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This is our last day together, day five in our look at 1st Peter chapter 2.
Remember yesterday we talked about how to live with unselfish love, how to be
different in our relationships. And in these last verses of this chapter Peter
comes back, as he often does in this letter, to look at Jesus.

This is how you should live, he says, and then he looks at Jesus. This is who
you are, he says, and then he looks at Jesus. This is how to love, he says, and
then he looks at Jesus.

He's modeling for us how to live the kind of life that Jesus calls us to live.
You look at Jesus. He learned to do this as a disciple.

They were following Jesus. He said to do this, so they had to look at Jesus in
order to follow Jesus. They literally had to look at him.

If he's going to go in that direction, down that road, they better have their
eyes up so when the Y in the road came, they could see which way Jesus went.
Which way does Jesus want you to go? You got to look at Jesus.

You look at who you're trying to love today, and then you look to Jesus to give
you the strength to love them. You look at what God's calling you to do today,
and then you look at Jesus to give you the strength to do what he's calling you
to do. So here's what he says in verses 21-23 as he looks at Jesus.

"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. " So Peter says here, when it comes to relationships, even the
tough relationships, the worst, Jesus is our example.

He says Jesus did not retaliate even when he was insulted. So you are not to
retaliate. That is not the way of a follower of Christ.

I know it's the way of all the TV shows and movies today. It's how we get our
entertainment when somebody retaliates and we feel so justified inside when they
retaliate and they seem to have solved everything in the two-hour movie or the
one-hour TV show. And I enjoy that kind of entertainment too.

But the truth of the matter is, the truth of life is, nothing is solved by
retaliation. The truth of life is, we're looking for eternity. And the only way
to give an example that's going to change my life, keep my heart from getting
bitter, and change a person's life who is struggling and who's hating me is to
show them an example of love.

So Jesus didn't retaliate. I'm to be like Jesus. Jesus, Peter says, he didn't
threaten even though he suffered.

So you're not to threaten. That's not the way of a follower of Christ. We don't
threaten.

We don't say I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that or I'm going to get
even. No. We just love.

We continue to love. Now how do you do that? Peter even says here's how you do
that.

Remember Peter, who was there, who was there. Now he denied Christ three times
when he was there, but he was there watching Jesus go through these trials there
when Jesus died on the cross. He's talking about the way that Jesus lived and
you and I living in that kind of way.

How did Jesus do this? Peter says here's how. He entrusted himself to God.

So you're not to retaliate. You're not to threaten. You're to entrust yourself
to God.

That's the real issue. The real issue is am I going to take this into my hands
or am I going to trust it into God's hands? When you're insulted, when you
suffer, the feeling you have, the emotion you have is someone has to do
something about this.

And you know that's a right emotion. That's a godly emotion because it's unjust
what has happened to you. It's wrong what has happened to you.

So you are exactly right to feel that way. Someone has to do something about
that. But the question is who is that someone?

Is that someone going to be you or is it going to be God? Now if you think you
can do it, you're going to find yourself eaten up by that because we cannot
retaliate without it wounding our soul. We can't threaten without it hurting our
heart.

That's why we entrust it to God. When you look at the way that you live life, in
one sense there are three ways to live your life. You can live the out of
control life, the in control life, or the under God's control life.

When I have anger, I can live out of control, in control, or under God's
control. When my anger is out of control, I act to hurt those who have hurt me.
It just explodes.

And we all know somehow as a Christian, well that's not right, that's wrong. But
then a lot of us go to the second option. We live the in control life.

We hold it in. We think about it all the time. We wonder what bad could have
happened to this person.

We run it over and over and over again in our minds and it eats away at you.
Nobody sees it on the outside. You seem to be in control, but the truth of the
matter is you have not let it go.

You know you haven't forgiven them. If somebody asks you have you forgiven, you
might say yes, haltingly. But in your heart, you know you haven't let it go.

