Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: 1 & 2 Peter

Sermon series by Pastor Geoffrey Willour on 1 and 2 Peter.

Ransomed from Futility

About this sermon

Salvation brings far more than escape from hell. Peter reminds believers that Christ ransomed them from the futile ways inherited from their forefathers, and he paid for it with his precious blood, not with silver or gold. Pagan life, then and now, is aimless and rooted in ignorance of the true God, whatever traditions carry it forward. God’s people call on him as Father, live in reverent fear, and follow Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing, dear friends, for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of 1 Peter. My sermon text this evening, or this afternoon, I should say, is 1 Peter 1, verses 17 through 19, focusing especially on verse 18, but I’m gonna read verses 13 through 21 to offer you the fuller context. So once again, let us hear God’s holy word from 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we do thank you for your grace to us and we thank you that Christ by his precious blood has ransomed us from our sins and from every futile and vain way.

We ask that by your spirit you would instruct us through this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word as we come before your word this afternoon. Help us to be attentive and to give hearty attention to of the proclamation of your word. And Lord, we ask that you would grant me the grace to speak forth and declare your word with clarity and power and faithfulness. We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this afternoon is Ransomed from Futility, and there’s three key words to listen for in my sermon this afternoon. The words ignorance, tradition, and ransomed. Well, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we believers often do not appreciate the full implications of what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us when he ransomed us with his precious blood.

To put it simply, many Christians, it seems, seem to think that salvation simply means that Christ delivers us from hell so that we get to go to heaven when we die. Period. End of story. Now, of course, the truth that our Lord has indeed redeemed us from hell and has secured for us a place in heaven, this is indeed wondrously glorious and absolutely essential truth. It’s essential to the gospel message. It’s part of, a big part of what makes the gospel, which means good news, such good news. That Christ has ransomed us from hell by his precious blood and has secured for us eternal life in heaven. It is indeed true that our Savior died on the cross to redeem us from sin so that we might be delivered from hell and destined for heaven.

However, friends, as our passage for this Lord’s Day afternoon underscores, Christ’s saving work on the cross has also redeemed us from the futile, pagan, non-Christian way of life that for some of us had been passed down to us from our parents, perhaps, a futile and vain way of life that had been received by tradition from our ancestors, our forefathers. Beloved, Redemption and salvation are not just about going to heaven when we die, although, praise God, that is a big and wonderful part of our salvation. But these blessings of grace are also about being given a new way of life to pursue while we are yet alive in this present life. Our passage for this Lord’s Day afternoon is set within a context where Peter is exhorting his readers to prepare themselves for action, the action of living a life of obedient discipleship unto the Lord, a life of holiness and reverent conduct.

And you will recall that Peter is writing this epistle to believers who were facing the prospect of severe persecution for their faith in Jesus Christ. And Peter is writing to these believers in order to encourage them in their faith and also to provide them with instructions for godly living, even in the midst of a hostile environment. Dear ones, in our passage for today, the Holy Spirit, through the inspired Apostle Peter, calls us to live throughout the time of our journey through this present life with an attitude of reverence, especially in light of the fact that we are privileged to call upon God as our Heavenly Father, and in light of the fact that we have been redeemed at such a great cost, at the cost of the precious, priceless blood of Christ our Savior. So for my sermon this afternoon, I want to turn our attention, especially as I mentioned, to verse 18 of our text.

And one of the things that we learn in this important portion of God’s Word is that the Christless, non-Christian way of life is futile, aimless, and rooted in ignorance. As Peter writes in verse 18, knowing that you were ransomed from what? From the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb, without blemish or spot. The Christless, non-Christian way of life is futile, aimless, and rooted in ignorance. the Greek word that is translated in verse 18 as futile in the English Standard Version. It’s translated in versions like the New King James Version as aimless. This is a word that could also be translated as vain. Vain in the sense of being void of result according to Vine’s dictionary.

In the context of this passage, it appears that Peter is saying that the Christless way of life is aimless or vain. Why? Because it is a life which is rooted in and based upon ignorance. It’s a life built upon ignorance, but ignorance of a particular sort. Back in verse 14, Peter had described the life of his readers prior to their conversion as your former ignorance. Let’s go back to verse 14. Peter writes, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of what? The passions, meaning the sinful passions of your former ignorance. Remember, Peter is writing to a group of believers who many of whom had been converted to faith in Christ and adherence to the true and living God of Scripture. They had been converted to Christ from a pagan background. They had come to Christ as idol-worshipping Gentiles who put aside their idols to serve the true and living God.

And so Peter says your former non-Christian pagan way of life was built on ignorance. It was your former ignorance. It’s no longer an ignorance that they lived in, however, because they had been delivered from that ignorance by the grace of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It appears that the kind of ignorance which Peter says characterizes the non-Christian way of life is not an ignorance which excuses us from moral responsibility before God. Rather, the ignorance of the unsaved, the ignorance of the unconverted, the unregenerate is a culpable ignorance. It is a guilty ignorance. It is a willful ignorance that is rooted in a heart of rebellion against God, in a sinful hardening of the heart, and in a willful suppression of the truth in unrighteousness. And when we compare scripture with scripture, we see that though in one sense the unsaved do indeed live in ignorance, as Peter tells us here in our passage for today, there is another real sense in which even the most hardened, unrepentant sinner knows the truth about God.

God’s knowledge is inherent we have what Calvin calls the sense of the divine. Since we were created in God’s image, we have implanted or imprinted, I should say, upon our souls a sense of the divine. We know in our heart of hearts through natural revelation, general revelation, God’s revelation in creation and in human conscience, we know in our heart of hearts that God is and that we are accountable to him. And the scriptures bear clear testimony to this fact. Just to take you to a few passages for our consideration this afternoon to compare this theme of ignorance and the knowledge of God among unbelievers, look at Romans 1, verses 18 through 21. Romans 1, verses 18 through 21, where the Apostle Paul is speaking of Gentile unbelievers, and he says this, He says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God, this is why the wrath of God is being revealed, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. How has he shown it to them? Verse 20. for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.” Even the unbeliever, even the unregenerate, in their heart of hearts know that the true and living God is. They know it by natural or general revelation, God’s revelation of himself in creation and in human conscience. Paul assumes this also in Acts chapter 14 verse 17, one of the sermons that he preaches to a pagan audience. Let’s turn to Acts 14 verse 17. where Paul is addressing the pagans in Lystra, and he says this in verse 17, as Paul proclaims to these pagans the true and living God, he says of this God, yet he, God, did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. excuse me, God has not left himself without a witness among any people.

But although there is a real sense in which the unsaved know the truth of God, there is another real sense in which they live in profound ignorance of the true and living God, at least in terms of the spiritual and saving knowledge of the true and living God. For example, the apostle Paul describes the times before the gospel came to the Gentile world. These times are described by Paul as the times of ignorance. As Paul preaches to the Athenian philosophers in Acts chapter 17 verse 30, he describes the times before the coming of the gospel to the Gentiles as the times of ignorance. And Paul also has something to say about this culpable ignorance of the Gentile world in Ephesians 4. Let me read Ephesians 4, verses 17 through 19. Pardon me. If you turn there to Ephesians 4, beginning at verse 17, we read this.

Paul, again, Paul here in this epistle is writing to believers who are mostly of a Gentile background who had been converted to Christ from pagan idolatry. He says, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. Why are the unsaved described here as being alienated from the life of God? It is, as it says in Ephesians 4.18, because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. In other words, this ignorance is due to, it is because of the Gentiles hardness or blindness of heart.

This culpable ignorance has always led and continues to lead the unsaved to live a vain, futile, aimless way of life as illustrated by pagan religious devotion to idolatry. Earlier in the service, not too long ago, I read a passage from the prophet Isaiah, one of the numerous prophetic passages in the Old Testament where the Prophet or the Holy Spirit through the Prophet is mocking idolatry, mocking the practice of idolatry. And you recall in that passage that I read from Isaiah 44, Isaiah is mocking the man who cuts down a tree and he uses some of the wood to stoke a fire and to provide himself with bread and warmth. And he says, aha, I’m warm, I felt the fire. But then he takes another segment of that wood and he sets up an idol to worship as a god.

What foolishness, what spiritual blindness, what aimlessness, what vanity is illustrated by religious devotion to idol worship? The Christless way of life is aimless because it is dominated by sinful desires rather than being mastered by Christ. Getting back to our passage for today and looking at verse 14, we are told again, as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former Ignorance. Notice the language that Peter uses there. The unbelieving way of life was dominated by the passions of your former ignorance. What passions are those? Well, the late Bible commentator William Barclay, and he wrote a while ago, so this, you’ll notice from this quotation, it’s a little bit dated, but William Barclay writes this in his commentary about the way of life, the aimless way of life inherited by tradition from their forefathers that was common among the pagans in the first century.

Dr. Barclay writes, As we read the records of that world into which Christianity came, we cannot but be appalled at the sheer fleshliness of life within it. There was desperate poverty at the lower ends of the social scale, but at the top we read of banquets which cost thousands of pounds, where peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues were served. Never had those at our fellowship meal, thankfully. But peacock’s brains and nightingale’s tongues were served and where Emperor Vitellius sat on the table at one banquet, 2,000 fish and 7,000 birds. Chastity was forgotten. Marshall speaks of a woman who had reached her 10th husband. juvenile of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. And Jerome tells us that in Rome, there was one woman who was married to her 23rd husband, she herself being his 21st wife.

And we think it’s bad today, right? Both in Greece and in Rome, homosexual practices were so common that they had come to be looked on as natural. It was a world mastered by desire, whose aim was to find newer and wilder ways of gratifying its lusts. Sounds a lot like our world today, too, doesn’t it? The Christless way of life is vain. It’s futile. It’s vain because of its ignorance. It’s vain because of its idolatry. It’s vain because of its immorality. The Christless way of life is also aimless and vain because it is ultimately futile and lacking in any higher purpose. You see, friends, without the true and living God revealed in Holy Scripture, without the true and living sovereign and triune God of the Bible, there is no ultimate purpose, there is no ultimate aim to our lives.

Without God, there is no reason. Why we are here, without God there is no dignity, human dignity. We are simply water-filled meat puppets who show up for a very brief time and then vanish into eternal forgetfulness. are basically meat bags who showed up as a cosmic accident and we are destined to take an eternal dirt nap. And there’s nothing we can do about it if the true and living God of the Bible does not exist. And without the true and living sovereign triune God of scripture, there’s also no ultimate moral standard like the Ten Commandments. Morality is simply what people, what the majority thinks is best at any given moment in time. If God is not real, then human dignity is a self-serving illusion. I always kind of shake my head when I hear of secularists and atheists and skeptics saying, well, we have to make sure that we help our children to have high self-esteem.

If we live in an atheistic universe and we’re all cosmic accidents and we all have evolved out of pond scum, why should we feel good about ourselves? Why? Why should we have a sense of dignity and self-esteem? The pagan Christless way of life is indeed vain, empty, aimless. Only Jesus Christ can fill that emptiness with his presence, his grace, and his purpose. We also learn in our passage that the Christless way of life is passed on by tradition from past generations. We learn this vanity from our ancestors. It is passed on by tradition. The term tradition indicates being passed on from generation to generation. And as I’ll point out in a few moments, there’s bad tradition, there’s pagan and sinful tradition, and there’s also good tradition, apostolic tradition. In other words, the Word of God, the Bible.

In verse 18, Peter describes the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. The New King James Version says your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. In context here, Peter obviously seems to be speaking of the idolatrous and immoral traditions which had been passed on to his readers from their ancestors prior to their conversion to Christ. But you know friends, another valid application of this principle is that Christ has delivered us from every kind of unbiblical pagan or heretical tradition. Every kind of belief and practice handed down from generation to generation that is not rooted in the Word of God or in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And this would include not just idolatrous pagan traditions, but even so-called Christian traditions that are based on, for example, works righteousness and a legalistic approach to God rather than based upon the saving work of Jesus Christ in his cross and resurrection.

In contrast to such bad traditions, such unbelieving traditions, is the true tradition with a capital T, namely the deposit of the apostolic faith, the faith as Jude describes it, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. That deposit, that apostolic deposit of faith and practice that has been inscripturated, written down in the New Testament Scriptures, and passed on to the Church of Jesus Christ, along with the Old Testament Scriptures as well, from generation to generation. This is the true tradition. This, my friends, this book is the true tradition that the scriptures speak of. And, by the way, the New Testament does use tradition in this positive sense as well. It uses tradition, obviously, in the negative sense, the Pharisees’ traditions, for example, the mere traditions of men. But then it speaks of a positive tradition, gospel tradition.

Turn, for example, to 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 6. 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 6. In that verse, we read this, Paul in wrapping up that epistle. He says, now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the what? In accord with the tradition that you received from us, this apostolic tradition, this tradition, the true gospel faith that is passed on from generation to generation. or consider 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 15, where we read, so then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. In other words, either through the preached word or the written word that he had given to them.

And there are other examples as well. Well, dear friends, let me ask you, have you understood and received the biblical apostolic tradition, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ, that faith once for all delivered to the saints and passed on in the true, faithful, visible church from generation to generation, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Have you received that tradition? You know, one of our most important missions as a visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ is to pass on the faith once for all delivered to the saints from generation to generation. And one of the things that really warms my heart as a pastor is hearing the young people in our church sing the hymns of the faith and get up during our memory work time and recite scripture passages that they’re learning and recite the children’s catechism and join the congregation together as we recite the shorter catechism together as we memorize scripture and sound Christian doctrine together.

Because one of the major functions of the church is the function of being a trident. That is to say, passing on the tradition, passing on the faith once for all delivered to the saints from generation to generation. Parents, you have a responsibility to pass the faith on to your children. not only to pray with and for your children, but to teach them the Word of God and to ground them in the faith through catechizing them and training them and instructing them in the ways of the Lord and by being a good example to them of living out your faith and repentance as well. By the way, our children need to see our repentance as well. They need to see us model not only our faith, but when we mess up, when we sin, when you get into a fight with your spouse in front of your children, do you apologize to your children for that?

Do you repent before your children? This is how we pass the faith on, by catechizing, by training, by instruction, and by example. Finally, beloved, there’s much more that could be said about our passage for today. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but let us be encouraged by the fact that Christ has ransomed us from the futile, aimless ways that we have inherited from our forefathers. Christ has ransomed us. Yes, he’s ransomed us from the guilt and penalty of our sin, but he’s also ransomed us from the futile, vain, empty ways of the world that have been passed on to us. from past generations. This is a major thrust of verse 18. Again, as Peter says, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. In other words, you’re not obligated to follow in the footsteps of your ancestors.

The generational sins of the past are not binding upon you. By the grace of God, the gospel frees you from those shackles so that you can begin a new trajectory. for generations yet to come by the grace of God as you embrace the gospel and pass it on to the next generation. Not only have we believers been redeemed from the guilt of our sin and the penalty of our sin through the redemptive work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Praise God beloved, we have also been freed from bondage to the aimless ways of sin. Because the risen and reigning Christ is our Lord and Savior, and because of our saving union with Him, we are not bound to bow before the wicked, vain, fruitless, and idolatrous practices to which we had previously been enslaved.

If any man be in Christ, he not only may become a new creation, He is a new creation. All things have become new, at least in principle. Brothers and sisters, we are free in Christ, ransomed from the futile, aimless ways inherited from past generations. My dear listeners, do you know this spiritual freedom in your life? Have you been redeemed from the aimless conduct received by your ancestors? Or perhaps, if not from your ancestors, passed along to you by the godless influences of your culture, your upbringing, your education, or whatever the case may be. Some of our missionaries serve in areas where ancestor worship, for example, is regarded as a social obligation. You’re obligated to offer sacrifices to the dead spirits of your ancestors, and it’s considered a great affront to societal norms not to follow in that.

But when someone comes to faith in Christ, they are freed from that. It’s difficult when you’ve got uncomprehending family members and social pressure to conform to those old patterns. But brothers and sisters in Christ, we and all of God’s people are freed from such vain, futile ways. And we have been freed from those futile ways that we may follow Jesus Christ, the true way. Jesus who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Let us embrace him, follow him, and trust him. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, our sovereign and eternal God, we praise you and thank you. for Christ’s precious blood, which ransoms us from our sins. And we thank you that through his saving work and through our union with him in his death and resurrection, we have been ransomed from the vain, futile ways that are so deeply embedded in this world.

We have been delivered from those ways that we might follow the true and living way, the narrow way, the way which is Christ himself. Be with us now and help us, by your grace, to walk in faith and repentance after a new obedience on that narrow road. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 7, 2024
Prepared for Action, Called to Holiness, Part 2

About this sermon

1. Let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness (vv. 14-16).
2. Let us conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy fear (vv. 17-21).

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Sermon transcript

Dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word, my sermon text this evening, 1 Peter 1, verses 13 through 21. As we get into the contents of Peter’s epistle, the main body of the epistle after his introductory section. title my sermon this evening, Prepared for Action, Call to Holiness. This is part two of these two sermons. Let us hear God’s word, 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

And if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let us pray. Well, Lord and Father in heaven, as we just sang in that beautiful hymn, our hearts are ever prone to wander.

Our hearts are ever prone to leave the God we love. We would pray that you would take our hearts and seal them for your courts above, and we pray that in so doing, you would use your word in that sealing work. We pray that by your spirit, you would open our minds and hearts to behold wondrous things from your word this evening, and that these truths that we consider enable us to take them to heart, and may these truths bind our hearts to Christ our Savior. We pray all of these things, Heavenly Father, asking also that you would grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to faithfully proclaim your word this evening. We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Well dear ones, as we’ve seen thus far in our study of 1 Peter, in this divinely inspired epistle, St.

Peter the Apostle is writing to a group of first century believers who faced the prospect of severe persecution for their Christian faith. Peter’s major aims in writing to these believers was to encourage and to fortify them in their faith as well as to give them instructions for godly living in the midst of a hostile environment. In the opening section of this epistle, Peter has sought to encourage his readers by reminding them of their identity in Christ and reminding them of the wonderful blessings of eternal salvation that they have received through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, friends, another way of putting this is to say that Peter follows the common apostolic pattern of first highlighting the indicatives of the gospel. In other words, by reminding his readers of who they are in Christ and reminding them of what Christ, their Savior, has done for them.

And having laid the foundation of these gospel indicatives, Peter then goes on to lay before his readers various imperatives, various exhortations and commands which flow out of our identity in Christ. We see this apostolic, indicative, imperative dynamic in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, which presents us with this call to be prepared for action and to pursue holiness. Peter’s call to godly action and to the pursuit of holy living in this passage are indeed imperatives. This is an imperative heavy section of Peter’s letter, Peter’s epistle. And so what we find in our passage for today are exhortations and commands that we believers are called upon and expected to obey. But did you notice, as I read our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, did you notice that Peter doesn’t tell us to do these things in order that we might be saved?

He doesn’t say, you know, gird up your minds, gird up the loins of your minds and be prepared for action and so forth, and be holy so that you may be saved. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say, do this and you shall live. as if we Christians were still somehow under a covenant of works like Adam was before the fall. No, instead he reminds us as Christians that we ought to prepare our minds to serve our Lord Jesus Christ as his faithful disciples and to seek to live lives of wholehearted holiness because we have been ransomed by the precious blood of Christ. If you skip down to verses 18 and 19, Peter makes this very clear. He says, after giving this call to action and to holiness, a commitment to holiness and to live in holy reverence before the Lord, he says, he gives us the reason why we should do that.

Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold. but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” In other words, listen, you’ve been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, and therefore, in light of this wonderful redemption, in light of your identity in Christ, in light of the imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance of eternal salvation that is being kept in heaven for you, which Peter has already described way back in verse four of chapter one. In view of all these things, brothers and sisters, live a godly life and pursue holiness in the fear of God. In other words, these imperatives are gospel imperatives because they are grounded in the indicatives. We are to obey and pursue holiness and be faithful servants of the Lord, not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved.

And this is how saved people are called to live out their walk with Christ. The Apostle Paul says basically the same thing when he writes in Ephesians chapter four, verse one, he writes that we as Christians are to walk, that is to say, to live in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Now friends on the last Lord’s Day evening we focused specifically on verse 13 of our passage with Peter’s call for us to prepare our minds for action or gird up the loins of our minds as that could be literally translated to be sober minded and to set our hope fully upon the future consummated grace that will be brought to us at our Lord’s second advent. Again, as Peter writes, therefore, in other words, in view of all that I’ve written thus far, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That’s our Lord’s second advent, his second coming. Well, friends, This evening we turn our focus to the call to holiness that Peter lays before his readers and that the Holy Spirit through Peter lays before all of the church in this passage of God’s Word. And so as we focus first of all on verses 14 through 16, brothers and sisters, let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness. In view of the great redemption we’ve received in Christ and in view of God’s amazing grace to you and to me, brothers and sisters, let us heed our heavenly Father’s call to holiness. Peter writes in verse 14, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. after calling upon his readers to prepare their minds for action. Peter next calls them, in verse 14, to live as obedient children, or if we were to translate that in a woodenly, literal sense, live as children of obedience. As Christians, we are called to be children of obedience. And this call to obedience in this passage here is obviously tied in with the call to holiness. To be called to obedience is to be called to holiness. God, our Heavenly Father, is Himself holy, but what does that mean for God to be holy? The term holy and holiness in the Bible has several different senses. The main sense of holiness, the main definition of holiness, if you will, is to be distinct, to be set apart.

