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The first reading today is an Old Testament lesson from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53, verses 4 through 6.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.
Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
The grass withers and the flowers fall.
The word of our God stands forever.
And the New Testament lesson is a reading from the first letter of Peter, chapter 1, verses 18 through 22, and chapter 3, verse 18.
For you know that it was not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors,
but with the precious blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish or defect.
To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate.
When he suffered, he made no threats.
Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed.
For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Good morning, Christ Church.
It's kind of crazy that we're one month into summertime here.
It's hard to believe.
I know some of you are brand new, not only to Christ Church, but to this area.
We want you to know that we're very glad that you're here.
We warmly welcome you.
You should know that I'm about to go on vacation tomorrow morning.
So I look forward to getting to know you, but later.
Later.
And some of you, I know, are moving away, which breaks our hearts always.
But to good things, new school opportunities, new job opportunities.
And I would love a chance to say a proper goodbye if that's you after our service today.
I'm really just on a personal note happy to report that this is the best I've felt going into summer vacation in the last five years.
And so I want to thank God for that.
We've endured a lot.
And I thank you for praying for me and for Christ Church.
And it's just so good to be in this place.
These past two months, we've been looking at this letter from one of Jesus' apostles.
He was the leader, really, of Jesus' band of 12 disciples.
His name was Simon Peter.
And Jesus took this ordinary fisherman and he transformed him into an extraordinary witness of the gospel, the good news.
And in our text today, Jesus gives us several nutshell summary statements about what the gospel is all about.
And so I want to talk about that under three headings today.
I want to talk about the centrality of the cross and the meaning of the cross and the result of the cross.
The centrality, the meaning, and the result of the cross.
First of all, let's think together about the centrality of the cross.
If you were to open your pew Bible, and you're welcome to do that,
and you look at the first sentence of this letter that the apostle Peter writes,
he says that he's writing to people who have been, quote, unquote, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.
It's a striking statement.
And then he goes on, as we read in chapter one, he says,
you've been redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus.
In chapter two, as we read, it says that he bore our sins in his body on the tree.
And then in chapter three, Christ suffered for sins to bring us to God.
So it's pretty clear that the cross is central in Peter's mind to the message that he has to give to these people.
And if you know the story of Peter, the centrality of the cross here in his letter is quite astounding.
Because when Jesus predicted his sufferings and his death, Peter protested.
Jesus said to his disciples, he said, I must go to Jerusalem, and I must suffer and be killed,
and on the third day, be raised.
And Peter was brash enough to take Jesus aside,
and to immediately and vehemently contradict Jesus and rebuke Jesus.
And he said this, he said, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.
Never, Peter said.
So how did Jesus respond to Peter?
Well, you can read this episode in Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16,
but Jesus rebuked Peter, and he said, get behind me, Satan.
Now, if Jesus ever says that to you, that's just not a good thing to hear from Jesus.
Okay, get behind me, Satan.
You are not setting your mind on God and the concerns of God,
but merely on human concerns.
And so Jesus tells Peter that if he will not embrace the cross,
then he's just not aligned with God,
and he's not aligned with the concerns of God.
And so what sort of impact, what kind of effect did this have on Peter?
Well, Peter came to understand that the cross of Christ is the center of the Christian faith.
And how did that happen?
Well, Peter encountered the resurrected Jesus on Easter Sunday.
He saw the nail marks in Jesus' glorified body,
and over those next 40 days,
he heard the risen and living Lord giving this giant review session
and going back over all the teaching that he had given over the past three years.
And somewhere in there, I think it all finally clicked for Peter.
For example, think about this sign and this symbol of the Lord's Supper that we have put in front of us.
You can think about all the means that Jesus could have given to us to remember him and to experience him.
And Jesus could have said, you know,
when my disciple community, when my church gathers together,
make sure that you pull out a replica of my manger
so that you remember my birth and the incarnation.
Or he could have said, you know,
make sure you pull out a hammer and a chisel to remember that I was a builder
and to remember the value and dignity of human labor.
Jesus could have said, well, bring out a little model of a boat
because that will signify when I got into the boat and taught all the people on the land.
It will signify my teachings.
Or he could have said, everybody pull out a towel.
