying that he's the Lord of our daily conduct. So what we need to do, I said this in our very first lecture, I wanted to say it again because it really is a theme that I'd like you to attend to, that the whole of the New Testament has each book in its own way something unique, something special to say about the person, the work, the Lordship, the salvation of Jesus.