Sermon 1 Peter 2:18-25 “Living the New Life”
Pittsgrove Presbyterian Church
May 3, 2020
Prelude - Give Thanks - Margaret Powers and Nick Mercado
Order of Worship
Anthem - Just a Closer Walk - Nick Mercado, solo, Margaret Powers, piano
Watch a video of this sermon.
Today I will be preaching my third in a series of sermons on our new lives in Christ as told to us by the Apostle Peter. Two weeks ago we saw that we can rejoice even though our new lives can make things difficult for us because of the gifts we receive from Christ. Last week we looked at how, in this new life, Christ transforms us into people who genuinely love one another. Today we will look at how in our new lives we are comforted in times of suffering and sorrow by the faith, hope, and love of God. We will get to this, but first, let’s pray.
Father in heaven, I ask for blessings to pour down upon this church. Send your faith, hope, and love to us as we endure these times of suffering and sorrow. Send your Spirit to comfort us. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
1 Peter 2:18-25 18 Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. 19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20 If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23 When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your soul.
You walk past a beautiful mahogany table that you purchased when you first got married. You remember your kids as they grew up around this table. But you just got back from the hospital after visiting your wife. While at the hospital your daughter told you that it is time for both of you to move to a retirement home to receive assistance in living. You wonder what will happen to this table when you leave your home.
You answer the phone and it is your son. His cancer has returned. There are new symptoms and the doctors are not sure what to do. All you can think of doing at a time like this is to sit down and pray to God who has sustained you in the past.
You are sitting in your favorite chair in the home where you have lived for over sixty years. You are watching a blank television because someone has misplaced the remote control and you have no idea where it is. You look around the room and everything looks unfamiliar. You become frightened that you have been taken somewhere. So you pick up the phone and call the only number you remember and tell the church’s answering machine that you need help because you don’t know where you are.
You eat dinner with a sense of dread. You hope that you can keep the food down. Sometimes you can. But you know that usually, an hour or so after dinner, you will run to the bathroom in incredible pain. The doctors don’t know what is going on. Thankfully you have a church that will pray for you.
You have been homeless for years. You and your wife have been living in a tent behind a church for a long time. Your wife is sick and was taken to the hospital. You need to know how she is doing. But when you call from a payphone they will not accept collect charges. You are desperate to know how she is doing.
Rarely does a day pass by when I do not pray for someone who is suffering. I keep a list of prayers for the church and pray your prayers every morning. I pray for healing for those who are sick. I pray for discernment for those facing difficult decisions. I pray for relief for those who suffer. Sometimes I pray and the person I pray for gets better. But often I pray for someone and watch that person get worse. Prayer is not magic. There are no guarantees, only hope. This hope comes from our faith in Jesus Christ, who does heal the sick and relieves suffering, but sometimes Jesus works in surprising ways.
The Rev. Craig Barnes tells a story about a woman with crippling arthritis. He met her at a prayer service where she walked down the aisle to ask for prayers of healing. Rev Barnes prayed for her. A few months later she returned with a cane and knelt down as he prayed for healing again. The following year she returned in a wheelchair and the pastor and elder knelt down to pray for her. When they finished praying they saw a giant smile on her face. She said “He is merciful, Pastor. Thank God he has healed my heart which was so crippled with anger. At long last, I am a free woman.” The pastor learned that day an important lesson: healing is not just about the body, it is about the heart as well. It wasn’t until this woman’s body stopped working that her heart was healed and started to work.
The Apostle Peter knew that people in his churches were suffering. The wild enthusiasm that had accompanied the resurrection was beginning to wear off. Now there were ordinary people leading ordinary lives that included suffering disease, and death. And they were asking what new life means in their situations. And this is the same question we ask. Peter said that we are blessed whenever we suffer because we know that God is here with us. God is the good shepherd who finds us when we are lost and binds up our wounds. And God knows when our suffering is undeserved and we are still able to maintain our faith. God loves you in your suffering just as he loved his own son in his suffering on the cross. Our calling is to follow Jesus even to our own suffering on our cross. God knows this and loves us in our suffering.
When we suffer we can rest in the comfort of God. We know that our suffering has nothing to do with anything we have done in our lives. Jesus already took the punishment for our sins on his own body on the cross. So for us, suffering is not a punishment for sin. Rather suffering is an opportunity for us to experience God in a new and exciting way. In suffering, we develop faith by our experience of God’s love for us and develop hope in a glorious future with new life. All of this comes to us by the grace of God.
When we experience suffering our faith grows. By faith, I don’t mean just belief in the existence of God. Rather I am talking about faith in a particular kind of God. We discover that we have a God who meets us in our pain. Even in the midst of our pain and sense of loss, we are aware of the presence of God. God’s Spirit has come to comfort us. This helps us to form not just an intellectual faith in a transcendent God but an emotional faith in an immanent God. We find in our experience of God a God who loves us dearly and fills us with great hope
We find that this hope is far more than just wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is all that those, outside of Christ, have. But we experience that our hope is in something real and tangible. Our hope rests in God’s faithfulness to his promises. We begin to look at suffering not as a time of imprisonment but as a time of preparation for something new. We start to trust God who leads us into an uncertain future. In suffering, we have a personal experience of the reality of God and God’s steadfast faithfulness. And most of all we experience an overflowing of God’s love.
The love we experience in times of suffering comes from God. This passes from God through faithful believers to us. We experience God’s love through the love of the people around us. Suffering gives other people opportunities to show compassion and grace in many different ways. We experience God’s love through the love of our friends and family who comfort us during our times of need. When we need God’s love the most God makes that love available to us through the incarnational love of those with new life. And God’s incarnational love is expressed through communities of faith, churches when it is needed most.
In suffering, we experience our own pain, grief, and loss, but we also experience God’s faithfulness, hope, and love. God too has experienced all of these emotions when his son Jesus Christ died on the cross. Jesus experienced the pain of dying. But he also experienced the great faithfulness, hope, and love of his Father.
In a few moments, we will be praying for each other. This is the most important thing that we do as a church. As we pray for each other let pray for healing. Let us also expand our prayers to include a request that God sends faith, hope, and love. And let us be a people of genuine mutual love as we care for those in our congregation who are in need.
Father in heaven I pray for healing for the people in this congregation and for the healing of their friends and family who are suffering. Comfort them with your presence. Fill them with your faithfulness, hope, and love. Transform us into your people who can bring your love to those who are in need. We pray this in the name of Jesus who suffered on a cross for us. Amen.
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