Pull out a towel and remember that moment where I washed the feet of my disciples.
Or we could have doves in here as a symbol of the Holy Spirit
that was operative in the life of Jesus.
Jesus had many, many symbols available to him
as the means for which his disciple community was to remember him
and to experience him.
But what did Jesus choose?
He chose the bread and the wine.
And he chose the bread and the wine so that Peter would know
and so that we would know that the Christian faith
is primarily the faith of Christ crucified.
Right?
The bread and the wine, they don't signify the birth of Jesus
or the life of Jesus or the words of Jesus or the works of Jesus
or the resurrection of Jesus or even the coming again of Jesus.
The bread and the wine signify to us Jesus' body broken
and his blood poured out on the cross.
Jesus made it super clear to Peter and all the apostles before he died
and after he was raised from the dead
that the reason he stepped out of eternity and into time
was to die on the cross.
And Peter came to see that without the cross,
there is no salvation for human beings.
There's no hope in this world without the cross.
So if you're exploring Christianity,
you may be wondering,
gosh, there's so much about the Christian faith.
Where do I focus my attention?
And I want you to know that, you know,
without the resurrection of Jesus,
his cross would be meaningless.
So you have to deal with the substantial evidence that we have
for the resurrection of Jesus.
But I would also say at the same time,
you've got to deal with the way that Jesus' followers spoke about his cross.
Take, for example, Saul of Tarsus.
Saul was this zealous Jew.
He was adamantly opposed to Jesus Christ
until he had this encounter with Jesus,
this life-transforming encounter with the risen and living Lord.
And then Paul began to speak in this way.
This is what he says in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2.
He says to this church,
we preach Christ crucified.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Now that does not mean that Paul devoted himself to ignorance
about other important matters.
Paul was educated.
Paul was brilliant.
But it means that all Paul does
and all that Paul teaches is tied to the cross.
And it means that we can understand nothing about Christian doctrine,
Christian ethics, Christian worship, Christian fellowship,
or Christian mission
unless the cross is at the center of all of those concerns.
So as you explore the Christian faith,
if that's you today and you're reading a Christian book
or you are hearing a Christian message,
you're engaging with a Christian group,
and it's not fairly obvious within a reasonable amount of time
that the cross is central to that message
or that group's vision of who God is
and of what God has done.
And if something else has been substituted in the center
other than the cross,
then you know that you're probably not dealing,
you're probably not engaging with
genuine historic Christian faith,
but rather some sort of counterfeit version instead.
So if you're exploring Christianity,
that's my encouragement to you
is to think about the centrality of the cross
for Peter, for Paul, for Jesus himself
who gave us this symbol to remember his cross.
Let's think for a minute too,
not only about the centrality of the cross,
but also the meaning of the cross.
The meaning of the cross.
Look at verse 24
where Peter says these words.
He says he himself, Jesus himself,
bore our sins in his body.
He bore our sins in his body.
And what Peter's talking about there
is that the eternal God became flesh.
The eternal God took a human body
and he assumed our human nature.
Why did he do that?
Well, Peter says it's because of, quote unquote,
our sins.
What is this archaic, nasty little three-letter word
sin mean?
Well, in the Greek,
it's actually a seven-letter word.
It's hamartia.
And when you read Homer
and you read the Iliad or the Odyssey,
Homer uses this word hamartia
to talk about throwing a spear
but missing the mark.
or shooting an arrow
but failing to hit the bullseye,
falling short of your target.
And then if you keep reading on,
and Aristotle and the Greek dramatists,
they use this word hamartia
to talk about a character's tragic error,
a fatal flaw,
some sort of blind spot
that leads to their downfall.
And that's basically what Peter's talking about as well,
that we were made
to hit the bullseye
of loving God
with all that we are.
We were made to love God
from the center of our being,
to find our deepest identity
and our deepest value
in our relationship with God,
in our service to God.
And what Peter's saying
is that we've missed that mark.
We've failed to hit that target.
We've fallen short of the bullseye
of God's design
and His intention for us.
And what Peter's suggesting
is that sin is seeking
to become yourself.
Sin is seeking to get your identity
apart from God
in something other than God.