And so God, our Heavenly Father, is holy, first of all, in the sense that he is distinct from and set apart from all of his creatures, and especially he is set apart from and distinct from his sinful creatures. But in another important sense, God’s holiness also means that he is set apart in the ethical sense, in the sense that he is a God of infinite moral perfection and ethical purity. He is a God of infinite white-hot righteousness, holiness, and purity. And therefore, in this call to holiness, God is calling us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to be different from unbelievers. How are we to be different from unbelievers? How are we to be set apart from, distinct from unbelievers? Sadly, many professing Christians interpret this or live out this call to holiness in a very externalized way.

When God calls us to holiness, He’s not just calling us to be different in the sense of external, such as wearing different kinds of clothes, or listening to different kinds of music, or merely in terms of culture and lifestyle. For example, God is not calling us to be holy merely in the sense of, say, the way that the Amish are holy, in the sense that they live distinct lives. They wear different clothes, they don’t drive automobiles, they don’t use cell phones, electricity, modern technology. I know there’s different sects among the Amish. They’re certainly distinct as a culture, as a people group, but they are not necessarily holy. I’m sure there are true believers among the Amish, but it’s my understanding that there’s also many among the Amish who are not true believers in spite of their different lifestyle, externally speaking.

But this call to holiness is not just a call to be different in terms of externals. I remember many years ago when I served a church in New Jersey, there was a church in our area, I think it was a fundamentalist Baptist type of church, and it had a reputation for being a very legalistic church. And so, for example, they didn’t drink alcohol, they didn’t dance, they didn’t play cards, And, you know, the women were expected to wear dresses of a certain length and wear their hair down a certain length and so forth. And is this what Peter’s calling us to? Is this what God, through Peter, is calling us to? No, my friends. We are called to be holy in the sense that we are to be different by the grace of God in the core of our being.

Holy not just in our outward behavior and actions, but holy in our dispositions and desires. Holy from the inside out and not from the outside in. A larger context of Peter’s epistle makes it clear that this holiness to which we have been called is made possible because we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, because we have been born again by the Holy Spirit, and therefore we have received new life in Christ as those who are united to Christ and raised up to newness of life in him, let’s live our identity, let’s live out the implications of that. This is what we are being called to here, brothers and sisters. This call to holiness implies that we are to live lives of holy separation from all that which is unholy and profane, including unholy and profane thoughts, and words as well as unholy and profane actions.

We are to pursue holiness in heart, in speech, and in our behavior. And this means that we are to seek to live lives of moral purity and integrity before a hostile watching world. Being holy does not mean shutting ourselves off from the world. It doesn’t mean retreating into a metaphorical or a literal monastery and cutting off all ties from the secular world. It doesn’t mean retreating into isolation from the world. It implies drawing biblical boundaries in our relationships with others, especially when it comes to how we relate to non-Christians. And it means guarding our hearts, guarding our hearts even when we are in the privacy of our own homes. Are you the same person out in public as you are behind closed doors? Are you the same person here at church as you are with your spouse at home or in the way that you treat your children or children in the way that you relate to your parents?

Are you the same person here at church as you are in the workplace and how you treat your coworkers and your employees and employer? This is what the call to holiness means, living out the implications of our union with Christ. Now friends, we learn in this passage that this call to holiness involves both a negative and a positive aspect. Negatively speaking, being holy means refusing to conform to the sinful patterns of behavior that we engaged in before God saved us. Look at verse 14. Peter writes, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. What could he be referring to there? What are these passions of their former ignorance? Well, we need to remember that Peter is writing to Christians who were, many of whom were converted to Christ from a pagan Gentile background.

And the pagan Gentiles in the first century Roman Empire, they had a reputation for immorality, they had a reputation for impurity and for gross ignorance, that ignorance that showed up, spiritual ignorance that showed up in their idolatry. And idolatry saturated a pagan Roman society. But Christ had redeemed them from that. And he says, don’t be conformed to those passions of your former ignorance. It’s your former ignorance. You are now new creations in Christ. So live as new creations in Christ. You know, the Apostle Paul says something very similar in Romans 12, verse two. And I know this is probably very familiar to many of you, but I’m gonna read it anyways. Romans 12, one and two. After Paul has spent most of Romans up until this point expounding the gospel of Jesus Christ and turning over every rock and investigating the ins and outs of God’s saving plan.

He then says, in Romans 12, beginning at verse one, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, by these mercies that he’s been speaking of and writing of in the first 11 chapters, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, this fallen, sin-cursed world and its system of thought and behavior. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Dear ones, the world tries to squeeze us into its mold. Like Paul, Peter here is telling us in our passage for this evening to resist the squeeze, resist the squeeze.

By the grace of God, let us resist the world’s attempts to get us to think and to speak and to act according to its own sinful patterns. Let us not be conformed instead Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And that is what is implied in the call to holiness that Peter lays before us here in verse 14. Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. So there’s the negative aspect. Do not be conformed. But there’s also a positive aspect to this call to holiness. Positively speaking, being holy means imitating the holiness of God. It says in verse 15, but as he who called you is holy, that’s God, God our heavenly father, he himself is holy, since he is holy, you also be holy in how much of your conduct?

In all of your conduct. And then he gives the reason. Verse 16, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. You shall be holy for I am holy. My friends, the fundamental meaning of holiness is the imitation of God. If you wonder what it means in practical terms to be holy, it simply means imitating the holy God who created you by His power and who redeemed you in Christ by His grace. And of course, where do we learn about the holiness of God, His ethical purity and holiness and set-apartness? Well, we learn about the holiness of God in the Word of God, and especially in the moral law of God and in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, being holy means putting off our old way of life and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ by letting our mind and our walk be transformed by the Word and Spirit of God as we trust in Christ and Christ alone.

I think, again, the quote from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 4, I’d invite you to turn to Ephesians 4 and let me read verses 17, I’m sorry, verses, yeah, verse 17 through chapter 5, verse 2. expresses similarly what Peter is expressing in our passage for tonight. Paul writes, now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity, But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus.

To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, therefore having put away falsehood Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. That’s a very powerful incentive to holy living in our relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are members of one another. We should treat each other as members of the family of God. He goes on to say, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Again, there’s another example of the imperative grounded in the indicative. We are to forgive one another because God in Christ has forgiven us. And then verse five, chapter five, verse one. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

And so this brings me to my next and final point this evening. Let us, beloved, conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy reverence. Let us conduct ourselves in this present life with an attitude of holy reverence. As obedient children, as we are described in verse 14, we address, we pray to, we call upon God as Father. And we learn here in verse 17 that our Heavenly Father is the one who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, as it says in verse 17. And if you call on Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear not a sinful fear such as Adam and Eve experienced when they ate the forbidden fruit and they went and hid themselves, not an unbelieving, terrifying fear, but a holy reverence and awe for the Lord.

Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers and so forth. This teaches us something important about God. It teaches us that God is holy and just in his judgments. He is a God who judges impartially. He does not show favoritism, and so he is a holy and righteous judge. But this statement here also implies truth about the final judgment. We are told elsewhere in the scriptures, such as in 2 Corinthians, that even we as believers, that we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of ourselves. This is not something, brothers and sisters, that I think as Christians should terrify us, but rather it should motivate us. Now, in saying this, in saying that our Father in heaven whom we call upon, whom we worship and pray to, in saying that he judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, in saying this, the Apostle Peter is not at all denying the biblical truth that our salvation is entirely by God’s grace and God’s grace alone in Christ and not at all by human works.

But since our works demonstrate to others whether or not we truly trust Christ as our savior and have experienced his saving grace in our lives, since our works demonstrate whether or not we are in fact in saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the scriptures indicate that on the day of judgment, our works will show to others whether we are saved or lost. God can see your faith. but others can only see your faith by your works. And so, when we are gathered on Judgment Day before the throne of Christ, how will the world know that we are in Christ? Well, by the works that the Spirit has wrought in and through us. As our shorter catechism states in its answer to question 38, the question is, what benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?

The Bible-based answer to that question is, at the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted, that’s legal language, acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity. The Spirit-wrought works of believers will be part of this open acknowledgment and acquittal before gathered humanity on Judgment Day. These works will not be the basis for our entrance into heaven. Only the works of Christ serve as our title to heaven. His merit and sacrifice alone serve as our title to heaven. But these works confirm the reality before gathered humanity. They vindicate the reality of our God-given faith. The spirit-wrought works of believers will be part of this open acknowledgment and acquittal. We are told here in this passage that God our Father judges impartially according to each one’s deeds.

After all, he is a just and righteous judge. If we are believers, beloved, if we are true believers, then these deeds will include the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But if we are spiritual phonies or hypocrites or false believers, then our works, our deeds will be manifested in the end as being works of the flesh, works that come from the sin nature, works that are ultimately produced by our sin nature. And by the way, those works of the flesh would include the work of self-righteously trying to earn your salvation by good deeds. If you go to church, it’s a good thing to go to church, good thing to read your Bible, good thing to pray, Good thing to use the means of grace, good thing to be kind to your neighbor and loving.

But if you are doing these things in order to earn God’s favor, in order to either obtain your salvation or keep your salvation, then by that very act of doing your good works to gain God’s favor, you are committing high blasphemy against the God of grace. You are saying, God, the work of Jesus, your son, isn’t enough. I got to help you save me, right? No. No. It is blasphemy to try to earn your way into heaven. And there are so many out there who are trying to earn brownie points with God, getting God’s good graces. by doing good, by giving to charity and holding certain views on political matters and so forth. You say, well, I’m a good person. I recycle, right? I’m a good person. You know, I give to charity. I help old ladies across the street.

Those are all good things in and of themselves. But what God looks at is not just the deed, but that which motivates the deed. And if you are motivated to do good, God will judge us according to our works, not on the basis of our works. We don’t get into heaven on the basis of our works, but if our works are works of the flesh, works of trying to earn God’s grace, well, that doesn’t cut it with God. If you want to rest in your works for eternal life, then you’ve got to be perfect. You’ve got to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength all the time, and never mess up once. Because God is a perfect, holy God. Heaven is a perfect place, and you need a perfect righteousness to get in there, and you don’t have it, and neither do I.

But what we lack, Jesus has obtained for us, His believing people. He obeyed for us, earning that perfect righteousness which we need to serve as our title to heaven. And he died for our violations of the holy law of God. He was a propitiation of satisfaction for our sins on the cross. And he rose from the dead to raise us up unto newness of life in him. Dear listener, where will you stand on that judgment day? When will you stand? Will you be with the sheep or with the goats? You will be standing on the judgment day only if you are clothed in Christ’s righteousness and indwelt by his spirit. And that is by his grace and his grace alone. So turn from your self-righteous labors and attempts to earn your salvation and turn to Christ who has earned, perfectly obtained the salvation of his people by his obedient life, his atoning death, his glorious resurrection and ascension, and his intercession at the Father’s right hand.

Beloved, for those of us who are in Christ, our judgment according to one’s deeds on judgment day will not be a judgment of condemnation, but rather a judgment of open vindication, a judgment that will manifest to the world that our salvation is by God’s grace and grace alone. And when God crowns our good deeds, if you will, he’s crowning but the works of his own grace. But at the same time, as our passage for this evening shows, the prospect of Judgment Day should motivate us as believers to, as it says in verse 17, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. That’s now. We are in exile. Heaven is our ultimate home. We are pilgrims of the dispersion, and we are to conduct ourselves with fear, not again a sinful fear or terror of the wrath of God, but a holy reverence and awe for the God who graciously has saved us and redeemed us.

For though our God is a loving and gracious Heavenly Father who has redeemed us, he is also a holy and just judge. Thanks be to God that Christ has taken the judgment of our condemnation upon Himself on the cross. He took the curse on the cross for us that we might receive the blessings of God. And so, as Paul writes in Romans 8, verse 1, we can be assured that there is therefore now no condemnation. for those who are in Christ Jesus. Christ became a curse for us on the cross so that in him we might receive the blessings of his grace and salvation. But let us also remember, beloved, that we always live our lives coram Deo, before the face of God. And that is true of us even as Christians. Beloved, out of gratitude for God’s amazing gift of salvation to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, let us make it our aim to make our lives count for the Savior.

Let us pursue holiness in the fear of God. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have ransomed us through the blood of Christ, our Redeemer, the lamb without blemish or spot. And we thank you that you have secured for us an eternal redemption and that our inheritance is being kept in heaven for us, we who are being kept by your power through faith. We ask that out of gratitude for these gospel indicatives, for all that you’ve done for us in Christ, that we would be motivated to live our lives for his glory. We pray these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. To close our worship this evening, let’s rise and we’ll sing number 455. 455, I Need Thee Precious Jesus, 455.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 17, 2023
Prepared for Action, Called to Holiness, Part 1

About this sermon

1. Prepare you minds for action (v 13a)!
2. Be sober – minded (v. 13b)!
3. Set your hope fully on future grace (v. 13c).

Deuteronomy 5:1-22

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Sermon transcript

Dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s holy word as we continue our series in 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter’s first epistle. And this evening, we consider 1 Peter 1, verses 13 through 16, the first of a two-part sermon mini-series, I guess, within this series. the title of my sermon tonight, Prepared for Action, Called to Holiness. Let us hear God’s holy word, 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse 13. I’m gonna read through verse 21, but our focus will be especially on verses 13 through 16. Hear the word of God. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word.

Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, once again we are humbled that you have chosen to speak to us, that you have spoken to us in your word, your holy scriptures. Lord, we don’t deserve to have you speak to us, especially speak to us your word of grace in the gospel. For Lord, apart from your grace, we are rebel sinners, conceived and born in sin, fallen in Adam. And apart from your intervening grace, we willfully choose to live in accordance with that fallen sin nature. But you have had mercy upon us, Lord, and you have redeemed us through the blood of Christ, you have renewed us with the Spirit, you have affectionately called us into faith and repentance, and your Spirit abides in us and among us. And so we praise you for that. We ask, Heavenly Father, that by the power of your Spirit and by your grace, you would enable us to learn that which the Spirit is seeking to communicate to your church in this portion of Holy Scripture.

So open our minds and our hearts, we pray, to behold wondrous things from your Word. And once again, we do pray that you would set a guard over my lips, that I might speak only that which is faithful to the Scriptures tonight. Build us up in our faith, challenge us, if necessary rebuke us, and strengthen our hands for the work that you’ve called us to. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Pardon me. As I mentioned, the title of my sermon tonight is Prepared for Action Called to Holiness. And there’s a couple of key words that I’d encourage you to listen for, especially the children, faith, action, self-control, hope, and grace. Well, dear friends, this is a marvelous epistle. a marvelous portion of God’s Word, so filled with comfort and encouragement, especially for suffering believers.

In this opening section of 1 Peter, we find the Apostle Peter seeking to encourage his readers who faced persecution for their faith. And so, as we’ve seen in previous weeks, Peter seeks to do so by reminding his original readers of the wonderful blessings of eternal salvation that they have received through the Lord Jesus Christ. As followers of Christ, we, like Peter’s original readers, are also elect exiles, as the recipients of Peter’s letter are described in verse one of the opening chapter. We too are elect exiles in this present world, for our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, where we await what verse four describes as an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Beloved, the opening verses of 1 Peter remind us that we have been chosen according to the everlasting love of God.

We have been sanctified by the Holy Spirit. We have been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. We have been born again according to God’s great mercy. And we are being guarded by the power of Almighty God through faith for salvation, which is ready to be revealed in the last time, as we’re told in verse five. Such powerful, comforting gospel truth to the suffering children of God. And because of all of these wonderful spiritual blessings, we who by the grace of God know and trust Jesus Christ as our very own Lord and Savior, are able to rejoice with what Peter describes as a joy which is inexpressible and filled with glory. And we can do so even though we may face various trials and various tribulations which grieve us at this present time.

We can rejoice in the face of trials and persecutions because of the hope and the assurance that we will receive the end goal of our faith, which is the ultimate consummated salvation of our souls. Again, let me remind you of what Peter said about this in verses 8 and 9 where he writes, though you have not seen him, you’ve not seen Jesus, You believe, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. What greater blessings could there be? Friends, this saving faith of ours is not built upon the sands of mere human opinion or upon the rotting foundation of mere man-made tradition.

Instead, it is built upon the sure word of the Old Testament prophets, the prophets who prophesied beforehand about the sufferings and the glories of Christ. Peter spoke to that in verses 10 through 12, where he says, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating. When he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you. in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Even the angels in glory long to look into the glorious truths of the gospel and the spiritual blessings that we have received in union with Christ.

Now friends, up through verse 12, we find Peter laying the foundation of our living hope as Christians, the solid rock foundation of the blessings of eternal salvation, which Christ has secured for his people. Friends, oh, how privileged we as believers are, and oh, how much we have received all by his grace. But with every spiritual privilege and blessing comes responsibility. So beginning in verse 13, Peter begins a long series of imperatives and exhortations on how we as Christians are to live in the light of all these wonderful blessings of grace and salvation that we have received in Christ. This evening we will focus on three imperatives from verse 13, which the Holy Spirit through Peter lays before the church. First of all, the imperative, the command to prepare our minds for action, the command to be sober-minded, and the command to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the second advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So let’s dig into our passage for this evening, and as we direct our attention to verse 13, notice first of all, beloved, the call to prepare your minds for action, prepare your minds for action. Peter writes, Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, even though the English Standard Version translation, therefore preparing your minds for action, even though this translation accurately conveys in our English language the force of this expression, a more literal translation of the Greek, and in my opinion, a better one because it grabs your attention more, is found in translations like the New King James Version, where it reads, therefore, gird up the loins of your minds. Gird up the loins of your mind.

You say, what does that mean, Pastor? What does it mean to gird up the loins of your mind? Well, this language is a very graphic call for action, which would have been readily understood by Peter’s original readers. But in our age, of course, we’re not used to this kind of language about girding up our loins. Just what does this expression mean? What does it mean to gird up our loins? Well, in the first century, it was common for folks to wear long, flowing garments. And these garments, of course, were not well suited for physical labor involving lots of movement. And so, for example, when a day laborer or a workman needed to engage in physical labor, he would literally gird up his loins, which meant that he would gather up his flowing garment and would tuck up the loose ends of his garment under a belt or a girdle.

If a laborer didn’t gird up his loins in this fashion, then the loose ends of his garment would just get in the way of his work and prevent him from being able to carry out his labor successfully. If a laborer did that, then he would not be a productive laborer. So this is the kind of imagery that Peter is evoking in the minds of his readers by using this expression of girding up the loins. Perhaps if Peter were writing to Christians living in our culture today, he might have said something like, roll up your sleeves or roll up the sleeves of your minds. Sometimes when we get to work, maybe you’re in the kitchen, you need to wash the dishes and you’re wearing a long sleeve shirt, you’ll roll up your sleeves so that you can get to work on those dishes, whatever the case may be.

The NIV translation I think captures the essence of Peter’s statement when it says, prepare your minds for action. Gird up the loins of your minds, roll up your sleeves, get ready for action. In the words of one Bible commentator, what Peter is saying here is that, quote, in Christian living, there must be no frazzled ends, no fuzzy thinking. Christians must gird up their minds. We must gird up our minds, and in order for our minds to be properly girded up and set on serving and obeying and following the Lord Jesus out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation, Our minds need to be transformed through the Word of God. Well, friends in Christ, what does this exhortation, this imperative mean for you and for me today? What does it mean for the church today? How do we gird up the loins of our minds today?

Well, to gird up the loins of your mind means to set your mind firmly and steadfastly and single-mindedly on serving your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Savior who has blessed you so greatly, the Savior who has redeemed you and called you to this new way of life, this life of discipleship. It means that you’re so thankful for God’s gift of salvation in Jesus that you are determined to live a new life in the service of your Savior in his kingdom. Dear listener, have you girded up the loins of your mind? Have you set your mind out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation to you in Jesus? Have you set your mind upon following Jesus and living in obedience to his word? So gird up the loins of your mind, be prepared for action.

But consider the next exhortation and imperative that Peter lays before his readers and before us. Be sober-minded, be sober-minded. Again, therefore, and again, let me just point out, I should have mentioned this before in verse 13, when Peter writes therefore, whenever you read in the epistles especially, like Paul’s epistles or Peter’s epistle, whenever you read a therefore, what’s the question you ought to ask? What is the therefore therefore? Right? In other words, Peter is saying, based on everything that I’ve said to you so far, based on all of these blessings that you have received in Christ, therefore, based on all these indicatives, here are some imperatives. The imperatives arise out of and are the implications of the indicatives. And one of the things he says next, after he says preparing your minds or girding the loins of your minds for action, he says being sober-minded.

Be sober-minded. Now this could be translated as it is in the NIV, which reads be self-controlled. The original meaning of the Greek word meant to abstain from excessive use of wine. But in its New Testament sense, it typically has the broader meaning of to live soberly, not just to stay away from excessive drinking of wine, but to live a life that is characterized In other words, to exercise sound judgment in all areas of your life. If you exercise sound judgment, then you will live a well-balanced and self-controlled life that glorifies your Heavenly Father. And that is really the goal of discipleship. is so that we might learn to live self-controlled lives to the glory of God under the lordship of Jesus Christ and out of gratitude for God’s amazing grace to us in Christ. Now friends, let me ask you a question.

