The Suffering Savior

Matthew chapter 16, Matthew chapter 16, verse 21, Matthew 16 verse 21, from that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go on to Jerusalem and suffer, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and raised again the third day. Then Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto him, Peter, get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art an offense unto me.

For thou savest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. And now over please if you would to Luke's gospel chapter 22, Luke chapter 22, and verse number 15, just verse 15 for the sake of time. And he said unto them, I have a desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

Now over finally to 1st Peter if you would, 1st Peter chapter 3, 1st Peter chapter 3, and verse number, I will read 18 first, but for a reason, 1st Peter 3 verse 18, for Christ also, 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. But that is linking it, see with the previous verse, verse number 17, for it is better if the will of God be so, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil doing. That seems a contradiction to human nature, which it is.

And go back to verse 14, but and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy are ye, be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to everyone that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Now that will suffice for our reading.

I find it ironic that after I've shared the speaker's, preachers find the same, after I've spoken people come and say, you know you missed this, you missed that, well wait a minute did you want me to be up here all afternoon? I don't know that time. So sometimes I'm sure I'm speaking for the rest of us, we give you maybe the skeleton of what we've been enjoying, or considering or studying. Now you would have picked it up of course if you're here this morning in my worship.

What I've been considering lately and really meditating upon a little bit, I trust it'll come out because I've never spoken on this before, is the suffering Savior. The suffering Savior. Brethren and sisters, we live in a world that is suffering.

This world is groaning. That's why nobody wants to walk a street without the ear buds. And I'm not criticizing people listening to music or maybe listening to ministry messages, whatever it might be.

But when I'm speaking of the world, this world cannot take a moment of silence. Do you know why? They're afraid they'd think. If they start to think, they're going to start to ask themselves questions that are relative to what's in here because God's put eternity in every heart.

But this world groans. That's scripture language. It groans.

And there's a moaning world out there because there is a suffering world out there. I'm not just thinking today of hospitals, institutions, because of drugs and drink and whatever. There is that aspect of suffering.

I'm thinking of suffering that takes places in the homes, where children, homes are divided, where there's such dysfunction in the world today. We live in a world of suffering. Suffering and sin are inseparable.

Suffering and sin are inseparable. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered. Make no mistake about it, he suffered.

Not for sins of his own, because of sin coming into the world and because of what sin has done to you and I. And ultimately, that takes us to his suffering at Calvary. No one wants to suffer. We avoid it at all costs, speaker included.

What's it take? What medication do I need? Oh, what needle do I get? Just, we don't want to suffer. We shun from it. It's our nature.

We do not like to see our loved ones suffer. Hard to watch them suffer. I watched two of our boys, as a result of car accidents, suffer.

They were not the drivers, they were just riding, and it was not really the fault of the driver, but on two occasions, standing in a hospital, once in Toronto, a number of years ago, we thought we'd lose our oldest boy. And the doctors didn't give a lot of hope from an accident that we were in. Coming back from the East Coast, that would be 36 years ago.

I watched him lay in that bed and wondered if we'd ever take him home. And that little fellow, just a little bit of a form of suffering. Listen, dear children, dear child of God, good for you.

All the work that's involved, dressing your children up and bringing them to the conference, do it. Not everybody could do that today. I could name you four families that are very dear to me personally, and to my wife.

And while you'll make your trip to take them to school, or whatever it might be tomorrow, do you know where they go? They go to the hospital. They go to the cancer ward, and look at a three-year-old with leukemia, wondering if she's ever going to make it. And I was just with her at the conference in Cape Britain two weeks ago.

They go to another ward in the Isaac Walton Hospital in Sussex, and a mother climbs in the bed with her little boy Ryan Hunt, you wonder who I'm talking about. With that track, I'm wondering, is this it? Is this where we lose our Ryan? Hard to stand there and watch him suffer. I could list others too, but I just stop at that.

Suffering and sin are inseparable. But because believers suffer is not because necessarily of their own sin. Even in a world, the Lord Jesus spoke of that.

That it was because of sin that had come into the world. But we shun it. We avoid it, and rightly so.

We don't want to see our loved ones suffer. We don't want to see our partners suffer. Our Lord is one who did suffer.

I would not be here today, and neither would you as a child of God, if there wasn't that one that loved us so much that he would suffer for us, the just for the unjust. Christ has also once suffered. I find it ironic that a man like Peter, when the Lord speaks of different things, Peter is silent.

Just go to that chapter, the first one that we read, and it's interesting. With all the things that Peter could say or didn't say, and there's times when he, believe it or not, did hold his peace. But it was almost like it was too much.

