Trusting God

Amen.

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission Church.

We hope you all are doing well this Sunday.

We are going to be continuing in our sermon series on 1 Peter called Hold Fast of Faith.

This morning we're going to be looking at 1 Peter chapter 2, looking at 18 through 25.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

So if you have a Bible or you have a smart device with some type of app on there, go ahead and get those out because we're going to be working through this section of Scripture together.

If you don't know where 1 Peter is, no problem.

It's easy to find if you have an app.

If you have a Bible that you're going through, it's in the back of the Bible near the end.

Close if you get to Revelation, you've gone too far.

You need to come back just a little bit to 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 18 through 25.

1 Peter 2:18–25

And what we've done is we've begun to hit this passage and section of the letter where Peter starts to get practical in his theology.

And that's a key thing that we have to understand that orthodoxy should result in orthopraxy, meaning that what we believe about God, the theology that we say that we hold, has to at some point in time work itself out into the way that we live our lives.

Because theology that does not result in practicality is dead.

We can have faith.

We can say that we believe these certain things, but if it doesn't come to fruition in our lives and the way that we engage circumstances and the way that we uh walk through different trials and sorrows in our life, then that theology is pointless.

And so what we need to do is we need to work to match our theology with the way that we live our lives.

And Peter, who wrote this letter, is getting into this section of the letter where he built up the very first half, big theological framework.

He's really trying to help us understand who we are in relationship to God.

He's helping us understand who we are and our identity through Christ and his finished work on the cross, death, burial, and resurrection.

And he's really now trying to work out okay, so if that is true, how do you live now?

We talked last week, and we've talked all throughout the sermon series as well, how Peter refers to us in this new identity, an aspect of this new identity is that we are exiles, sojourners, foreign aliens in a foreign land.

This is not our residency.

This is not our home.

This world and everything that comes with it is not ours.

We are resident citizens of a different kingdom.

We are resident citizens of a different reality.

And that causes us to be these exiles, these sojourners traveling through a foreign land.

And so we run into things as these exiles, as these uh as these foreigners.

We run into circumstances, we run into different situations in our existence, in our life, uh, that we have to now respond to.

And the hope is that we're responding to those things through the theological framework of who we are in Christ Jesus.

And that causes us to live counterculturally to the world that we find ourselves in.

And Peter's going to continue in that framework, continue in that thrust this morning.

So let's read the passage together, and then we'll start opening up what he is trying to say to us today.

So, first Peter chapter.

Whether they were good rulers or they were wicked rulers, that didn't matter.

We had to be submissive people to them in honor to God, in fear of God.

And he's going to continue now in that same theme in the way that we engage with our employers.

Now, if I was going to start to break down this section of scripture, I'd look at 18 through 21st, and then we really start to see a big chunk of how Peter's addressing this topic of servants.

And the way that I would summarize 18 through 20 is that I would say that we are servants to God, which frees us to serve others.

We are servants to God, which frees us to serve others.

Now, Peter's using this word servants.

Right in the beginning of 18, he says, servants be subject to your masters with all respect.

Now, when we look at this word servants, that might be a very foreign thing to us, or we could really start down a rabbit trail or some type of uh false framework of thinking that this doesn't relate to us.

I can kind of glaze over this, I can pass over this.

He's talking about something that isn't applicable to me.

And if we really look at the word servants, we'd have to understand that if we try to make it some type of modern context and bring it into our application today, uh, we would find a couple things.

Number one is that we would find that the word slave would be way too strong of a word here.

Especially if the only way that we're able to understand slavery is through the framework of the kind of beginning of America slavery that we uh have in our history.

That was a very cruel slavery, that was a very unjust slavery.

Uh that was something, you know, that that's not what we're talking about.

That would be too strong of a language, especially if that's the only way that we can understand or start to try to put some type of uh framework around what slavery would equate to.

That's not what Peter's referring to here.

Uh also the the word employee is too weak.

So slave is too strong, employee is is a little too weak, and so they rest when they're trying to translate this passage, they rest on servant.

And what this is that we have to understand that when Peter's referring to these group of people, it would be a very diverse group of professionals in their fields.

So we're not just talking about housekeepers and butlers, uh, we're not just talking about chauffeurs or something of that nature.

We're talking about skilled people, professionals in their field, and a very diverse one.

