On The Tree for Me
I Peter 2:21-25
Verse 21 says, "For even hereunto were ye called." Called unto what? He has just been talking about suffering. He has been talking about the fact that those who know Christ as their Savior will experience suffering.
He said that you have been called unto suffering. What he's saying is that it is a part of the salvation package. It just goes with it. God's children have been called to suffering. It is a part of the salvation package, a part of the salvation experience. He says, "Because Christ also suffered for us." If we are to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, He suffered. We're going to suffer.
He tells us two very important things concerning the Lord Jesus. He says in verse 21 that Christ suffered for us, "Leaving us an example." The word example literally means to write under.
Do you remember when you were in school learning your ABC's? They hand out a piece from a tablet and on the top of it would be the letters of the alphabet. Our job was to trace those letters of the alphabet. We learned the alphabet by following the pattern that had been laid out for us.
That's the word that is used right here. Christ is our example. We are to take the example of Christ. We are to learn of Christ.
Then he says that He is our example, "That ye should follow his steps." Have you ever seen a little boy following the steps of his daddy, trying to step where the daddy is stepping and the dad looks over his shoulder and sees the little boy following? Simon Peter says the Lord Jesus Christ has given us an example. We are to follow His steps.
I think that statement must have brought back some real memories to Simon Peter. He was a fisherman and working with his nets around the ship one day around the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus came walking by that day and said, "Come follow me." Simon Peter started following in the steps of Jesus. Do you remember the day you were called to follow the Lord Jesus Christ?
Maybe he thought about the night Jesus walked on the water and before the night was over, he had also.
Then I think maybe Simon Peter thought about that night before the Lord was crucified, that night of His trial, and the Bible tells us that Simon Peter was following Him afar off. Sometimes we don't follow Jesus as close as we should follow, and he must have remembered that.
Maybe he remembered after the resurrection when Jesus gathered with them around the Sea of Galilee and cooked breakfast for them, and He said to Simon Peter, "Follow me."
There's a wonderful song in our hymn books called "Footsteps of Jesus, that make the pathway glow. We will follow the steps of Jesus where ere they go."
It should be the desire of every one of us in this building to follow the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're going to follow the steps of Jesus that means that you've got to be going in the direction Jesus is going.
That is the introduction, and in this introduction Simon Peter moves very quickly to one of the most moving expressions, one of the most moving passages in all of the Bible about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, and he calls it on the tree.
I want to talk to you about His death on that tree for you and me. I'm going to have to use some big words to get me started. You have to use Bible words and some theological words sometimes to explain what you are talking about, and then my job as a preacher is to dumb them down so that guys like me can understand them.
I. The Virtuous Nature of Jesus Death on the Cross.
What I mean by the word virtuous is the absolute perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ; the moral and the ethical and the spiritual excellence and perfection of our Savior because that's what he talks about in verses 22 and 23.
The virtuous nature of His death on the cross means that when Jesus died on that cross, He was not dying for any sin which He had committed. That's what I mean by the virtuous nature of His death on the cross.
We learn in these verses that the death of our Lord, what He suffered on the cross, that He did so sinlessly. In verse 22 it says, "Who did no sin."
What that means is that Jesus Christ never, ever committed a single act of sin. That's one of the things I ask boys and girls when they come to see me, when I counsel your children. The first thing I ask them is, "Have you ever sinned?" A lot of times they look over at mom and dad and then they all admit they have. Then the second question I ask them is, "Did Jesus ever sin?" Without exception they understand that Jesus never did sin.
Here is a statement about the sinlessness of Jesus Christ. He did no sin. Everybody knew that he was without sin. Even his enemies acknowledged the sinlessness of our Savior. Judas, for instance, said about Him, "I have betrayed the innocent blood." Pontius Pilate, before whom He stood, said, "I find no fault in this man." And his wife came and said, "Have nothing to do with this just man. I've suffered many things in a dream this night because of Him." He was the absolute sinless one.
The Bible says that He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. The sinlessness of what Jesus Christ went through on the cross of Calvary. He did no sin.
But it sets forth, secondly, that Jesus Christ suffered for our sins silently. At the end of verse 22 it says, "Neither was guile found in his mouth." There was no deceit, no deception, in the mouth of Jesus.
