Introduction: Our media continues to inform us of the senseless and brutal suffering that humans experience. From the shootings in Los Angeles this week to the continual enduring pain of those in countless places, we are bombarded with the images of human suffering. Take a walk through a hospital or a nursing home, visit with a homebound person or a hospice patient. There you find suffering that is personal and real.

We sometimes imagine that because a human endures or experiences unjust or unfair or undeserved pain that somehow that pain or suffering changes how God sees them. As though their agony alters their sin and standing before God. We somehow think that our suffering in this life changes our eternity. The truth is—it doesn’t!

These verses serve as a reminder that none of our sufferings can ever remove our sins. Our pain that we may endure may call to mind the suffering of Jesus helping us to better identify with Him but it cannot release us from our sin or remove the stain left from our disobedience.

We need to understand that it is not necessary for us to pay any price of pain in order to gain grace. There is one who has suffered for our sins that we might be saved. That One is Jesus. We come this morning to this table, the Lord’s Table, to share bread and cup, body and blood, and be reminded of the suffering that saves.

Peter immediately and emphatically tells us that what Jesus suffered He suffered personally. He did it Himself! He could have called, as the song says, "ten thousand angels" but he chose to endure the suffering of the cross by Himself. He took upon himself this responsibility, willingly and voluntarily. It’s interesting that Peter is careful for us to understand that the location of this suffering was "in His body." Jesus, the Son of God, in human form, carried in His own body all of the sin of the world and all of our sin.

Steven Mosely writes of that pain for us that Jesus bore for us on the cross: "Darkness fell like an unexpected sentence on the world, thick and terrifying. And amid this sudden night Jesus tumbled violently, as if in the epicenter of an unfathomable storm, wrenched apart by a planet careening out of control. It had been a long and costly ordeal that Jesus threw Himself into: Arrogant Assyrians gloating over the captives they skinned alive. SS troops machine-gunning women and children who ran from the burning synagogue with clothes ablaze. Child molesters making sure their victims would never testify against them. Pharaohs sacrificing thousands of faceless laborers to build themselves a deifying tomb.

"Jesus took on all this and more. It all fell on Him with unspeakable violence. He was tossed about in the endless storm of enraged fathers beating toddlers to death, pimps seducing teen runaways into lives of drugs and prostitution, Canaanites burning their children to Moloch, nice church ladies cannibalizing other nice church ladies over coffee, grand inquisitors piously binding conscience to the rack and demanding right doctrine at a stake, impoverished parents in China selling their daughters into slavery, Bible-believing elders praying long and loud while their wives sit in the back pews hoping heavy makeup covers the bruises.

"On and on it goes, a storm of titanic currents raging between Heaven and Earth, two irreconcilable moral fronts colliding at full strength in the dark. Jesus tumbles alone amid embezzlers, gangsters, bullies, rapists, liars, the indifferent, the sadistic, the self-righteous. It’s a scene of unbearable horror and unspeakable madness. Jesus writhes amid this suffocating cloud of witnesses. He is the accused for them all, bearing the weight of abused children scarred for life, families destroyed by adultery or apathy, civilizations decaying, wars ravaging, victims, victims, always victims crying out. They are numberless and their anguished voices all focus on this one Man tumbling in the storm, exposed, vulnerable to it all. Wasted lives, heartache, monstrous atrocity, petty transgression-—humanity dumps its wreckage on this one spot."

When you take this small piece of bread it is a reminder that the suffering that saves is the suffering of Jesus Christ Himself.

II. There is something else that compels us in this verse. It says that "He Himself bore our sins…" The word Peter uses was a familiar one to a Jew because it described how someone would bear or pay the penalty for someone else. As Jesus was nailed to the cross He was placed there instead of you and instead of me to pay the penalty for your sins and mine. The word "sins" is important because it is each individual sin which indicates that the responsibility for each sin you or I have ever committed.

The willingness of Jesus to suffer for us is powerfully demonstrated in a story that Max Anders tells: An American naval vessel, the USS Pueblo, was hijacked a number of years ago by the North Korean military. For a couple of months the diplomatic situation was very tense while eighty two crew members were held in captivity. Their guards tortured them in various ways.