This would be doctors, nurses, uh, teachers, musicians, skilled artisans, all these different kinds of uh professions would be enveloped in this term servants.

And so if we were really trying to understand who these people are that Peter's referring to, we would best define them as semi-permanent employees.

Semi-permanent employees without legal or economic freedom.

Now, part of that doesn't sound like us at all, right?

Without legal freedom.

Many of us in our employment have legal freedom in our employment.

We get to choose who uh we are employed by, by most standards.

Uh we're not bound to them uh by legal contract or anything of that nature.

However, I would make an argument that many of us, many of us, are these semi-permanent employees without financial freedom or economic freedom.

We very much depend upon our employer.

Without our employer, we would not be able to live.

And so we have to be in certain ways bound to them because without them, we would not have economic freedom.

So there's an aspect where we can relate and put ourselves into the characters of the people of whom Peter is talking to.

And the real issue is as we approach this, uh, this word servants, we can really get hung up on the term.

Uh, and what we try to do, if we get hung up on the term servant, is that we try to dismiss the heart and theme of what Peter is working to communicate.

We dismiss the whole uh theme of what he is trying to tell us and show us in this passage of Scripture.

You see, I would argue that this isn't just something Peter's communicating to us.

This theme of submissiveness, this theme of being servants, uh of honoring others in the way that we live our lives.

No, I would argue that the whole Bible works to communicate this reality and truth.

And I think that we see it ultimately in the person and work of Jesus.

He became the ultimate servant.

He became the the he fully submitted himself ultimately to others.

And we are called to be like him.

And so there's a theme throughout the scriptures that's fully realized in the person and work of Jesus, that we are called to be servants.

So we can get hung up on the term, we can get hung up on the word, and we can try to dismiss it, that this doesn't relate to us in the way that we live our lives, but I think that we really do ourselves a disservice, and I really think that we're missing a theme that's spoken of throughout the entirety of Scripture.

You see, we're called to be servants that labor for the glory of God and the good of others.

Our lives should seek the ultimate flourishing in others around us.

You see, that's what we're called to do.

As we're called to be servants, as we're called to humble ourselves, as we're called to submit ourselves to other people, the purpose of that is for their good and the glory of God.

We should work and labor for the ultimate flourishing of others.

That's the model that Christ gives to us, that he subjected himself fully to all people in this life, so that we might benefit in flourishing in our own selves through his finished work.

And so this is something we're called to model.

This is something we are called to imitate.

Now, God through his word calls us to submit ourselves to both good and unjust masters.

This is what we see here, uh, the Holy Spirit using Peter to uh uh communicate his infallible truth, his infallible word to us and how we should live our lives.

He's saying, servants, be subject to your masters, not only the good and gentle, but also to the unjust.

So we're called to submit ourselves to both good and unjust masters.

Now, this can be incredibly hard for us to reconcile in the way that we live our lives.

You see, we've been fully convinced that our employers should serve us in our needs and desires.

As we look for different types of employment in our life, we look for which ones can benefit us the most.

Maybe it's the ones that have the most vacation days, maybe it's the one that will pay us the most, maybe it's the one that has the most benefits or whatever it might be has the best culture or more freedom in our scheduling.

We look for those benefits when we're choosing employers.

So we've been conditioned through our culture to be able to say, look, I'm gonna pick who best serves my needs.

I'm gonna pick who best serves my desires in the way that I work.

And so it's hard for us to reconcile this when we have what seems to be freedom in our employment.

We've been fully convinced that our employers should serve us and our needs and desires, and we often have a wide open plane of options when we feel like we have unjust masters.

So, in all reality, the statistics show us today that in culture, people who are graduating out of college and getting their first job, they're not expecting to have that job for very long.

Actually, less than three years, they're expecting to have that job before they get on to the next one.

It's more of like a stepping stone out of college and into the professional field.

And they'll leverage those type of positions for better positions than other companies.

You see, we often see a wide open plane of options, especially if we come out with a degree, if we come out skilled in some sort of field, then we can say, look, I'm going to pick here, here, or here because my options are so wide open, or maybe I'll pick this employer, but I'm only using it as a stepping stone to get to the place that I really want to be.

We have so much freedom and we have so much options when it comes to our employment.

And so we feel like when we have unjust masters, those who don't serve our needs or serve our desires in the way that we want them to, we can simply look for the next best thing.

