The Cross is Our Motivation for Hope
Level Up: Discover hope on a whole ew level • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Series Review: 1 Peter is a book meant to give hope to those “dispersed” into other regions due to persecution from the Emperor Nero.
Peter wants them to have purpose in their suffering. When you can find purpose in your suffering, then it strengthens you making you better not bitter.
Because of the hope that awaits them in heaven through Christ’s suffering they are being viewed by God as His own. Royal priesthood and a Holy nation being buit into a Holy Temple.
Then he reminds them to flea from the ways of the world that lead Jesus to the cross in the first place. After all, their suffering is because mankind in general rejects God’s ways and God rejects mankind.
Finally, Having been brought in through adoption we are to be nurtured by the Word of God into a new nature.
Therefore, the Gospel compels and even demands our conscience and morality and lifestyle be shaped by the cross.
I give you all of that to help you be up to speed for today’s message but also because I am going to preach three verses in their salvific context first then in their historical and literal context next week.
Why would I do that?
Illustration John 6: 66
The surrounding context is Peter commanding them to do something so radical, so bold and rebellious that IF we do not understand the motivation for such a command you would all likely yell out and storm out.
So if you are new you will want to be back next week for the revealing of such a command.
Please Stand as we Read God’s Word
when He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He was suffering, He did not threaten but entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly.
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; you have been healed by His wounds.
For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm.
Prayer
There are 3 certainties of the Cross that should compel our hope in Christ.
1. There was a legal transfer of deeds
2. The work was totally finished.
3. It was completely voluntary
1. There was a legal transfer of deeds
Explanation
in verse 23-24 Peter uses legal terms to describe the work of Jesus.
“Judging justly” and “Righteousness”
Regarding Judging justly
Cops & Judges
The term Justly means to compare behavior to the one judging. In other words, it is based on the judges record of behaviors not the law.
Today, a judge today can show situational leniency based on the spirit of the law verse the letter of the law.
Thus the fallen condition of mankind. There is no one just before God. We are all sinners in the hands of an angry God.
In verse 24, Peter uses the word righteousness. In Greek in this setting it means to be handed a favorable verdict.
Illustration Courtroom Commotion after the verdict.
What happened that you were found innocent?
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; you have been healed by His wounds.
We are all dead to rights in that situation but Jesus choose to legally free us from the sentence of death.
Illustration
IRS debt… But a friend
You are legally cleared but they are destitute
Our sins against God being requires a punishment.
The wrath of God needs satisfied, and the individual must pay with their life.
Jesus choose to take on our debt.
He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
You are legally cleared but it cost Christ everything.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
Righteousness is a sentence, a legal declaration that you are right before a just God.
In order to have your sins paid for by Jesus John tells us in 3:16 that He wants us to believe in Him as Lord.
Just like in the court system in America you cannot be tried twice for your charges it is called double jeopardy.
Transition: God cannot condemn you for sins that you have trusted Jesus to pay for.
2. The work was totally finished.
Explanation
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm.
Peter is clear, God wanted to remove the penalty of sin from us and Christ did so once and for all.
Illustration: Bill Cosby “A Rock”
We should not shudder at the thought that there is nothing bigger than God.
God is greater than creation.
So if God set out to remove sin, could he do it?
and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
John also agreed it was meant for life
My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish —ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand.
My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Paul also agreed
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
height or depth, or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Argumentation
We wrestle with this idea because our conscience struggle that someone would do something for us that is un-repayable.
So we say “Jesus, you get me justified and I’ll take it from there.” I’ll earn it moving forward.
Our conscience, morality and lifestyle can be summed up in one word in the Greek, it the word “soul”
Soul in the text is a verb connected to the noun soul
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness; you have been healed by His wounds.
For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.
in other words, do you realize how free you could be if your conscience recognized the finality of your righteousness in God’s eyes?
If we view our righteousness as final, and we believe God set out to make our salvation final, and we Believe His Word (read verse…)
Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus,
We would live much more calm lives knowing that I am not failing God.
Yes, my conscience pricks my heart over the sin I commit, but
it is meant to be a promoting to bring us into deeper fellowship with God, not
threaten our place in his family.
Notice Peter says when we wonder we are returned to a God who is like a Shepherd and a Guardian.
Shepherds care and feed the soul
Guardians oversee the condition of the soul
Transition:The Bible places a greater salvation focus on God’s part to secure us by his own doing
3. It was completely voluntary
Jesus wanted to give you eternal life.
1 Peter 2:23 (HCSB)
when He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He was suffering, He did not threaten but entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly.
1 Peter 3:18 (HCSB)
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm.
This is why the Father loves Me, because I am laying down My life so I may take it up again.
No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from My Father.”
No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.
Think about that for a minute. No one has ever given their life up voluntarily.
Illustration:
Suicide the time of death
Soldiers give… way of death
But they were already going to die they just assisted the type of death.
Death is only natural because it is a consequence of sin in this fallen world.
But nothing is natural or good about death. Grief...
Death is a punishment of a fallen world. It’s certain and unavoidable. Except for Jesus.
Jesus never had to die. No sin, no need to die.
However He wanted to be your shepherd to help you through pain and feed your weary soul
He wanted to be your Guardian to protect you from all unrighteousness and give you his life.
1 Peter 3:19 “In that state He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison”
Application: (Worship Team)
Christ’s legal, final, and voluntary work should lead us to die to sin and live for Righteousness
Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, equip yourselves also with the same resolve —because the one who suffered in the flesh has finished with sin —
in order to live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.
Jesus’s work on the Cross Should draw Us to Him.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time,
casting all your care on Him, because He cares about you.
The big unthinkable thing that Peter is going to instruct them to do is submit to God’s plan and accept the suffering of bearing His name.
Before we try to overcome that in our minds hear what he said again.
1 Peter 5:7 “casting all your care on Him, because He cares about you.”
May the Cross be your motivation to trust Jesus and walk in His ways