In one incident, thirteen of the men were forced to sit without moving around a table for hours on end. Finally, the door burst open and a North Korean soldier stepped in and began to beat the man in the first chair with the butt of his rifle. The next day each man took his assigned place and sat rigidly for several hours. Again the guard threw open the door and brutalized the man in the first chair. The same sequence of events was repeated on the third day—the same man was beaten. On the fourth day, a young sailor, realizing that the man would not live through another beating, sat in the first chair in his place. At last the door swung open. The cruel guard came in and beat this new victim until he was almost unconscious. It went on this way for weeks. Each day a different man would volunteer to take his turn in that first chair, fully aware of what would happen. Finally, the guards gave up. They were powerless in the face of that kind of willing sacrifice. Jesus sat in the first chair for us. He took the blows of sin and death in our place, so that we might have eternal life. His suffering was for our sins.

III. Earlier we read from Isaiah 53. It is significant that Peter makes five allusions or quotations from that chapter in these verses. What Peter reminds us of is this: Jesus suffered so that we could be completely saved. That there would be nothing left untouched by his power or his grace. When He saves or rescues He does so totally.

When our daughter Amy was younger one of her favorite TV shows was "Rescue 911." She would watch it weekly and the reruns daily. Now, with more channels, she finds shows similar and watches them. Recently a new show for the fall was advertised that has a similar rescue theme and she said, "I can’t wait!"

Regardless of the name of the program, the rescues all have three basic elements: someone needs to be released from a life-threatening situation, if they are dead then it is possible they need to be revived, and when they are rescued they are returned to their family or friends who love them.

In these last lines Peter verifies that Jesus does for us these very things in His bearing our sins on the cross. His suffering for us releases us from the constrictions and curse of our sin so that we can live in a way that is right. His pain in our behalf has the ability to renew our life because it touches our wounds and heals them. If this were not enough, He tenderly restores us to the care of the Father so that we can know we are safe.

Missionaries Dennis and Vicki Gast were thrilled with a doctor told them they would have another child. Then at four months he informed them that he heard two heartbeats. The Gasts were overjoyed. At the five-month checkup, however, the doctor could hear only one heartbeat. Early one morning after Dennis had left for work, Vicki went into severe labor. Ten minutes later she delivered her own baby—stillborn. The second followed soon after—also stillborn. Vicki had lost a lot of blood and was rushed to the hospital. When the doctor assessed her condition, he said, "Forget the blood bank. There’s too much AIDS to risk it." So he prepared to give his own blood, which matched hers. Vicki recovered because of her doctor’s blood.

Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ gave His body but also His blood so that we could be absolutely free, alive and secure.

Max Lucado relates an amazing sight a friend of his saw at Disney World. He was visiting Cinderella’s castle. The place was filled with kids and parents. All of a sudden, all the children rushed over to one side of the big hall. Someone had come in. It was Cinderella herself! The young lady in the costume was perfect for the part—beautiful features, long flowing blonde hair, radiant smile. The kids all crowded around her, each one wanting to touch her, to somehow get her attention.

Over on the other side of the room, however, stood a small boy of maybe six or seven. It was hard to tell how old he was because his little body was so deformed. He just stood there, looking longingly toward the lovely princess. You could tell he wanted to go over and talk to her like all the other kids, but he remained transfixed, holding tightly to the hand of his older brother.

It was fear that kept him there—fear of yet another rejection, of being mocked or rudely pushed aside. But above all the hubbub Cinderella noticed the boy and started walking toward him. Gently but firmly, she extricated herself from the clutching hands of the other children and made her way across the room. She dropped to her knees in front of him and placed a kiss on his forehead.

Today we celebrate not the kiss of a princess, but the death of the Prince of Peace for us. Rather than a little boy whose body has been twisted, it is us who are deformed by our sin. The one on the cross did not bend down and gently recognize our dilemma. Also, He took our deformity on Himself. It is that suffering that saves us. It is that salvation that we celebrate today in this bread and this cup – all of you!

Sunday, August 15, 1999

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org