Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Tonight I’d like to consider something that Peter says in our epistle reading: “Indeed, it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil, because Christ also suffered once for sins in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” First, I’d like to speak a little bit about suffering. We know from the Bible that suffering is the consequence of the fall into sin. With sin came death and everything that leads up to death, including pain, sickness, and disease. Psychological and spiritual suffering came with the fall—the worst of which is the feeling of alienation from God. There is also emotional suffering. Right from the get-go human beings have tried to alleviate suffering to the greatest extent that they could. Right after Adam and Eve sinned they tried to alleviate their shame by making some clothes for themselves. From that time forward we have applied all the gifts and abilities that God has given to us to eliminate suffering wherever we might find it. One invention after another has reduced our toils and troubles and pains and sickness. Just think about it. We don’t have to walk anywhere. With our HVAC systems we are never cold nor hot. Gadgets and devices of all kinds make it so that we never have to exert ourselves while doing chores. There are also all kinds of drugs that can address disease, pain, and even our moods. Now there is nothing unclean about these things unless they contradict God’s commandments. They can all be sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. We shouldn’t deliberately shun them like the Amish do. There’s nothing in God’s Word that says we should do that. However, let’s not pretend that this way of living hasn’t had a powerful effect on us. When we are trained from the moment of our birth that suffering is bad and it must be eliminated, then it will be much harder to believe what the Bible says. For example, Jesus says that we are to take up our cross and follow him. The cross was the Roman government’s way of inflicting capital punishment in a particularly painful way. It was reserved for slaves and non-citizens. Capital punishment for Roman citizens was beheading—a much quicker and less painful way to die. So Jesus is calling us to a life of suffering. But this is not a life of suffering simply for suffering’s sake. It’s not like everything gets turned upside down where suffering is good and joy is bad. Suffering is still sad and hard, but it can be blessed, good, and holy. Suffering is also not something that we should go out of our way to find. Peter says, “it is good to suffer, if it is God’s will.” Again, I might mention the Amish. God is not better pleased with us if we use some gadget or don’t use some gadget. We should not make up good works for ourselves, and then feel good about the suffering that those self-chosen works might cause us. That is not suffering for doing good. But God will, indeed, give us our crosses to bear if we are his disciples. These normally come in our everyday walk of life. God puts us all in families. Inevitably there will be hard times in those families. How do you react when you are mistreated? Do you forgive? Or do you seek some kind of payback? Or, what is much more common, we will rationalize our payback by convincing ourselves that we are teaching them a lesson. If we allow this one irritation to pass, then we’ll become a doormat, so we better teach them a lesson. So everybody teaching everybody else a lesson with their sour faces, sharp responses, and tit for tat. Of course, these things can easily grow until we hate each other. It doesn’t need to be this way though. If we would only cover up the faults of our loved ones and let the mistreatment roll off our back, there wouldn’t be these blazing fires. Also, all along the line, if either party will only humble themselves, and quit teaching the other a lesson, how quickly the fire would be knocked down! Peter, a lit