Then in verse 23 it says, "Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again." What that means is verbal abuse.
When Jesus lived this sinless life, He didn't live it in a vacuum. He didn't live it in a bubble. Jesus was not off on a mountain somewhere or in a monastery somewhere away from the temptations and the complications of life that you and I experience. Jesus came into the real world. He came into the same atmosphere you and I did, and yet the Bible says that in that atmosphere He was sinless and when He was verbally abused, He did not return that verbal abuse.
That's not easy to do. Are you listening? That's what gets a lot of marriages in trouble. You know the temptation of our old fallen nature. When somebody says something ugly to you, what does the old flesh want to do? You want to say something ugly back to them. Be honest about it.
Did you ever try to put toothpaste back in the tube?
That is exactly the way it is with some of our words sometimes. Be honest about it. Aren't there a lot of you who wish there are some words back there you could take back that you got out of the tube?
When He was reviled, He reviled not again. They heaped verbal abuse on the Lord Jesus. They called Jesus Christ everything you can imagine. The Bible says that when He was threatened, He threatened not. "When he suffered, he threatened not."
Think of everything they poured on the Lord Jesus at Calvary, all of the verbal abuse that He went through. "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." They said everything imaginable. Can't you imagine what Jesus Christ could have said to them in reply?
He could have said, "You guys are going to get yours. I'm going to call the angels down and they are going to hurl thunderbolts of judgment on you and vaporize the whole crowd of you." But He didn't do it.
On that cross, He suffered sinlessly. He suffered silently. Notice what it says. It says that the Lord Jesus Christ also suffered serenely.
The last part of verse 23 says, "But committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." The tense of the verse committed means that He continually committed. The word committed literally means to deliver up.
Interestingly enough, that word is used of what the enemies did to the Lord Jesus Christ. For instance, the Bible tells us that Judas committed or delivered Jesus up to the Jewish leaders. The Bible says that the Jewish leaders committed or delivered Jesus Christ up to the Roman authorities.
But all along the way as they committed Him up to His enemies, Jesus committed Himself to God. They betrayed Him. He committed Himself up to God. They lied about Him. He committed Himself up to God. They put Him on a cross. He committed Himself up to God. He was continuously, constantly, serenely turning His life over to the heavenly Father. He refused to retaliate. He refused to say ugly and unkind things to them.
In fact, He said rather, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." He continually committed Himself up to Him who judges righteously.
That's what the Bible says you and I are supposed to do. That's the way we're suppose to live. We hear it early in the Sermon on the Mount. In I Corinthians 4 it says in verse 12, "And labor, working with our own hands, Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it." In Romans 12, verse 19, in the last part of that verse it says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
If you're having a tough day, commit yourself to God. If people are saying unkind things about you, commit yourself to God. If people are giving you an unfair deal, commit yourself to God. If things seem to be going wrong for you, commit yourself to God. There is a court on this earth and there is a court in heaven and there is a God in the court of heaven who is judging righteously who knows all of the details about every situation, and one of these days He will do justice. You just commit yourself unto God.
II. The Vicarious Nature of Jesus Death on the Cross.
These verses set forth not only the virtuous nature of His death on the cross, the fact that He was sinless, but they secondly set forth the vicarious nature of His death on the cross. There's another unfamiliar word.
The word vicarious means in the place of someone else. The vicarious nature of His death on the cross means that He was not dying on that cross for Himself. He was dying on that cross for someone else.
The Bible has said that we are to follow His example, but here is a place where we cannot follow. We can follow His example in that we do not retaliate in the midst of injustice, but now we are taken into a direction where we are not able to follow because Jesus Christ not only is our example on the cross, but the Bible teaches He was our substitute on the cross.
It says in verse 21, "Christ also suffered for us." Verse 24 says, "Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree." He was suffering vicariously, that is, He was suffering in our place. He was our substitute.
Let's look at verse 24. It's one of the meatiest verses in all the Bible about the cross, about the death Jesus died on that old tree.
I want you to notice the offering that was made here.
It says, "Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree." The language here is a language that is taken from the Old Testament ceremonies. The word bear literally means that He offered up Himself for our sins on the tree. "In his own self He bore our sins in his own body on the tree."
