Jesus Lived His Life To Set An Example For Us To Follow

1st Peter 2:18-25, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

I cherish this passage of Scripture. Jesus is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. The inspired Scripture teaches that Jesus lived His life to set an example of how we should live as Christians. When Jesus was mistreated, He did not seek revenge. When the dear Savior was falsely accused and unfairly beaten, He held His peace. We've all been mistreated in life. God doesn't want us to retaliate with evil.

In 2013, I moved from Guam to Hilo, Hawaii. I had called ahead twice to ask a local chiropractor's office if they could prescribe the opiate pain medications that I needed. The same woman employee on the phone assured me twice (in two separate phone calls a week apart) that the doctor absolutely could prescribe my medications. So, I moved 4,000 miles from Guam to Hilo, but when I met with the chiropractor he said he wouldn't even know where to send me. The idiot woman on the phone blatantly lied to me.

When I confronted her kindly at the front office desk about her false information, she couldn't have cared less. There were two woman working at the front desk. I kindly told her that even though she had horribly done me wrong, I forgave her. But I also told scolded her for lying to me, and told her that God sees and cares about our words. As I finished speaking my peace, I gently walked away and they both laughed at me as I neared the door. I wanted to murder both of them! I contemplated coming back during the night and throwing a big brick through their window, or something malicious I could do to teach them a lesson. But I wisely considered that I would likely be arrested and get into big trouble, while they laughed some more. So, as hard as it was, I let the matter go INTO GOD'S HANDS. To this day I am deeply hurt over what those two MONSTERS did to me, and I want justice from God. Luke 18:7, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?”

Dear reader, I have literally hundreds of such painful incidents which have happened in my life. From the irresponsible fool who left their abandoned car in the middle of the road in 1992 (which led to the tragic accident involving 3 church buses that caused my permanent neck injury), to the two African American punks who stole our family's car in Chicago in 2004, to wicked pastor Tom Brennan in Chicago who in 2004 stole $4,800 from my family and gave away our three cats that he had promised to take care of for 6 months for free (yet we paid him $4,800) and our dog that he killed in anger, to Cedar's Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles who threw me under the bus for dead in 2009 after my neck surgery, to that wicked pastor Marty Herron who forced me out of Harvest Baptist Church in 2014 and banned me from returning, to that wicked hypocrite pastor Jeff Redlin at Pensacola Christian College who also kicked me out of their Campus Church and banned me from returning, to the ungodly slanderous pastors of Dr. Jack Hyles at Family Baptist Church in Pensacola (who wickedly kicked me and my wife Alice out of their damned authoritarian carnal church in 2025)—I WANT JUSTICE FROM GOD!!! 

And the good Lord has promised me to avenge me of these evildoers (Romans 12:19-21). You better believe that I want heads to roll. And if I have wronged or hurt any human being, I want the same justice for them against me. I could easily list hundreds more offenses against me by wicked sinners (including ruthless Christian sinners), but I have never avenged myself.

I could have spit in co-worker's food, but I didn't. I could have stolen their tools and personal belongings (as they did to me), but I didn't, not once. I could have stolen their work uniforms (as they did mine), so that they would have had to pay for them (like I did). Not once in all my working years did I steal anything from anybody. I have worked for everything I have.

By far, I wasn't perfect. Once a guy at work, who was 10 years older than me, kept harassing me. His name was Frank. He threw my radio on the shop floor and smashed it into pieces. I told my boss (the shop foreman), but he couldn't have cared less. I was 21 or 22 years old at the time. My boss said: “If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

That weekend he was driving on his motorcycle southbound on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago (I nicknamed it 'Death Shore Drive' because of the high rate of auto accidents). Frank hit a big bump and crashed his bike. When he came back to work both of his eyes were red from broken blood vessels. Frank took a hard fall. He asked me if I thought God was punishing him for breaking my radio, to which I replied: “Hey, you said it, not me.” I didn't rub it in, I prayed for him.

Frank in his usual anger grabbed me by the shirt one day in the shop and we scuffled. I ripped all the buttons off his shirt in the incident trying to be freed from him. We had a concrete walled makeshift shower at work with an open top. A few month later in summer, while he was taking a shower at work for a hot date on a Friday night, I poured 80/90 gear lube over his head in good gesture, not hatred. I knew it was a harmless stunt. I heard him yelling, “There's gear lube in the water!” Frank came running out with a towel around him, asking who did it, and the other guys told him. Frank threw my tool box on the floor and overturned it so that my tools went everywhere. I was hiding in the parking lot...lol.

Thankfully, my boss warned him the following Monday that if he touched me he would be fired, so Frank left me alone. For once my boss stood up for me, but only that one time. At that job, working as a newbie mechanic, I was spit upon by a co-worker, Bob. Don threw  3-pound sledgehammer at me, and thankfully I dodged out of its way. They stole my work uniforms, which I had to pay for. Co-workers placed Penthouse centerfolds on my work locker.

One day someone left a comic strip on my locker which read: “NEWS FLASH! A Tv evangelist has been seen with his wife!” I figured that pun out fairly quickly. Adultery is epidemic in modern-day apostate neo-evangelism and sad to say, in nearly all of the churches. It's our perverse American culture, which has deliberately been sexualized by Satanists to destroy our nation. Men are under attack like never before by the Devil, which is why I make such a big fuss against women wearing pants in public. IT IS WICKEDNESS!!!