Honestly, when it comes to just employment in general, people aren't staying around workplaces the way that they used to.

We don't have the uh 40-year employment veteran who retires with the gold watch.

Those things don't exist really in our culture anymore.

We're looking for the best next opportunity constantly, and whatever it comes into, be and especially if we feel like the conditions that we currently are in are unjust conditions, filling ourselves with sorrows, we're gonna look for different options.

Because ultimately, our employers should serve us, or at least we are convinced that that's the truth.

I would argue that this is another axiom to our inability to subject ourselves even to God.

We have characterized God.

We have made him such a person that he should mimic the way that we both engage our employers, but even like we talked last week about how we engage our government, both our government and our employers and all things in life should seek to serve my good, my happiness, my joy, my pleasure.

All of these things around me should seek to serve me.

And the greatest disappointments that we experience in life, the greatest frustrations that we experience in life is when the things in the our world don't satisfy.

Right?

When our marriage doesn't fulfill my needs and desires, when my children don't fulfill my needs and desires, when my employment, when my government, when my put anything in that blank, when they don't fulfill my needs and desires, I am greatly devastated.

I am frustrated.

And it's oftentimes in every single one of those circumstances we go looking for other options.

We don't endure, we don't trust God, we set our gaze upon the landscape of options and chase down something else that's gonna leave us equally devastated at some point in time.

Because nothing in this earth can satisfy us the way that we long to be satisfied.

And we often have this misconstrued that God should be the one who uh fully gives us everything that we want and everything that we desire, and that he should serve us.

And the problem is that often we can be misguided or fully uh falsely convinced that what we desire is actually what is good for us.

You see, those two things can be extremely conflicting with one another.

That sometimes God's good and gracious gift to us is to not give us what we desire because that is ultimately what will destroy us.

You see, we have to serve God, trusting that he is good and that his plans and purposes for us, his sovereign power in orchestrating our lives, is our ultimate good.

And we can only be fully satisfied in this life when we are fully trusting on him.

And so for us, we have problems and issues serving even God Himself.

And it's it's it's seen and demonstrated in our inability to serve our government, in our inability to serve our employer, in our inability to serve our spouses, we struggle so greatly.

How would it look if we structured our lives around the flourishing of others rather than center it around the flourishing of ourselves?

How would our lives change if the decisions that we made were about the flourishing of others rather than self?

If the things that we put our money toward were about the flourishing of others rather than the flourishing of self, with the work that we did, the way that we labored, what if we switched the norm instead of having everything being centered around the flourishing of ourself, it was actually focused on the flourishing of others.

You see, I think that's a life.

I would argue that what we're seeing in the scriptures is that is a life that more uh brings glory to God and the good of his neighbors that lines up more closely with the will of God that he has for our lives.

Now, Peter makes this clause in here.

As he's talking about us as servants being subject to even unjust masters, he has this clause that he inserts there, and I love this because it really brings into focus how we're supposed to live our lives.

He says, when mindful of God, when mindful of God.

You see, there's a call here being made to us in response to the sorrows that we may experience.

We are not being called to revile and retaliate the unjust behavior.

No, that's not what God calls us to, nor are we equally called to push down and dismiss the unjust behavior.

What God calls us to is to endure through the unjust behavior, mindful of him through all of it.

What does that mean?

What does that mean to be mindful of him?

So as we're being called to subject ourselves to even unjust masters, we're not called to retaliate against it in vengeance, we're not called to dismiss it and uh shove it down and not engage it.

No, we're called to be enduring through it, having being mindful of God through it all.

I think this comes down to a simple question as we try to understand what this means.

In the midst of life's sufferings, sorrows, and trials, do we trust God?

Do we trust God?

In the midst of all that this life can throw us, do we trust him?

Because you see, as we're going to unpack later on in this sermon, our behavior and our response communicates, do we trust God?

Do we trust him when we find ourselves under unjust and wicked rulers?

Do we trust him when we find ourselves under unjust and wicked masters?

Do we trust him when we find ourselves in life circumstances that don't seem to be giving us the fulfillment that we sought for it to give us?

Do we trust God?

And when we endure suffering, being mindful of God, what we're saying is that whatever life comes my way, whatever comes my way in this life, Lord, whether it be good and gentle or whether it be unjust and wicked, whatever comes my way, I'm gonna endure through it, especially through the unjust wickedness.

