So we're in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 13. Submit yourselves
to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be
to the king as supreme or unto governors as unto them that are
sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise
of them that do well. For so is the will of God that
with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish
men, as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness,
but as the servants of God. Honour all men, love the brotherhood,
fear God, honour the King. Servants, be subject to your
masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also
to the froward. For this is thankworthy if a
man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if when
ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But
if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently,
this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called,
because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example,
that ye should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile
found in his mouth, who when he was reviled, reviled not again,
when he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to
him that judgeth righteously, who his own self bare our sins
in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins,
should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray,
but are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
great example. The Lord is an example to his
people, a great example. And Peter here uses the picture
of the example of Christ to teach us lessons about our life and
how we should live. In verse 21 of 1 Peter chapter
2 he says, for even he run to where ye called, because Christ
also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should
follow his steps. I've called this sermon this
morning simply for us because I think that that little phrase
in the middle, just these two little words in the middle of
this verse are a hinge upon the door of the understanding of
how we are to grasp the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for
his people and this great work of example that he has left to
us. Certainly there are many pictures
in scripture which tend to this theme of Christ our example. For example, he is our master
and we his servants. Now when a master speaks, his
servants' eyes go to him and they follow after him and they
do his bidding. and they identify with him. He
is the master and we are the servants. He is the teacher and
we are the students. Again, a good teacher will show
his students how they are to act, how they are to go about
the business that he is teaching them. He is the shepherd, and
we are the sheep. We follow him. Where he goes,
we go. What he does, we do. It is a
foolish sheep that wanders away, that goes off the path that the
shepherd has directed to. He is the leader. He is the captain of our salvation,
and we are his followers. He is our elder brother, and
we are his siblings. and we look to our elder brother
as a pattern of how we should live. He is the head and we are
the body. And there are any number of pictures
in scripture that show us this emphasis of our saviour as our
great example. Now, By the grace of God, it is my privilege to point you
to the Saviour, our example. By the grace of God, you will
never hear me from this pulpit directing you back to Moses'
law, directing you back to the old dispensation, to the day
of law, to the day of works, to the day when people were given
a code of conduct and said, do this or else. That is not the rule of life
of a believer. That is not how we live. But
rather, as God enables, I will constantly seek to point you
to the Lord Jesus Christ. I will frequently and regularly
lift up the Lord Jesus Christ as the picture for us to follow. Look at his words, look at his
deeds, look at his actions, look at his ways and follow him. He is the pattern, the perfect
pattern upon which to model our lives. And this is Peter's reasoning
in this passage. We are saved, he says. We are
called, he says. We are sanctified for the service
of God. We are conformed, Paul says in
another place, to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are
made like unto him as he has been made like unto us for our
deliverance and salvation. He became one with us. He took upon himself our flesh. He took upon himself this burdensome
world in order to live before men,
though without sin, and became the perfect sacrifice and example
for his people. So Peter says in verse 21, Christ
has left us an example and we should follow in his steps. And that example is the believer's
rule of conduct. Or as we might say, re-echoing
the words that were spoken in the book of Ezekiel, how are
we to live? How then shall we live? We live in pursuit of the example
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what his church is called
to do. And oh yes, we lament our weaknesses. We lament the fleshiness which
besets us and all of the lusts of the flesh which tempt us round
about. We struggle in this world of
sin and death. And the believer longs to be
more Christ-like. He longs to be more gracious,
more gentle, more kind, more patient, more like Jesus every
day. In John chapter 13 and verse
15, the Lord Jesus Christ himself says, I have given you an example
that you should do as I have done to you. And how did our Savior live?
Sometimes we need to reflect upon these truths and realize
that the practical day-to-day experiences that we encounter
were also the very same things that the Lord Jesus Christ encountered. Was the Savior successful? Was
he fulfilled? Was he happy in the way in which
the world would say success and fulfillment and happiness is
the portion of a man or a woman? Not at all. Not at all. Indeed, some of the words that
are used for the Lord Jesus Christ in scriptures paint a completely
different picture. Peter is going to spend quite
a lot of this passage before us today thinking about the prophecy
of Isaiah, specifically the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 53. And from there, we too can draw,
as the minds of these readers would be drawn to Christ, words
that were used to describe our Master, words that were used
to describe our example. Do you know that the Lord Jesus
Christ had no form or comeliness? He was poor in his circumstances. He was born in a poor village.
