You want to turn in your Bible
to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 3. We're going to read from verse
15 through the second verse of chapter 4, if you want to follow
along. 1 Peter, chapter 3, verse 15
through chapter 4, verse 2. I've entitled today's message,
The Just for the Unjust. In verse 15, as we read last
week, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always
to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason for
the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. We ourselves, having been saved
from our sin, have no other attitude with which we can speak of God's
goodness other than meekness. In 2 Timothy 2, Paul writes to
Timothy and says, the servant of the Lord must not strive,
but be patient. and with meekness instructing
those that oppose themselves if God peradventure would give
them repentance unto the acknowledging of the truth. And so that's our
attitude when we speak about Christ in meekness and in fear. Because we know the condition
of men and their sins, we know the justice of God, and we know
that we cannot convert anyone but that the Lord himself has
to do that, so we speak to them. And we speak to them about our
hope. Last week we went over three points about our hope,
that we will stand before God in judgment without sin, perfect
in Christ, justified by God in the presence of his glory, without
fault, blameless. And that we, in this life, God
works everything to our good. Everything in our life from our
birth to our death, everything before our birth and everything
after our death is working together by God according to his predestinated
will for our good and his glory. That's our hope. And the other
reason, the other part of our hope we saw last week is that
God, according to the scripture, has, for Christ's sake, according
to His will, prepared for us an eternal home, an eternal inheritance,
which is in heaven. And that though this body perish,
we shall be raised again, we shall be changed, we shall be
like Christ, we shall appear in the presence of God, conform
to His image, and we shall see His face." Now that's our hope,
and the reasons for it were many, but mostly because God wrote
it in Scripture, because it is Christ that died. because it's
all of grace, because all this hope is brought to us where we
are as sinners. We don't do something to ourselves
to make God, to enable God to give us this hope. Because when
we were yet sinners in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
And we could go on and on rehearsing these things, but it gave us
such delight to consider both our hope and our reason for it.
But the reason that God says this here, sanctify the Lord
God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer. Our
reason for our hope is the answer. That's what we answer with. In our thoughts, in our meditations,
in our prayers, we're taking, we're drawing from God's word
in the gospel to find the answer to God for our souls. And that
answer is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we could say it simply that
our answer is Christ, isn't it? The reason is Christ. In fact,
if I don't have Christ, if he doesn't answer God for me with
himself, if he didn't answer God with himself for me at the
cross and in judgment, If he doesn't now intercede as my advocate,
I have no other answer. I have no reason for hope. But
because I have Christ according to his word, coming to me all
you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. And all
that the Father gives me shall come to me, and he that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out. And the Spirit and the bride
say, come. And let him that heareth say,
come. And let him that is athirst come. and whosoever will let
him come and take of the water of life freely. These things
encourage us. Ho, everyone that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters. Christ is the fountain of living
waters. So we come as sinners with nothing,
expecting God to consider him alone, and having considered
him alone, him being all sufficient for us, our wisdom and righteousness,
our sanctification and redemption. The fullness of the Godhead is
in Him, and we are, according to Scripture, complete in Him.
Now, if that's our answer, then on the Day of Judgment, He will
answer for us. He will say to us, Well done,
thou good and faithful servant. And He won't say it for righteousness
found in us, but for what God has given Him to do for us and
what He did and finished and what He gives to us freely by
His grace. That's the reason. Now in verse
16 of chapter 3, 1 Peter, he says, he goes on, having a good
conscience that whereas they speak evil of you as of evildoers,
they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation
in Christ. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego? I mentioned them last week. King
Nebuchadnezzar erected a golden idol and commanded everyone of
his subjects to bow down to it. But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
drew the line there. God rules in our conscience.