I'm gonna endure through it, placing it all at your feet, trusting you, trusting you that you see me, trusting you that you're near to me, trusting you that you have the power to change the circumstance, trusting you that you're good, trusting you.

But see, in both of those actions, we take our suffering into our own hands and we ultimately communicate.

A distrust in God.

When we look at verses 21 through 23, the way that I would summarize this section of Scripture is that we're called to suffer unjustly as Jesus our Lord did for us.

You see, right in the beginning of 21, Peter says, For to this you have been called.

What is the to this that Peter's talking about?

Well, it's simply that we would suffer unjustly.

You see, we're actually called to suffer unjustly because Christ our Lord suffered unjustly.

We're called to this in our life.

Now we can have a theology where we're actually supposed to escape suffering, that God is so much of a blessing, and we don't understand what that word means.

We don't understand how it uh impacts our life, or that God has so much favor upon us.

Again, we don't understand what that really means, and we can create an escapism theology where suffering should not be a part of this equation.

However, Peter makes it very clear to this, to what?

To unjust suffering, you have been called because Christ suffered for you.

And he says, leaving you as an example.

This presents itself another theological framework of Christus exemplar.

Christ is our example.

When we see the way that he lived his life, when we see the way that he engaged with other people, how he sought the glory of God and the good of others in every aspect of his life, we're called to be imitators of that.

We're literally called to walk in his footsteps in the way that he engaged with culture so that we might follow in his steps.

And I love this when you really break it down and you try to look at what Peter's trying to communicate, we'll see that there's a direct expectation of not just experiencing unjust suffering, but that it's tethered to a direct expectation of how we would respond to it.

And so there's these two things.

There's the reality that we're called to experience unjust suffering, and there's the reality of how we are called to respond to it when we do.

And those two things are tethered together with this unbreakable chain that we're called to experience suffering even unjustly in our lives, but we're also called to respond to it in the way that Jesus did as our great example.

I love this quote from John Stott as he's talking about this passage of scripture specifically.

He says this he says, slavery to Christ transforms service into freedom.

Slavery to Christ transforms service into freedom.

You see, this is what we have to grasp in our minds and hearts this morning, as from last week even to this week, and Peter's going to continue on a lot in this theme, that we have to understand that our slavery to Christ transforms service into freedom.

We don't serve because we have to.

We don't serve because we're under the thumb of wicked rulers.

We're not obligated because of their power or because of whatever sense of control they think they have.

We serve because we know we are free in Christ, slaves to him, a true and better master.

And that gives us strength to serve.

That gives us boldness to serve, even in the midst of unjust suffering.

You see, the suffering of Christ that Peter's directing us to is that which is leading to his crucifixion.

Jesus demonstrated great strength, great boldness and great freedom in the face of unjust masters.

Jesus did not dismiss his circumstances in weak cowardliness, nor did he return the unjust behavior in false courageousness.

No, he stood trusting in God.

And Jesus ultimately laid down his life in freedom.

I love that passage of scripture where Jesus looks at the face of these wicked rulers as they're trying to communicate to them, do you not know that I have the power to take your life?

And Jesus says, You don't have anything that my father hasn't given you.

And I, you will not take my life, but I will lay it down.

You see, these men that Jesus found himself under were under the false assumption that they had some sense of poor, that they had some semblance of control.

And Jesus quickly let them know everything you think you have is a facade.

It's fake, it's fantasy.

You don't have anything.

And everything that I'm about to do, I do out of my freedom.

You see, that's how we have to engage the people in our lives.

That's how we have to engage both our government systems, our employers, everything that we find ourselves subject to.

We subject ourselves freely to it.

And when they try to work themselves out in some sense of false power or some sense of false control, we have to remind ourselves they don't have anything, but in freedom and in joy, I will subject myself to them, and I will lay my life down, and my slavery becomes my freedom, my service becomes my joy, because I know that I am chained to a better master.

You see, Jesus entrusted himself to God, and so should we.

When we work to take our circumstances in our own hands, we're communicating a distrust in God.

With our actions, we're communicating our theology.

And we really have to grasp that as Christians.

We really have to grasp that, especially as a church who really loves robust theology.

Right?

We get all hyped on it.

We love nerding out about theology.

We love being right about our theology.

We love all these things.

There's a lot of times where it can work itself out in pretentiousness or arrogance or pride, and those are false things that we should not be striving for.