He lived an impoverished life. He worked with his hands and
the sweat of his brow. He knew what it was for three
decades to live in relative obscurity. The prophet says, there was no
beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected
of men. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. These are characteristics of
the Lord Jesus Christ in his earthly life. And we can identify
with that Yes, there are some who are attractive, there are
some who have wealth, there are some who have fame, there are
some who have fulfilment and joy in this world, but rarely
do those things fall to the Lord's people. More often we find that
they are the poorest people. They are the meanest people.
They are the least desirable people that the world would spend
time with. They feel marginalized in this
world. They feel that they are not welcome
in this world. And this is the portion of the
Lord's people as it was the portion of our Savior. Might we not expect
to bear His likeness in these things too? And should that surprise
us that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble are called? And on the contrary, God has
chosen the base things of this world and things that are despised
to bring down the things that are glorious in the sight of
men. Humility becomes the church. and poverty besets the church. So in this passage, Peter is
directing us to understand what it is that the Lord Jesus Christ
has done and how he is an example to us. In verses 13 through to
20, Peter directs the dearly beloved, those who are loved
of God, those who are loved by the apostle, those who are loved
by the saints of God, not to think too highly of themselves,
but for the Lord's sake, to submit to the challenges and the trials
and the difficulties that they find themselves in in this world. And that's not an easy thing
to do. Therefore, Peter is saying that
in the face of these trials, in the face of these challenges,
endeavour to endure patiently. This is what will emulate the
pattern that the Lord has given us. This is what will honour
the Lord whom we profess and seek to serve. If they have persecuted
me, says the Lord Jesus, they will also persecute you. We are to serve with respect
our masters, We are to endure trials patiently. We are to give
the rulers that have been set up in this world their proper
place and their proper honour, whether they are good or whether
they are not good. We are to love our brothers and
sisters in the church because we know that the Lord Jesus Christ
loves them too. And in verse 21, the apostle
says, You who profess Christ, you who say that you're a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you who endeavour to identify with
the gospel of the Saviour, You are called in this world to well-doing. The world looks on and sees your
life. It looks on and sees your lifestyle. It looks on and sees the things
that you do. And we are called to well-doing
because we are called to follow the pattern of Christ, who was
always good and always kind and always gracious. We're told that his trial that
they brought in false witnesses and they tried to say that he
was responsible for all manner of evil actions and they tripped
themselves up and confused themselves because they couldn't even agree
on the stories that they told about the Lord Jesus Christ who
did no sin. He is our great example and so
the Lord's people seek to honour him. We are called to well-doing. but we're also called to suffer
in our well-doing. To suffer in our well-doing. Now, people like to get praised
for their well-doing. But the church, those who are
of Christ, are called to suffer for their well-doing. Why is
that? Because we set up such a contrast to the values and
the principles and the morality of the world around about us.
That's just the way of it. Because we seek to honour God,
because we seek to pattern our lives after the Lord Jesus Christ,
the world hated him and it will hate us. So we're called to well-doing. but we know that we will suffer
in that very place. And we are also called, says
Peter in verse 21, to do it patiently, because our Saviour walked this
way before us. Peter says, Christ suffered for
us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps. Now the rest of the passage here
draws from Isaiah 53 as we've stated. And Peter shows how the
Lord Jesus Christ is the object. of that prophecy in Isaiah 53. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
one who is the suffering servant. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
one who grew up before men, who had no comeliness, and who was
as that one who gave his life for his sheep. And what the apostle gives us
here in these few verses from 21 to the end of the chapter
is a precious restatement and confirmation of the Gospel accomplishments
of the Lord Jesus and how the Church's hope and how the Church's
assurance and how the Church's comfort fixes upon the things
that the Lord has done for us. fixes upon that little phrase
which says, it was for us. Christ did this for us. That's personal. That's for you. I want you to remember that.