When the Lord spoke that he was going to suffer, right there as we read of Matthew chapter 16, must go forth unto Jerusalem and suffer many things, he says, of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and raised again the third day. That's significant to notice that put in there, raised again the third day. You say, why is it? Well, in case I don't take time to get to it, what's the difference between a Peter that literally quivers, melts from the voice of a maid, and a man that will now stand out in absolute bravery and speak with such authority as Peter would? What made the difference? A risen Christ.

He has seen a risen Christ. And that fortified that man like nothing else, the sight of a risen Lord. That's why he says, and raised again the third day.

Those were words that Peter may or may not have remembered. I'm not going to say that he forgot them, but they must have very quickly come back to his mind. What a change it had made in him.

Just three things, very quickly. I want to think of Christ before he suffered, while he suffered, and after he suffered. Then I want to go to the very same chapter that we're in and talk about the saint suffering.

How it is interesting that Peter, the man that shuns the thought of Christ's suffering, there's not another writer in our New Testament that speaks more of suffering than Peter does. A man is going to be crucified. A man that was told he was going to see death.

And this man is going to suffer. But you know, suffering was not always just in a physical way. And believers today do suffer.

Sometimes the physical way can actually be, can I say it, easier than the mental way. I know believers today going through great trials, deep trials. It's scaring them.

Cut their own children. They don't think the marriage is going to make it. Mom and dad have made it for years.

Large family, happy home. Somebody takes an interest in one of their children. And the parents are quite happy about it.

Looks like it's a good possibility. And they get married. And then very, very slowly but surely, things start to fall apart.

And then she's calling home to mom. He's not speaking. Do you know who's really suffering in that? Mom and dad.

Mom and dad, if they have any sensitivity at all, it's tearing them apart. Come on, brother, put yourself in that. Your daughter calls up.

It's easy for us to stand here, me included, and speak very randomly and freely. When my daughter calls up tomorrow, my son calls up and says, Dad, I might as well tell you, it's over. You say, what? Hey, that happens.

Unfortunately, it happens amongst us as believers. Let's not put our head in the sand. Let's not pretend it's not there.

There's believers today, dear children of God, committed Christians. I would go through their life and say, I don't know where you didn't cross the T. I don't know where you didn't dot the I. You know, there are others that live lives that are almost a recipe for a disaster. And you think, what did you expect? Look at the way you treated their mother.

You expect them to be different? Look how you lacked respect for your husband. You deceived him before the children. Likely one of the best hoped-for marriages in the Bible was a disaster.

Isaac and Rebekah divided in a home that was divided. And it had its consequences upon their boys. Read your Bible.

It's right there. I speak to someone here this afternoon. You're wondering how he is going to treat you.

Find out how he treated his parents. He won't treat you any better. Somehow, people think that once that ring has slipped over that finger, everything is forgotten.

Let me speak. I am going off a little on my tangent, but I'm aware I'm doing it, okay? When I'm not, that's when it's dangerous. If a single sister wants to kind of joke about the fact she's not married and that sort of thing, I can go along with that.

But you know what I do and practice not to do? I will never engage that kind of a conversation because I salute sisters right in this audience today. And there's all kinds of unsaved men out there that have looked at you and you know they have. They would just take a nod and you'd be gone.

Others have done it. You haven't. I admire you for that.

Do not tell me that there isn't a form of suffering for that. She'd like to have a family too. She would like to come home to a partner in life that she could love, but the Lord hasn't just opened that up for her.

And I've been in situations where, and I know it wouldn't surprise you, I've had a rebuke. A brother in a conversation that was literally going aboard a sister because she wasn't married. Hope you don't do that.

We seek to honor that. Some of us that are involved in this work and people speak to us in their confidence can tell too many sorry stories of some that have stepped outside of the parameter of Christian living. And for the sake of a better expression of pick somebody from the Philistines, they pay the price for it.

So what am I saying? I say be careful with someone, especially our sisters, that are not married. Okay, don't think that they have, I know some that likely had more opportunities than some that had married. Some that had married just took whatever came along, thought there's nothing better.

You know what they're waiting for? They're waiting for the one that Lord brings to them. And if he doesn't, they're satisfied to abide as they are. I speak honorably and support that because there is a suffering that goes with that and only the Lord knows that.

The Lord Jesus coming back to him. You see, when we think of the Savior's suffering, we think of him taking a bride himself. Okay, taking a bride himself.

You know, we see pictures of that, of course, as you know, in the Bible. There are three outstanding, if you like, types of the church seen in a bride in the book of Genesis. Now, you might see others that are in there too.

That's fine. You can enjoy them. But when I think of Eve, we have a picture of the creation of the church.

Tremendous to think that in a bride like Eve, there is a picture of the creation of the church. When I come to Rebecca, we have a picture of the calling of the church. Interesting.

I know it is an interesting story. I know I've already spoken about the marriage that wasn't likely the best. What a beautiful pictures we think of her making that way back with a servant and she sees him coming in the field.