But we love good, robust theology.

But the reality that we have to understand is our lives communicate our theology much more truer than our mouth ever does.

You see, with our actions, we're communicating our theology.

Our theology of a God who sees us, who is with us, who has the power to do something about our circumstances, and who will execute judgment against all wickedness should cause us to be able to endure unjust suffering.

Let me say that again.

Our theology of a God who sees us, who is with us, who has the power to do something about our circumstances, and who will ultimately execute judgment against all wickedness should cause us to be able to endure unjust suffering.

Now, how does the way that we live actually declare our theology?

You see, we can say all the right things about God, but when the fire of trials invade our lives, our true theology is revealed.

Now, looking at this end of this section of scripture in 24 and 25, I would simply summarize it in this way that by his wounds we have been healed.

By his wounds we have been healed.

While Jesus is our example, he accomplished for us what we never could have.

And in this, he is our Christus victor.

So in the first part of this passage where Peter was trying to say that Christ is our example, he was our Christus exemplar, he's the one of whom we should imitate and model our lives after.

But the reality of us is that we will fail to live up to those standards.

We will fail to live up to that imitation of who he is.

And so ultimately, we don't just need Christ as our great example, but we need Christ as our great victory.

And here Peter is laying it plain.

He's not just your example, he's not just Christus exemplar, but he is Christus victor.

He is your victory for when you fail.

For when sin shows itself in our lives, Christ is our victory.

He accomplished for us what we never could have.

He bore our sins.

All of the unjust suffering that we would inflict on others, and that would be inflicted upon us, was ultimately afflicted upon him.

All of the unjust suffering that we would afflict upon others, if we're honest, we have done that.

We have done that.

And that would be inflicted upon us was ultimately inflicted upon him.

He took the full consequence of our sins.

And he died in sin.

He died in sin that we might die to sin.

We've been released of the slavery of our sin, and we've been chained to a true and better master.

Peter says here, by his wounds you have been healed.

I'm going to take a moment to talk about what Peter's saying there.

What have we been healed of?

We've been healed of the disease of sin that permeates every aspect of the cosmos.

There is not one part of creation that has not been permeated with sin, that has not been affected by sin.

There is not one aspect of all creation.

And it's this disease that runs rampant throughout God's creation.

But Jesus is the great physician.

Jesus is the one who heals us of our sin.

By his wounds.

What wounds?

The wounds he suffered on Calvary.

The markings upon his back caused by the cat of nine tails, the piercings in his hands and feet, the spear that pierced his side, all of these wounds bring us our healing.

This isn't talking about some type of hyper-atonement perspective where we're going to be physically healed of all of our diseases and all of our sicknesses here and now in this earth.

Is that promised in the fullness of atonement and glory?

Will we struggle with sin and sickness with uh with physical sickness any longer?

No, we will not, but we're not guaranteed that in now.

Every time the Bible talks about by his wounds you were healed, it's directly in the context that you were healed of the disease and sickness of your sin.

That's exactly what Peter is referring to.

That's exactly what Isaiah refers to in Isaiah 53, which is what Peter is referring to here.

He's recalling the words of the prophet Isaiah as he's trying to lay out how do we uh endure through unjust suffering, look, gaze upon the man of sorrows.

And so by his wounds, Christian, you have been healed.

If you have put your faith and trust in Christ, when he died in sin, you died to sin.

And we can now live to righteousness because of his finished work being lived out in us.

Jesus is the good shepherd.

Jesus is the gentle master who brings us back to the fold of God.

We cannot be enslaved because we have been chained to Christ.

We cannot be forcibly ruled because we have been freed to serve, and we cannot die under unjust masters because we have been made to live to our heavenly one.

Our main idea this morning is this that by patiently enduring unjust suffering, we demonstrate the freedom we have in Christ.

By patiently enduring unjust suffering, we demonstrate the freedom we have in Christ.

There is no earthly power that can take away your freedom.

We have to get that in our heads, we have to get that in our hearts, and at some point in time it has to impact the way that we live.

That there is no earthly power that can take away our freedom.

It is by being servants, subjecting ourselves to others, do we show that we are truly free?

You see, Jesus enables us to live for Him.

Jesus enables us to live to righteousness, which enables us without fear, but in total abandoned trust in God, to live for the good of others.