In the Old Testament a priest would come before an animal, and that animal had to be without spot and perfect in terms of its qualification. But the priest would take his hands and he would lay his hands on that sacrificial animal and he would confess his sins and the sins of the people on that animal. Then he would take that animal and kill it.
He would take the body of that animal and he would lay it up on the altar.
Notice what Jesus did. The Bible says that Jesus bore, that is, offered up on the altar. "Bore our sins in his own body," not the body of a dead animal but His own body. Our sins were laid on Jesus and He bore our sins in His own body.
His was a body without sin, and yet when Jesus died on that cross He bore in His own body all of our sins. Our bodies are scarred by sin. We bear in our bodies the marks of our sins. We bear in our bodies the ramifications and the results and the consequences of the sinful choices that we make.
Yet the Lord Jesus Christ, though He was not scarred by sin Himself, was scarred by our sins so that when Jesus went up to that cross, He went up there bloody and beaten and bruised, and He did it all because He was bearing our sins on the tree.
Here is the priest. Here is the sacrificial body. Where is the altar? Simon Peter says that it was the tree. Isn't that an interesting statement for the cross? Did you know that Peter, many times when he preached, that is exactly how he described the cross?
Simon didn't want Jesus to go to the cross. When Jesus went to the cross, we have no evidence that Simon Peter was there, and yet in chapter 5, verse 1, he makes it very clear that he was an eyewitness of the cross. Somewhere, at some safe distance, through tear-drenched eyes old Simon Peter saw our Lord dying on that cross.
But now he sees the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ through the eyes of scripture. Isaiah 53, probably the clearest passage in the Old Testament about the death of our Lord on the cross, is in the background of these verses that I have read and we are studying.
It says that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. The tree became an altar. On that tree was the altar where God brought all of the sins of the whole world. The Bible says that God laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
You have to understand that what happened on that cross and the reason He suffered the way He did and the reason He went through such agony and the reason the blood was shed like it was is because on that cross He was paying the price for your sins and for my sins.
I know that this is not satisfactory to modern people. Our modern culture doesn't want it that way. Our modern culture says, "We want to give you some good advice. We want to give you a little therapy. That will just solve your problem." But here is a verse of scripture that makes it very plain that our sins have to be dealt with. Our sins have to be paid for, and it was on the tree, on the cross, that Jesus Christ paid for all of our sins. That’s the offering. He, in His own body, bore our sins on the tree.
Now look at the outcome of the vicarious nature of His suffering.
"That we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness."
When you come to Christ, you come dead in your sins. You receive Christ as your Savior. Then you become dead to your sins. You ask, "What does that mean, Preacher? Are you trying to say that we don't sin anymore?" No. That's not what it means. When the Bible says that you are dead to sins, it means that you are loosed from the power of sin. It means that you now don't have to sin. You have the choice. You can choose not to sin. "Dead to sin."
The difference between a saved person and a lost person when it comes to sin is that a lost person doesn't have any choice. You are like a puppet on a string. You are doing what you do. But when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, now you have been freed from sin. You are dead to sin which means that you have been loosed from sin's power. Now you can choose not to sin. That's good news!
It says, "Being dead to sins," you can, "live unto righteousness." I now by the power of what Christ did for me on the cross of Calvary can live the kind of life God wants me to live.
There are some people sitting here this morning who would say, "I would become a Christian if I thought I could live it, but I know I can't live it. I don't have the power to live it." Let me tell you something. I can't live it either. I don't have the power to live it either, but I died to sin when Christ died on the cross. Now I am alive unto righteousness which means in the power of His resurrected life I can live with His help and power the way God wants me to live.
He says at the last of the verse, "By whose stripes ye were healed."
The word stripe means the scar made by a whip. Think about the stripes He endured and think about the blow that He endured. Think about how they took their wicked hands and beat the face of the Lord until the Bible says that He was beyond recognition. You couldn't even tell He was a man.
Think about how they beat the back of the Lord Jesus Christ until it was just a mass of quivering flesh and plasma. Think about how they put that rugged cross upon the back of the Lord and drug Him up Calvary's hill. Think about the nails they put in His hands and think about the crown of thorns that was on His head and think about that spear that was thrust into His side.