Christ sits on the throne of our heart. As Brad just read,
the Lord is my light and my salvation. What shall I fear that man shall
do to me? And that attitude of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
out of it, they told, they gave a reason for their hope. They
said, our God is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace,
O king. But if not, we will not bow down
to your image. And so, they expressed, out of
a good conscience, their allegiance to Christ, their devotion to
him, because he was their hope and their trust. And so it is
with us. We express to men in our life,
not only with our words, but with our actions, that Jesus
Christ is everything in our life. He's all of our hope. He's the
reason for it. He himself is our savior. He is also our Lord. He's the
one we worship. He is God over all. And men find
that offensive. And they want to mock us, they
want to accuse us of having a simple mind or being enamored with things
that are only imaginary, that we've made it all up, or that
we just follow religion and so on. Any number of accusations
to belittle God's people. But having a good conscience
through Christ, whereas they speak evil of you as of evildoers,
because they'll say all sorts of things, they may be ashamed
that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. What
did Nebuchadnezzar do when he saw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
in the fire, unhurt, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, walking with them freely, unbound in the fire? He called
to them, oh, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you servants of
the Most High God, And he said, come out. And when they came
out, there was nothing. No harm came on them. And then
what did that man do? That ungodly idolater, he gave
glory to God. He falsely accused them, but
he gave glory to God because of their trusting in Christ. He acknowledged that Christ,
their Lord, was truly God over all. And so it will be in our
lives. So it was with the Lord Jesus
Christ. Verse 17, for it is better if the will of God be so that
you suffer for well doing than for evil doing. Whatever we do,
we do to the glory of God. That's the exhortation throughout
scripture. You can find it, for example,
in Colossians 3 and verse 17. And I'll read that to you. In
Colossians chapter 3 and verse 17. So you have it. He says,
whatsoever you do in word or deed So this is not just an activity
in our mind, in our heart, but it's actually in our word and
in our action. Whatever you do, do all in the
name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father
by Him. That's what we do, we give thanks
to God and the Father by him. O to grace, how great a debtor,
daily I'm constrained to be. And all of this chapter, if you
read chapter three, is exhorting us to live in accord with what
we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can read that on your
own. But here in 1 Peter chapter three, he tells us, if you suffer,
It's the will of God. It's better if the will of God
be so, and it is so, that you suffer for well-doing than for
evil doing. Don't suffer as a murderer, he
says in the next chapter, or as a busybody in men's matters,
but if you suffer as a Christian, then don't be ashamed, but glorify
God on this behalf. That's in verse 16 of chapter
four. But here he says, if you suffer, because you profess Christ
and you hold to him as your Lord and Master and you follow him.
You declare what he said as the way things are and you stake
eternity for your soul on his word and his work and his will
alone. You don't trust yourself, you
don't trust your will or your work, you don't look for anything
of yourself, you look to him for everything. And if you suffer
for that well-doing, it is the will of God. And here we see
that it is God's will, contrary to popular religion, that Christians
suffer. There's the whole health and
wealth and prosperity unquote, unquote gospel in our day that
preaches some kind of a attitude of arrogance that in this life
we have all these great things and we can boast in what we have
and pursue things in this world because we're God's children.
But here he says God's people will suffer. And then he gives
the Lord Jesus Christ as the premier example. Notice, he has
the preeminence in all things, doesn't he? God has exalted him
and set him high above everything else. And so he says here, verse
18, and notice how throughout this book, Peter, the apostle,
the servant of Jesus Christ, loves his master. And he loves
to talk about him. He loves to talk about his obedience
and his sufferings and his blood, and he loves to talk about how
God has highly exalted him. So he says in verse 18, for Christ,
Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened by the Spirit. Now here we have a very compact
summary of the entire gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ has once
suffered. He doesn't suffer many times.
He came into this world. He came to do the will of God.
The will of God was that he offer himself for his people in sacrifice,
that he would bear their sins, and bear the penalty for their
sins, he would fulfill all righteousness, and he would do it all as their
representative in surety. He would offer himself to God
to answer every demand of God's law, both in obligation and in
penalty for them, as their substitute. He substituted himself in the
presence of God as a man, and bore their sins, taking their
sins from them, and bearing the mocking, the treatment, the unjust
treatment of men, and all that they intended to do, and finally
death itself at their hand, and under the wrath of God. And he
did it. the just one, he is the righteous. For the unjust ones, we are those
who are unrighteous. In order that, this is the reason,
he might bring us to God. Is there anything more glorious
than being brought to God? And notice, he did it. He did it. He brought us to God. We have
access into the very presence of God in all of his glory and
perfections by the blood of Jesus alone. He did it, the just for
the unjust. This is the gospel, remember
these words. Christ also hath once suffered for sins, not his,
ours. The just for the unjust, that
he might bring us to God. He accomplished that work. He
made a way. He is the way to the Father.