Whether they are good or whether they are wicked.

You see, ultimately, how we engage this life, how we respond to the suffering and sorrows of this world has everything to do with do you trust God?

Is your theology real?

Is who you say he is who he really is in your life?

We can endure any circumstance.

We can endure any unjust suffering that might come our way if we know God is for us, if we trust that he is who he says that he is, and if we understand our freedom that we have in Christ, because being chained to him frees us to serve others without fear.

But we struggle to entrust our lives to God.

And ultimately we do this, I think, in two different ways.

Number one is that some of us demonstrate this through false humility.

Some of us demonstrate this through false humility.

We push down and dismiss the sorrows that we experience in this world.

We demonstrate a theology that God doesn't see us or just simply doesn't care about our state.

And we live in apathy to our circumstances because we ultimately don't trust God is good.

When we live a life that demonstrates this false humility, when we kind of just put our head down and keep going and try to not make any wakes in our path, when we really try to push down the suffering that we feel or dismiss it altogether, what we're really communicating is we don't trust that God is good.

Because we're not taking it to Him.

We're not taking it to Him in trust and obedience.

We're trying to dismiss it completely out of our lives.

We live in apathy.

And what our theology actually communicates, rather than whatever we say, what we're demonstrating in our lives, is that God doesn't see us.

He doesn't see the suffering that we're enduring.

He doesn't see the circumstances and trials that we're facing.

And ultimately, he just doesn't care about our state.

And maybe you've grown up believing that.

Maybe you've grown up with other humans who have interacted with you and made you to believe that.

Maybe you've tried to bring suffering and struggles to others and they've dismissed you.

Or maybe you've been told to suck it up and just keep going.

No one's gonna care anyway.

No one has time to worry about your stuff.

Just keep your head down and keep moving forward.

It's not how God's calling us to respond to unjust suffering.

And maybe you've been led to believe that people don't see you in your state.

And so you project onto your heavenly Father that he doesn't see you either.

I think ultimately what we do in those situations is we just don't trust that God is good.

But some of us, some of us demonstrate this through false strength.

Some of us demonstrate this through false strength.

I'll get it right one of these times.

You see, we retaliate and contend against the sorrows we experience in this world.

We demonstrate a theology that God is too weak to do anything about our circumstance and that he is not a righteous judge.

And so we have to take it into our own hands.

We have to fight back against it in our own strength.

We live in contention to our circumstances because we ultimately don't trust God is just.

You see, we live this life like if we're if somebody's going to make my life right, it's gonna have to be me.

If someone's gonna do something about the circumstances that I live in, it's gonna have to be me.

That's not what the Bible calls us to.

The Bible says that God is ultimately a just judge who executes his righteousness upon the wicked.

At the end of time, all wickedness will be dealt with through the judgment of God.

And it'll either be dealt with through the person and finished work of Jesus, extending grace and mercy to us, or it will be dealt with through his wrath and eternal punishment through those who rejected Christ in this life.

But ultimately, all unjustness will be dealt with by a just judge.

But when we face trials, when we face unjust suffering and we try to take control of it with ourselves, when we try to shove it back with our own strength, we're ultimately communicating a theology that says God is not just.

And so we have to be the great vindicator.

We have to be the one to.

In our marriages, in our government, in our employment, in the church, in every situation, we will fail to trust God.

Because in every one of these situations, we will be tempted to believe that these things should serve us rather than the belief that God established these things that we might serve in them.

So we can either look at the things that God has established on this earth as something to serve us, or we can start to flip our perspective and view the things that God has established in this world as things for us to serve in.

But the moment that we're tempted to believe that they should serve us and they don't pull through on what we feel they should, we're gonna be tempted to fail to trust God.

But Jesus suffered unjustly at the hands of sinful men and bear that very sin in his body on the cross.

And when we saw when we suffer the sorrows of this world, let us look to the cross in trust filled worship.

So, how would we live?

If this was true for us, how would this impact and change the way that we live our lives?

I have three points.

Number one is we would subject ourselves to our employers.

Let that really ring in.

As all of us are probably facing some type of circumstance where we're just frustrated with our employers.

We're frustrated with decisions that they're making.

We're frustrated for circumstances that they're creating.

We're frustrated.

And we were maybe even some of us are thinking, man, I'm just going to go ahead and look for a different option.

I'm going to go ahead and look for a different place.