What is the basic ultimate standard for all sound judgment? As a Christian, you should know the answer to that question. The answer to that question is the word of God. In other words, the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, the Scriptures are the ultimate standard for all sound judgment. And so we cannot live sober-minded, self-controlled lives without a knowledge of the Word of God, without filling our minds with the Word of God. And so the answer to the question, If that is the case, if it is the Word of God, which it is, that is the ultimate standard for sound judgment, then how can we believers exercise sound judgment? Well, the answer is only by knowing, embracing, and living out the principles and commands of God’s word, all in union with Christ. In other words, dear ones, if you wanna have a sound, sober, self-controlled mind which exercises sound judgment, then you must seek to thoroughly acquaint yourself with the ultimate standard of the sound mind, namely God’s inerrant, infallible word.

And not just those portions of the Bible that you most resonate with. I know I harp on this quite a bit, but I think it’s important. We all have our favorite portions of Scripture, and it’s okay. You know, I’m a guy, I love Paul, I love the Gospels, I love the Psalms. I’m not so enamored by some of the historical books, but they’re part of God’s Word, too. So we need to read broadly, even as we also read Deeply, we need to acquaint ourselves with the scriptures in their entirety. For all scripture is God-breathed, given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. So let me ask you, dear listener, how often do you crack open your Bible?

How deeply and broadly do you read your Bible? I know the Bible’s a big book. It’s actually a collection of books. It’s not just a single volume. It’s a large collection of divinely inspired works that the Holy Spirit has woven together and given to his people, his church. and what a blessing the Bible is. I would exhort all of us to be frequently and regularly in the Word, to sit regularly under the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s Word, because it is only as our minds are informed and transformed by the Scriptures that we will be men and women, boys and girls of sound mind and sound judgment, as Peter exhorts us, or as I should say, as the Holy Spirit through Peter exhorts us in this passage of Scripture. So again, prepare for action, gird up the loins of your mind, and be sober-minded, be self-controlled.

But finally, set your hope fully on future grace. Set your hope fully on future grace. Again, Peter writes, therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, some might say, hold on, Pastor. Haven’t we already received grace? And the answer is, of course, yes. We have received grace. We daily receive grace, grace upon grace, superabounding grace. but we also will receive ultimate consummated grace when Jesus our Lord returns in glory at the end of this age. And here the theme of hope comes again to the forefront of what Peter is writing to his readers and what the Spirit is saying to us. Hope in the face of trials is one of the major themes of this epistle.

And here the Holy Spirit through Peter is urging us to rest our hope fully upon the future grace that we are going to receive when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory. Now again, as I’ve pointed out, As believers, we have already received grace, and Peter has already spent time talking about the grace that we’ve already received in Christ, the spiritual blessings that we have received in Christ. And some of the graces that we’ve already received, past grace, if you will, that continues to have a present impact upon us is the grace of the new birth or regeneration, being born again, the grace of conversion, the grace of justification, the grace of adoption as children of God, and so forth. But in addition to this grace that we’ve already received, we as believers are continuing to receive an abundance of daily grace from God, the grace of progressive sanctification, the grace of perseverance, and the grace that comes from the comfort and encouragement of the Holy Spirit’s presence. in our lives.

So as believers, we have received grace, past grace, which continues to have present effects in our lives. We are receiving grace, present tense, but beloved in Christ, there is even more grace yet to come, consummated ultimate grace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we receive grace upon grace, super abounding grace. And the specific grace that Peter is speaking of in verse 13 is a future grace, the ultimate consummated grace that we will receive when Christ returns in glory, raises us up from the dead. and welcomes us into his consummated kingdom where we will enjoy his presence forever in the new heavens and the new earth where in righteousness dwells. Why do you think Peter is focusing in this verse in particular, this section, on this future grace that will be brought to these believers and to us, to the church, at the return of our Lord?

Well, because the immediate future did not look all that bright for these particular Christians. Some of these Christians perhaps would face martyrdom for their faith, suffering for their faith. So Peter is urging them to look beyond the immediate future to the ultimate future, that final grace that will be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And by that language of the revelation of Jesus Christ, that is a way of speaking about our Lord’s second coming. When Christ returns in glory, he will be revealed in the ultimate sense for all the world to see, and what a joy it will be when Jesus returns in glory, that we will see him as he is, and we will commune with him face to face. Friends, what Peter is telling us here is that one of the main ways that we prepare our minds for action as disciples of Jesus is by resting our confident hope upon this future grace.

And we can be assured Remember that biblical hope is not a mere wish. It’s not, oh, I hope so, sort of like, oh, I hope it doesn’t snow tomorrow, or something like that, which in this area, you never know at this time of year, right? But it is a certainty that is still in the future. The hope of salvation, the Christian hope, doesn’t mean, oh, I hope I’ll be saved, but I’m not sure. No, the Christian hope is Christ has secured an eternal salvation for us, but it is still in the future, so we still hope for it. We look forward to it. How do we face the trials and persecutions of this life, of life in this hostile, sin-cursed world with confidence and faithfulness and with the self-control that comes from a sound mind?

Well, the answer that Peter gives here is by fixing the eyes of our faith upon the end goal of our faith, the future grace that we will receive at the revelation of Jesus Christ at His second advent. And tonight, as you know, we will be celebrating the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. And the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper also helps us to set our sights on this future grace that will be brought to us. You might say, well, pastor, I thought that the Lord’s Supper reminds us of what Jesus did for us in the past when he died on the cross for our sins. Well, certainly that’s part of what the Lord’s Supper is about. It points us back to Christ’s finished work and it also points us to our present communion with Christ, but it also points us forward.

Remember, Jesus said that he would not drink of this until he came again in glory. The Lord’s Supper points us forward to the ultimate feast of salvation that will be experienced by God’s people at the marriage supper of the Lamb on that final day. Again, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is one of the ways that this hope in God’s future grace is sustained and nourished. For as we look back with the eyes of faith upon what Jesus our Lord did on the cross to secure our eternal redemption, the eyes of our faith are also pointed forward to that final eschatological marriage supper of the Lamb, which we will celebrate and feast upon when our Lord Jesus returns in glory. Dear listener, do you have this sure and certain hope? Have you tasted the grace of God in Jesus Christ?

The Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine point us, they are signs and seals pointing us to the gospel truth, that Christ’s body was broken, his blood was shed to redeem sinners just like you and me. And he invites all who would trust in him to come to him by faith and receive and rest upon him and him alone for salvation. Are you resting in Jesus alone for salvation from your sins? In the gospel, God offers you full and free forgiveness. through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repent of your sins, trust in Jesus and Jesus alone. Jesus who was crucified for the forgiveness of our sins and raised from the dead for our justification so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. Come to the feast of salvation that Christ has spread for sinners.

Come, dear listener, tonight. Amen, let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you that in Christ we have indeed received grace upon grace. Grant us the grace, oh Lord, to prepare our minds for action, to be sober-minded, and to set our hope fully upon the future grace that will be brought to us when Jesus returns in glory. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 10, 2023
The Spirit of Christ in the Old Covenant Prophets, Part 2

About this sermon

Much of the Old Testament can seem confusing or dull, but all of it points to Christ. The prophets searched and inquired about the salvation they foretold, and the Spirit of Christ in them predicted his sufferings and the glories to follow. They served a later generation, and the gospel now proclaims what they announced. The Old Testament is full of grace and gospel, and sinners receive that grace by receiving God’s Son.

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Sermon transcript

of God’s Word. We continue this afternoon, we continue in our investigation of 1 Peter, and my sermon text for this afternoon is 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 10 through 12. We’ll be focusing especially on verse 12 as we focused on verses 10 and 11 on the last Lord’s Day. To give the fuller context in this opening section of Peter’s first epistle, I’m going to begin reading at verse 8 and read through verse 12. So let us hear God’s holy word. Speaking of the Lord Jesus, Peter writes, Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. things into which angels long to look. Dear ones, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the proclamation of his word. Once again, Heavenly Father, we ask that you would open our minds and our hearts to your Word. We ask, Lord, that by your Spirit you would cause this portion of Scripture to come alive to us, to help us to see the relevance of it, for all of your Word is relevant. And we ask, Heavenly Father, that you would help us, Lord, to take this Word to heart, and we pray that by your Spirit you would illuminate us and cause your Word to find a lodging place in our souls.

We ask these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this afternoon is The Spirit of Christ in the Old Covenant Prophets. It’s the second part. Well, dear friends, I don’t know about you, but I love the Old Testament. Of course, I also love the New Testament scriptures as well. But over the years of my Christian life, as I’ve had the privilege of reading and studying the scriptures, I’ve come over the years to a growing appreciation for that first and lengthiest part of the Bible that we know today as the Old Testament. But brothers and sisters in Christ, I must admit to you that I didn’t always feel this way about the Old Testament in particular, especially as a young believer who was new to reading the Bible.

I was converted to Christ as a 15 year old, and I remember my later years of high school venturing forth to read the Bible in its entirety. And I remember Genesis was cool, I liked Genesis, that was interesting. The first part of Exodus was good, engaging. Then towards the end of Exodus, you get into all those details about the tabernacle and its furnishings, but when I got to Leviticus, wow. That was tough to slog through, Leviticus, and then numbers and so forth. You know, apart from sections of the Old Testament like the book of Psalms and the Proverbs and some isolated passages containing clear predictions about the coming of Jesus the Messiah, in my earlier days of Bible reading, I must admit that I found much of the Old Testament writings to be either confusing, enigmatic, puzzling, and quite honestly, boring and dry as dust.

Now perhaps some of you, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, Perhaps some of you, if you were to be completely honest, have felt or maybe still even feel that way today about your attempts at reading the Old Testament Scriptures. But dear ones, let me suggest to you that if you find that to be the case, don’t give up. Keep pushing through. Keep reading. You see, beloved, let me suggest that as we come to understand that all of the Old Testament is ultimately about Jesus, it’s ultimately about the Lord Jesus Christ, as we come to understand that, and as we come to see that not just the New Testament, but even the Old Testament as well, is God’s word for the church today. As we come to understand these things, by the grace of God, our love for the entirety of the Holy Scriptures, including the Old Testament, will grow.

In fact, we would do well to remember that the only Bible that the earliest apostolic church had before the apostles and the apostolic writers had finished composing the new covenant writings known as the New Testament, before the writing of the New Testament, the only Bible the earliest church had was the Old Testament. Our passage for this Lord’s Day afternoon underscores the truth that the early apostolic church looked to the Old Testament writings penned by the prophets of old as their scriptures. In our passage for this afternoon, the Apostle Peter assumes this posture towards the Old Testament, even as he, as an inspired writer, is penning a portion of the New Testament. Peter assumes this attitude towards the Old Testament and the prophets who composed the Old Testament. As Peter points out to the persecuted Christians in Asia Minor to whom he was writing, that it was revealed to the old covenant prophets that they were serving not themselves but later generations, the generations of God’s people such as their own and also such as our own. the generations that would be living in these messianic new covenant times in which we are privileged to live.

Again, as Peter writes in verse 12, as he speaks of the old covenant prophets, meaning not only the prophets of the Old Testament as such, but those who wrote the Old Testament scriptures in the spirit of prophecy, he says, it was revealed to them, these prophets of old, that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Even the angels in glory are fascinated. by and long to look into the things that have been revealed to us in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, all of this highlights the truth that God’s old covenant prophets minister to us as God’s new covenant people, which implies that their writings, the Old Testament scriptures, continue to be relevant to us as the New Covenant Church of Christ today.

Even those seemingly, at least on the surface, those seemingly dry as dust, quote, boring parts, they’re there for a reason. The Holy Spirit inspired those portions of scripture as well for our instruction and edification. We often hear the statement, we hear our brothers and sisters in Christ in the broader Christian world sometimes saying, well, I’m a New Testament Christian. Well, good. How about let’s be whole Bible Christians? We are not merely to be New Testament Christians. We are to be whole Bible Christians because the whole Bible is God’s inspired, God-breathed, authoritative, infallible, and inerrant word. That is Peter’s position, that should be our position today because it is the truth. Now by way of review from what we covered on the last Lord’s Day evening, on the last Lord’s Day evening, we considered from verses 10 and 11 of our passage, the identification and the functions of biblical prophets.

I sought to lay the groundwork of who the prophets were and what their calling and significance was. We saw last week that the prophets who prophesied mentioned by Peter refers specifically to those whom God had chosen, called, and inspired to be the bearers of new divine revelation. They did have, if you will, a direct pipeline to God. God gave them his word and they spoke an authoritative word from God, thus saith the Lord, because God gave them the message to communicate to his people. So they were the bearers of direct divine revelation. We also saw that biblical prophets engaged in two closely related activities. First of all, the activity of what has been described as foretelling. The prophets spoke forth the word of the Lord to their contemporaries. But they also engaged in foretelling. They foretold future events in God’s unfolding plan of salvation, especially as the Spirit revealed those events to them.

And they did so especially as that plan would culminate with the coming of Christ. And we also considered what Peter meant when he spoke of the searching and the inquiring of these old covenant prophets in verses 10 and 11. He talks about how the prophets inquired carefully, inquiring, verse 11, what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. The Old Testament prophets, when they predicted the coming of Jesus the Messiah, They didn’t always fully understand. In fact, they didn’t fully understand that which the Lord had revealed to them. They faithfully proclaimed it and recorded it, but it is only in hindsight as we go back and say, ah, that’s how that scripture was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And so they had searched and inquired to know what the Lord was revealing to them.

Well, friends, this afternoon we consider what we learn in verse 12 about the ministry of old covenant prophets to us as God’s new covenant people. And when I speak of ministry, that word ministry simply means service. to speak of a minister of the gospel is not to speak of someone who, you know, bow down and kiss my ring, who lords it over the flock. A minister is a servant, a servant of the Word, a servant of God’s people, a minister of the church, a minister of the gospel. The word minister means to serve. Well, the Old Testament prophets serve us today even in this new covenant age inaugurated by Christ through his life, death, and resurrection. How do the Old Testament prophets minister to us? Well, that brings me to our passage for this afternoon.

First of all, the Old Testament prophets minister to us in their writings by strengthening and confirming our faith. Again, Peter says, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you. in the things that have now been announced to you. And these things, these things having to do with the gospel strengthen our faith, build us up in our faith. Norman Hillier, the Bible commentator, has this to say about this particular verse. He writes, But, quote, but it was revealed to the prophets of old that what God had made known to them concerning Messiah referred to a later generation, not to their own. That later generation has turned out to be that of Peter’s readers. So the ministry of those ancient prophets, however much of it applied to their contemporaries, has its fulfillment in Peter’s day.

The prophets, Peter tells his readers, were not serving themselves in the deepest sense, but you, when they spoke about God’s program. But friends, not only did the Old Testament prophets serve those believers living in the first century, living in Peter’s day, those original recipients of 1 Peter, but they still serve all believers, including you, including me. Well, pastor, I don’t get it. How do the Old Testament prophets serve me today? How do they serve the church today in the 21st century? Well, in many ways, of course, but one of the most powerful ways that they serve us is by strengthening and confirming us in our Christian faith. And so, for example, to give you an example of what I’m talking about, As we compare with the eyes of faith, the New Testament to the Old Testament, we see how perfectly and how clearly our Lord Jesus Christ fulfills Old Testament prophecies about the promised Messiah.

I like to tell the children, when you read the Old Testament, you always gotta put your Jesus glasses on. Now, you know, the Old Testament proclaims Christ by way of shadow, type, anticipation, as well as direct prophecy, so you’re not always gonna see a direct link between what you’re reading in the Old Testament and Jesus, but when you look at the overall picture, and when you read the Old Testament scriptures, the Old Covenant scriptures, from the lens of this Messianic New Covenant age in which we live, you’ll see how it shows, how it prepares God’s people for the coming of Christ. And so, for example, to offer just a few well-known examples of direct prophecies of the coming of Jesus, we read, for example, in Micah chapter five, verse two, we read in that passage that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.

And then if you compare that to Matthew 2 verse 1, Matthew 2 verse 1 tells us that Jesus was in fact born in Bethlehem. Another example, in Isaiah 7, verse 14, we learn that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and that he would be identified as Immanuel, which means God with us. And of course, Jesus is God with us in the ultimate sense. He isn’t just the Shekinah glory of God dwelling in the tabernacle or in the temple. He is God the Son come in the flesh, the God-man. conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, the Word made flesh who came to pitch his tent and make his dwelling in our midst. And in Matthew 1, verse 18, we learn that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

In other words, that Jesus was indeed virgin born and is thus a fulfillment of that prophecy in Isaiah. And then of course that famous passage, the suffering servant passage of Isaiah chapter 53. And let me just tell you a little story about that passage. There was in the previous presbytery that I was privileged to serve in, there was a particular minister in that presbytery who was a convert to Christ from Judaism. He had been raised in the Jewish faith, and as he tells it, if I’m recalling correctly, he said that someone once challenged him. In fact, someone said to him, a Christian said to him, well, let me read you a passage from the Bible, and you tell me who this is talking about. And the Christian proceeded to read Isaiah 53 without telling this gentleman what he was reading from.

And of course, this fella said, well, of course that’s talking about Jesus. And then the Christian pointed out to him, well, actually, that’s from the book of Isaiah, which was written hundreds of years before the coming of Christ. And that was one of the things that was instrumental in bringing this brother into the faith and ultimately into the ministry. In Isaiah 53 verse 12, one of the things we learn about the promised Messiah is that the Messiah would be numbered with the transgressors. And then if you compare that to Matthew 27 verse 38, we learn in that passage that Jesus was crucified along with two robbers. He was indeed crucified with transgressors. He numbered among the transgressors. in Psalm 16 verse 10, which I believe is the most quoted messianic prophecy of the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament.

In that passage we learn that the Holy One would not see decay, and of course the united testimony of the New Testament is that Jesus our Lord did not see decay. He did not rot in the grave, but in fact was gloriously raised from the dead. And I could multiply examples of the many Old Testament foreshadowings and types along with additional examples of direct prophecies about the coming Messiah that were fulfilled in the person and the saving work of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. In this way, as we read the Old Testament It confirms and strengthens our faith in Jesus Christ because God revealed the old covenant scriptures to prepare his people and indeed to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. And now that Messiah has come, now that Jesus has come, as we go back and read our Old Testaments from a New Testament perspective, as we put our Jesus glasses on and read the Old Testament, we see, wow, this does point to Christ.

How could I have missed it before? and that has the effect of strengthening under the blessing of God, strengthening our faith. Dear listener, let me ask you, are you diligent in reading and studying your Bible, including the Old Testament, so that your faith in Christ might be strengthened and confirmed? I wanna encourage you and urge you to do that. And I know I recently made a plug for this, but we do have Bible reading plans, In the back, I believe there’s a plan that can take you through the Bible in a year, if that’s too much to bite off. I think there’s another plan, isn’t there, that will take you through the Bible in two years, if you prefer a two-year plan. You don’t have to use those plans, of course. We’re not going to bind your conscience.

You might choose to follow a plan of your own. But I would strongly commend to you Make it your goal to read through the entirety of the Bible on a regular basis. Don’t lose the forest for the trees. It’s so easy for us to gravitate towards those portions of Scripture that most resonate with us. And I think I’ve shared with you before, I love Paul’s writings, I love the Gospels, I love the Psalms, but there’s other parts of the Bible too. And I’ve grown in my love for those more difficult parts of the Bible, even Leviticus. And even the phone book of the Old Testament, the First Chronicles, all those genealogies, so and so begets so and so, that’s there for a reason too, my friends. I wanna encourage you, press through, keep it up, and over time, you’ll see the connections.

Over time, it’s worth it in the end. So don’t give up. Read and study your Bibles carefully so that your faith in Christ might be strengthened and confirmed. Secondly, the Old Testament prophets minister to us by deepening our understanding of the person and saving work of Jesus the Messiah. The underlying subject of the Old Testament was the good news about the Christ to come. This is implied by Peter’s statement where he says, almost in Pauline run-on fashion, he says, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached, what? the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Many folks say, well, wait a minute. Isn’t the Old Testament’s about the law of God, the New Testament’s about the gospel?

Well, it’s not an either or thing. The Old Testament is saturated with grace, saturated with gospel, even as the New Testament contains law and commands. You get law and gospel in Old and New Testament. and both are important in understanding the whole counsel of God. And the good news about Jesus Christ is there in the scriptures. Yes, it’s there in shadow and type, but the good news was proclaimed, for example, in the ceremonial law and the sacrificial law given to the Israelites. where there were laws about sacrifices for sin and the need for atonement and so forth. All of that points forward to the saving work of Christ and it was sufficient for the people of God at that time to edify them and build them up in their faith. As we read the Old Testament prophets and the Old Testament writings through New Testament lenses, our knowledge of who Jesus is and of what he came to do will be deepened and strengthened under the blessing of God.

