Alright, in 1 Peter chapter 3,
let's look here at verses 17 and 18. For it is better if the will of God be so, that
ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing. For 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. We see three things here about
suffering in this world. First thing we see is it's better.
It's better for the believer to suffer in this world for well-doing. The second thing we see here
is it's the will of God. And the third thing we see here
is the Spirit of God instructs us in the heart to remember our
Redeemer. And by these things, He truly
does make us to remember our Redeemer, to draw us nearer to
our Redeemer. You notice there in that 16th
verse, He says, having a good conscience, And there at the
end he says, he speaks of a good conversation. And both of these
are in Christ. Both of these are in Christ.
It's better, it's better if we suffer for well-doing than for
evil-doing. It's better, first of all, that
we suffer and if we suffer it be for well-doing and not for
evil-doing. That's obvious. But the word
here, it's better if we suffer. It helps us, brethren, when we
suffer, when we've done that which is right. That's what well-doing
means. When we suffer for that which
is right, it helps us to examine ourselves when we're accused,
when we're charged with something. God's able to use even the false
accusations of men who charge brethren falsely. He's able to
use those to cause us to be more conscientious of what we're doing
and how we're living, what we're saying. We have our conscience
purged from dead works, from trying to come to God in anything
of us that makes the difference. If there's anything of you that
has made the difference, You need to be purged from that,
and I need to be purged from that, because it's God who maketh
thee to differ. And we're purged in our conscience
from dead works by the Holy Spirit, by the sprinkling of the blood
of Christ. And when that happens, when that
happens, we know, we have an understanding by this cleansing
so that we can behold Him in truth. We know that it's not
because of what we did. It's not because of works of
righteousness we did. It wasn't because of my faith.
It was because He washed me in regeneration. And He renewed
me by the Holy Ghost. And He gave me faith. And He
gave me repentance. Repentance from me. Repentance
from the dead works of thinking. I make the difference to Him.
And when He purges us of that, He purges us of guilt. Because beholding Christ, we
behold it in Him. Our sin's been put away in Him.
Christ justified, or in Christ we're justified. He did it. God
did it in His Son. We've been reconciled unto Him
by God's work, not our work. And that's the faith that lays
hold of Him. Now that conscience is purged. And because it is
purged, we know that as Christ is, that's how we are. How is
He? He's at the right hand of God.
We are at the right hand of God. That means He's accepted of God
and we're accepted in Him. That means He's complete. We're
complete in Him. That means that right now every
believer is accepted of God because of what He's done. And this purging,
this cleansing of our conscience makes us to behold that. And
when we behold this truth, we serve Him not because we're trying
to be accepted of Him, but because we are accepted of Him. Now because
we're trying to be complete, we are complete. Not because
we're trying to be holy, because we are holy. We have been set
apart and sanctified and separated into Christ Jesus. That's why
we're serving Him. That's why we're serving Him.
And because we have this hope, not in what we're doing, but
in what Christ has done, then now we do have a conscious awareness,
our conscious object of our faith is Christ, and our conscious
objective is to adorn Christ in everything that we do, everything
we say. That's what we want to do. That's
exactly what we want to do. We want to actively seek to live
so that we always have a conscience void of offense toward God and
toward men. That's the active living life
of every believer. That's his desire. That's our
desire. That's mine. That's yours. But we still can't
escape the accusations from evil men. We can't escape the charges
that will be laid against us. You find yourself laying accusations
against somebody else. And when you do, if you're honest
with yourself and think about it, you realize, I do that. I do all those things. I do all
those things, and it's constantly this awareness we have of that. But when we are accused by others,
and evil is laid against, charges are laid against us, it does
cause us, brethren, to think about, and first of all, not
defend ourselves. That is generally our first thought,
defend ourselves. But when God brings us to ourselves,
Our thought is to think about, well, now let me look at what
I'm doing. Let me think about what I'm doing.
Could I be doing this differently? And it makes us to understand
in the future, now we know what the accuser's looking at. We
know what the accuser's gonna be looking at, don't we? So we
have an understanding of that. So it's better, even if we suffer
for well-doing, it keeps us constantly reminded of what the world's
looking at, what they're gonna charge you with, what they're
gonna be accusing you of, so that makes us more careful of
ourselves. So it's better if the will of
God be so that you suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing.
All right? Here's the second thing. Remember
this, that when we do suffer, it's the will of God. It is the
will of God. There's absolutely nothing that
happens in this world that's outside of the will of God. Verse
17, it's better if the will of God be so, that we suffer for
well-doing than for evil-doing. If somebody levels a charge,
it charges you, becomes angry with you, even though you've
done nothing wrong, to bring it on yourself. It's not by chance. Not by chance. It's directly
according to God's will. God uses everything in this world,
good and evil, to teach his children that we need him constantly. Now let me give you an example
of this. You hear the word preached. You hear this gospel preached.
A description of what you can expect in this world. Saturday
night we looked at Psalm 17 and David said, he described the
oppressor like this. He said he's like a young lion.