Therefore, it is in his death he made reconciliation between
us and God and brought us to God. He made us God's children. We were adopted, we were appointed
to this, predestinated to it, and he did it when he offered
himself under the law, bearing our obligations, fulfilling our
righteousness, and the curse of God, bearing it himself and
taking it away. and making us holy in God's sight
by his death on the cross, being put to death in the flesh. In
the flesh, in his human nature, human nature is made up of a
body and a soul. And so he says he was put to
death in his flesh, in his human nature. He died. In Isaiah 53,
he has poured out his soul as an offering for sin. He bore
our sins in his own body on the tree. And in his body and in
his soul, bearing our sins, he died. which meant that he bore
the full condemnation from God against our sins in himself,
for us, in our place as our substitute, instead of us. He was there doing
it for his people to God because it was God's will. Notice in
verse 17, if the will of God be so, and what was that will
ultimately? That Christ also would suffer
for sins, but not his own, for ours. It was the will of God
that he was doing when he came into this world. And from his
birth, he was hounded by Herod. And at 12 years of age in the
temple, he was asking questions and the Sanhedrin there and the
big swells in the temple were asking him questions and questioning
him. And then later in his life, when
he preached the word, the first thing he spoke, after going through
the temptation in the wilderness, the first thing he spoke, they
wanted to push him off the cliff. because he told them God saved
that one widow and she wasn't even part of Israel in the days
of Elijah. They were offended by that. He
healed the one leper and he was Assyrian, he wasn't even part
of Israel. They were offended by God's sovereign
grace and they wanted to push him off the cliff. So all his
life, they hounded him. They denied what he said. They
tried to trap him in his own words, in their own traditions,
and twist the law in order to make him appear foolish. But
no matter what they said, he always made them appear, exposing
them in their wickedness. He spoke the truth. He never
deviated from it, but he suffered as a sinner because he bore our
sins. And that was the will of God.
He suffered. He suffered from his birth to
his death. It was obedience. It was submission. It was trust
in God. It was righteousness that he
fulfilled. So he died in the flesh, but
he was quickened by the Spirit. What is the Spirit? It's his
own divine nature, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, the
Spirit of Christ. He said, God the Father gave
him this commandment to lay down his life. I have power to lay
it down. I have power to take it again. In his spirit, he raised
himself from the dead, although it's attributed also to the Father
and to the Holy Spirit. Because God is one. But here
the Lord Jesus Christ is spoken of by his spirit. And notice
in verse 19, he follows up, the same spirit. By which the spirit
of Christ also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. Which
sometime were disobedient when once the long suffering of God
waited in the days of Noah. while the ark was a preparing
wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. So Peter
now is building up. He's just not throwing out random
pieces of information. He's building to this conclusion.
When you give an answer for the reason of the hope that lies
within you, You're going to live out that because you've meditated
on it, you've been praying this, you've been going to God's throne
of grace through Christ, the one who is the reason for your
hope. You've been depending, you've been anticipating what
God will do, what he's reserved for you in heaven in Christ.
You've been anticipating this throughout all of your life.
And you're going to suffer in this life because of that. as
you pursue to bring glory to Christ in your in your mind and
with your words and with your deeds, you're going to suffer.
It's the will of God. Notice Christ suffered by the
will of God and he did it for us. And now he says, when he
was raised in his spirit, he went and preached to the spirits
in prison, which sometime were disobedient when once the long
suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was
preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by
water. Notice how the few eight souls that were saved by water
overlays our current state in this world. Noah preached in
those days. He was a preacher of righteousness,
it says in scripture. He preached Christ. The spirit
of Christ was in him. That's what it says here. He
preached unto the spirits in prison, because he says in chapter
one, 10, that they prophesied of the grace
that should come to you, searching what or what manner of time the
spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it spoke
beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that
should follow. So by his spirit, the Lord Jesus
Christ went through Noah and preached in those days. Now,
he says, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits
in prison. Now there's all sorts of strange
interpretations of the scripture that are given, and I'm not going
to go into them. Some say that Jesus, when he died on the cross
by his human spirit or his spirit went into hell and preached to
those who were captives in hell. That's not what he says here.