Friends, the belief that the Old Testament scriptures can instruct us Christians about the person and work of Christ is clearly the perspective that was held by the inspired author of the epistle to the Hebrews. In Hebrews, we are shown, for example, throughout that letter, how the Old Covenant both foreshadows and is surpassed by the greatness of the New Covenant. In that book, that portion of the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, we learn about that Christ is greater than Moses. We learn that Christ’s priesthood is greater than the Old Testament Levitical priesthood. We learn that Christ’s sacrifice is greater than and a fulfillment of the old covenant animal sacrifices and so forth. Indeed though, friends, Without a basic knowledge of the history, the institutions, the persons, and the rituals of the Old Testament, a portion of scripture like the epistle to the Hebrews would be shrouded in mystery and almost impossible to understand.

I mean, if you’re familiar, if you’ve read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, ask yourself this. If you’ve never read the Bible before, you’ve never read the Old Testament before, and you decide one day to sit down and open up your Bible, and you open it up to the book of Hebrews, and you start reading, do you think you’re going to understand what you’re reading? No, because Hebrews, of course, it was written to a group of Jewish Christians who were kind of unstable in their faith and tempted to go back to their former Judaism, but without having a basic understanding of who Moses was and about Melchizedek and about the Old Testament sacrifices and priesthood, without a basic understanding of these Old Testament realities, Hebrews would make no sense whatsoever. Much of the Old Testament assumes a basic knowledge, much of the New Testament rather, assumes a basic knowledge of the Old Testament.

Now, you can certainly pick up some things from the New Testament if you’ve never read the Old Testament or unfamiliar with it, but nevertheless, if you want to benefit from the New Testament and its richness and its depth. If you want to get into the Word, into the meat of the Word, you have to have at least a basic understanding of the Old Testament background to the New Testament writings because the Old Testament serves us by pointing us to Jesus, giving us insight into the person and work of Christ. Again, all of this serves to show that the writings of the Old Testament prophets, and indeed of all the Old Testament scriptures, can minister to us today by deepening our understanding of the person and the work of Jesus, our Lord and Messiah. But finally, beloved, the Old Testament prophets minister to us by glorifying the grace of God which we have received through Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament prophets minister to us by glorifying the grace of God, which we have received through Jesus Christ. In verse 10, you will recall, Peter says that these prophets, these old covenant prophets, prophesied about the grace that was to be yours. They prophesied about the grace. They didn’t just give law, law is there, law is important, but they prophesied about the grace that was to be yours. My dear listeners, God’s grace has come to us in the person of his son, Jesus the Messiah. And God’s grace is the undergirding theme of the entirety of Scripture, including the Old Testament. God’s amazing grace, God, the infinitely holy God, how amazing that he would show grace and mercy and kindness to a sinful, rebellious people. And one of the things that’s very common if you’re an Old Testament reader, you know that the people of God in Old Covenant times, were they faithful most of the time?

Were they faithful in keeping the covenant and avoiding idolatry and walking in step with the Lord’s commands? No. Most of the time they were wayward and wandering and backsliding and even guilty of apostasy. But God persevered with his people. He did not abandon them. He disciplined them. He brought the covenant curses upon them. He sent them into exile. but he did not abandon his people. Indeed, he has always preserved a remnant. So God’s grace, God’s grace is the message of the entire Bible, including the Old Testament. And the Old Testament prophets minister to us by glorifying the grace of God, which we have received through the coming and the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear listener, have you personally experienced God’s grace in your life? Has God’s grace in Jesus Christ truly come to you?

You say, well, how do I know that His grace has come to me? Well, His grace and forgiveness is declared to you, presented to you in the gospel, the good news about His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate who was predicted and anticipated by the old covenant prophets God incarnate who has come into the world to die on the cross to pay the penalty for sin and who was raised victorious from the dead so that whoever trusts in him alone for salvation may not perish but have everlasting life. Have you received his grace offered to you in the gospel? Or to ask the question in a different way, have you received his son? God’s grace comes to us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, I leave you, brothers and sisters and listeners, I leave you with what we are told in John 1, verses 12 and 13.

Speaking of how the eternal living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, how he became flesh and dwelt among us, it says in verse 11, he came to his own, that would be to the Jews. He came to his own, to his own people. His own people did not receive him, but to all who did receive him, meaning Jew or Gentile, to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. May God give you the grace to receive his Son, and in receiving his Son, you will receive the fullness of his grace. Amen. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we are thankful for your word.

It is rich, it is deep, it’s also It is all so deep, and sometimes it’s so deep that we feel like we’re drowning in its depths, but Lord, we pray that you would give us wisdom, illuminate us, and give us a desire for your word, a desire to grow in our knowledge and understanding of the whole of Scripture. Give us grace, Lord, to be whole Bible Christians. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 3, 2023
The Spirit of Christ in the Old Covenant Prophets, Part 1

About this sermon

1. The identification of the biblical prophets.
2. The function of biblical prophets.
3. The searching of the old covenant prophets (vv. 10-11).

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of 1 Peter for the evening sermon series. And by the way, just a reminder, on the next Lord’s Day, we won’t be having an evening service. We’ll be having an afternoon service after the fellowship meal, which we encourage you to join us for and stick around for. But tonight, 1 Peter 1 10-12 is our passage. I’m gonna begin reading in verse eight to fill out the context a little bit. This continues to be Peter’s opening doxology here in his first epistle. So let us hear God’s holy word, 1 Peter 1 8-12. Our focus will be on verses 10-12 tonight. Speaking of Jesus, Peter writes, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. And it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Let’s pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have raised up prophets and apostles through whom we have received your very word.

And we thank you that by your spirit and in your providence, your word has been inscripturated in the canon of Holy Scripture. We thank you, O God, for your word. It is a lamp unto our feet and a light into our path. We ask, Heavenly Father, that You would implant within our souls a love for Your Word, a reverence for the truths of Your Word. May we, along with the psalmists, say, O how I love Thy law. It is my meditation all the day. May Your Word be our meditation, our consideration this evening. And we pray that you would grant us grace to derive spiritual benefit from that which we consider this evening. Bless the proclamation of your word tonight and bless our hearing of your word. May we do so, may we hear your word proclaimed as an act of worship and make our hearts receptive to you.

We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is The Spirit of Christ in the Old Covenant Prophets. This is the first part, as it’ll take a couple weeks to get through this particular section of 1 Peter chapter 1. And there are five words that the children can be listening for in my sermon this evening. The word prophets, inspiration, word, gospel, and truth. Well, dear friends, in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, Saint Peter the Apostle touches upon the subject of the biblical prophets, a very important subject. And he does so in the course of writing about the wonderful salvation that we believers enjoy through our faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, the setting of what I just read to you from my sermon text for this evening is verses eight and nine, where Peter is still focusing upon Christ and he says, though you have not seen him, you love him, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

And then he goes on to say in verse 10, concerning this salvation, the salvation that Peter has just been speaking of, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully. Now we’ll flesh out a little bit this week and more next Lord’s Day, what specifically all of that means. But this is the context in which our passage comes to us this evening. Now it’s important to remember too whom Peter is writing to. Remember that Peter is writing this epistle to a group of first century Christians living in Asia Minor who were facing the threat of severe persecution for their Christian faith. And so that being the case, Peter’s major concerns in this letter, in this epistle, are to encourage and to fortify these believers to be faithful even in the face of persecution, as well as to provide them with some instructions about living a godly life in the midst of a hostile, ungodly world.

In his opening salutation and doxology, Peter has sought to encourage his readers by reminding them of the glorious inheritance of eternal salvation that Christ has won for them. And also in the midst of this doxology, he has spoken to them of both the joys and the trials of the Christian life, which we’ve considered on recent Lord’s Days. Well, in our passage for this evening, the Holy Spirit through Peter reminds us that this glorious salvation, and in particular, the Savior who would make it possible, was anticipated and predicted by the Spirit of Christ speaking in and through the Old Covenant prophets. Again, as we are told in verses 10 and 11. Now, in order to set this brief passage in its proper biblical context, in its overall redemptive historical context, what I’ll be offering to you this evening is sort of some groundwork here.

I’ll be offering a basic review of both the biblical identification of the prophets and also what the Bible says about the functions of a true prophet of God. And then we will begin to look at what Peter has to tell us in this passage about the searching of the Old Covenant prophets. And then on the next Lord’s Day, we consider in more detail what this passage has to teach us about the ministry of the Old Testament prophets to us in the New Covenant Church, as Peter touches upon that subject in verse 12. And so, as we seek to lay the groundwork for appreciating all that is being taught to us here in this passage, let’s first consider, beloved, the identification of the biblical prophets. the identification of the biblical prophets. That’s the first point in your sermon outline, if you’re following along in that.

Now, question number 15 of the first catechism, which was written for children, and some of you children may know the answer to this question. The question asks, who wrote the Bible? Anyone know the answer to that question? Yes, who wrote the Bible? You can speak it out. Very good. The Bible-based answer to that important question is chosen men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. And Peter himself affirms this truth in his 2nd epistle. If you turn to 2 Peter 1, let me just read in that passage, verses 19-21, the apostle Peter writes, 2 Peter 1, beginning at verse 19, he says, after speaking of the glory of our Lord’s transfiguration, an event to which Peter was an eyewitness, Peter writes, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.

Notice especially verse 21, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were, what? as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Again, chosen men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit are those who wrote the scriptures. And while God certainly used the personalities and the writing styles, the literary conventions, and the historical circumstances of the various biblical writers to communicate his word to his people, Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit was so involved, supernaturally involved, mysteriously involved in the writing process, that Peter tells us they spoke as they were moved or carried along by the Holy Spirit. What this means is that the Holy Spirit carried along the biblical authors in their work of writing the Holy Scriptures so that the human authors of the Bible wrote precisely what God, the divine author, intended for them to write, even down to the very last word.

We in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church believe in what is called the verbal inspiration of scripture. We don’t believe that the Bible is merely inspired in its thoughts or in its overall contours or message. It is inspired, it is God-breathed, even down to the very last word of the original autographa of holy scripture. It is verbally inspired, even down to the very last word. Now, most of the human authors of the Bible were either themselves inspired prophets or apostles, but even those biblical authors who were not technically prophets or apostles were still inspired, still carried along by the Holy Spirit. And, of course, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of prophecy. And so friends, the human authors of the Bible were either prophets themselves or they had received the spirit of prophecy in order to write and compose and edit the biblical books which God called them to produce.

And this is why the Holy Scriptures are called the Word of God. They are precisely that. The word or verbal revelation of Almighty God coming to us through the words of men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of prophecy.” The spirit of prophecy, again, being none other. than the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. Now, since this is the case, there are a number of things that are true about those who are genuine prophets, biblically speaking. What is a true prophet of God in the technical biblical sense of that term? Well, friends, a prophet is a person whom God has chosen, called, and inspired to be a bearer of divine revelation. And this is important to understand because there are those around today who would claim to be prophets.

And sometimes that term prophet and the term prophetic gets used in a sort of a non-technical sense. Sometimes today the terms prophet and prophetic get applied to individuals who are not technically prophets by the biblical definition of that term. And so for example, If you’ve studied church history, you would no doubt agree that throughout church history, God has at times raised up powerful preachers of the word of God who are sometimes described as prophetic in their preaching because they have been gifted with the uncanny ability to bring the word of God powerfully to bear upon their contemporary situation which they confront in their day. And so, for example, I believe that there is a legitimate, though informal, sense in which we could say that the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, was prophetic in his denunciation of the excesses and errors of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

Luther powerfully confronted a corrupt church and a corrupt church leadership for their rebellion against the Word of God and their departures from the purity of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But even though there is an informal sense in which we can say that Luther was prophetic, Luther was not himself a prophet in the technical, biblical sense of the term, because Luther was not bringing new, fresh, divine revelation to God’s people. Luther was simply a minister, a servant. The word minister means servant. He was a servant of the word, and he preached and applied the word to his contemporary situation. Luther would have never claimed to have been a prophet. He never claimed to be bringing new or fresh divine revelation, he simply brought the truth and demands of God’s Word to bear upon a corrupt and heretical church.

He simply applied the teachings of God’s Word to his own historical setting. But on the other hand, the biblical prophets actually received direct messages from God, messages that they were called to proclaim, messages which were ultimately inscripturated as part of the canon of Holy Scripture. And that is why you will find the phrase, thus says the Lord, or its equivalent some 2,000 or so times in the Old Testament alone. Calvin Knox Cummings in his wonderful little book, which we use for training church members, his book Confessing Christ, he describes this as the signature of God, that the Bible contains God’s signature, his thus says the Lord throughout its pages. Now what about today, however? Do we look for prophets in the church today? Well, friends, this is where it’s important to understand the flow of redemptive history.

You see, dear ones, with the first advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and with the completion of the New Testament apostolic canon of Holy Scripture, there is no more need today for the biblical office of prophet. Since a prophet is defined, biblically speaking, as a person who is called by God to be the bearer of new and fresh divine revelation, it is legitimate to ask questions like, are there still prophets in the church today? Is God still revealing His Word? Is the canon still technically open? Are there continuing new revelations that God is giving His church today? Well friends, the biblical answer to all of these questions is a loud and clear, emphatic no. You see, the New Testament reveals that Jesus Christ, who as Messiah, is the ultimate divine prophet of God’s people.

Jesus Christ is revealed as God’s final word. He is revealed as such, for example, in passages like Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two. And I invite you to turn there, Hebrews chapter one. The author, the inspired author of Hebrews begins his wonderful epistle by saying these words, and he contrasts how God spoke in Old Covenant times, Old Testament times, he contrasts that with how God has spoken in what he describes as these last days, meaning this new covenant era. He says this, Hebrews 1, verse 1. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers how? by the prophets. But, and here’s the contrast, but in these last days, notice by the way, the author of Hebrews is writing to Christians in the first century. We often hear our fellow believers today wondering aloud, I wonder if we’re in the last days.

The author of Hebrews would say, we’ve been in the last days since Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church at Pentecost. These are the last days, and they have been the last days since Christ was glorified at the Father’s right hand. But anyways, he goes on to say, but in these last days, how has God spoken? He has spoken to us by His Son. whom he appointed the heir of all things and so forth. The revelation that Jesus brought us during his earthly ministry and after his resurrection through his appointed apostles and prophets of the apostolic age is the climax and fullness of divine revelation. In other words, this is God’s full and complete word. And that is why there can be no more new revelations from God and therefore no more prophets, at least not in the technical, biblical sense of that term.

And this is also affirmed in the very last book of the New Testament canon, in the very last chapter of that book. Revelation 22, verses 18 and 19 contains a statement that is a solemn warning to those who would seek to add to the word of God. St. John the Apostle writing in Revelation 22, 18 and 19 says this. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book. Now while the focus of this warning is on those who would add to or take away from what is written specifically in the book of Revelation, since the book of Revelation is the last of the New Covenant canon, there is a generic sense in which this could be applied to the entirety of the Scriptures.

There is that wonderful hymn, How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord. The hymn writer says in that hymn, what more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? In other words, what more is there to say? God has spoken his final word in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the word of grace and salvation. The apostles inscripturated that word And we have that word in the completed canon of scripture. And because of that, friends, because Jesus Christ and his apostolic representatives, Jesus Christ himself is God’s final word. Figures like Muhammad and Joseph Smith, who claimed to be prophets, whose followers claim prophetic status for them, they were not true prophets of God, they were false prophets. And supposed holy books that are added to the Bible, books like the Koran or the Book of Mormon, which claims to be another testament of Jesus Christ.

These are not true scriptures. These are not truly the Word of God. These are what I like to call imitation scripture. They were written many, many years after the Bible was completed, many, many years after Jesus had died for our sins, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is reigning at the Father’s right hand and has sent His Spirit upon the church and promised to be with His church throughout this present age until He returns again. And so let us not look for another word. God has given us His final word in the Scriptures. But at the time of the old covenant prophets, that word had not been completed because the Lord Jesus, the promised Messiah, had not yet come. And so that brings me to my next point. We’ve considered the identification of biblical prophets and we’ve considered what a true biblical prophet is, but what are the functions of biblical prophets?

And we turn our attention to that important subject now. Well, the functions of biblical prophets, if you study the prophetic, if you study the books of Scripture, and especially the prophets, what the prophets did was twofold. They told forth the word of God and they also were used by God to predict future events in the history of redemption, events that would culminate in the person of the Messiah and in the messianic age and ultimately the consummation of God’s kingdom. And so those functions included what we might call forth-telling as well as fore-telling. Let’s first of all consider forth-telling. Biblical prophets spoke forth the word of the Lord to their contemporaries, and that is very clear, very plain. If you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, you read the old covenant prophets, they spoke, yes, they spoke about events that were yet on the horizon in the future of God’s dealings with his people, but they also confronted their contemporaries, calling their contemporaries to repentance and renewed covenant fidelity.

And so the biblical prophets often acted as God’s prosecuting attorneys to charge his people with sin in violating God’s covenant and to call them to renewed repentance and covenant obedience. Their first function was to confront men and women in their own day with the demands and the promises of God which is applied specifically to them. But the word which these prophets spoke forth to their contemporaries is still God’s word to us today. Because we, brothers and sisters, are united with the ancient people of God through the one covenant of grace, and therefore, the general truths of the word of the Lord that apply to them still apply to us today. The question has been raised, does God still speak today? And the answer is absolutely, absolutely yes. God speaks to us today through what he has already spoken to his people in ages past.

God speaks to us today through that which he has spoken once and for all in his holy word. And again, that final word. is the Lord Jesus Christ, it is fulfilled in Christ. Someone has the saying, perhaps you’ve heard this saying, if you want to hear God speak, read the Bible out loud, because the Bible is God’s Word, and it continues to be God’s Word. It is God’s Word in its very nature, and in that Word, God the Holy Spirit speaks forth the truth into our hearts and souls. But the biblical prophets also were called by God to foretell future events that were on God’s timetable for the future of redemptive history. The prophets not only spoke a word from God that confronted the issues of their contemporaries, but at times, in redemptive history, they also received messages from God which pertained to future events in God’s unfolding plan.

They predicted future events which were significant for the history of God’s plan of salvation, especially the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, and the blessings of salvation that would come in the Messianic age. And this is the particular function of the Old Testament prophets that the Apostle Peter is specifically highlighting here in 1 Peter 1, verses 10 through 12. Now, given the limitation of time and given the amount of material that is packed into these few verses, we’re just going to consider one more point this evening. from verses 10 and 11. Beloved, let us consider the searching of the Old Covenant prophets. The searching of the Old Covenant prophets. Again, getting back to our text for today and hopefully having laid a foundation for appreciating this passage in greater depth. Peter writes of this salvation that he has been speaking of, he says, concerning this salvation, the prophets, which prophets is he speaking about?

He’s speaking clearly in this context about the Old Testament prophets, the prophets whom God had raised up in the Old Covenant era before the coming of Christ. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. Earlier in the service this evening, I read to you from that very familiar passage on the suffering servant, Isaiah chapter 53, which we rightly, the Christian church has rightly and correctly understood to be a prediction of the sufferings of Jesus the Messiah, the sufferings, the messianic sufferings of Jesus as the suffering servant. And that prediction was fulfilled to the letter, indeed. But we may ask ourselves, did Isaiah understand what he was saying?

Certainly the Spirit inspired him to write and to proclaim what he wrote there in that famous passage, but did Did Isaiah fully understand what he was writing? The indication of our passage this evening is that though he was inspired to write that, and though it was a clear prediction of the sufferings of the coming Messiah, yet again, Isaiah was writing from an old covenant perspective. He was writing from the standpoint living before the incarnation and cross and resurrection of Christ. Again, as I’d mentioned earlier, in the context of this passage, Peter has been speaking of the salvation that Christ has won for us. The this salvation to which Peter refers in verse 10 means the final stage of our salvation. He’s speaking about the consummation of our salvation on that final day. It seems that most Bible scholars agree, as I mentioned, that the prophets whom Peter is referring to here are the Old Testament prophets.

All the way from Noah, who is a prophet, and Abraham, and Moses, all the way through Malachi, those prophets. Not the New Testament prophets that were found periodically during the apostolic era, again, as the context would seem to make clear. Peter speaks here about how these Old Testament prophets who were the very bearers of the Word of God, how they searched and inquired carefully to discern what the Spirit was revealing about Christ. And notice how he describes in verse 11 the Holy Spirit who predicted the sufferings of Christ. The Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ was active in his revelation through the old covenant prophets, even as the spirit of Christ was active in the New Testament apostles and prophets. And so friends, what is Peter telling us here? Why is it that these prophets needed to search and inquire about the Christ of whom they prophesied?

Didn’t God already reveal the truth about Christ to them? Well, we learn here in this passage some very significant truths about the Old Testament prophets. They were indeed inspired by God, they wrote and spoke as God carried them along, and they wrote the very truth of God, the inerrant truth of God. But as Bible commentator Dr. Edwin Blum summarizes verses 10 and 11, Dr. Blum writes the following, he says, this salvation was the subject of the Old Testament prophecies of the messianic sufferings and glories. The prophets not only spoke to the situation of their contemporaries, but they also spoke of the longed for messianic times. In predicting the future, they did not always understand their utterances. How could they? Jesus had not yet come. He goes on to say, the prophets longed to see the messianic time and so searched into what they could know of it.