You know how a young lion will lower his eyes and that brow
will become furrowed when he's looking at his prey and he's
intensely, fiercely set on his prey. David said that's what
the oppressor, the oppressive man is like. He's like a lion. He's just looking at you and
he's angry and he's fierce and he's ready to just tear you from
one end to the other. Have you ever seen that look?
You ever seen that look? The world is conformed to the
world. And David said, the world fights
back with that same lion fierceness and lowers their eyes against
each other and they just meet head to head and they're conformed
to each other. It's the world being conformed
to him, exactly. David said, as for me, I'm going
to turn my face from them and I will behold thy face in righteousness. He said, I'll be satisfied when
I awake with thy likeness. This is what the believer has
our face set towards God, and we want to be like Him, conform
to Him, and we shall be. We shall be. But because of that,
we don't want to meet the oppressive line of this world with the same
oppressive oppression. But we hear that word and we
rejoice in it and it fills our heart and we have confidence
seeing what God has said is so and we have confidence of it
strengthens us and it encourages us and it lifts us up in the
inner man. But Satan's desire is to take away that word just
as quickly as it's sung. Quickly as it's sung. To take
it away. So you go out, you've heard a
message, it lifts your heart up, you go out and a man lays
charges against you. He puts his eyes down on you
and he comes at you like a young lion. Fierce and strong and angry. If all we see is a man, we've
forgotten we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. It's
not a man. Oh, it may be a man doing it,
but it's not a man. It's not a man. The Lord turned
to His own. He turned to His own. Turned
to Peter one time and he said, Satan, get behind me. Get behind
me. Peter was the one talking. He
said, Satan, get behind me. Satan does devour. He said, Peter, Satan has desired
you that he might sift you like wheat. And no sooner has that
happened, and that word begins to be taken. But why would God
allow that to happen? If He has the will and the power
to stop that, why would He be willing to let something like
that happen? He teaches us like that how quickly
we need Him. How quickly we need Him. We could
be listening to a message in the service and when our flesh
inflame in us and we forget everything we heard and don't hear anything
else. It teaches us how badly we need
God. constantly. No sooner do we find ourselves
strong in His Word, strengthened by His Word, rejoicing in His
Word, and we find that flesh in flame. And I'm talking about,
I know it. I know it. I know it. And our
minds are taken off Christ. They're taken off of Him. And
if we keep on thinking about, meditating upon, repeating to
ourselves, everything that has inflamed our flesh, you know
what it does? It's like pouring gasoline on a fire. It just inflames
our flesh. It inflames our flesh. It's very
difficult, it's very difficult for us to remember. It's so much easier, really,
for us to just be quiet. It takes a lot of effort. It
takes a lot of effort for us to go out of the way, and be
inflamed by those things that offend us, and those things where
we're wronged and everything. And this is not just pretty words
and a sermon, and you come in and you hear it, and you go out
and say, all right, well, we got that for the day. This is
life. It's life. But when we repeat
those things in our own minds, in our own conscience, and we
continually think about those things, We separate ourselves
from our chief friend. And when we speak of them to
others, we separate one another from chief friends. Not just
each other as friends. Our friend that sticks closer
than a brother is Christ. It's Christ. And the whole thing
Satan is trying to do, and the whole thing he wants to do is
separate us from him. our minds and our thoughts and
our affections and everything from Him. Separate us from Him. And so we repeat this whole scene
and we start thinking about the whole scene and it doesn't do
us any good at all. Doesn't do us any good at all.
And if we do lose control and we revile back or we speak back
as we ought not to speak back, all we've done is become conformed conformed to the world. Well,
look back over at Psalm 17. I want you to hear again what
David prayed. And David knew this. David was
surrounded by this same thing. And this was his prayer. Verse 5. Hold up my goings in thy paths,
that my footsteps slip not. I've called upon thee, for thou
wilt hear me, O God. Incline thine ear unto me and
hear my speech. Show thy marvelous lovingkindness,
O thou that sayest by thy right hand, them which put their trust
in thee. thou that savest by thy right
hand them which put their trust in thee from those that rise
up against them. Keep me as the apple of the eye,
hide me under the shadow of thy wings from the wicked that oppresseth
me, from my deadly enemies who compass me about. Save me, keep me from Doesn't it serve well that when
we suffer for well-doing? Doesn't it serve well when we
see how quickly our flesh rises up? Doesn't it serve well to
show us just how badly we need God to keep us every hour? Doesn't it serve well to cause
us to cry out to him, Lord, save me, save me? Well, it's better. It makes us examine ourselves,
makes us to know what the enemy is going to accuse us of. And
secondly, it's the will of God to teach us that we need Him.