And that's why the ancient theologians
talked about the human condition
as we are, all of us,
homo incurvatus in se,
which means that we are human beings
curved in upon ourselves.
That self-centeredness
and self-absorption
and self-interest
has somehow poisoned all of us.
And that is why, Peter says,
the eternal God took a human body.
And that's why Jesus voluntarily
offered Himself up to God the Father.
He says Jesus came to bear our sins
in His body.
And where exactly did Jesus do this?
Now, I have a little quibble
with the translation
that we just read this morning
because the Greek word is
He did this on the zulon.
He did this on the wood.
He did it on the tree.
It doesn't say He did it on the staros,
the cross.
And I don't know why
the translation committee did that.
So we need to write them a letter.
But I'm pointing this out
because it's a really important difference.
Why does Peter actually say
He bore our sins in His body
on the tree?
In the Acts of the Apostles,
we get multiple sermons from Peter.
And in two different sermons,
Peter says that Jesus was put to death
by people hanging Him on a tree.
He was hung on a tree.
And then here He uses the same language.
He bore our sins in His body
on the tree.
That's a very odd way of speaking.
Why in the world
does He put it this way?
Why would you go out of your way
to emphasize the tree?
Well, Peter's referencing Moses
in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 23.
And Moses says this.
He says,
Anyone who is hung on a tree
is under God's curse.
Anyone who's hung on a tree
is under God's curse.
So that word tree
is deliberate shorthand
that means that Jesus died
under the divine curse.
And of course,
Peter does not think
that Jesus deserved
to be accursed by God.
He says in verse 22
that He committed no sin.
No, it was the divine curse
that was on us.
The divine curse
that was hanging over me.
And hanging over you
that Jesus came to bear.
And now notice
how Peter refers
not only to Moses
but then to the prophets.
He refers to the prophet Isaiah
and he quotes Isaiah 53, verse 5.
And he says this.
By his wounds,
you have been healed.
And that's a deliberate reference
to the whole of that passage,
which I want to read to you
one more time.
You can look at Isaiah 53,
starting at verse 4.
This is talking about God's servant
that He's going to send.
And it says that,
surely He took up our pain
and bore our suffering.
Yet we considered Him punished by God,
stricken by Him and afflicted.
But He was pierced
for our transgressions.
And He was crushed
for our iniquities.
And the punishment
that brought us peace
was on Him.
And by His wounds,
we are healed.
And do you see all that
back and forth
that Isaiah is doing there?
What he's talking about
is some sort of substitution,
some sort of exchange,
some sort of transfer
that this servant of God
is going to come
and He's going to take
the place of sinners.
He's going to bear their sin
instead of them
and on behalf of them
and in the place of them.
And so why is Peter
marshalling Moses and Isaiah
and the whole of the Old Testament?
What in the world
is His point for us?
It's just this.
That the Creator of the universe
stooped down
and that He humbled Himself
and that He took our human nature
to Himself in His birth
and then He took our guilt
and our shame to Himself
in His death.
Sinless Himself,
Jesus came and He bore our sins.
Innocent Himself,
Jesus assumed our guilt.
And immortal Himself,
Jesus died our death.
And why did He do it?
Well, He did it out of sheer
selfless love
that we can barely even begin
to understand
that Jesus wanted to bring us
out of that cursedness
that we were living in.
He wanted to bring us
out of the cursedness
of sin and death
and He wanted to bring us
into that healing
and that forgiveness
that can only happen
through His wounds.
He says in 1 Peter 3.18,
He suffered for sins
that He might bring us to God,
that He might reconcile us
with our Creator God
against whom we had rebelled,
that He might bring us back
into fellowship with God
as our Abba Father.
So when we look upon the cross
and we look upon
that most dramatic experience
of unjust suffering
in human history,
what should cause us to tremble
is not so much
His physical suffering
when He was reviled
and tortured
and executed
at the hands of His enemies.
And what should cause us
to tremble
is not so much
His mental suffering
when He was betrayed
and denied
and abandoned
at the hands of His friends.
But what should really
cause us to tremble
is Jesus' spiritual suffering
when He, the sinless one,
bore our sin
and He bore our curse
and He bore our condemnation
and our eternal death penalty
not at the hands
of His enemies,
not at the hands
of His friends,
but at the hands
of God Himself.