Oh beloved, the Old Testament prophets searched and inquired because they often did not fully comprehend or understand the prophecies about the Messiah which God had revealed to them. They saw dimly, they saw the truth, they recorded the truth, they spoke the truth, but again, until Christ had come and fulfilled that which they predicted, the full light of truth had not, redemptive truth was still needing to be searched out by them. And even when there were glimmerings of insight, the prophecies remained veiled and mysterious, again, until Jesus Christ came and fulfilled them. Now we’ll leave it here, but what are some of the applications, what are some of the lessons that we can learn from this? Let me just make a couple of points in closing. Beloved, the main implication of these verses is that as believers living in this messianic New Covenant era, this era after the first advent, the first coming of Jesus, we are more privileged than even the Old Testament prophets were.

And you say, but pastor, they received direct divine revelation. They received new and fresh revelation from God. Isn’t that a great privilege? It certainly was a great privilege, but they knew in part and they prophesied in part. Even though they received direct revelations from God himself, they often did not fully understand or comprehend the full implications of their prophecies, which we have the privilege of understanding today, again, because Christ has already come. And dear friends, in Christ, let us never feel inferior to the prophets, simply because we don’t receive new direct revelations from God. We’ve already received his final word in Jesus Christ and in the completed canon of Holy Scripture. In this book, the canon of Holy Scripture, Old and New Testament, we have the full picture that they did not have, though they were raised up by God to serve in their generations.

And so in Christ, again, dear friends in Christ, let us never feel inferior. After all, in Christ we possess the fullness of truth that the Old Testament prophets only knew in shadow and type and prophecy. Let us be satisfied with the truth of Jesus Christ as we have it. in God’s completed word, the Bible. And let us not be longing for or looking for another word from God. God has spoken his final word in Jesus Christ. Are you not satisfied with Christ? The God-man, the word made flesh, the perfect all-sufficient savior of sinners. This passage also serves to underscore the truth that Christ is the unifying theme of the whole Bible. both the Old Testament and the New Testament. As Peter shows us in verse 11, Christ was active, the Spirit of Christ was active even in Old Testament times.

For the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ as He is the Spirit of the Father as well. The Old Testament anticipates Christ, the New Testament fully reveals Him. The Old Testament prophets pointed forward to Christ The New Testament apostles explained him. As the saying goes, Christ is in the Old Testament concealed, but in the New Testament revealed. The Old Testament prophets pointed us forward to Christ, but the New Testament apostles explained him. Dear listeners, do you know the biblical Christ who was predicted by the Old Testament prophets? Do you know Him as your Savior, your Messiah, your Lord? And finally, not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well is useful and important for us as Christians to read, to study, to learn, to meditate upon. Sometimes we hear the expression, I’m a New Testament Christian.

Well, the New Testament is wonderful, but I would challenge us, let us be whole Bible Christians because this whole book from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, is the Word of God. And so let us read it. Let us not just read our favorite parts. Let us not just pick and choose. I’d encourage you, by the way, as we are soon to be in December and we’re approaching the end of this calendar year. We have Bible reading plans that can take you through the Bible in either a year or two years available in the foyer on the literature rack there. Pick one of those up if you don’t have a Bible reading plan. I’d encourage you to read through the entirety of Holy Scripture on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be every year or even every two years, but do it regularly.

Get the big picture. Don’t just focus on the trees. Don’t lose the forest for the trees. Get the big picture as well. Read the Scriptures as a whole. Be a whole Bible Christian and not just a New Testament Christian. Again, dear friends, we can praise God for the Old Covenant prophets. They minister to us They serve us. They teach us about the Christ to come. And they help us from this side of the incarnation and cross and resurrection. They help us to gain deeper insight into the person and work of our Savior. But let us also praise God that in the Bible we have his complete word. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have spoken your word to us.

We thank you that long ago in ages past, you spoke to the fathers of old by the prophets, but now in these last days, you have spoken to us in your son, and you have spoken to us the final word. And we thank you that in Christ and through faith in him, it is a word of grace and salvation to all who believe. We pray that these truths would increase and strengthen and deepen our faith and our repentance as well. We ask all of these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time of worship tonight, let’s rise and we’ll sing together 437, how marvelous, how wise, how great, 437.

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November 26, 2023
A Tested Faith, a Joyful Heart, Part 2

About this sermon

1. The character of the Christian’s trials (v. 6).
2. The purpose of the Christian’s trials (vv. 6-7).

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Sermon transcript

Dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. We continue our study of the first epistle of Peter, the apostle. This evening, we consider 1 Peter 1, verses six through nine. 1 Peter 1, verses six through nine. I’m gonna read verses three through nine to give you the fuller context, but again, our focus will be especially on verses six through nine. This is the opening doxology of this epistle. Dear friends, let us hear God’s holy word. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Dear ones, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Please join me in prayer. O Lord our God, send your spirit of illumination upon us that our minds might be opened and our hearts be warmed by that which we consider this evening.

We pray that you would fortify and strengthen us in our faith. We pray that you would convict us of any sin that we need to repent of, as we need to repent of all sin that your spirit convicts us of. And we ask that you would renew and fill us with your spirit as we are filled with your word. We ask that you would be with us now, and we pray that Christ would be present in the proclamation of your word this evening. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is A Tested Faith, A Joyful Heart, Part Two. There’s a lot in this opening section of Peter’s first epistle, and so we’ve been taking our time, we’ve been kind of going at Presbyterian speed, as I like to say, going through this passage of God’s word, and seeking to mine many of the riches that are found here in this portion of scripture.

And I do direct your attention once again in your sermon outline. There’s quite a number of words that our young people can be following along with as they listen for those words in my sermon tonight. Well, dear ones, the Apostle Peter wrote this first epistle to a group of first century Christians living in Asia Minor. And these were Christians who faced the threat of severe persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And because of their situation, because Peter knew that he was writing to a group of harassed Christians, Christians who were probably anxious and probably fearful about what lay ahead for them, because of that, Peter’s main purposes in writing to them are to offer them, first of all, encouragement. and hope in the face of their trials, and also to provide them with instructions for godly living as those who are elect exiles of the dispersion.

In other words, as pilgrims of Christ living in this present evil age. So he wants to encourage them, and he also wants to equip and fortify them to continue living godly lives even in the face of a hostile world. And so on the last Lord’s Day evening, we considered from our passage how the Holy Spirit through Peter seeks to encourage believers in the midst of their, what Peter describes in verse six, their various trials. And Peter seeks to encourage us by reminding us of the Christian’s joy. We focused on the last Lord’s Day evening, especially on the theme of the Christian’s joy. In particular, we considered from this passage the character of the Christian’s joy, the reason for the Christian’s joy, and the strength of the Christian’s joy. But as I pointed out on the last Lord’s Day evening, this passage from God’s Word presents us with the paradox of the Christian life.

That paradox being, namely, that it is a life of joy in the midst of trials and sufferings, even as it is a life of trials and sufferings in the midst of joy. This realistic yet hope-filled picture of the Christian life can help to strengthen our hands and to fortify our souls in Christ as we heed our Lord’s call to take up our cross, to deny ourselves, and to fight the good fight of faith as those who are called to bear the cross. and to proclaim Christ to a lost and sin-cursed world. And since we focused last week on what this passage from God’s Word teaches us about the Christians’ joys, on this Lord’s Day evening we turn our attention now to what we learn in this passage about the Christians’ trials, or the testing of our faith.

We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, lead us not into temptation. God does not tempt us to evil. He’s not the author of sin. He doesn’t tempt us in the sense of enticing us to do something that is evil or sinful or contrary to his moral will. But God does test our faith. And so this evening we consider the testing of our faith, our Christian trials. And specifically, we will consider the character of the trials that we face as Christians, as well as the purpose of our trials as believers. So friends, let’s dig into our text for this Lord’s Day evening. Let’s focus our attention on verse six. And the first thing I want us to consider tonight is the character of the Christians’ trials, the character of the Christians’ trials. Notice that Peter writes here, he says, in this you rejoice.

What is the this that he is referring to in verse six? Well, he’s saying the salvation, the full and free and secure and eternal salvation, our inheritance of salvation that has been secured for us in Christ. He says, in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. Here, this terminology of various trials, this speaks to the character of the Christian’s trials. In the New International Version, it is translated all kinds of trials. Now, what Peter says in these verses here is similarly stated elsewhere in the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament. For example, the Apostle Paul says something similar in Romans 5, verses 3-5. I’d invite you to turn there to Romans 5. You’ll notice a similar language that Paul uses. He has just talked about how we have been justified by faith and so we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have a standing in grace and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And then Peter goes on, I’m sorry, Paul here, in Romans chapter five, it’s getting Peter and Paul a little mixed up there. Sorry about that. But in Romans five, Paul says in verse three, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings We rejoice in our suffering. That sounds odd. Not because we’re masochists, because we enjoy suffering. No, we rejoice in our sufferings. Why? Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Again, so there is a role for the Christians’ trials, the Christians’ sufferings and struggles, and that role includes the development of endurance and character and hope, the strengthening of the Christians’ hope.

And likewise, James in his epistle says something similar in James 1, verses 2 through 4. Again, I’d invite you to turn there, James 1. Actually, James is before 1 Peter. James 1, verses two through four. James writes, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And so this sounds similar to what Peter is instructing his readers and the Holy Spirit through Peter is instructing us to do. As Peter says, in this you rejoice though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. With respect to Peter’s language here, this language of various trials, or again, as the NIV translates it, all kinds of trials, the Bible commentator Norman Hillier explains, he says, the expression all kinds, referring to trials facing believers, here translates the Greek poikilois, which literally means many colored.

So Peter’s talking about many colored trials. Dr. Hilliard explains, he says, Peter uses the word again in chapter four, verse 10, to describe God’s grace, God’s many-colored grace, if you will. The only two occurrences of the Greek word in this letter nicely balance, he writes. Christians may have to face all kinds of troubles, but in whatever, quote, color troubles appear, God’s grace will always match them and prove perfectly sufficient. In other words, beloved, the character of our trials as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the character of our trials is multifaceted because we experience all kinds of trials. You may be going through a particular trial or struggle in your life and you may be thinking, no one else has ever been through what I’m going through right now. And I can guarantee you that is not the case.

You are not alone. Our trials, our struggles that we face in this life are common to our fellow human beings, common to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And so these trials are described, again, as many-colored. But the inspired Apostle Peter tells us in this epistle that God’s many-colored or manifold grace is more than sufficient to meet our many-colored or manifold trials. Those trials can take the form of grief or loss. They can take the form of sickness or disease. They can take the form of job loss. They can take the form of relational breakdown. They can take the form of persecution and hostility. Whatever form your trials take, God’s grace is sufficient according to Scripture. Oh, Christian friend, do you feel that you are facing a trial that you just cannot handle? Well, you’re right, in your own strength you can’t handle it.

Sometimes you hear that saying, God will never send something into your life that he won’t equip you to handle. It’s sort of a half-truth there. God does send trials, allows trials to be sent into our lives to show us that we can’t handle them in our own strength. And these trials are meant to drive us back to the Lord for grace, they are meant to show us, among other things, they show us how weak we are, how dependent we are upon God’s grace to sustain us through those trials. Are you afflicted by many and varied trials which grieve your soul, or which threaten to cast you down into a pit of despondency, discouragement, or despair? Oh, dear listener, turn the eyes of your faith upon Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. I’m reminded of what the Apostle Paul said in, I think it’s 2 Corinthians, where Paul, you know, Paul was a man who was familiar with suffering.

He was a man who had endured beatings and shipwrecks. He endured opposition. He endured slander. He had much joy in his life, but he also had many trials in his life. And there was a particular trial, we don’t know exactly what it is, but Paul speaks of it as a thorn in the flesh. And there’s various speculations about what that might have been. But what does Paul say? Paul says, I prayed three times for the Lord to remove this thorn in the flesh from me. And what was God’s response to Paul? Remember, God said, my grace is sufficient for you. God’s grace is sufficient for us. His power is perfected in our weakness. Dear friend, His grace is sufficient to meet your need and to uphold you in the midst of your trials. That’s not to say that your trials are gonna be pleasant or easy, but the Lord walks with us He is the good shepherd, he travels with us even through the valley of the shadow of death.

So let us rest in him, let us look to him, let us cry out to him, even as the psalmists cry out to him, sometimes saying, Lord, why? Let us take the words of the scriptures upon our lips in the psalms, crying out to God for mercy and for his grace to sustain us in our trials, and let us look to him for our deliverance. Dear ones, our trials are indeed many-colored. They are many and varied, and as Scripture elsewhere teaches us, it is through many tribulations that we must enter into the kingdom of God. But you may wonder, why is this the case? Why does God permit, yes, even sovereignly decree that we, His beloved blood-bought children, must experience so many trials and testings of our faith before we enter into that final consummated kingdom?

Sometimes we wonder, Lord, why did you save me and then leave me here? Why didn’t you just save me and take me home to be with you right away? If you know Christ, if you’ve tasted that the Lord is good, you long to be with the Lord, don’t you? You desire to be where your Savior is in his direct presence. You desire to see him face to face. You long for that day when you will see him face to face and you may wonder, Lord, why can’t it be now? Why do I have to wait? Well, God has a purpose in all things. Why does he do this? Well, why does he decree and permit us to face so many trials? Well, we find this question answered in our passage for this evening, and this brings me to the next main point from our passage.

Let’s consider next the purpose of the Christians’ trials, the purpose of the Christians’ trials, and we focus especially in this point in verses six and seven. Again, these trials are described as various or many-colored trials. Why? So that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. In verse six, Peter states that we will face the grief of various trials if necessary and if God decrees that it shall be so. And then he gives the purpose statement in verse seven. The tested genuineness of your faith, which is described by Peter as more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

What’s he talking about when he talks about the revelation of Jesus Christ? Well, in the Greek, it’s apocalupsis, the word from which we derive the word apocalypse. This is speaking of the second advent of Christ, the appearing of Christ in his glorious future second advent. See, the purpose of our trials is to demonstrate the genuineness of the believer’s faith, refining that faith as gold is refined by the fire. so that our Lord Jesus Christ might receive the praise and glory and honor when he returns in glory. Again, as I mentioned, Peter is referring here to our Lord’s second advent as the revelation of Jesus Christ. Well, dear ones, ultimately, when trials or testings of faith come into the life of a professing believer, they can have basically one of two effects. First of all, superficial, nominal, or hypocritical confessors of the Christian faith are exposed by trials as phony Christians, quite frankly.

Over the long haul, these Phony Christians, or as I like to call them, make believers. In the face of trials, they become embittered and hardened against Christ. Or they end up falling away from the faith when persecution threatens them. Not just falling in the faith like Peter did when he denied Christ three times. By the grace of God, Christ prayed for Peter and Peter did return in repentance. He was full of contrition for that horrible sin of denying his Savior. And certainly, we Christians, we believers, do not always respond to our trials in a godly way. But over the long haul, if your trials are driving you toward Christ, driving you back to Christ, they are having a wholesome effect. But in the case of those who do not truly know Christ, who do not truly trust Christ as their Savior and Lord, the effect of trials is to harden them against Christ and in some cases causing them to fall away from even a profession of faith in Christ.

Our Lord Jesus had taught about such superficial or phony believers who fall away from the faith in His parable of the sower. Let me just have us turn briefly to Matthew chapter 13. Let me read verses 5 and 6 of Matthew chapter 13. In this passage, our Lord Jesus is delivering to the crowds. He is delivering this parable of the sower, as it is often called. And he describes some of the seed here in this parable. He says, Beginning in verse 5, other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Now, how does the Lord Jesus explain the meaning of this aspect of his parable of the sower?

Well, I’d have you turn to the verses 20 to 21 of that chapter. Jesus explains. He says, as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. In other words, he joyfully professes faith in Christ. He joyfully professes to accept the gospel. Yet, notice what it says in verse 21, he has no root in himself. In other words, it’s not a genuine, I would understand this to mean it’s not a genuine conversion. There’s no root, there’s no root of regeneration. It’s an emotional response to Christ rather than a response to Christ that is rooted in being born again. So he has no root in himself, but endures for a while. And notice what it says next. When tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

He falls away. You know, someone once said that trials in life can either make you bitter or they can make you better. Struggles, difficulties, sorrows, trials, and tribulations in our lives as believers, these things have a way of exposing our true colors, of revealing what we are really like as professing believers, of bringing to the surface the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. In the case of hypocrites and phony believers, in the long run, trials will expose their hypocrisy and unbelief. But of course, let me just say, beloved, that in some cases this might actually be a mercy to such individuals. It might be a mercy for such trials may be used by God in his providence to bring such hypocrites and false believers or nominal believers to see the true state of their souls and to awaken them to their genuine need for Christ and thus be used by God to lead them to genuine faith and repentance.

Sometimes that happens, and we praise God when it does. But in the case of others, such trials have the sad effect of causing these individuals to further harden themselves in their hypocrisy or self-righteousness or unbelief. Dear listener, if you’re uncertain this evening about the true state of your soul before your Maker, I would urge you to cry out before your Maker. I would urge you to cry out to the Lord as David did in Psalm 139, 23, and 24. Let me have you turn there, Psalm 139, verses 24, 25, and 26. David in this beautiful psalm that speaks in such a personal way of our Lord’s knowledge of us, His omnipotence, omnipresence, His omniscience. David says this, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me. and lead me in the way everlasting.

And we know, brothers and sisters, that the way everlasting is the way of faith in Christ and Christ alone for salvation from sin. And so, dear listener, turn to Christ in true faith and repentance, and He, by His grace, will give you the grace to endure through trials, and He will cause your faith to come forth in the end as gold. So trials can have the effect in some cases of exposing the hypocrisy and falsehood of those who are mere professors of faith and not true possessors of faith. But in the case of the true believer, those who truly trust Christ alone for salvation, trials are vehicles that God uses in the lives of true believers to show the genuineness, to manifest the genuineness of their faith in Christ. And this, of course, is what Peter focuses on in these particular verses.

He tells us that true believers demonstrate their faith is genuine by enduring through and even rejoicing in the midst of their trials. This morning I read from a passage in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which was one of Paul’s prison epistles. And one of the things that is characteristic of Paul’s letter to the Philippians is that it is just, it throbs, it pulsates with joy. Even though Paul is writing from prison, even though Paul is in an uncertain set of circumstances, He rejoices in the Lord because he knows that the Lord has a purpose even for his difficult circumstances that he endures and that the Lord would use those circumstances for the furtherance of the gospel and for the glory of his name. Dear ones, our faith is tested and purified through the fiery trials that God brings into our lives.

And that’s why, again, in verse seven, Peter writes that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, your faith being more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire. This assumes that faith will be tested as by fire. As gold is tested and refined by fire, so faith is as well. And the purpose is so that it may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus will get the glory on judgment day for the precious shining gold, if you will, of your faith. It’s not faith that you have refined by your own works or merits or efforts or deeds. It’s a faith that he, in his sovereign purposes, has refined, fitting you for the glories of heaven.

Our faith is tested and purified through these trials which God brings into our lives. The Bible commentator, Dr. I. Howard Marshall, who I know I like to quote from. He’s got a helpful commentary. He writes that, quote, Peter indicates the purpose that God has in allowing his people to suffer. Trials test the faith of God’s people. Peter draws an analogy with the purifying of metals. Gold is a precious metal, but it can be mixed with impurities, which lower its value and spoil its beauty. Even though it is a precious metal, it needs to be refined. And so it is subjected to the intense heat of fire in a crucible, where impurities rise to the surface of the melted gold and are skimmed off by the goldsmith. God values Christian faith much more than gold, which, although precious, belongs to this world and will ultimately be destroyed.

Faith, too, must be refined so that it will be genuine and thus redound to the glory of Christ. So whatever God is doing in your life, whatever you’re going through, God is sovereignly using that to bring you forth, to bring your faith forth as gold. My dear brothers and sisters, when our gracious heavenly Father permits us to go through fiery trials, it’s not because He’s a heavenly sadist who enjoys watching us squirm and suffer. No, we His people, we are the apple of His eye. We are his precious adopted blood-bought sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. He loves us. He has loved us with an everlasting love. He sent his son to die for us and to rise for us and to intercede for us. But he puts us in the crucible and he melts us through fiery trials tailored to refine us, tailor-made to refine us where we’re at.

And he does so as a heavenly goldsmith so that he can skim away our impurities. Although it is certainly no fun being in the crucible. And though the trials of God’s people can sometimes seem grievous beyond description, we think especially of the sufferings of the martyrs in past and present church history, some of the horrible sufferings that God’s children have endured. We think about those kinds of trials and it may seem like overkill to us. Why, God, we might wonder. But nevertheless, our loving Heavenly Father allows us to go through such trials because He is making us into something beautiful in His sight. We are works of His hands, and He’s not through with us yet, but one day He will be done, and He will cause us to shine forth as gold. One day we shall emerge from the crucible, and our faith will shine forth as gold, which has been purged of its impurities.

The late Bible commentator William Barclay offered this illustration of the purpose of trials in the life of the believer that he uses an illustration of the athlete who undergoes rigorous training. And Dr. Barclay wrote, the rigors which the athlete has to undergo are not meant to make him collapse, but to make him able to develop more strength, and staying power. In this world, trials are not meant to take the strength out of us, but to put the strength into us. Dear ones, what is the end goal, the telos, the goal and purpose of our testing our trials as Christians? The end goal of our trials is again that the genuineness of our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. What Peter probably means here by this is that the genuineness of our faith will bring praise to God on the final day of judgment since God is the one who gives us the gift of faith and who refines that faith in his sovereign purposes.

