Christ our Example, Our Savior, Our Shepherd, Our Overseer
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Introduction
Introduction
Last week we talked about submission, how we are called to live in submission to the authorities that are over us.
As we ended our time last week we noticed v.19-20
We have to remember the context in which this letter was being written.
Peter is writing to Christians that are suffering, that are being persecuted, that are having a difficult time of it.
1:1, they are exiles, they have been dispersed from their homeland.
They are Jews dispersed to these different places, being Jews would make them unpopular in these foreign lands, but to add to that they were also Christians which added to their unpopularity
The reality is that being a Christian may have been the ground of all of their suffering and difficulty.
You can imagine someone who is doing well financially and things are going well in their life and then they become a Christian and because of their faith maybe they lose their job, their family disowns them, maybe they get ran out of town.
Because they have been dispersed from their homeland they have probably had to give themselves over to slavery so that they can simply have something to eat, so that they can have a way to live.
Peter again addresses their suffering in 1:6-7
And as they were going through these trials, these difficulties they were at the mercy of those around them, some maybe have found good or gracious masters or employers while others had found unjust masters or employers.
with that mind Peter reminds them that though the suffering is difficult they are called to be faithful because they will be rewarded (v.19-20)
Jesus says the same thing:
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
What is this great reward? What is the His glory that is to be revealed?
One of the things that suffering does for us is that it weens us off of this world and teaches us to long for the consummation of God’s Kingdom, we long for the Return of our Great King.
Then he grounds this call to suffer as a Christian and to look forward to the reward to come in the person and work of Christ.
Christ is our example
Savior
Shepherd
Overseer
Christ is our Example
Christ is our Example
What is the call of the gospel? It is a call to die to self, it is a call to take up one’s cross
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Christ is our example ultimately but one of the things that I think about as i think of this text
He is our example in that He did not live for the world
He did not live for worldly fame
He did not live for the pleasures of the world
He did not live for the riches of the world
He did not live for the applause of the world
He did not live for the approval of the world
He lived for the Father, He came to do the will of the Father
John 4.
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.
And interesting thing is the word that Peter uses here
You have been called
Kaleo
Here speaking about the effective calling of the Holy Spirit
And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—
They were called by the power of God, by the Spirit of God, called out of the world and called to Christ, and by God’s grace they turned from the world and turned to Christ.
But he reminds his readers that they were called to a suffering Savior
What did Jesus say to His disciples
John 15.18-
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.
And He is our example as far as how we are to handle suffering when we suffer as Christians.
Let me just say this, we live in a time and place where by God’s grace we have not experienced the suffering for Christ that a majority of our brothers and sisters in Christ have through church history
But i fear that time is coming to an end. I don’t know how soon, I am not a prophet and am not even going to try to guess, but the hostility for the Christ and the church in our culture is increasing. There is a great hostility toward truth, toward the Bible, toward the Bible’s demands upon us as creatures of our God.
There is hostility toward a Holy God that tells us how we are to live our lives.
Make no mistake about, hostility toward God’s law, whether it comes from the world or the so called church is hostility toward God because the law is simply an expression of the character of God.
The church has two options here
The church can compromise and become more like the world and try to fit in with the world and ultimately change the gospel to fit in with the world.
The church can continue to proclaim, Thus saith the Lord and by God’s grace the church will be built up and strengthened but the church will also be increasingly attacked by a hostile world.
I do not understand Christian leaders apologizing to the world for how the church has offended the world throughout the years hoping to get in good with the world and to try to reach them that way.
You do not reach the world by apologizing for truth or for backing off of the truth, the world hated our Lord and the world will hate us.
But by God’s grace as we proclaim the gospel message there will be some who will hear.
There will be some who will be worked on by the power of the Holy Spirit and will come to Christ.
What does Jesus say?
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
All of that said, what is the example that our Lord gave to His people?
v.22-23
The gospels tell us how Jesus was hated all of His ministry, how He was ultimately betrayed by one of His disciples, how He was arrested, how He was lied about, how He was mocked, how His trials were a mockery of justice and yet through the trials He was silent and how through it all He entrusted Himself to the Father
And do you remember what Jesus says to Pilate
So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Jesus was able to endure all of the suffering, all of the difficulty because He was not living for this world, the kingdom of this world, instead He was living for God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom that He knew would one day come and fill the earth.
But not only was he living for another Kingdom, but He was also entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.
In other words, Jesus knew that there was coming a day when all things would be made right.
He knew that justice would be served.
Brothers and sisters, Christians that are living in persecution can only suffer for our Lord when they are living for the Kingdom to come and when they live in light of the reality that justice will one day be served.
These are good truths for us to remember as well as we live our daily lives.
Brothers and sisters, we would spare ourselves a lot of depression and anxiety if we were not so influenced by the worldly kingdom.
Brothers and sisters we are called to live for God’s Kingdom.
Christ and His Kingdom should effect every part of our lives, it should effect the way we enjoy the gifts that He gives us, it should effect the way we suffer when trials come our way, it should effect the way that we interact with others, it should effect the way that we live and the way that we die, right?
Christ is our Savior
Christ is our Savior
Jesus not only showed us how to live, how to suffer, how to die
He also Saved us by His life, by His suffering, by His death
Oh brothers and sisters we are in the holy of holies here.
Here we are at the heart of the gospel
Here we have the glorious doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
We are taught by the OT
Of course we have the picture of the sacrifice that would die in the place of the sinner in , , and we could go on and on
That was to teach the people of the need of a sacrifice
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
We are taught of the ultimate sacrifice to come in Isaiah 53.
Of course so much of this passage, even the previous verses are influenced by , but we also see it here
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Peter uses the same exact verb that is used in v.12
This idea of Substitutionary atonement is all through the Bible
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We could go to many more passages but we will look in the same book
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
1 Peter
Another interesting fact here is that Peter uses the word tree here and not cross.
Why do you think?
“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Deut. 21.22
This is where Paul gets the idea in Galatians
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
Gal.
But notice in the text, why did He die for us?
Ultimately so that we might live to righteousness
That we might live righteous lives, that we might live for God’s Kingdom, that we might be children of light.
Again, brothers and sisters, the Bible knows nothing of a Christ follower that does not seek to follow Christ.
The NT knows nothing of someone who has been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the Kingdom of Light who still loves to live for the kingdom of darkness.
He delivered us so that we might live to righteousness.
He delivered us so that as sojourners and exiles we might abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against our souls and so that we might keep our conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against us as evildoers they may see our good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
What comes right after ? 13 -16
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Christ has healed us, that is He has delivered us from the disease of sin, He has rescued us, He has changed our hearts so that we might be salt and light in this world brothers and sisters, that is what Peter is calling us to.
You see at one time you were just like the rest of the world but now you have a Shepherd, you have an Overseer of your Soul.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd of
The Good Shepherd of our Souls
The Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His people.
He is the Overseer of our souls
This word overseer can be translated guardian, supervisor.
It speaks of one who takes care of something or someone, the one is the keeper, the one who is responsible for someone.
This is the great truth brother, sister in Christ
If you are in Christ then He is the Keeper of your soul, He is the guardian of your soul, He is the One who takes responsibility for your soul
He will ensure that you arrive safely home.
We could talk about how these two ideas of shepherding, or overseeing is are the two responsibilities that we see placed upon the elders of the church
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly;
1 Peter 5.1-2
But as under-shepherds, as under-overseers, we ultimately are pointing people to the great Shepherd and the Great Overseer of our souls