Literally, when it says, "By whose stripes," the word is a singular word. It means by "whose" stripe. It's as if all that Jesus endured was one massive wound, one massive conglomerate of sin and suffering that was put upon the Lord Jesus Christ. "By whose stripes, by His suffering, by His wounding, you were healed."
That means far, far more than just bodily physical healing. Something far more serious is intended by this statement right here. He's saying that you were healed from the sin disease. Our great physician, our Dr. Jesus, is the most wonderful physician in that when we come to the Lord Jesus He takes the disease and gives us the cure.
It says, "By whose stripes," and then he gets personal. "You were healed." Have you been healed of the sin disease? Is this personal to you?
III. The Victorious nature of His Death on the Cross.
These verses set forth not only the virtuous nature of His death on the cross, that is, He suffered sinlessly. No sin of His own. They set forth the vicarious nature of His death on the cross, that is, He was dying not for Himself but for us, not for His sins but for our sins. Then, number three, it sets forth the victorious nature of His death on the cross. That word is not hard to understand.
In verse 25 it says, "For ye were as sheep going astray." Isaiah 53 is in the background. Isaiah 53 says, "All we like sheep have gone astray." The Bible pictures us as sheep.
One of the tendencies of sheep is that sheep tend to get lost. They can't find their way. They wander. He says, "You were like sheep going astray. You were like sheep wandering away."
Isn't that a picture of people today, wandering from pillar to post? People are just looking for everything. They go from one brand of cigarette to another. They go from one label of booze to another. They go from one bar to another. They are just wandering astray. They go from one affair to another looking for something to meet the deep need of their heart, looking for something to give them peace of soul, looking for something to deal with the guilt and the pain that they feel in their heart. You were as sheep going astray.
Do you see that little sheep? Here's that little sheep out wandering, and it's going from place to place, and that little sheep gets closer and closer and closer to the edge, and the ground begins to crumble under the little feet of the sheep. Just one more step now and the sheep is gone.
Simon Peter says that you were like sheep going astray, but he says, "But are now returned." You have been rescued. The Bible says that God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be the Savior, to be the Shepherd of the sheep.
Here we were right there on the edge getting ready to tip over at any moment, and the Bible says that the Great Shepherd of our soul came and He returned us. He put us on His shoulder and He took us to the fold, and they rejoiced and they shouted and they had a party when the sheep came home. That's what happens when God saves the soul. That's what God will do for you. "You are returned unto the Shepherd."
A shepherd is responsible to provide for the sheep. That's why I am glad that Jesus is my Shepherd. He provides for me. He provides food. He provides guidance. He provides care. He is the shepherd of my soul.
No wonder it says in Psalm 23, verse 1, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." No wonder the little boy in his Bible class on Sunday morning quoted it like this, "The Lord is my shepherd; that's all I want." He misquoted it, but he didn't miss the message of it. "The Lord is my shepherd; that's all I want." He meets the deepest needs of your soul.
It says that not only is He your shepherd and that you have been returned, but it says that He is the "Bishop of your souls." The word bishop is an overseer. The word literally means to watch over. It means to attend to, to watch over, to care for.
Jesus as our Shepherd means that He provides for us. Jesus as our Bishop means that He protects us. He's watching over us. You're not alone. You may think you're all alone, but you're not. If you are a child of God, if you are one of the sheep of the Lord, you have been returned to the Shepherd. You have been returned to the Bishop. He is watching over you. He's got His eyes on you.
One of my favorite stories is about the friend who was visiting another friend for morning coffee and noticed on the wall that picture of Jesus. The artist had so drawn the eyes in that picture of Jesus that wherever you went in the room those eyes followed. Have you ever seen a picture like that?
The friend said, "I noticed that on your picture of Jesus that wherever you move those eyes of Jesus are following you in the room. Doesn't that bother you a little?" The other said, "Oh, no. It doesn't bother me. It just simply means to me that Jesus loves me so much He can't take His eyes off of me."
His eyes are on you today. He is the Shepherd and He is the Bishop of your soul. What you need to do today is come to the shepherd.