Peter is probably also referring to the fact that we who are believers will be glorified on that day as well. As Christ says to us, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray that the genuineness of our tested faith will be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the final revelation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May your trust and hope be found in him and Him alone. Amen. Let us pray. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you for the joy that we have in Christ. We also give you thanks for the trials and testings that you send into our lives. Though some of these trials and testings are unpleasant and difficult, We know that our suffering is not meaningless or purposeless.

We know that you have an ultimately good plan behind it. So help us, Lord, to plant our feet upon the solid rock foundation of that promise of yours that you cause all things to work together for the good to those who love you, who are the called according to your purpose. We pray that you would be with us in our trials and testings, make us faithful, and cause our faith to come forth as gold. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time of worship tonight, let’s rise and we’ll sing together, Psalm 30, O Lord, I will extol thee. Psalm 30.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 19, 2023
A Tested Faith, a Joyful Heart, Part 1

About this sermon

We have a foretaste in this age of the joy that is yet to come.

1. The character of the Christian’s joy (vv. 6, 8).
2. The reason for the Christian’s joy (v. 6).
3. The strength of the Christian’s joy (vv. 6-8).

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Sermon transcript

remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter’s first epistle. And this evening we’re going to focus, we are moving along at Presbyterian speed. Nice and slow, but there’s so much here in this passage tonight, we are going to consider 1 Peter 1, verses six through nine. I’m gonna read verses three through nine to remind us of the fuller context here, but our focus will be especially on verses six through nine. So let us hear God’s holy word, 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the proclamation of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, your word tells us that the joy of the Lord shall be our strength.

We pray that we might experience your joy this evening as we consider this glorious portion of Holy Scripture. We pray that the unfolding of your words would give light to our souls. We ask, O Lord, that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word, and we pray that you would feed our souls through this portion of your word. We ask that these truths from your word that we consider this evening would indeed be spiritual milk to those who need the milk of your word, may it be spiritual meat to those who need the meat of your word, and may it be manna to all of us. We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would grant me grace to faithfully declare your word this evening and give us faithfulness in receiving your word. and taking it to our hearts and into our souls by your spirit.

We ask these things in Christ’s name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. title of my sermon this evening is, Attested Faith, A Joyful Heart. And there is so much in this passage that we’re considering tonight that I figured instead of pulling an Apostle Paul and detaining you all until midnight, that I would break this up into several sermons. Well, dear ones, the Christian life is often misrepresented today. What I mean is that some seem to incorrectly represent the Christian life as a life of constant thrills and unending spiritual and emotional highs. The Christian life is presented as a victorious life, a life of constant unbroken onwards and upwards, if you will. From this point of view, the Christian seems to be presented as a person who lives on a higher spiritual and emotional plane of existence as compared to the ordinary mortal.

Professing believers who lean towards this view tend to look down upon Christians who shed tears of sorrow or who experience real suffering, real struggles, real grief in their lives as being somehow unspiritual. The suffering and sorrowful and grieving Christian seems to be viewed by them as a Christian who is missing out on the so-called victorious Christian life. But on the other extreme, there are others who appear to incorrectly believe that the Christian life is ordinarily to be viewed as a life of unending suffering, struggle, tedium, and drudgery. Professing believers who lean towards this view tend to look upon Christians who are openly joyful about their faith as being, well, somewhat superficial, perhaps overly emotional. It seems that for these folks, being a sourpuss seems to be a prerequisite for being spiritual. And the most faithful and mature Christians seem to be viewed as those professing believers who are stiff as a board and who wear a constant scowl on their faces.

Believers of this persuasion err by either ignoring or overlooking the fact that the true Christian has a deep-seated peace and an exuberant joy in the heart, which the unsaved person can never experience, apart, of course, from turning to Christ in true faith and repentance. This inexpressible joy and peace comes from a living relationship with the living Savior, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. And it is a peace and a joy which can endure through grievous trials and flourish even in the midst of great suffering. In contrast to these two extreme and erroneous views of the Christian life, and I know I’ve presented them in their most extreme forms, but in contrast to these extremities in viewing the Christian life is, of course, the biblical view. In particular, the biblical view of the Christian life as presented here by Saint Peter the Apostle.

And remember that Peter the Apostle in this portion of scripture is addressing a group of harassed Christians living in Asia Minor, Christians who faced the threat, the very real threat of severe persecution for their Christian faith. The biblical view of the Christian life avoids the extremes of these two misrepresentations of the Christian life that I explained. On the one hand, as Peter makes clear in this epistle, Scripture recognizes that genuine born-again Christians can and often do experience many sufferings and trials of various sorts. including the fiery trial of persecution. Real Christians face sorrow, too. Real Christians suffer, too. Real Christians grieve, too. And it is not an unspiritual thing to experience sorrow, suffering, grief, or trials of various sorts. On the other hand, scripture also teaches that true believers have been blessed with every blessing in the heavenly places, that we who are true believers have been blessed with the spiritual resources to endure through the trials and sorrows and griefs of life in this fallen, sin-cursed world.

Because of the presence of the resurrected Christ in our lives, we who by God’s grace are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have implanted within our souls an inexpressible and glorious joy, a joy which enables us to overcome as we face the trials which God in his divine providence decrees and permits to come into our lives. So friends, the biblical picture of the Christian life as presented to us here in this passage of 1 Peter is very realistic, but it’s also incredibly hopeful. It tells us, Peter is telling us, or the Holy Spirit, I should say, through Peter is telling us that the Christian life is a life of joy in the midst of trials and sorrows, even as it is one of trials and sorrows in the midst of joy. There is a paradox to the Christian life that Peter touches upon in this passage for this evening.

Here in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, as Peter addresses his original first century readers, he encourages them, as the Holy Spirit through Peter encourages us in the church in all ages, to put our main focus on the spiritual blessings that we’ve already received in Christ and the blessings of our inheritance of final salvation, which we shall receive in the future. so that we might have a living hope in the present as we face trying circumstances. In this passage, where the Apostle Peter addresses the joys and the trials of the Christian life, the Holy Spirit reminds us of the paradoxical truth that a tested faith and a joyful heart can coexist. And so this Lord’s Day evening, We will focus particularly on the Christian’s joy. We’ll talk more about the Christian’s trials and testing on the next Lord’s Day, but this evening I want us to focus on the Christian’s joy.

In particular, we will focus first on the character of the Christian’s joy, then we will focus on the reason for the Christian’s joy, and finally, the strength. of the Christian’s joy. So let’s dive into our passage, beloved, and let’s first of all consider the character of the Christian’s joy, the character of the Christian’s joy. This is the first point on your sermon outline. After the opening doxology where Peter blesses and praises the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who in great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the historic bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to an eternal inheritance. Peter goes on to say, in this you rejoice. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” Peter knows those to whom he is writing.

He knows that they have faced trials. They have faced sorrows. They need comfort. They need encouragement. And he reminds them, notice he says, though now for a little while, If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. Now, when you’re going through a particularly painful or grievous or difficult time in life, oftentimes those sorrowful times can seem to be so lengthy. But Peter encourages us to take the eternal perspective. From the standpoint of eternity, our trials and struggles and sufferings in this life, though very real and at the time very pressing, nonetheless, in the light of eternity, they are just for a little while. but they are grievous. He says, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That’s speaking about Christ’s second coming, his revelation, his appearing. And then he goes on to say in verse eight, though you have not seen him, you have not seen Christ, you love him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Verse six, Peter says, in this you rejoice. It is translated in a stronger way in the New King James Version as in this you greatly rejoice. This is not just you know, an ordinary kind of rejoicing. This is a great rejoicing. This translation is a translation of the Greek word, agaleasthai. The Bible scholar Norman Hillier says that the rejoicing which is expressed by this New Testament Greek verb is always a jubilant and thankful exaltation for some divine action. A jubilant and thankful exaltation.

Not just a, yay, that’s great. but an exaltation, a jubilant one. This word is also translated as rejoice in verse eight, which speaks of the believer as rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. inexpressible joy. Peter seeks to express the inexpressible here in this passage. The joy that the Spirit has implanted within the soul of his children is a joy that at one level is inexpressible. We do seek to express it in our prayers, in our praises as we sing joyful songs and psalms to the Lord But at the deeper level, this joy cannot be expressed even by those glorious forms of expression. In 1 Peter 4, verse 13, this word is translated in, again in the New King James Version, as exceeding joy. Believer, because of what Christ has done for us and for our salvation, and because of what He has done in our lives, showing His mercy to us, forgiving our sins, renewing us, giving us a living, everlasting hope, we ought to have a great and indescribable joy.

And you can have an inexpressible and indescribable joy even if, in terms of your personality, you are a reserved person. That’s okay. You don’t have to be one of these bubbly individuals that goes around saying, praise the Lord, every other sentence. And there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, if you have that kind of personality. Isn’t it wonderful that the Lord saves individuals, that his people include all different personality types? But whatever your personality type may be, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, whether you’re gregarious or reserved, whatever the case may be. If you are in Christ, the Spirit has implanted within your soul A joy that cannot be expressed because it is a joy that is founded upon Christ. It is a joy that is grounded in the gospel, the good news of your eternal salvation in Christ.

And so it is expressed by Peter here in verse eight as a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Now, what is this term inexpressible? Again, according to Dr. Hillier, this word means not capable of human description or calculation. Beloved, the reason that our joy is inexpressible and full of glory, the reason that it is not capable of human description or calculation is because it is not of human origin. Rather, it is from above. It is a gift of God. You know, it’s interesting, happiness depends, as the word suggests, it depends upon happenstance. You know, I think of that song, oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way. And it’s easy to feel happy, to feel emotionally lifted up when everything’s going your way.

You’re healthy, you’re comfortable, you’re financially set and all of that. But what happens when you lose your job or when you get that cancer diagnosis? What happens when that trial comes into your life? The joy that we believers experience in Christ is a joy that goes deeper than the mere outward circumstances, the happenstances of our daily lives. It’s not something that we can work up within ourselves. It’s not something that outward circumstances can control. It is from above. It is a gift of God. to try to paraphrase Peter’s expression here into modern lingo. The joy that we believers experience in Christ is a joy that is out of this world. And it is out of this world because the source and origin of our joy is not of this world. It is found in Christ and given to us as a gift of God through Christ.

Now perhaps you’re wondering, what could produce such deep and rich joy in the souls of believers? Well, you will find the answer to that question in verse six, where Peter tells us the reason for the Christian’s joy. And that brings me to my next main point in your outline, the reason for the Christian’s joy. Verse six, Peter writes, in this, You rejoice. In this, you rejoice. Now, as often is the case, Bible scholars debate about what the in this means. Bible scholars have disagreements about what the in this is to which Peter refers. Some suggest that in this would be better translated as in whom, referring, of course, to God, meaning that we rejoice in God. If that is the case, then Peter is saying that we believers rejoice because of God and in Him.

Others suggest that it would be better understood and translated as in which, meaning in which time. If that is the case, then Peter is saying that we will rejoice greatly at the final day when we experience the final consummation of our salvation. Now friends, while it is certainly true that as Christians we rejoice in God and that we will rejoice greatly at the last day when Christ returns. Nevertheless, the context of this passage appears to support in this, as the best translation, and in this in the sense in which circumstance, in which circumstance you rejoice. What’s Peter talking about? Well, what Peter seems to be saying is that we rejoice because of the blessings of salvation which we’ve already received. as well as because of the blessing of final, ultimate salvation, which we shall receive on that final day.

The blessings which Peter has already described in his opening doxology in verses 3 through 5. The certainty of receiving this final consummated salvation and our security in that salvation is the reason why we rejoice with joy inexpressible at this present time and why we rejoice even in the midst of our trials. Remember Peter. has already told us in his opening doxology that we have an inheritance awaiting us and we are being kept for that inheritance. Our eternal inheritance, our eternal salvation, the final consummation of salvation which is described by Peter as our inheritance, how has it been described? It is described in verse four as imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. And so, this, my friends, this, my friends, is the reason for the Christian’s joy, because our salvation, our inheritance, is firm and secure, unfading, kept in heaven for us.

Beloved, By way of application, these truths revealed here in this passage reinforce the biblical teaching that a Christian can enjoy in this present age a full and infallible assurance of salvation. After all, how could we believers experience such joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory if our salvation was always in question or if we could not be fully assured of our eternal salvation? If you’re always in doubt about whether or not you’re in a state of grace, if you’re always living in doubt of whether God is angry with you or whether you are in Christ and in the favor of God, that can rob you of joy. The praise be to God, the scriptures teach that we who rest upon Christ, who cling to Christ, trusting him alone for salvation from sin can be fully assured of our salvation.

Dear listener, do you know this joy inexpressible and full of glory that Peter describes here? Do you have a full and infallible assurance of your salvation? If you have doubts about your salvation, take your doubts to the Lord. Jesus is very kind and welcoming. Remember how he treated doubting Thomas. Yes, he rebuked Thomas at one level, but he also welcomed Thomas. And he welcomes us. If you struggle with doubt, if you struggle with assurance of salvation, turn to Christ. He welcomes you. He welcomes you. And trust in him with repentant faith. and be assured that you are forgiven for Jesus’ sake. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. That’s God’s promise. And God does not go back on his promises. God’s promises don’t contain fine print. That’s hard to discern. God speaks his word.

He means what he says. He says what he means. Believe in him. Repent and believe in him tonight. But finally, beloved, we note here, we consider here, the strength of the Christian’s joy. This is my final point in your outline, the strength of the Christian’s joy. This is a joy that endures in spite of and even in the midst of trials. This is the irony, not the irony, but the paradox of the Christian life. Again, Peter writes, in this you rejoice, this good news that your inheritance is being kept for you in heaven and you are being guarded through faith for that final salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you’ve been grieved by various trials. The grief is real. You’ve been grieved.

Not, oh well, grief tempted you, but you’re living the victorious Christian life, you’re beyond grief, no. You’ve been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We’ll focus more on the testing of our faith on the next Lord’s Day evening, but again, notice the strength of the Christian’s joy here, as brought out in this passage. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. We walk by faith, not by sight. But the things of faith, the things that we grasp and believe in, are real. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. But those things not seen are realities.

Christ is real. The spiritual realm is real. The fact of our salvation is real. and can be relied upon. And then it goes on to say, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. And what does this faith, which is suffused with joy, lead to? Obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And here, again, the salvation he has in view is salvation in the broader, final, consummated sense, it would seem. The strength of the Christian’s joy, beloved, is that it is a joy that endures in spite of and even in the midst of sorrows and trials. And our lives are filled with sorrows and trials. Different degrees, different forms of intensity. But we live in a fallen, sin-cursed world.

We face the common curse. Believers experience, along with our unbelieving neighbors, we experience the effects of the common curse. but we have hope, a hope that the unbeliever cannot even imagine. Oh, dear believer in Christ, it is because you look forward with joy to receiving final salvation on that final day when Christ returns that you can even now rejoice in spite of and even in the midst of your trials. In commenting on verse six, the Bible scholar, and I quote him often, but he’s got a very helpful commentary, Dr. I. Howard Marshall, He says that Peter’s point is then not a contrast between present suffering and future fullness of joy, but rather the paradox of greatly rejoicing now despite suffering. We have the first fruits of the age to come. We experience a foretaste in the present time of that final age to come.

By the grace of God, our joy in the Lord will endure through the fiery trials of this life as we walk in that joy through faith in Christ and as we strive to maintain a clear conscience before the Lord. As a biblical example of this kind of joy that was experienced even in the midst of suffering and trial, consider Paul and Silas in Acts chapter 16. Remember Paul and Silas were in the city of Philippi? and they got in trouble with the authorities. They were beaten and they were put in prison in chains and probably expecting to be executed the next day. How did they respond to that brutal treatment that they had received from the Roman government there? Now, if I were in their shoes or their sandals, my natural inclination, I think the natural inclination would be to grumble, to complain, to moan and groan.

After all, these men were probably in a lot of pain, physical pain from the brutal beating that they had received. But turn with me, if you would, to Acts 16. Let me read verses 22 through 25. Acts chapter 16, and we’ll wrap things up in a few minutes, but just wanna point this out. Acts chapter 16, verses 22 through 25. This kind of sets the context here. It says, The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.” Not a comfortable way to spend the night.

But notice verse 25, about midnight, Paul and Silas were doing what? Moaning and groaning and complaining and whining. No, they were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. Prisoners were listening to them, their joy in the midst of this trial that they were undergoing, this persecution that they had undergone. This joy must have been a powerful witness to the prisoners who heard them singing and praying and also, no doubt, to the Philippian jailer who is marvelously converted later on in this passage. It was that joy inexpressible and filled with glory that empowered and strengthened Paul and Silas to be calm, to have peace of heart in spite of the throbbing pain that no doubt their bodies were enduring as they were recovering from that brutal beating that they had received.

The joy of the Lord is our strength. And the strength of the Christian’s joy is that firm and sure and certain eternal hope that we have in Christ because of the gospel. But while it is not possible for us as believers to lose our salvation, it is possible to lose the joy of our salvation. And there’s many ways that we can lose the joy of our salvation. We can lose the joy of our salvation through neglecting the means of grace, neglecting the Word, neglecting prayer. neglecting fellowship in the church and so forth. We can lose the joy of our salvation through unrepentant sin, through hardness of heart, through failing to maintain a clear conscience and so forth. And I think the biblical example of a believer who for a time lost the joy of his salvation, think about King David.

King David in his grievous sin of falling into the sin of adultery with Bathsheba and arranging for Bathsheba’s husband to be murdered on the front lines of battle. And David continued, hardened and impenitent in that sin for a time. But we read in his Psalm of Repentance, Psalm 51, he prays in Psalm 51, verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. When David fell into such grievous, serious sin, he did not lose his salvation. He was not cast out of the kingdom, but he did lose the joy of his salvation. And in his prayer of repentance, he says, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation. His salvation was the source of joy itself. I take that to mean that David, because of his sinfulness, was doubting.

Am I really saved? Am I really in favor with the Lord? And this is a warning to us. Again, while our salvation is secure, we can lose the joy of our salvation. And so, dear ones, let us make every effort to obtain and maintain, by the grace of God, the joy of our salvation. Let us be often in the Word. Let us meditate often on the promises of the gospel, feeding our souls with those wonderful promises. Let us often avail ourselves of the comfort that comes to us through the sacrament of the Holy Supper. Let us diligently use the God-ordained means of grace, the word and the sacraments and prayer, and let us often search our consciences, confessing our sins in repentant humility and thus striving to maintain a clear conscience before the Lord. After all, the joy of the Lord is that which gives us strength for the trials that we face as pilgrims of Christ, making our way through this present evil age.

Dear friends, may the joy of the Lord be your strength, And may you experience a joyful heart even when your faith is tested. Amen. Let’s pray.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 12, 2023
Guarded by God’s Power

About this sermon

1. The hope of eternal salvation is kept in heaven for us (v. 4).
2. We are guarded by God for our inheritance of eternal salvation (v. 5).
3. Consider the implications of our preservation in the faith (v. 5).

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Sermon transcript

1 Peter 1, verses 3-5. As we are in our 1 Peter series, considering this wonderful portion of God’s Word, I’ll read the first five verses of chapter 1 to fill out the context a little bit. Again, our focus this evening will especially be on verse 5. So, let us hear God’s holy word. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the proclamation of His Word this evening. Oh, Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you for your inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. and especially for this portion of your word that we consider this evening, we ask that you would grant us, Heavenly Father, wisdom and insight. We pray that by your spirit, that spirit who not only breathed out the scriptures but who also illuminates the minds and hearts of your people to understand the scriptures, we pray that your spirit would illuminate us and that your word would find a lodging place in our souls this evening and would bear much spiritual fruit in our lives. Once again, we pray that you would set a guard over my lips, Lord God, that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word, for the edification of your people, the salvation of the lost, and most important of all, for the glory and honor of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is present with us now in his word.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. title of my sermon this evening is Guarded by God’s Power. And I just wanna encourage the children, three key words to listen for in my sermon tonight, inheritance, salvation, and guarded. Well, dear ones, as we saw a few weeks ago, the text from God’s word that we’re going to consider once more on this Lord’s Day evening is a passage which offers rich encouragement and deep comfort to God’s people. In this passage, the true believer learns that he or she, as it says in verse three, have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Friends, as believers, this passage assures us that a glorious inheritance awaits us, namely the consummation of our eternal salvation on that last day, that final day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory and ushers in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells.