He doesn't talk about hell. If the prison he's referring
to were hell, he's not talking about the spirits of the men
in the Old Testament, besides the fact that it is appointed
unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment. There's no
hope. After death, that's it. There's a great goal fixed, and
no man can cross over to you, and no man from there can cross
over here. Christ didn't go into hell. to
preach the spirits there. That's not what he's talking
about. But in the days of Noah, notice, so these spirits were
not spirits in hell. These were the men who lived
there that at the time Peter is telling us this, were dead
and their spirits are now in prison. Does that make sense? The spirits of the men that were
preached to by Christ in the days of Noah are now in prison,
which sometimes in their lives were disobedient, in verse 20,
when once the long-suffering of God waited. Now, Noah, as
I understand it, was building the ark 120 years. And that's
a long time after God promised he would destroy the world because
of man's wickedness. That's called long suffering. God waited all the time of the
building of the ark while the gospel through Noah was being
preached, the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow
to these disobedient people whose spirits, while Peter is writing
this, were now in prison. The prison of spirits of men
who have died. That place where only God understands
what's going on with them. But God waited. What a long-suffering
God we have. And he waits today. Then only
eight souls were saved. Now, how few. Many are called,
few are chosen. Many hear, few believe. Isn't
that true? Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. And that's spoken after God exposes
and declares the fact that in the world at the time of Noah,
all of the imaginations, the hearts of men was only evil continually. And it hasn't changed. Today,
it's the same thing. Even after the flood, God said
he won't destroy the world because man's heart is evil from his
youth. And so it was then, and so it
is now. So he's overlaying that that
happened in Noah's day with what's happening in our day. We suffer
for Christ's sake, we give a reason. And that we preach the gospel,
and that gospel, according to 1 Peter 1.12, is by the Holy
Ghost, which was sent down from heaven, in which we tell what
God has revealed to us by his spirit in the word of God, the
gospel of his grace. So Noah did that, and Christ
was the one who went in those days in his spirit to preach
these things through his faithful servant Noah. And then he says
that this happened while the ark was preparing, and only eight
souls were saved by water. How were they saved by water?
Well, because when God rained on the earth 40 days and 40 nights,
the water increased and covered everything. The highest mountains
were covered with water. And so Noah and his family, though,
God had told Noah, he spoke to him, he says, now you take your
wife and your three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and their
three wives, and you go into the ark. And God closed the door
of the ark when they were in the ark, and he had pitched it.
He told Noah, you pitch it within and without. And the word pitch
means atonement. And there was one window in the
ark right above, in the top. So Noah was taught through these
things that the ark was the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a figure
of him. It wasn't him, the wood wasn't
him, but it meant this is how God saves his people. He places
them in Christ. When the flood of his judgment
comes, what happened? The ark floated, it was lifted
up, and they were saved by water. Now he speaks of that in the
next verse. The like figure, so that figure, the ark, Noah
and his family being saved by water, that same figure is represented
in baptism. He says the like figure were
unto even baptism doth also now save us. He doesn't mean our
water baptism saves us. He means that baptism... represents
the fact of how we're saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so
when the Lord says this, he took the bread and he said, this is
my body, he didn't mean it was really his body, his actual body. Obviously, his body was there.
But he says, this is my body, meaning it signifies, it's a
figure of, it represents my body broken for you. And the same
thing with a cup. And here it is with the ark.
And here it is with baptism. Our baptism saves us because
it points to Christ who did save us. But in our baptism, we're
confessing our hope. We're confessing our reason for
that hope. And what is that hope? That we'll
be raised. That we have been raised in spirit
and will be raised in body because the Lord Jesus Christ, the reason
for our hope, bore our sins in His own body, the just for the
unjust. He suffered once for our sins. He died and we died in our sins
with Him. The guilt of our sins and the
condemnation for our sins was buried in His death. God remembers
us no more, our sins no more, just like the dead are no more
remembered in the grave. But then, having fulfilled the
will of God, As Christ, not for himself, but for his people with
him, he was justified, God justified him for his obedience and his
death, justified him from all sin and us also in him. He's our righteousness. And he
died in his body that we might, who are dead because of his death,
might live to righteousness. So baptism signifies this. The hope is that he rose from
the dead, we shall be raised with him. Because he died, was
buried, and in that death and burial, he fulfilled that righteousness,
he answered God for our sins, and God raised him from the dead.