You don't feel like you can let it go because what they did was wrong. They need
to pay for it. That's the in control life.

It's in some ways worse than the out of control life because it eats you up from
the inside out. There's a third way to live. It's under God's control.

That's where you find the strength to forgive and let it go because you realize
that that person all of life, all of eternity, all of me is under God's control.
Because he is in control, I can trust it to God's control. Peter is talking
about Jesus here and looking at Jesus.

I love what he says in verse 24 because it tells you where you find the power.
I'm always looking for how do I do this? I mean these are great sounding words,
but how do I live in this kind of way?

Verse 24 tells you where to find the power to love like this, to live with this
kind of unselfish love. This verse says, "He," Jesus, "himself bore our sins in
his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By
his wounds you have been healed.

" Where do you find the power to live like this? You remember three things.
First, he bore your sins so you don't have to bear them yourself.

You don't have to bear the burden of your sins. He bore them. Second, he did
that so that you could die to those sins and live for righteousness.

He did it for a purpose, to give you forgiveness, die to your sins, but also so
that you could live for righteousness. Righteousness means a right relationship
with God, living the right way in your life so that you have a right
relationship with other people. Everything becomes right in the way that you
live.

Now not every circumstance becomes right. While we're in this world, we're going
to face some wrong circumstances, but everything becomes right in the way that
you live because he bore your sins. And then this incredible phrase in
scripture, "By his wounds you have been healed.

" Unless you're healed by his wounds, you don't have the power to love
unselfishly. When you're living with wounds that you're trying to heal on your
own, you're not going to find the power to be unselfish. You're too caught up in
your wounds.

And by the way, if you're trying to bear your sins on your own, trying to make
up for them on your own, you're not going to have the power to be unselfish.
You're carrying too much weight in your daily life. And the fact that we carry
this weight or we live with these wounds causes many of us to feel powerless in
being unselfish.

But he bore your sins. By his wounds you have been healed so that you can live
for righteousness. That's how it happens in my life and your life because of
what Jesus has done.

And so then you get to verse 25, the difference that Jesus makes. Verse 25 says,
"For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the shepherd
and overseer of your souls. " That's who Jesus is.

He's the shepherd and overseer of your soul. What's going on inside of you? He's
the one who can shepherd, guide you, who can put you in the right direction.

He's the overseer who can be the Lord over even the most ugly feelings and
thoughts that you have in your life. He's the shepherd and overseer of your
soul. I love, I love in this verse, verse 25, the two words, "but now.

" They're some of the most beautiful words in Scripture. You see them again and
again and again. In John 9 verse 25, a blind man replied, "Whether Jesus is a
sinner or not, I don't know.

But one thing is true. I was blind, but now I see. " Ephesians 2.

13, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near
through the blood of Christ. " Ephesians 5. 8, "For you once were darkness, but
now you are light in the Lord.

" Colossians 1. 22, "But now God has made you his friends again. He did this
through Christ's death in the body so that he might bring you into God's
presence as people who are holy, with no wrong and with nothing in which God can
judge you guilty.

" And then again, 1 Peter 2. 25, "You were like sheep that wandered away, but
now you've come back to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. " Our Father,
as we pray, we thank you.

We thank you that Jesus is the shepherd, the overseer that our souls need. We're
not trying to figure this out on our own. We're not trying to make it work on
our own.

Jesus is not some example on the outside that's 2,000 years away from us or a
heaven and earth away from us, and we're trying to figure out how to live the
life you called us to live. Jesus, you're here with us. You are the shepherd.

You're the overseer. And so we pray, shepherd our souls in the direction of
knowing you better and loving other people more today. Guide our souls in the
direction of having a deeper faith today.

We need your guidance. We need your direction. We need your power.

And we ask for it, Jesus, in your name. Amen. Well, join us next week for 1
Peter chapter 3.

We're going to continue to talk about unselfish relationships, and we're going
to also tackle what many people call the most difficult to understand passage in
the entire New Testament.