That's the real meaning
of the cross,
the real meaning
of what Christ did
on that cross
is that the suffering
and the agony
that Jesus bore
was the endless suffering
and endless agony
of being cut off from God
and being separated from God.
And Jesus, of course,
didn't deserve that.
Jesus deserved nothing
but adoration and reward
for the life that He lived.
But the one person
who did not have to die
volunteered to take our place
and to become
our sin-bearing substitute.
And on that great
central day of history,
for one time only,
God treated the only
righteous person
as if He were unrighteous.
And Jesus cried out,
My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?
And the reason He said that
is so that none of us
would ever have to utter
that awful sentence
for ourselves.
That we would never
be forsaken by God.
Jesus cried out
from that cross,
It is finished
so that you and I
could know
that all of our sin
and our unrighteousness
was transferred onto Him.
And all of His sin
and His righteousness
was transferred onto us.
and that all of our
self-centered
homo incurvatus
in se,
curved inness
upon ourselves,
past and present
and future,
all of our self-centered
attitudes and actions,
past, present, and future,
were born by Jesus
for us.
In a lot of churches,
people would say,
mm-hmm,
or like, amen,
or that's right.
There's nothing more
that you can do
to make you more
acceptable to God.
And there's nothing more
that we could add
to Christ's work
on that cursed tree.
And so if you're here
and you're exploring
Christianity,
I want you to know,
again,
that becoming a Christian
is about allowing
this meaning of the cross
that I've just explained
to you,
allowing the meaning
of the cross
to become the meaning
of your life,
to become the very
foundation of the heart
of your identity.
And that's how
Jesus' followers talked,
right?
The Apostle Paul
closes his great letter
to the Galatians
like this.
He says,
may I never boast
except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ
through which the world
has been crucified to me
and I to the world.
You following with me?
The centrality of the cross
and the meaning
of the cross
but I also want you
to see the result
of the cross
because Peter doesn't
just leave it there.
He keeps going
and kind of begs
this question of like
what was God's desired
outcome
of Jesus' sin
bearing death?
It wasn't just
that we might be forgiven.
It was that
but it's more than that.
Peter says in verse 24
that we might die
to sin
and live to righteousness.
that we might die
to sin
and live
to righteousness.
Jesus bore
our sins
that we might be given
a new birth
into a new life
with a new power
and new habits
so that we increasingly
more and more
come to look like Jesus
and sound like Jesus
and feel like Jesus
and act like Jesus
and talk like Jesus.
So the cross
not only brings us
forgiveness
but it commits us
to the holiness
of Jesus.
Our new life
in Jesus Christ
is so radically new
that it can only be
described by Peter
as a death
and a resurrection.
He's saying to us
you died
with Jesus
to sin
and you were raised
with Jesus
to a new life
of righteousness
in line with God's will.
And so what does that mean
for us in practical terms?
Well it means simply this
that I can no longer
do things my way.
That if you embrace
the meaning of the cross
for you
you can no longer
do things your way.
And here's where I get that
in verse 25
Peter says
for you were like
sheep going astray
but now you have returned
to the shepherd
and overseer
of your souls.
See Peter was there
when Jesus said
to the disciples
in John chapter 10
I'm the good shepherd
who lays down
his life for the sheep.
And so Peter knows
that Jesus
is our seeking shepherd.
He passionately pursues
his straying sheep.
And when he says that
he's quoting again
Isaiah 53 6
which says
we all like sheep
have gone astray
and each of us
has turned to
our own way.
And that's what sin is.
Sin is my way.
Sin is saying to God
not your way
my way.
And if you know
the story of Peter
you know he had
some my way moments
didn't he?
Peter had some
some big kind of like
my way failures
like big time.
And so what a relief
Peter must have felt.
What a joy
Peter must have felt
and must have filled
his heart
when he met
the resurrected Jesus
and he received
the forgiveness of sins
from his good shepherd.
And I'm imagining
from that point on
Peter was thinking
to himself
gosh
if my good shepherd
laid down his life
for me
and my failures
and if the overseer
of my soul
bore
my sins
and my way
for me
then it's inconceivable
that I should
insist on
my way
anymore.