I want you to remember that when you go to work tomorrow. I want
you to remember that when you have hassles and problems with
your daily life. I want you to remember that when
you are up to your ears in the swamp and there's alligators
on every side. I want you to think about it
when you have problems with your wife or problems with your husband
or the children are playing up or it seems as if this world
is crowding in upon you and that you have no reserves left. I
want you to remember what Peter says, that what Christ did, he
did for you. He did for you personally. If you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, this was for us, that the Lord Jesus Christ
endured all of these things. The Lord who did no sin, in whom
there was no deceit, no error, no iniquity, yet he suffered
for us. He was reviled for us. He was crucified for us. He bared his back to the righteous
judgment of God on our behalf. Isaiah 53 verse four says, surely
he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And here
in verse 24, the apostle reiterating and rephrasing, paraphrasing
that same verse says, who his own self bear our sins in his
own body on the tree. Isaiah prophesied about what
this suffering servant of God, this one who would come, the
anointed one, the promised Messiah, he prophesied about what he would
do. Peter applies it personally to
those who love the Lord. And that work of the Lord Jesus
Christ was a substitutionary work. It speaks of his suretyship. It speaks of the fact that he
took all our obligations upon himself. He took all the demands
of a holy God against us, and he called them his own. He called
them his own, and then he acted accordingly. He was our substitute. And it displays beautifully this
central gospel truth of Christ becoming sin for us. He bore our sins in his body. He took the debt, he carried
the burden, and he died for us. He who was righteous became sin,
so that we who are sinners might be righteous in his sight. Righteous to live for him, righteous
to live righteously, to follow his example, to seek to identify
with him as he leads us in this world. And I admire the intimacy
of the apostle here as he writes these things to these scattered
pilgrims and strangers. That's what he's called them.
Dearly beloved, yes, but a scattered people, a weak people, an impoverished
people scattered around a few here and a few there and yet
this letter comes to them with a personalness and an intimacy
that speaks of the loveliness of Christ and all that he has
done for us. He says that Christ took the
stripes by which we are healed. Our healing comes from Christ
interposing himself between God and us, between that law that
condemned and us. Our healing from sin, our healing
from guilt, our healing from a just condemnation was obtained
and secured by the Lord Jesus Christ's suffering on our behalf. and the death of our substitute,
that surety, that one who took our place, delivers us from spiritual
death and separation. Because he died, we live. And that's the mercy of God. That's the plan of salvation. That is the evidence of his grace
towards his people and his goodness extended to us out of love. A goodness that is freely bestowed
upon us and displayed to us in this world, in the gospel, and
by the work of our great example. Did we earn that or merit it
in any way? Have we deserved it? No, says
Peter, we are the sheep that went astray. We are the people
that wandered off. Is there any reason to think
that we aren't justifiably in a dangerous position? If we wander
off the path, if we go where it's dangerous, if we do that
which satisfies us rather than that which satisfies God, we
are the sheep that went astray. So we speak of the free gift
of grace. We speak of it being given not
out of merit, not out of deserts, but because God is good to his
people and because he loves us. And we speak of it being freely
given, not earned, not deserved. How dearly it was purchased. Yes, it is freely given, but
how dearly it was purchased for us who are redeemed by the blood
of Jesus Christ. I want you to note with me, and
we're not going to spend too much more time on this, but I
want you to note with me Peter's description of the sheep that
are returned. He says in verse 25, For ye were
as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the shepherd
and bishop of your souls. We are returned by the powerful,
effectual grace of God. We are returned not by our own
efforts, not by our own desires, but we are returned by the work
of God, the Holy Spirit, We are returned to the shepherd and
bishop of our souls. Christ again is the object in
Peter's mind. Christ is the great shepherd.