We learn that this glorious inheritance is reserved, is kept for us in heaven, where no one and nothing can cause this inheritance to be corrupted or defiled or decayed. Again, let me read verses three and four. This opening doxology, Peter writes, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And what have we been born again to or unto? As it says in verse four, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. So friends, on this Lord’s Day evening, we’re going to briefly cover some of the truths that are touched upon in verse four, but our main focus this evening will be on verse five, where we are told that we who are followers of Christ are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Friends, every word of this verse is packed full of truth and significance, so we’ll spend some time considering this verse in some detail. But before we turn our attention to verse 5, let’s once again look at verse 4. And in this verse, I would have us consider that the inheritance of salvation is kept in heaven for us. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have an inheritance, and that inheritance is being reserved. It is being kept for us in heaven. These words in verse 4 speak of great security, the great security of our salvation. In fact, even if Peter had decided to stop here at verse 4 and not include verse 5 in this chapter of his epistle, verse 4 alone would be sufficient to prove the doctrine of the absolute and eternal security of the true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the Calvinistically-oriented Baptist theologian, Dr. Miller J. Erickson, comments on this verse, and I quote from him. His comments, I think, are very relevant. He says, the three adjectives used to describe our inheritance are vivid and powerful. They speak of our salvation as incapable of being destroyed in the fashion in which armies ravage a nation during war. It cannot be corrupted or spoiled by the introduction of something impure, and it never fades, no matter what influences are brought to bear upon it. This salvation has a permanent quality about it. It endures. Hence, as Peter writes, this inheritance of salvation is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Beloved children of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has merited and secured for us an eternal salvation. He hasn’t just merited and obtained for us a standing in grace that we may or may not persevere in, a standing in grace that is insecure and unstable, that may be defiled or may perish or fade away, no.

In Christ, we have an eternal salvation, a salvation that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Through Christ’s atoning sacrifice for sin on the cross of Calvary, he has secured the redemption of his elect sheep. Beloved, because our salvation has been obtained and secured for us by our perfect, spotless, divine Savior, and because our Savior Jesus Christ is the sovereign King and Lord of heaven and earth, we can be sure that the inheritance which He has won for us at the cost of His own precious blood, He will keep and protect for us imperishable, undefiled, and unfading in heaven. This is a truth which should stir up hope and bring great encouragement and comfort to you who are weary pilgrims on your journey to the heavenly Zion. Do not be discouraged, dear believer. You have an inheritance.

It is being kept for you. So do not give up hope. Oh, praise be unto our great and sovereign God for the security and protection that we have in Christ. But not only do we learn in this passage that our inheritance of eternal consummated salvation is being kept, is being guarded for us in heaven, we also learn in this passage that we are guarded by God for our inheritance of eternal salvation. This is the second point in your sermon outline if you’re following along. Friends, we are guarded by God for our inheritance of eternal salvation. As it says in verse five, that we, for whom this inheritance is being kept, we who by God’s power are being guarded, or as some translations put it, are being kept through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, the last time that Peter speaks of there.

He’s obviously referring to the ultimate last time. He’s speaking of the consummation of this present age when Jesus returns in glory at his second coming. When the dead are raised, the final judgment occurs and Christ ushers in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells. So he is speaking here of our ultimate final salvation or what is elsewhere called our glorification. Now, dear ones, what is so comforting about this is that not only is heaven kept for us, as verse four affirms, we are kept for heaven. If you’re taking notes, write that down. Not only is heaven kept for us, we, beloved, we who are in Christ by his grace and grace alone, we are kept for heaven. Verse five is one of the plainest passages in all of God’s word, which teaches the biblical and reformed doctrine that we in the reformed faith call the perseverance of the saints.

See, the main point of verse five has to do with the fact that true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are preserved, that they are guarded, they are kept, and kept by God himself. but also it teaches that they persevere in their faith. For what does it say? We are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed. So we are preserved by God and by his grace, we persevere in our faith until the end of our lives. And that is implied where in verse five where it says that we are guarded through faith. Now again, theologians typically call this biblical truth the perseverance of the saints. But this is kind of, has the potential to get us into some confusion. Because in many folks’ minds, in our culture, even in the broader church culture, a saint is sort of a super spiritual Christian.

Or a Christian who is almost beyond sinning. We’ve got ordinary Christians and then we’ve got the saints, right? That misconception of the term saint is is in part due to, for example, Roman Catholic teaching and distortions of the biblical teaching on saints and the significance of that word. But we need to remember, friends, that every true Christian is a saint. The Bible teaches that if you are a Christian, if you have Put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your very own Lord and Savior, having repented of sin and believed upon Christ for salvation as he has offered to you in the gospel. If that is you, then you are a saint. according to the Bible. What does the term saint mean? Well, the term saint simply means consecrated one, holy one.

That is to say, one who has been set apart to belong to God in Christ. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit, all true believers who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit are set apart to belong to Jesus Christ. And that is true of you, Christian, even on those days where maybe you don’t feel like or behave like the Christian that you ought to behave as. And so all true believers are saints by the biblical definition of that term. Because all true believers are saints, set apart ones, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and because the Bible teaches that true believers will persevere in their faith until the end of their lives, Reformed theologians have typically called this doctrine, as I said, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. However, because that word saint is often misunderstood, I would agree with a particular theologian who has suggested that it would perhaps be better to refer to this doctrine not as the perseverance of the saints, but the perseverance of true believers.

And that’s how I’m going to be referring to this doctrine in the remainder of my sermon except where I’m quoting from others. Now, how do we understand and how do we define this biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints? Well, I think a wonderful Bible-based definition of this doctrine is found in our beloved Westminster Confession of Faith. And I want to invite you, if you’d like to follow along, to take your Trinity Psalter hymnal and turn to page 929 in the back of your hymnal to Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 17, and I’ll quote from section one of that section of the confession. Page 929, this is in chapter 17, entitled Of the Perseverance of the Saints, section one. And this is a wonderful Bible-based definition or summary of what the Bible teaches about this doctrine.

It says, they whom God hath accepted in his beloved, the beloved being Jesus, they whom God the Father has accepted in the beloved, Jesus, effectually called and sanctified by his spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.” Amen. It’s not saying that true believers can’t fall into sin, even serious or scandalous sin, but that they can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end and be eternally saved. The great Reformed theologian, Louis Burkhoff, defines this doctrine of perseverance as follows. He says, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is to the effect that they whom God has regenerated and affectionately called to a state of grace can neither totally nor finally fall away from that state, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.

We hear Burkhoff sort of borrowing words there from the Westminster divines. Another Reformed theologian, Herman Hoeksema, in his Reformed Dogmatics, defines this doctrine as follows. He says, the perseverance of the saints, therefore, may be called that act of the grace of God whereby he preserves the believers and saints in Christ Jesus in his power and through faith to the very end unto salvation and glory so that they fight the good fight. and so that they can never fall away from the grace they once received. Now, of course, brothers and sisters, if you’ve been in Reformed circles for a while, you know that this doctrine is often misrepresented or misconstrued by those who do not accept it or by those who are confused by it. The biblical doctrine, let me make an important clarification. The biblical doctrine of the perseverance of true believers, such as we find it in passages like this one, it does not mean, as it is sometimes misrepresented to mean, that everyone who claims to be born again is in fact born again and headed for heaven, no matter what they believe, no matter how they live their lives.

No, my friends, that is not what it teaches. As the late Dr. John Murray once wrote, in order to place the doctrine of perseverance in proper light, we need to know what it is not. It does not mean that everyone who professes faith in Christ and who is accepted as a believer in the fellowship of the saints is secure for eternity and may entertain the assurance of eternal salvation. Dr. Murray makes an important distinction. Is it possible to fall away from a profession of faith in Christ, an outward profession to believe in Jesus and follow him and be a member of his church and so forth? Yes, of course. It is possible to fall away from a profession of faith because it’s possible to outwardly profess faith in Christ and not possess a true and living faith in your heart. but it is not possible to fall away from the possession of a true and living faith because that faith is the result of a supernatural work of God called regeneration or being born again, wherein God implants new spiritual life in the soul of a dead sinner and causes us to be raised from the deadness of our sins to newness of life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Dr. Murray goes on to say, It is possible to give all the outward signs of faith in Christ and obedience to Him, to witness for a time a good confession and show great zeal for Christ and His kingdom, and then lose all interest and become indifferent, if not hostile, to the claims of Christ and His kingdom. It is the lesson of the seed sown on rocky ground. referring to Christ’s parable of the soils. The seed took root, it sprang up, but when the sun arose, it was scorched and brought forth no fruit to perfection. And he refers there to Mark’s record of this, of our Lord’s parable of the sower in Mark chapter four. So dear ones, the bottom line is that not all of those who profess faith in Christ will persevere, but rather, that all who possess a true and living faith in Christ will persevere to the end of their lives.

The biblical and reformed doctrine of the perseverance of true believers teaches that all true believers will persevere in faith, obedience, and holiness until the end of their lives and thus be eternally saved, all by God’s grace and grace alone. We need to watch out for misconceptions. As I mentioned before, this does not mean that true believers never sin. Of course we sin, we struggle with sin every day because in this present life, we continue to have the remnants of our old sin nature. And that’s why the scriptures call upon us to reckon ourselves, to count ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God in union with Jesus Christ. And that’s why we are called upon to fight the good fight of faith, to take up our cross and follow Jesus and so forth. The Christian life is a blessing, but it’s also a battle, it’s a warfare.

And we are called upon as children of God to engage in this battle, to be strong and courageous in the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, again, the perseverance of the saints does not mean that true believers never sin. On the contrary, all true believers struggle, as I said, with the remnants of their sin nature, this side of glory. And it is possible for a true believer to not only fall into the kinds of ordinary everyday sins that we are all, in our weakness and frailty, all subject to, but it is possible for a true believer even to fall into serious and scandalous sin. We see examples of that in the Bible. Think, for example, of King David. King David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, David who is described in Scripture as a man after God’s own heart.

David, a man who obviously loved and trusted the true and living God. He loved the Lord, but think, you read the history of David, there were a number of times in David’s kingship, in his service to God’s people where he fell into very serious sin, the most obvious one being his sin with Bathsheba, committing adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of another man. And then what does he do to cover it up when he learns that Bathsheba, that he’s conceived a child in this adulterous relationship? Well, He tries to get her husband to come home from the battle and spend time with his wife, but that doesn’t work out. And so what does he do? He arranges for Bathsheba’s husband to be put on the front lines of battle so that he will die in battle.

So David basically committed adultery and murder. And he continued, he persisted in his arrogance, he persisted in those sins for a time until he was confronted. but he was eventually, by the grace of God, brought to repentance. Does that mean that David fell out of grace during that period of spiritual darkness in his life? No, we don’t bounce in and out of grace. But nevertheless, he sinned very seriously. Or think of the apostle Peter. Peter, the author of this epistle that we are studying in this sermon series. Peter himself denied Christ three times. Remember that? When Jesus warned the disciples, you’ll all fall away because of me. You’ll all abandon me when I go to the cross. Peter says, not me, Lord. I’m strong. Even if everyone else abandons you, I will not. I will die with you if I must.” And that very night, at the instigation of a servant girl, he gets intimidated and he denies knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the last time he denies Christ, he does so with an oath. He calls a curse upon himself if he’s lying, which he obviously was. Again, Peter denied Christ. But the Holy Spirit eventually brought these erring believers, David, Peter, and others, to repentance. And that’s what the Spirit does with true believers. He will bring the true believer back to renewed repentance and a renewed striving after a new obedience. And so the biblical doctrine of perseverance teaches that the true believer cannot fully and finally and permanently abandon Christ and cannot completely and irreversibly fall away from the faith into final apostasy. That’s what the doctrine means. Although a true believer may fall many times in the faith and may grievously fail the Lord many times. The biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the true believer is taught, again, very clearly here in 1 Peter 1, verse 5, where we are told that we are, by God’s power, are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Again, we have an eternal inheritance that is kept in heaven for us, and praise God, we are being kept for that inheritance in heaven. Do you have the assurance that you are a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? That is to say, have you personally put your faith and trust in Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin? The word of God calls you, the gospel of Jesus Christ calls you to repent and trust in Christ. Receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone for your salvation. Christ who was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead so that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ is the God-man, the Word made flesh, the one and only mediator between the Holy God and sinful humanity.

Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Confide in Him, believe that in Jesus you have a merciful, forgiving God. And then continue to cling to Him with confidence and joy. Finally, beloved, let us consider just some of the implications of our preservation in the faith. This is the final point in your sermon outline. Let’s consider the implications of our preservation in the faith as some of those implications are laid out for us in this passage. Again, notice the language here. We are guarded by what? by God’s power. Believer in Christ, you are kept, you are guarded. You do not keep yourself, you do not guard yourself, at least not in the ultimate sense. Yes, you are responsible to be in the word, to diligently use the means of grace, you are responsible to faithfully follow Jesus, but you do not ultimately keep yourself.

God, your omnipotent Father in heaven, keeps you. And this, my friends, is the biggest difference between the Calvinist and the Arminian understandings of the believer’s perseverance. You see, in the end, beloved, for the Calvinist, it is God who keeps us as our passage teaches. Whereas for the Arminian, ultimately speaking, it is we who keep ourselves, with God’s help of course, but the ultimate factor for the Arminian in the believer’s perseverance unto the end is the believer’s choice to continue clinging to Christ. The good news of this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. You know, sometimes, brothers and sisters, we get weak in our faith. Sometimes we falter in our faith. Sometimes our grip on Christ gets loosened. But praise God, even, brother or sister in Christ, even when your grip on your Savior gets loosened, his grip on you will never be loosened.

He continues to hold you in his sovereign hand. He keeps you, and that is your confidence and mine. Praise God. I don’t know about you, brothers and sisters, but the more years I live as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, the more I see my own weakness, my own frailty, And the more grateful I become in knowing that, praise God, my salvation does not depend on me. If it did, I’m in big trouble. My salvation depends on Christ. Your salvation depends on Christ, not on your keeping yourself, doing more, trying harder, being better. And certainly we should strive after a new obedience, absolutely, but out of gratitude, for what God has done for us in Christ. So believer, be comforted. You are kept, you do not keep yourself. And consider also, dear friend, that if you are a true believer in Christ, if you have trusted, personally trusted Christ as your very own Lord and Savior, you are kept by the almighty power of God.

This word power here is so comforting. We are guarded By what? God’s power. What do you think of when you think of God’s power? God’s power, is it limited? No, God’s power is almighty. All the power of his omnipotent being is brought to bear in preserving and keeping His elect in the faith and in His grace until the end of their lives. That same power of God, who in the very beginning, by His sovereign, omnipotent power, spoke the universe into being out of nothing. That power that said, let there be and there was. That’s the biblical Big Bang, by the way. God spoke and bang, it happened, right? just simply by speaking the word. Nothing existed besides God in the very beginning. He was the only existent one. He was beyond time, space, and matter.

And he brought time, space, and matter, and everything else into being simply by speaking the word. We think of the power of God in parting the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk through on dry land. We especially think of the power of God that raised our Lord Jesus from the dead. What power to raise a dead man to life. That same power is at work guarding and keeping you believer. So be comforted. But notice also we believers are guarded by God’s power, not apart from faith, but through faith. So there is human responsibility here. But let us remember, beloved, that this faith by which we receive and rest upon Christ, this saving faith that clings to Christ and Christ alone, is not the accomplishment of our own autonomous free will. You do not believe because you make better decisions than your unbelieving neighbor or coworker or family member.

It’s not that you’re better or more worthy. Your faith is indeed itself ultimately a gift of God, a gift of God that was purchased for you by Christ himself. Our faith is not the result, is not the cause of our new birth, I should say. It is the fruit of our new birth. This is reflected, for example, by the Apostle Paul’s language in that very familiar passage in Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, Paul writes, for by grace, you have been saved. Grace is God’s unmerited, undeserved favor, his demerited favor, if you will. By grace, you’ve been saved through faith. Faith is the empty hand that receives the gift of salvation. But you’ve been saved through faith, and this, not your own doing. What does the this refer to? Some think it refers to salvation and not to faith, but I think it refers to the entire salvation process.

This faith is itself a gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. If you’ve come to believe in Jesus, don’t pat yourself on the back and say, hey, I’m a sinner, yeah, but at least I got faith right. Now, your faith is a gift of God, the fruit of the Spirit working in your heart and applying the gospel to your life. So friends. we believers are being kept for salvation. And again, in the scriptures, the term salvation is a broad concept. It’s sort of an umbrella concept that depending on how it’s being used in a particular passage, it can include many different aspects. Aspects such as regeneration or being born again, effectual calling, conversion, justification, adoption, sanctification, and ultimately glorification. If someone comes up to you on the street and says, brother or sister, are you saved?

The correct biblical answer is, I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved. Salvation involves things that have happened in the past, God has justified me, adopted me, forgiven my sins, things that are happening in the present, the Holy Spirit is sanctifying me, and ultimately, final salvation in our glorification. Now in the context of this particular passage, Peter seems clearly to be speaking of salvation in its final, ultimate, consummated sense. He is speaking here about our final glorification on the last day when we receive our resurrection bodies and are made perfect in body and soul to live in the direct presence of God forever in the new heavens and the new earth. And so, friends, as we close our time in the Word this evening, we are confronted with comfort as well as a challenge.

The comfort of this passage, beloved, is that we who know Christ as Lord and Savior can be assured, true believers can know the joy of full assurance of salvation. Because we are weak and because our faith is weak, sometimes we have doubts about our salvation, our faith wavers, But if Christ is your savior and if he is keeping you, if you know that and meditate upon that and realize that he is for you, in Christ God is for you, that can fill you with joy, the joy of knowing that he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion until the day of Christ Jesus, the last day. The challenge of this passage is that it encourages us, by implication, to reflect upon the question, am I a true believer in Christ?

Now I raise this question. This question is not set before you to get you to doubt your salvation. It’s not my intention, brothers and sisters, to minister to doubt. If you are a believer with a sensitive conscience, do not misinterpret or misconstrue what I’m saying. But if you are here and you’re arrogant and unrepentant in your sin, you have no intention of turning from your sin, you have no interest in the Lord or the things of the Lord or his word, then you need to ask yourself, am I a true believer? Do I know Christ as my Savior and may God give you the grace to search your heart and to repent and to come to Jesus Christ. He offers himself in the gospel to you, dear sinner. Do not refuse him. Turn to him this evening and then you too can know the joy of the Lord that is spoken of in our passage this evening.

Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that our salvation is from you and through you and unto you, that you keep for us an eternal inheritance, and that you, by your grace, through God-given faith, are keeping us for that inheritance. May these truths bring deep and rich comfort to our souls, and may they fortify us, Lord, to face the challenges that we face, living as your pilgrim people in this fallen, sin-cursed world. Encourage us, Lord, bless us, guard us. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. Dear ones, as we close our time of worship this evening, let’s rise and sing hymn number 514, O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go. 400, I’m sorry, 514, hymn number 514. you O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.

I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer O light that followest all my way, I yield my flickering torch to thee. My heart restores its borrowed ray, that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day may brighter ♪ O joy that seekest me through pain ♪ I cannot close my heart to thee ♪ I trace the rainbow through the rain ♪ And feel the promise is not vain ♪ That morn shall tearless be ♪ O cross that liftest up my head ♪ ♪ I dare not ask to fly from thee ♪ ♪ I lay in dust life’s glory dead ♪ ♪ And from the ground there blossoms red ♪ ♪ Life that shall endless be ♪ Amen. Dear people of God, look up and receive the declaration of God’s blessing, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Amen. We’ll close our time singing stanza one of number 562, Lord dismiss us. ♪ Lord, dismiss us with your blessing, fill our hearts with joy and peace. Let us each, your love possessing, triumph in redeeming grace. Oh, refresh us. Oh, refresh us. Traveling through this wilderness. I know. Thank you, Toby. Thank you.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

November 5, 2023
A Living Lord, a Living Hope

About this sermon

1. We believers have a living hope because we have been “born again” (v. 3a).
2. The objective basis for the new birth: The historic resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (v. 3b).
3. Our living hope: An imperishable inheritance (vv. 4-5).

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Sermon transcript

standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of 1 Peter. This evening we consider 1 Peter 1, verses 3-5. 1 Peter 1, verses 3-5. Dear friends, let us hear with reverence and awe the Word of our God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Dear friends, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. You may be seated. Please join me in your hearts as we pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word.

Our gracious Lord and Heavenly Father, once again, we pray that by Your Spirit, You would help us to gain insight into that which Your Spirit has recorded for us in Holy Scripture. We do thank You, O God, that the Bible is theopneustos, that it is God-breathed, that it comes from You, that it is practical, instructive and sufficient. We pray that by your spirit you would help us to behold wondrous things in your word this evening. And we pray that your word would find a lodging place in our souls. We ask these things through Christ our Lord. Amen. The title of my sermon this evening is A Living Lord, A Living Hope. And there’s a number of key words that you can be listening for that are listed in your sermon outline that I encourage you, especially the children, to listen for this evening.

Well, my dear friends, one of the greatest human needs is the need for hope. Without hope, the human spirit is crushed, dashed upon the rock of utter despondency. Without hope, the bright sunshine is hidden behind the dark storm clouds of despair. Without a sense of hope, you can lose all sense of meaning and purpose in your life. If you don’t have a sense of hope, you may even lose your will to live. However, beloved, if you have a strong sense of hope, you will be much better equipped to endure great trials and afflictions, even persecutions if they should come your way. Throughout history, we read of men and women who have been able to endure great sufferings because they had a strong sense of hope amidst their sufferings. Many a valiant soldier has been willing to lay down his life on the battlefield because of the hope that his death in battle would help to pave the way for a brighter, more peaceful future for his loved ones and for his country.