We've got to have Him. Thirdly, it makes us to remember
our Redeemer. Look at verse 15 there. He said,
Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. We saw that that meant
from Isaiah 8, 13. Let Him be your fear. Let Him
be your dread. There's something far worse going
on in every conflict in this life. Something far more important
than just one man against another man. Something far greater than
that. In every instance. In every instance. For the believer. Sanctify the
Lord God in your heart. Look down at verse 18. For Christ
also hath once suffered for sin. the just for the unjust, that
he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but
quickened by the Spirit. Have I suffered? Christ also once suffered. Have I suffered from one particular
sinner speaking contrary against me? Every single person Christ
came into contact with was contrary to His holy nature. Have I suffered unjustly? I had
no right to accuse me of anything. Christ was just. So just in everything, God spoke
from heaven and said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased. He had never spoke from heaven
and said that about me. Have I suffered for the unjust? All of Christ's suffering was not for just men. It wasn't for men who were just.
The elect of God were everyone enemies in our mind by wicked
works. Haters of God. Enmity against God. And that's
who he suffered for. What did he suffer? Have I been
falsely accused? He was falsely accused. Have
I been threatened? He was threatened. Have I been
betrayed by my closest friend? He was. Have I been stripped naked? And
spit upon. And mocked. And beaten beyond
recognition. You still recognize me, and I
still recognize you. But Christ was. He was. Have I been lifted up
on a cursed tree? He was. Have I borne the wrath of justice
for every unjust elect child of God? He did. To what extent have I really
suffered? To what extent have you really
suffered? This is the extent Christ suffered. Verse 18, being
put to death in the flesh. We hadn't really suffered, have
we? Not really. How did Christ bear this suffering?
Look back at chapter 2, verse 22. He did no sin, neither was guile
found in His mouth, who when He was reviled, reviled not again. When He suffered, He threatened
not. This is not just in word, This
is in his heart. In his heart. Yeholi, through
and through. But he committed it to him that
judgeth righteously. I want you to see something here
about this suffering. God's long suffering. Our God
is long suffering. Christ suffered long. In Noah's
day, Genesis 6-5 said that the Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth. and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Now this
is who Christ dwelt among when he walked this earth. But it
was Christ in the Spirit preaching through Noah when Noah was preaching
in his day. With the exception of Noah who
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Everybody in that generation
from that generation and some in Noah's family who were saved.
But everybody in that generation, they're now in hell. They're
in prison. That's what verse 19 tells us.
He said that by the Spirit also he went and preached unto the
spirits in prison. which were sometimes 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." You see there, he went and preached in
Noah's day. And everybody in that generation
was disobedient. Everybody in that generation
was against him. But it says here that God suffered
long. How long did He suffer? He waited
to pour out judgment until that ark was finished. And everybody
was in that ark, and He shut them up in that ark. And when
He shut them up in that ark, then He took vengeance. And He poured out judgment. And
He poured out justice on the earth. But He suffered long. This is what we're being taught
here. If we suffer, if we have the Spirit of God in us, look
to Him. cast yourself on Him. Let none
of these things separate us from Him because it's our fleshly
nature not to suffer but not even a minute. And we find out real fast when
we do begin to suffer for false things how fast we will just
revile back if not restrained by God's grace. Well, why did
He do that? Why did Christ suffer long? Look
back at verse 18. That He might bring us to God.
That He might bring us to God. That's why God will have us to
suffer. He's going to bring us to Himself.
He's going to keep us trusting Himself. And He's going to keep
us from being conformed to this world. And being conformed to
operate just the way the rest of the world Operates not just
for the sake of us Looking good, but for the sake that he's gonna
have us and he's gonna keep us and he's gonna preserve us from
from the world And that's Christ suffered to bring us to him.
What did he accomplish by that suffering? He brought us to him
Have you suffered any stripes, this is what he said with his
stripes I Everybody that's born of God was healed with His stripes. So if you suffer, now remember
where Christ is. Look down at verse 18 at the
end. He was quickened by the Spirit, raised from the dead. This One who is God, this One
who had the Spirit of God poured out upon Him without measure,
this One is now seated at God's right hand. He was raised because
He is God. He was raised by Himself. He
is raised. So what does that mean? What
does that have to do with my suffering? He said, Sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts. He committed everything to Him
that judgeth righteously. Now He said, Sanctify the Lord
God in your hearts. Look down at verse 22. He's gone
into heaven. He's on the right hand of God.
And angels and authorities and powers are all subject unto Him. So we can commit everything to
Him, can't we? Because everything's subject to Him. Everything. Subject to Him. So if we suffer
for well-doing, here's the end. It's better, isn't it? It's better. Always to be for the charges
to be false, but it's better also to suffer so that we can
know what the enemy's looking for. So we can be sure, let's
don't do that. Let's don't give them anything
to charge us with. But it's also good because we know it's the
will of God. God's teaching us something about
ourselves and our need of His grace constantly. in every little
thing. Even things that we lose sight
of and think are just seemingly insignificant little things.
He teaches us by it. And then we remember Christ has
also suffered. And this is where we're going
to find peace and strength in Him. So here's the instruction.
Look at chapter 4 verse 1. For as much then as Christ has
suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with
the same mind. For he that hath suffered in
the flesh hath ceased from sin." Christ had the right hand of
God. He's not suffering from sin anymore. Not anymore. That
he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh
to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. To the will of God. Amen.