And what is the resurrection but a lifting up? So we have
been lifted up, we've been saved by what baptism signifies, the
death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
we confess this when in our baptism, we go under the water, and we
come back up out of the water, we're buried with Christ, we're
reunited with him, his death is our death, his burial, we
were buried with him in the body of our sins, and the sins are
taken away, God remembers them no more and we're raised again
in justification because He was delivered for our offenses and
was raised again for our justification. Amazing grace. So they were saved,
Noah and his family, in the ark because the judgment that came
lifted the ark up because the ark was delivered, delivering
his people in the flood. Just like Christ, when the wrath
of God was poured out on him and all the suffering for our
sins that God determined should come, and he made full satisfaction,
he was lifted up out of death. Even that judgment lifted Him
up, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life. That's our hope, isn't it? The
hope of the resurrection. The confidence that if Christ
raised, then we've been justified and shall be raised with Him.
All right, does that make sense now? These spirits were those
people who, when Peter wrote, were in the prison of God's judgment.
They had died in their body. Their spirits await the final
judgment. They were sometime disobedient
in the days of Noah, when the long-suffering of God waited
in those days while the ark was preparing. Noah was preaching,
it was the Spirit of Christ preaching in him, that's what it says here,
that he was quickened by the Spirit in verse 18, and he also
went by that Spirit to preach to these spirits in prison, now
in prison, but then were alive and disobedient. And then he
says, we're in few that is eight souls were saved by water and
the gospel comes today and we preach it with fear and with
trembling in meekness because we know that the time is short,
God's judgment will fall and only in Christ is there salvation. And so we preach to men with
urgency and earnestness, flee the wrath to come, look to the
Lamb of God as John the Baptist did, remember? And then he says
here, the like figure who are into even baptism doth also now
save us, not the water baptism, but our baptism with Christ,
which our water baptism signifies. And then he puts in parentheses,
not the putting away of the filth of the flesh. We're not saved
by putting away our own sins. but the answer of a good conscience
toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There it is.
Our justification is in Christ. He says this in Isaiah 45, verse
24 and 25. Their righteousness is of me
and all of Israel shall be justified in the Lord. It's in the Lord
that we're justified. He is our righteousness. He is
our justification. His resurrection is God's proof
And Christ proved that He overcame all of our guilt and our sins.
He took it away. He brought us to God. He removed
our sins. He removed the barrier. And He
gave us His Spirit. He gave us faith to come to God
by Him alone. And that's the answer of a good
conscience. If Christ answered for me, my conscience is sprinkled
by his precious blood. That's the way we come to God.
We don't come to God knowing that we've done what's right
today so that we can come. We come looking to Christ only. It's only his performance that
makes our conscience clear. And in trusting him, we have
a good conscience, don't we? If it's Christ alone, then what
do we have to stand and answer for? He's answered all for us.
And so we come to God for every grace by him. And then he says
in verse 22, here's the victory, who has gone into heaven, notice,
the one who suffered. And we're considering him when
we suffer by the will of God. He himself is gone into heaven
and is on the right hand of God. He who rose from the dead for
our justification is gone into heaven. He's received the inheritance,
the reward, and is on the right hand of God. Notice, and angels
and authorities and powers being made subject to him. Nothing
is left out. I don't care if it's the local
councilman, or the supervisor of your county, or the mayor
of your city, or the governor of your state, or the president
of the nation, or the head of the CIA, or the FBI, or the NIH,
or the Justice Department, they're all under Christ. He raises up
the basis of men. and He controls them. They're
subject to Him. They don't move a muscle without
Him. Notice here, and this is our
deliverance, right? We profess before men that Christ
is our hope. We profess before men because
of His life and His death and His resurrection were justified,
and we have an eternal hope. Look, our Savior Himself, our
forerunner, is already in heaven. He has taken possession of our
inheritance at the right hand of God, making intercession for
us, and everything is put in subjection to Him. Can you see
it? No, not with eyes. But with faith,
I'm absolutely confident this is the case. I don't have to
try to undo what I see in the news. the Lord Jesus Christ is
in control. I don't have to worry about my
employer when he unjustly accuses me of something. I just submit
in meekness and in fear to Christ. And I submit to the delegated
authority in my life, trusting that God will take care of me.