Possibly God is calling you to endure suffering and to subject yourself even to your employer, whether good or unjust.

How would it look for us to work for the good of our employers?

Right?

How would that look if we went into the office with the mindset every day that we're going to work for the best case possibility for our employer?

We're going to labor hard, not so that we get the paycheck, not so that we get the bonus, not so that we get the promotion.

We're going to labor hard so that they get the most out of my effort and labor.

And if I get recognized, that's fine.

God sees me.

God is with me.

And I put my trust in him and him alone.

How would it look for us to patiently endure hardships with our employers?

Are we constantly just looking at the next best option?

Are we, is every position that we're in a stepping stone for something better?

When we find ourselves under a boss or supervisor that we don't like or we think that they're doing things that aren't in line with how they should be functioning in their role, do we just click online, go to LinkedIn, and put out some feelers?

What if in our patient endurance of these hardships, God uses that in his grace and mercy to cause them to be made alive and saved?

Because they see the character of Christ being imitated in us.

Man, that's a different reality.

That's a different way to live.

And what would it look like for us to work for the flourishing of our coworkers?

Everybody's got that coworker that they don't like very well.

They don't get along with very well.

It just gets on their nerves, right?

Maybe it's the one that goes in and eats whatever lunch is in there, whether it has a name label on it or not.

Or maybe it's the person that just won't stop talking and distracting you when you're trying to get work done.

Maybe it's the person who just is always around the boss trying to get them to like them and be on their good side.

Whoever that person is, the one you can't stand the most, what do it look like for this week to work for their good?

What would it look like this week to work for their flourishing and their employment?

I can't give you the answer to that.

You have to come up with it through prayer and through listening to the to the Holy Spirit speak to you.

But I believe that that's the life that God's calling us to live: to be servants of others, subjecting ourselves to others for his glory and for their good.

Number two is that we would model ourselves after Jesus.

We would model ourselves after Jesus.

We're called to suffer sorrow.

That's what Peter said.

For to this you were called.

To what?

Unjust suffering.

It's not about if we will suffer sorrow, it's about how we respond to it when we do.

That's what all of this is about.

How will we respond to sorrow when we experience it?

And so we would model ourselves after Jesus.

We would look at his life.

Nothing could shake him of who he was, nothing could jeopardize his identity, nothing could jeopardize his freedom.

There was nothing that he could come into contact with in this life.

There's no trial that he could face, there's no suffering that he couldn't endure that would ever jeopardize who he was.

And it could never jeopardize his trust in God.

And that's what we have to strive for.

No matter what life throws away, no matter what God allows us to go through in this life, even in his sovereign power, to experience the unjust suffering of which we are called to.

Man, can we are we going to be shaken by such small circumstances?

Are we going to be shaken of our identity and of our trust in God and the minor sufferings of this world?

Man, some of us are just unraveling in this moment.

And what we're going through in our culture, we're just unraveling.

And we've allowed this minor momentary suffering to just put ourselves in a position where we're able to trust God.

We have to be in our word to know his promises.

How can we put trust in promises that we don't even know?

But the Bible is full of his promises.

How can we put trust in his character when we don't know how he's revealed himself to be?

The Bible reveals God's character to us.

You see, if we're going to put trust in God, we have to stop trying to project onto God images of fallen men.

And we have to submit and labor in his word, how he's revealed himself to be in his character, what he's revealed promises to be to us, and in those things can we stand, and in those things can we place our trust.

Many of us are shaken because we're built on a shaky foundation.

The false truths of this culture, these false promises of this world, the false philosophy of man.

Jesus could not be shaken because he was established on the rock foundation of the word, of who God was, of who God is, and what he has promised to his people.

You see, it's then that we can look any unjust suffering.

It is then that we can look even in the eyes of death unshaken, trusting God, enduring through trials of life.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you help us to trust you.

I pray that you help us to endure through suffering, being mindful of you through it all.

I pray, Father, that you help us to imitate the life of Christ in the way that we go through the sorrows of this world.

But ultimately, I pray that we're able to trust Christ even when we fail to do so.

We love you.

We pray, Holy Spirit, that you change our hearts to not see the things of which you have created in this world and established in this world as things to serve us, but you change our hearts to see the things of this world that you have established as things to serve in.

As slaves of Christ.

Free.

Freer than we could have ever imagined.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.