Co-workers put booze bottles in my toolbox, old cigars, and once a highly charged ignition capacitor that caused me to jump a foot into the air when I picked it up, while Dan laughed who put it there, thinking it was funny. My friend at work, Grant (one of our best mechanics and a really nice guy), went to told my boss that the stupid stunt could have stopped my heart, but my boss didn't care. I could write a lengthy book about my persecutions in the secular workplace, and the corrupt churches. When you are a godly Christian you become a moving target for the heathen world (2nd Timothy 3:12). When you are a Christian the whole world is waiting for you to fall (John 15:19).

I saw a truthful meme recently, which read: “The more I learn about people, the more I understand why Noah only took animals aboard the ark.” People equal pain dear reader, as you already know all too well. That is why me and my wife increasingly prefer to stay home as much as possible. We are at the place where we don't even want to go outside our door anymore, because of how wicked American society has become. Pastor Lester Roloff (1914-1982) was absolutely right, who said: “We're in insanity because of sin.”

I am far from a perfect man, but other than that gear lube stunt nearly 40 years ago I cannot remember having done anything to hurt, retaliate or be mean to anyone that I worked with, or at any church. They tore up my daily work-orders at work, which I had to fill out twice. They deliberately stopped up urinals to flood the restroom floor to harass me. Wicked co-workers started and spread ungodly rumors about me, knowing that people go by what they hear.

Yet, I prayed for my co-workers and I prayed for them continually, mainly for God to convict them about their need to be saved. I've had a Church of Christ nutcase get angry at me for leaving Gospel tracts in the men's room. I refused to admit to leaving them out, because he was trying to get me into trouble. Cult members are hateful! The Jehovah's Witness are some of the most hateful people I have ever met. They are militant in their damnable false religion! The Church of Christ and Lordship Salvation Baptists are nearly just as bad. Beware of the heretical militant “repent of your sins” followers of nutcase Dr. Peter S. Ruckman (1921-2016).

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was so right: “No good deed shall go unpunished.” Everywhere that Jesus journeyed, He was a blessing but wicked sinners hated Him. Jesus said if they hated Him, they will also hate us as saints (John 7:7, 15:19). Christians are often accused of being “hateful” by the world, and they are right in that we hate sin and evil (Psalms 97:10). But the truth is actually reversed, it is the world who hates the Christians. 

John 15:17-21 “These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.”

The world walks in darkness. Jesus is the light who came into the world, but the world did not recognize Him for who He is. John 1:4-5, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Judas was sorrowful for betraying innocent blood (Matthew 27:3-5), but he never repented toward God of his unbelief to trust Christ. You see dear reader, repenting of your sins won't save you. 

To get to Heaven, you must by faith (taking God at His written Word) receive Christ's sacrifice on the cross as full payment for your sins, believing that He was burled, but then physically ressurected after three days from the dead. This is the Gospel (which means 'GOOD NEWS') by which all who BELIEVE IT are saved (1st Corinthians 15;1-6; Romans 1:16).

May we as God's redeemed saints strive in the Lord's grace each day to walk in our dear Savior's footsteps—forgiving those who have hurt us, loving our enemies, praying for those who despitefully use us, and placing all injurious matters, being defrauded and other offenses into God's omnipotent hands for judgment (Romans 12:19-21). Romans 12:19b, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” It is not our place to avenge ourselves against those who hurt us.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't defend our self and our loved ones against harm or evil. I humbly believe this passage in Romans 12:19-21 applies to the many situations of life where someone has wronged us, and legally there is absolutely nothing we can do to obtain justice. We could break the law by hurting that person somehow, but this is not what God wants for His redeemed children to do. God is much bigger than our problems! And I assure you that nothing is overlooked by God's eyes. Proverbs 15:3, “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” I love those last three word... and the good.” The faithful Lord sees when we do good. God sees when someone cheats, defrauds, hurts or kicks us out of church for telling the truth, and then we let those offenses go into the Lord's caring hands for judgment. I choose to let a painful matter go, to take the high road instead of seeking revenge. Life is too short to live with a burden of hatred.

Granted, I am not talking about godly fundamentalist Bible preachers who preach against evil, expose incompetent clergy, earnestly contend for the faith, and call out bad religious institutions and corrupt churches for their recklessness in handling God's Word, hurting people and the Gospel. Our Lord was a man “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 55:3b). Yet, Jesus who could have called twelve legions of angels to free Him (Matthew 26:53), joyfully endured the cross and the shame for you and me dear reader (Hebrews 12:2), because Jesus loves us (1st John 4:19).

Although Jesus took an uncompromising stand against sin and wickedness, it is also true that He unconditionally loved everybody without exception. Jesus hated no one!

Jesus, I humbly think, was the kind of guy who would give you His last dollar if you needed it, but at the same time He suffered no fools.

Jesus was no wimp, as the ungodly Roman Catholic Church always portrays Him to be, decrepit and weak on a religious crucifix cross.

1st Peter 2:21-25, “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.”

I often preach THE TRUTH that you don't have to forsake a sinful lifestyle to receive God's free gift of eternal life (Ephesians 2:8-9), and that is a needful truth in defense of a free grace Gospel; but dear reader, please don't think for one second that God doesn't want His redeemed children to walk in perfect holiness. Ephesians 2:10 teaches that we were saved UNTO GOOD WORKS. Not “by” good works, but rather “unto” good works. I think Pastor Lester Roloff said it very well: “Jesus saved you so you wouldn't live like that anymore.”

If I could sum up Jesus' life on earth with two words, it would be: “He cared” (1st Peter 5:7).