If we suffer as a Christian, we commit the keeping of our
souls to him as a faithful creator. Chapter four, verse 19, but here
he says in verse one, just quickly cover the next two verses, for
as much then. Now he's trying to give us as
believers the comfort and encouragement to build us up and what is the
foundation he gives? Christ in him crucified. Notice,
for as much then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh,
Arm yourselves, you soldiers of Christ, pick up these arms,
this armament, this shield, this sword, this breastplate of righteousness,
this helmet of salvation. You look to Christ and what he
suffered by the will of God and how he's now seated in heaven
because God is faithful. He suffered for us in the flesh,
arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. For he that has
suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. When the Lord Jesus
Christ was in this world, he bore our sins. But when he went
to the cross, he laid aside our sins in the grave. He answered
for them. Our sins are removed from us. And when he rose again, he had
no more sin, no more sin. It was laid aside. And so we,
when we die in Christ, we will be raised. And when we're raised,
guess what? In our souls, no more sin. In
our bodies, when they're raised, no more sin. We've ceased from
sin in our death. Death, the suffering in the flesh
that brings death, causes us to, in our body, it goes into
the grave. But our souls immediately go
to be with the Lord. And now we've ceased from sin.
We've ceased from it. In order that, he says, he that
has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin that he should
no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lust
of men, but to the will of God. When we live in this life, knowing
that we're subject to death in our body, we live knowing we
have but a short time. How old are you? Well, subtract
a few years from 100. Subtract your age from 100, that's
how much time you have. You're not going to live much
beyond 100 if you do get that far. That's not very long. Think
about how old you are now. Maybe you're 12, 13. But don't
consider your youth to be an indication you have a long time
to live. God says that the best of man,
the flower of the field, man is like that, it just falls away
like grass. So our life is short. Our body
is subject to all sorts of afflictions and ultimately will die. So we
live how? We're short timers. We look to
Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. We see
how for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God. And so
we also arm ourselves with the same mind. All of this life is
short. I'm gonna die. This body's going
away. I'll be free from sin. So what do we do? Well, now,
We no longer should live the rest of the time in the flesh
to the lusts of men. We don't live, we don't owe men
in this world anything. We owe Christ everything. And
we don't owe our bodies anything. We've been delivered from the
body of this death. But we live to the will of God.
There you go. We live to the glory of God.
Christ, the will of God for Christ, suffer for sins. Deliver your
people from their sins. God's will for us, look to him
who suffered for us. He died the just for the unjust
that he might bring us to God. Look to him. Isn't that what
God says in scripture? Jesus says, look unto me and
be ye saved, all the ends of the world. of the ends of the
earth, for I am God and there is none else. So we look, we
walk in this life ever looking to Christ, trusting that he will
bring us to himself as he has said in his word, he has already
brought us to God in his own death, burial, and resurrection.
And in the confession of this, In our baptism, we confess our
hope is Christ, that we live to His glory, and though we suffer
because of that, realize this, that our baptism in Christ is
our salvation, and we do it emblematically, symbolically, in that baptism,
in obedience to Him, confessing and suffering for it, if need
be, by the will of God, knowing that this body will soon be laid
aside. We have no obligation to live
to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. What a great Savior
that He would use His own life and suffering and death and resurrection
and exaltation to teach us how to live by faith in Him. Let's
pray. Father, we thank You for Your
Word and for our Savior. You chose Him and chose us in
Him. All that he did is counted for
us. We now have access to God. We're
brought near because of his suffering in our place, the just one for
the unjust ones. And he suffered only once. And
we also live our life but once. And though our life seems long
in the moment, it's a very short, light affliction compared to
his, which was an intense, indescribable suffering. And yet, in all of
his suffering, he looked with joy for that that was set before
him, that promise of his people with him in eternity, that they
would see his face and he would open his heart to us and disclose
all of his goodness. and His loving kindness and His
grace towards us, that He would save us from our sins by His
own suffering and death. Let us now, as those who have
been made debtors to grace, bind our hearts, Lord, that we would
live for His glory in everything that we think, say, and do. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.