You know, he's got wares and all the things displayed to show her, to gladden her heart. So when she meets him, what's she going to talk about? When she meets him, what's she going to say? Where's all the gold? Where's my earrings? Where's my necklace? No, no, I don't think so. You know what I think she would like to know? Tell me about some of those hours going up Mount Moriah.

Tell me about that moment on that altar. What was going through your mind? Did you actually believe the words of your father when he said, and we'll come again to you? You know, when we think of the Savior today, I know there's much of his life, much of his person we can appreciate and express, but we so readily go to Calvary. That's how our morning began with the truth of Calvary this morning, being led to Calvary.

And we do. Do you know why? Because that's where he suffered for his bride. So when I think of Rebecca, I think of the calling of the church.

When I think of Astoneth, that's Joseph's wife, we have a picture of the coronation of the church, okay? A picture of his coronation, the day yet coming. However, when I think of Christ, I think of him while he suffered. If I was going to do that, I'd go to the 88th Psalm, okay? 88th Psalm, verse 15, I am afflicted and ready to die, says the psalmist from my youth up, while I suffer thy terrors.

I am distracted while I suffer, while I suffer. So we think of a Savior today, and we think of him before he suffered. Was there really much before he suffered? You know, I don't think we understand, at least I can't comprehend, what he must have suffered when he looked at human beings that were deformed by sin, realizing he had created them for better than that.

Look at those that could not see, another man that is lame. Maybe they didn't know the cause, they're looking for the cure. He knew what the cause was, and it broke his heart.

Why? Because of what sin had brought into the world. His suffering for righteousness sake is really a subject in itself, just sufficient to say this, that he was ever the righteous one. And when Peter speaks here, he is thinking of his Lord, and speaking of us suffering righteously.

Now, not only what before he suffered, we think of Joseph, a beautiful example already spoken to us here, rejected. Think of Joseph coming in, rejected by his brethren, mistreated, misunderstood, maltreated, and yet they owed everything to him. He would ultimately become their Savior.

And it is significant that the first time the word forgiveness is used in your Bible is used by Joseph, a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus. While he suffered, or rather before he suffered, while he suffered as the idiot son, after he suffered, that brings me to 1 Peter chapter 3. For Christ also once suffered for the unjust that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. You know, when I think of that passage, and I've gone already to the verse that's just before it, and Peter reminds us of those that would suffer, he say, for righteousness.

In other words, here's someone, just picture what Peter really has in his mind, what so often happens. It's better if the will of God be so. That's the significance.

If it's the will of God. Now, there are things that we suffer because of our own foolishness, our own failures, and our own sin. I'm always reminded of Frank Knox, when a fellow that professed to be saved met him, and he had this black eye, and he walked up very proudly to Mr. Knox in the north of Ireland.

He says, see this? He said, I suffered it for Christ. I took it for Christ. I suffered it, he said, for the Savior.

No, he says, you didn't at all. He says, you suffered it because of your own foolishness. He said, who hit you anyhow? The man walked away.

Well, whatever. But listen to what he's saying. Peter is saying this, it is better if the will of God be so that you suffer for well-doing than for evil doing.

I have to say, after 55 years in assembly testimony, I've seen brethren and sisters, that's a couple, and individuals suffer in the assembly. Take things that I don't think I could have taken. Accusations that were wrong.

Some have picked up and left and fled, and they've lost. Now, I'm not saying if someone has decided to move that that was necessarily a wrong move, but I could name you couples today that stood with it, and God has honored them in that. And they have suffered.

They have suffered. Why? For well-doing. Not evil doing, well-doing.

Sometimes it was because of the jealousy of somebody else, whatever it might have been, but they have suffered. So, think of a man like Peter, telling the Lord, Lord, he says, be it far from thee. Just turn over a little bit your book, the book of Acts, and he's sleeping.

He's going to be executed the next day, he's falling asleep. You're going to be executed the next day, you're asleep that night, like fun. He wouldn't be sleeping.

But like I say, that's what made the difference in him. So, more than that, it is for us to suffer three things that Peter brings before us. We are to suffer rightly, rightly.

We are to suffer royally. Christ enthrones your hearts. We are to suffer, he says, righteously.

When called upon to suffer, we face not only it with the Lord enthroned in our hearts, but with his word enthroned in our mind. That his word is taking control of our minds. That's why the man that will say to the Lord in the gospels, be it far from thee, is now the man that writes to us very authoritatively from his own experience of what it means to suffer.

So, when I speak in someone's day, I do not know the aspect of your suffering. I have no idea what you're going through. I have absolutely no reservations in saying that I'm speaking to people here today.

You wouldn't even share it with anybody else, but you're suffering. You remember this, Christ also suffered.