Christ is the good shepherd. He is the shepherd of his church
and the shepherd of his people. And we are his flock. He calls
us the flock of his heritage. the flock that was long ago his,
that was committed into his care and keeping, the flock that foolishly,
because of sin, because of waywardness, because of the fall, went astray,
but now has been gathered again by God the Spirit and brought
once again to their Saviour, Jesus Christ. You have been returned
the flock of his heritage, the flock of his pasture, because
he leads us. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He leads us beside the still
waters. He leads us in the green pastures. He leads us to those places of
comfort and security and sustenance. He gives us of himself as a shepherd
to his sheep. And we feed upon the Lord as
we hear the gospel proclaimed, as we come together to fellowship
together in these holy things, as we speak together of the heavenly
accomplishments that the Lord Jesus Christ has secured for
his people. These things nourish our souls
and give us strength and enable us to face the trials of our
day. And if it is hard out there and if it is difficult in your
life and if there are challenges that you have to face, where
are you going to get your help? Where are you going to have that
sustaining power to face the trials of your day and yet be
preserved in the Lord Jesus Christ? drawing from him day by day such
sustenance as he is pleased to give in reflection upon all that
he has accomplished for your soul and for your life. These are lovely phrases, the
flock of his heritage, the flock of his pasture. It speaks of
us as his possession. and it speaks to us of the blessedness
that we possess because he provides for our every need. He is the
shepherd of his people but there's another word in there as well
you'll notice verse 25. We have been returned unto the
shepherd and the bishop of your souls. A bishop is an overseer. That's what it means. It's one
that someone who sits up at the top of the pile and oversees
all that's going on underneath. There are some churches who have
in their hierarchy bishops, and usually the bishops are top.
The bishops coming to town, then everything gets cleaned in the
church because the top man's about to arrive. Well, here is
the true bishop of the Lord's Church. Christ is our bishop. This is not some man-made position. This is speaking of Christ as
our bishop, and he is the One who has oversight of his church
and people. It's another precious title of
our Saviour. He is the overseer of our souls. Believer, think on this. The Lord Jesus Christ has daily
oversight of your life. Whatever it is you're doing,
wherever it is you're going, Whatever it is you have to face,
the Lord Jesus Christ is watching. The Lord Jesus Christ sees. The
Lord Jesus Christ knows every situation into which you're brought. He knows the ones that are not
fair. He knows the ones that are hard to bear. He knows the
trials. He knows the difficulties. He
is with you in it. He is the overseer of your soul. But that has another dimension
to it too. because not only has he oversight
in the sense that he watches over us, he has oversight in
the sense that he has responsibility for us. Your soul was committed
into the hands of Christ, committed to the care of Christ, committed
into his charge in the eternal covenant of peace. He was given
oversight of your soul in that great covenant purpose of God's
grace and salvation. And the Lord Jesus Christ willingly agreed to provide for your soul
everything that was needed to satisfy God's holiness. That's what it means for Christ
to have oversight of your soul. He will supply everything needed
to satisfy God's holiness in you. When this world was created,
right in that very first day, when this world was created,
Christ had oversight of your soul. He saw you. He knew that you were His. He
knew that He was building this world in order to redeem your
soul. He created this world with the
express purpose of securing your salvation. When Adam fell in the garden,
Christ had oversight of your soul. When Joseph went down to
Egypt, Christ had oversight of your soul. When Israel came up
out of Egypt, Christ had oversight of your soul. And he has formed
that path through the time of the prophets and the kings, all
the way through the history of scripture, always in mind that
come the time that was appointed, he would enter into this world
as the one who had been spoken of and foretold, and he with
responsibility for oversight of your soul, would accomplish
all that was needful to satisfy a holy God on your behalf. And when he began his ministry,
he saw your soul. When he went to the cross, he
saw your soul. When he rose from the dead, he
saw your soul. And it was all with the express
purpose of delivering your soul out of the bondage of sin and
bringing you as a prize, as the shepherd and bishop of your soul
into heaven's glory and his father's presence. So he sent his apostles out into
the world for you. He sent his gospel to the ends
of the earth for you. He brought a preacher in time
to your hearing and he sent his spirit into your heart to accomplish
that oversight which he had been given. And he didn't stop looking after
you then, he looks after you still. He is watching over you
now. He is protecting your path. He
is providing for your needs. He is directing your steps and
he is safeguarding your soul in the midst of this evil generation. My friends, if indeed Christ
is the shepherd and bishop of your soul, you are blessed. You are blessed to be numbered
in His flock. You are blessed to be overseen
in His love and by His power. May God grant us faith to trust
Him, desire to follow after Him as our great example, and strength
to serve Him all the days of our life. Amen.