The result of the cross
is that I should
no longer go
in my way
but that I should
go in my good
shepherd's way.
And if he's leading
me in paths
of righteousness
who am I to resist him?
He's the shepherd
and overseer
of my soul.
And so Peter says
I'm done with that
old life
of my way
and now I want
to live this new life
of Jesus' way.
And the way
he describes that
is he says
it's living
for righteousness.
Living for righteousness.
What in the world
does that mean?
Well look again
at verse 21
of chapter 2.
He says
because Christ
suffered for you
leaving you
an example
that you should
follow
in his steps.
He left us
an example
that we should
follow in his steps.
And that word
example
it refers to
the pattern
of letters
in the alphabet.
and children
in the ancient world
they would learn
to write their ABCs
by taking
an example
of the letters
and then they would
trace over that
example.
And so Peter's
telling us
that living
for righteousness
means tracing
the pattern
of Jesus' life
onto our life.
It's like laying
that paper
over the pattern
right?
And looking
through it
and seeing
the example
the pattern
of Jesus
cross-shaped
sacrificial
self-giving love
and then tracing
that out
on our life
replicating that
out in our life.
Peter says
we're to follow
in Jesus' steps.
And that
simply means
that we cannot
step into the
footsteps of Jesus
and then go
head off
in our own
direction
that's different
than the direction
that Jesus
is taking.
Jesus'
footsteps
led him
to follow
a particular
pathway.
And the path
that Jesus took
was the path
of meek
submission
to the Father's
will.
The path
that Jesus took
was radical
obedience
to the Father's
word.
The path
that Jesus took
was suffering
love and relationship
with others.
The path
of Jesus
was surrendering
his needs
and his desires
his rights
and his privileges
and his comforts
for the sake
of loving others.
Can you imagine
tracing those
ABC's of Jesus
onto your life?
And I'll go
one further
in verse 23.
It says
when they hurled
their insults
at Jesus
he did not
retaliate
and when
he suffered
he made
no threats
instead
he entrusted
himself
to him
who judges
justly.
And what
Peter's telling
us is that
living for
righteousness
means following
in Jesus'
footsteps
of non-retaliation.
And you may
find this useful
in your workplace
tomorrow
or in your
family gatherings
this July 4th
weekend.
Right?
That just as
people hurled
ugly words
at Jesus
and he
did not
retaliate.
So when
people say
something to
you that's
not worth
saying.
Right?
When people
are insensitive
to you
or mean
to you.
When people
criticize you
to your face
or they slander
you behind
your back.
And whether
they do that
in person
or over text
or online.
As someone
who's living
for righteousness
someone who's
following in
Jesus'
steps
you will not
reply in kind.
You will
as Jesus
he did not
retaliate.
And that's
to state it
negatively
but let me
just end
by putting
it positively
using Jesus'
own words
from the
Gospel of Luke
chapter 6.
And I think
if the church
did this
it would probably
change the world
because here's
what Jesus
says.
Love your
enemies.
Do good
to those
who hate you.
Bless
those
who curse
you.
Pray for
those
who
mistreat
you.
If someone
slaps you
on one
cheek
turn to
them the
other also.
If someone
takes your
coat
do not
withhold
your shirt
from them.
Love your
enemies.
Do good
to them.
Lend to
them without
expecting
anything
in return.
Then your
reward will
be great
and you
will be
children of
the
Most High
because he
is kind
to the
ungrateful
and the
wicked.
So be
merciful
as your
Father
is
merciful.
To follow
in the
footsteps of
Jesus'
righteousness
means that
when we're
hated
we do
good.
And when
we're
cursed
we bless.
And when
we're
mistreated
we pray.
And when
we encounter
someone who's
ungrateful
we're kind.
And when we
encounter someone
and deal with
someone who's
wicked
we're
merciful.
Friends this
is the way
of Jesus.
And this is
the intended
result of
his cross.
So may we
follow in
Jesus'
steps and
may when
people look
at us may
they see the
example,
the pattern,
the ABC,
of Jesus'
righteous life
writ large
in our
lives.
In the name
of the
Father,
Son,
and Holy
Spirit.
Amen.