Many brave Christian martyrs, past and present, have been willing to endure unspeakable cruelties at the hands of their persecutors, rather than to renounce their faith in Christ, because the hope of the resurrection was a living reality in their lives. And they knew that in the end, that their Savior would vindicate them. Again, few things can make a person stronger than a powerful sense of hope, and few things can cripple a person more severely than the loss of hope. Well, dear ones, in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, the Apostle Peter is writing to a group of Christians who were facing the threat of severe persecution because of their allegiance to Christ. And what these brothers and sisters, these first century brothers and sisters needed was encouragement. And they also needed hope. Because of the afflictions and persecutions that Peter’s original readers faced, they would no doubt be tempted to lose their sense of hope.

And that is why in the opening doxology of praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter reminds his readers that they have been given a new birth, or to use Peter’s language, they have been born again to a living hope, as we’re told in verse three. The living hope to which Peter refers, of course, is it’s not a false or misleading and certainly not a dead hope, such as is entertained by unbelievers and followers of false religions who have a false hope. Rather, it is a true and certain and living hope. And what is it that makes this hope sure and certain? What is it that makes this hope trustworthy, reliable? What is the objective ground and basis for this new birth into a living hope? Again, the answer is given to us in verse three.

That answer is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There is hope because Jesus literally, physically, bodily rose from the dead as he had promised that he would. In other words, it is because of their spiritual and saving union with the resurrected Jesus, their living Lord, that they have a living hope. As their Savior is the living Lord, their hope is a living hope. One that Peter describes as imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, as we’re told in verse four. And what was true for these first century believers facing persecution is true for us. The Holy Spirit breathed out this portion of his word, not just for these original readers, but this message of a living hope grounded upon and based upon our living Lord. This is a hope that belongs to each and every one of us and belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ today in the 21st century as well.

And so let us consider this passage of God’s Word. And the first thing, as we focus on verse three, notice, first of all, that we believers have a living hope because we have been born again. We believers have a living hope because we have been born again. Again, notice Peter’s opening doxology, which is again, this was customary in epistles. especially Christian epistles of this time, such as the apostolic letters. Peter writes, Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is referring to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the first person of the Holy Trinity. That’s God the father. And notice that Christ is described as our Lord Jesus Christ showing forth his divinity, his deity, and showing that he too, revealing that he too is the object of worship and praise.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope. What does it mean, though, to be born again? I think it’s often helpful to understand what something is by first of all understanding what it is not. There are probably many misconceptions out there in the professedly Christian world and the world at large about what it means to be born again. What does it mean to be born again? Well, first of all, it does not mean water baptism. Some folks think that water baptism automatically and necessarily causes the one receiving that baptism to be born again, to receive this gift that is being spoken of in this passage. But this is not speaking of water baptism, though baptism is indeed a means of grace and it is an outward sign and seal of our new birth.

But many have received the outward sign who have not received the inward grace, and some have received the inward grace without receiving the outward sign. And so the new birth is not water baptism. Some might say, well, then is the new birth confirmation, as is the practice in some churches, confirmation? where the bishop comes and lays his hands on you. And I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I remember as a young person being confirmed and the bishop came and laid his hands on you and smeared some oil on your forehead and with the sign of the cross and all of that. Is that what it means to be born again? No, that’s not what Peter is speaking of. The New Testament does not speak of any right of confirmation. I suspect that some folks think that being born again means turning over a new leaf in your life.

It means, perhaps to some, a moral resolution to reform their lives. And, you know, for example, some folks might feel that they’re born again if they’ve had struggles with alcohol abuse. And we read stories and we know that there are folks who have struggled with the bottle, with addiction to the bottle, and have found help with that. through such organizations as Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, and they’ve gotten help and they’ve cleaned up their lives, they’ve turned over a new leaf. But friends, is that the new birth? Well, that may be in the lives of some, that may be one of the effects of the new birth, is that the Holy Spirit helps you to overcome sinful patterns or addictions or what have you. But there are plenty of unbelievers who have cleaned up their lives outwardly, who have outwardly reformed their lives, which has benefited them and benefited loved ones in their lives.

But outward reformation, turning over a new leaf, cleaning up your life, Well, those are good things. That’s not what the new birth is. So what is this new birth that Peter speaks of? Well, it is in the context of this passage and in the broader context of scripture, the new birth is the spiritual rebirth or resurrection of a spiritually dead sinner unto newness of life in Jesus Christ. It’s much more than than simply a sacrament. It’s much more than simply a moral resolution to do better, to try harder. It is a supernatural reality. It is something that God, as we will see, that God does for us. You see, beloved, in the scriptures, the scriptures indicate that as fallen sinners, as those who are fallen sons and daughters of Adam, in our fallen nature, we are dead to the things of God.

We are described in scripture as being dead in our transgressions and sins, as we’re told in Ephesians chapter two, verse one. And what that means, that doesn’t mean that we are unconscious or unaware or physically dead. You can be dead in your sins, but very much alive and healthy and vigorous in your physical and natural life. But we are dead in the sense that we are dead to the things of God. In our fallen, unregenerate condition, apart from grace, we are oriented away from God. Our spiritual disposition is a disposition of inner hatred for the true and living God, the God revealed in the Bible. You see, apart from God’s grace, we hate the true God and we hate the things of God and of his word. We are hardened in our sinful rebellion. We are insensitive to the demands of God’s holy law.

And we are unresponsive to the call of the gospel, the call to repent of sin and believe in Christ as Savior. But through the gift, the divinely given gift of the new birth, God the Holy Spirit raises us from a condition of spiritual death into a condition of spiritual life in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. In the new birth, He implants within our souls a new spiritual disposition. A disposition that is repentant for sin. A disposition which longs for and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ alone as Savior from sin. A disposition that has new desires. A desire for holiness. A desire for the things of the Lord. Some of you may resonate with with this but I recall. when the Lord was merciful to me and granted me, again, insofar as I understand my own conversion and walk with the Lord, I remember as a new believer, a newly born again believer, that I wanted to know the Bible.

I wanted to learn the Word. I had this hunger, this desire to grow in my knowledge of who Jesus was. And I wanted to know about what Jesus did for me. and so forth. There was a hunger and thirst that wasn’t there before. Before that time, spiritual things were intellectually interesting to me. But now that the Lord was merciful, now that I came to understand the gospel, now that the Lord had granted me the new birth, now I really wanted to know. There was a hunger to know. Dear friends, through this spiritual miracle of the new birth, we are made willing and able to respond to the gospel call with true faith and repentance unto life. Well, this passage is instructive because it shows us who the author of this new birth is. Verse three, blessed be who?

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I’ve shared this before, but I have in my library a book written by a famous evangelist, and the book is entitled How to be Born Again. How to be Born Again. And again, well-intended evangelist, well-intended book, but that would be, it makes about as much sense from a biblical standpoint, the title of that book as a book entitled How to be Born. Does that make sense? You didn’t choose when you were born. You didn’t choose what gender you were going to be. You didn’t choose your mother or father. That was given to you. That was something that God created.

Likewise, with the new birth, we don’t cause ourselves to be born again. We don’t contribute to our new birth. The author of the new birth is not God plus our cooperation. The author of the new birth is God. and God alone, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is clearly revealed in this passage to be the author of this new birth, this spiritual resurrection. Through Jesus Christ and by the power and agency of the Holy Spirit, God accomplishes this miracle of sovereign grace known as the new birth or regeneration. He does so in the soul of the elect sinner in God’s good time. I find it interesting that Dr. I. Howard Marshall, who I’m given to understand is not at all a Calvinist. I believe he’s Arminian and perhaps even Wesleyan in his theological views.

Yet in his commentary, he says this about the new birth. He says that the new birth, the concept of the new birth, quote, emphasizes that the source of life is outside ourselves and lies wholly with God, whose word engenders life. Might as well be a Calvinist to say something like that. So God, God is the source and origin of the new birth. He’s the author of the new birth. But this passage also speaks of the source of the new birth. The author is the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But notice again what it says. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his what? According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. excuse me, to a living hope according to his great mercy.

The source of our new birth is the Father’s great mercy. Now, the term grace and the term mercy are closely related to one another. They’re closely connected concepts, but they are distinct in some ways. God’s grace, God’s grace is views us as guilty sinners in need of forgiveness. God’s grace is his undeserved favor that provides deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin. So God’s grace views us as guilty sinners in need of forgiveness, and it provides us with that forgiveness. On the other hand, God’s mercy views us as miserable because of our sins. Grace meets us and meets our need for the guilt and penalty of sin to be dealt with. But mercy comes to us in our state of misery, our fallen state of misery. And therefore, it provides us with relief from the misery of sin.

By His grace, God favors us in Christ with His undeserved, unmerited love, providing forgiveness of sins, deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin. But by His mercy, He pities us with a heart of compassion. And friends, it is said to be because of His great mercy that He has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Now, by way of application, I want you to notice in verse 3 that the Apostle Peter tells us that God’s mercy is great. He doesn’t just say, according to His mercy, He has caused us to be born again. He says, according to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again. How great is God’s mercy, brothers and sisters? How great is God’s mercy to us in Christ? Friends, God’s mercy toward His people is as great as God Himself is great.

Beloved in Christ, do you realize that God’s mercy toward you is infinite, eternal, inexhaustible, and unchanging? Even as God Himself is infinite, eternal, inexhaustible, and unchanging. Do you realize how deep His heart of compassion beats for you? Dear one in Christ, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are powerful demonstrations of God’s heart of mercy for the redeemed. Oh, believer, rest with confidence in the tender mercies of your heavenly Father. And though you and I may face great trials, deep wounds of affliction, and even the blows of persecution, we can rest assured that our heavenly Father views us with his pity and compassion and his mercy comes to meet us in that need and he will deliver us in due time. But what is the basis for this new birth? We’ve considered the author of the new birth.

We’ve considered what it means. Let’s next consider the objective basis for this new birth, and that objective basis is the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ. from the dead. And this is the second point in your sermon outline. The objective basis for the new birth is the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We’re told again in verse three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You see, friends, because of what Jesus did by rising from the dead, physically, bodily rising from the dead, we can be spiritually resurrected in the new birth. The objective, historical, physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the basis and foundation of our regeneration of the new birth.

And through his bodily resurrection victory over death, we receive victory over death, both spiritual death and ultimately physical death. Not only does Christ’s resurrection guarantee our ultimate physical resurrection unto life on the last day, it also guarantees the spiritual resurrection of all of the elect in this present age in God’s good time. And this is one of the reasons why the resurrection of Jesus is so important and central to our faith, and also why it is so central in the writings of the apostles in the New Testament. You read the Acts of the Apostles, you read the various samplings that we are given in the book of Acts of apostolic preaching. What are the apostles constantly emphasizing when they preach the gospel? They don’t emphasize as so many preachers today making a decision for Christ or the response to the gospel, although that that is there, that there is the call to repentance and faith.

But what the apostles in their preaching of the gospel emphasized so much is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and they, the apostles, were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus. You see, without the resurrection of Christ, We would have no basis for our Christian faith. But in regard to our passage for this evening, without the resurrection of Christ, we would have no sure, certain, or lasting hope. But because of Jesus’s resurrection, we have an eternal hope, firm and sure. Dear ones, let us, as believers in Christ, be vocal and zealous defenders of the truth of Christ’s physical bodily resurrection from the dead. Without Christ’s resurrection, we would have no hope and neither would anyone else. Let us hold fast this cornerstone of Christian truth, for Christ our Lord is risen indeed. So what then is our living hope?

This is the final point on your outline this evening. What is our living hope? Our living hope is an imperishable inheritance, an imperishable inheritance. Now, we’re going to be coming back to this passage and digging into it more in terms of the specifics tonight. I’m going to give you more of a general overview here, but let’s look at verses four and five again. He says, we’ve been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And what have we been born again to? To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, if you are in Christ, your inheritance in heaven is being kept for you and you are being kept by grace for your inheritance. Kept for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

Not only has God given you a new birth to a living hope, He also preserves you in that hope. And He is keeping you for your inheritance in the end. See, friends, because we’ve been born again, as verse 3 makes it clear, because of our union with the resurrected Jesus, Because of this, we look forward with assured certainty to receiving our eternal inheritance, which Christ has purchased for us at the price of his own precious shed blood. You see, just as Christ rose from the dead never to die again, so the inheritance of salvation that we receive in the new birth is imperishable and secure. The resurrection of Christ is clear testimony to this promise. You know, our Roman Catholic friends believe wrongly, they believe that it is a sin of presumption to have the assurance of salvation or to have a firm and certain assurance of salvation.

And certainly they would say that, well, you can have a strong hope that you are currently under the umbrella of grace, that you’re currently under grace, but you have you can’t be assured that you will have that in the end. But the Apostle Peter here makes it clear that you can be assured. Here, our Catholic friends are contradicting their own supposed first Pope. Peter, of course, was not the Pope. But he tells us that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, that it is kept in heaven for us and that we, by God’s power, are being guarded through faith for this final salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. When I’ve studied church history and read about the martyrs and some of the sufferings that they endured, sometimes I find myself wondering Would I have been faithful to the end if I were in their position?

And you know, I figured out the answer to that. The answer is, in myself, in my own strength, no. I know my weaknesses. I know my frailties. But it is not my persevering through my own steam that keeps me secure. Yes, true believers do persevere, but we persevere in faith Because God preserves us in that faith. We are kept by the power of God. God’s infinite, almighty power. That power by which He spoke the universe into existence. That power by which the Father raised His Son from the dead. That power that raised us from spiritual death unto newness of life in Christ. That power, likewise, preserves us. If you are in Christ, fear not. The Father will keep you. That’s not a call to be lazy or lax or not to be diligent in your Christian life.

We must. We are called to be diligent. We are called to give diligent use of the means of grace and so forth. But it is calling us not to trust in our diligence, but to trust in the one who preserves us. Well, brothers and sisters in Christ, if these things are so, and indeed they are, let me offer you these closing applications very briefly. When you face trials, persecutions, difficulties, and struggles because of your allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are tempted to lose hope, ask the Lord to remind you of the living hope that you have. That living hope of an eternal inheritance that is even now being kept for you. Meditate on the glories of heaven. Meditate on the beauty and majesty of your Savior. And let these truths be to you the light at the end of the tunnel that gives you strength to travel through that dark tunnel of afflictions.

Because though the tunnel may be dark, though the way may be dark, the Lord’s hand is with you and he will pull you through. For you have an eternal inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you. Another application, if you have been born again, if you’ve received the gift and the grace of the new birth, Seek by the grace of God to live a life that is consistent with the new birth that you have received. We have been raised up to live in newness of life, and therefore that is the indicative, if you will, that is our position in Christ. And therefore, the imperative is to live in newness of life because of what the Lord has done for you in the new birth. We claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

By the grace of God, let us seek to act like disciples, His followers, in every area of our lives. And finally, since you have received such abundant and great mercy, do not neglect to show mercy, even to your enemies. Remember that it was not when we were worthy or when we were the Lord’s friends When we were faithful to Him, no, we were not. We were fallen in Adam. We were, by nature and by choice, sinners, rebels against our Creator, guilty of committing cosmic treason. And the Lord could have justly said, forget it. Forget it. You’re out. But it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. God had mercy upon us, not because we deserved His mercy, He had mercy upon us because He is merciful. And it was when we were His enemies, shaking our fists at Him or being indifferent toward Him, that He had mercy upon us and raised us to newness of life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Since God has shown us such great mercy, let us strive by the grace of God to show mercy to others, even to our enemies. We can’t do that in our own strength, our own power. It’s not natural to us in our fallenness to pray for those who persecute us and even to love our enemies, which doesn’t mean liking your enemies. Jesus says to love your enemies, that is to seek their ultimate good, which would be if they’re unbelievers, that would be their repentance and so forth. We can only do this by the grace of God. In closing, let me ask you, dear listener, have you been born again? Has the Holy Spirit raised you from the deadness of your sin to newness of life in Jesus Christ? You say, well, how do I know whether I’ve been born again?

Do you look to yourself or do you look to Jesus for your salvation? Are you repentant for your sin or do you wish to cling to it and love it and embrace it? If you are repentant and believing, then you can be assured that the Spirit is at work in your life. But remember, dear listener, God calls you and invites you to come to Jesus. Jesus died for sinners and rose from the dead so that all who believe in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. If you find within yourself the desire to believe in Christ, he welcomes you. He commands all men everywhere to repent and turn to him. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. And you can be assured that you have received the gift of the new birth because it is we believe and repent because we have been born again.

Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for your supernatural grace given to us in union with Christ, and we thank you that in sovereign grace you have raised us from the deadness of our sins to newness of life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to take these truths to heart and live out the implications of these truths in our lives. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Well, friends, let’s close our time together by rising and we’ll sing together hymn 490, Behold My Servant, 490.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

October 22, 2023
Sprinkling by the Blood of Jesus Christ

About this sermon

1. The reason why Christ’s blood needed to be shed.
2. The significance of Christ’s blood.
3. The blessings of Christ’s sprinkled blood.

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Sermon transcript

Amen. Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word as we continue our consideration of 1 Peter. We are still in the opening verses of 1 Peter. There is so much packed into the first two verses. And so my sermon text this evening is 1 Peter 1, verses 1 and 2. So friends, let us hear with reverence and awe the Word of our God. 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. May grace and peace be multiplied to you. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Let’s ask the Lord to bless our time in the word this evening. Let us pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, indeed, we would pray that your grace and your peace would be multiplied to us this evening by the work of your Holy Spirit working through this word We thank You, God, for the Scriptures. And we thank You for the comfort that the Scriptures offer to us, Your people. We would ask, Heavenly Father, that You would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from Your Word. We ask that You would encourage us and strengthen us, comfort us, challenge us, build us up in our most holy faith. And we pray that these truths would find a lodging place in our souls this evening. May this portion of Scripture be to us indeed food for our souls.

And we pray, Heavenly Father, that You would set a guard over my lips, O Lord. Grant unto me, Your unworthy servant, the grace to declare Your Word with clarity and power and with the assistance of Your Holy Spirit. For the glory of the name of Jesus Christ and the edification of Your people and the salvation of the lost. We pray these things through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, and all of God’s people said, Amen. Friends, you may be seated. title of my sermon this evening is Sprinkling by the Blood of Jesus Christ. And there’s just two key words to listen for this evening, the words sprinkling and blood. Well, dear friends, the Apostle Peter wrote 1 Peter to Christians in Asia Minor who were facing the real possibility of severe persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Peter’s main reasons for writing this letter, this epistle, included inspiring hope in the face of hardship and providing encouragement to these harassed believers. Since Peter is seeking to encourage these believers and to fortify their faith and their hope in the face of hardship, Peter begins this letter by reminding them of their true identity in Christ. Notice he doesn’t begin by reminding them of their duties or by preaching law to them. He doesn’t start out that way. He starts out reminding them of their identity in Christ. So Peter begins by addressing these believers as elect exiles of the dispersion or other translations. For example, the New King James Version translates it pilgrims of the dispersion. The NIV translates it as strangers in the world. Brothers and sisters in Christ, like all followers of Jesus, we too are pilgrims of the dispersion.

We are elect exiles of the dispersion. By reminding us of this truth, the Holy Spirit, through Peter the Apostle, points the eyes of our faith heavenward. He is setting our sights on our true home, our eternal home. And this hope purifies our souls and it gives us strength to press on through the difficulties that we face in this present life. Peter also reminds his readers that they are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, as we see in verses 1 and 2. And as we’ve learned in recent weeks, this means that we believers have been loved with the everlasting, sovereign, saving love of God. A love that has chosen us in Christ from before the creation of the universe. A love which will therefore keep us secure even until the end. What an awesome thought that even before God spoke the universe into existence, brothers and sisters, he had you and me in mind and he intended, he set his eternal saving love upon us in Christ.

What this means is that our heavenly father again will preserve us through our trials and persecutions, and he will enable us to persevere by his sovereign grace. And this is something that Peter’s original readers desperately needed to hear. Peter then goes on to remind his readers that they have been sanctified by the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. Now, the obedience that Peter is speaking of here, I don’t believe he’s speaking specifically of obedience to God’s law, although striving after pursuing obedience to the law is certainly the fruit of the renewing work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. But by God’s sovereign grace, What this is talking about is being renewed by the Spirit to obey the gospel call. By God’s sovereign grace, we have been born again.

We’ve been regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit, which has enabled us to obey the call of the gospel by believing in Christ as our Savior and by repenting of our sins. This initial obedience to the gospel call of repentance and faith, of course, leads to a lifetime of walking after a new obedience, a lifetime of daily renewed repentance and faith. But not only are we sanctified by the spirit for gospel obedience, Peter goes on to say that we are sanctified for obedience and for sprinkling with his blood, sprinkling with his blood. What’s going on here? What’s he talking about? It is through this spirit wrought, obedient response of faith to the gospel call that we sinners are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ and therefore receive the full benefits of Christ’s atoning work on the cross of Calvary.

The Holy Spirit applies to us the saving work of Christ, the Redeemer. He applies that saving work to the elect by giving them the gift of saving faith, the faith through which we receive the full benefits of Christ’s substitutionary atonement. But again, what exactly does Peter mean when he talks about being sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ? Doesn’t sound sounds kind of gross, right? Sounds kind of gory. What’s he talking about in this phrase? Obviously, he’s not speaking in a physical sense. When you believe in Jesus, what happens when you believe in Jesus? It doesn’t mean that the heavens part and Jesus literally sprinkles his physical blood upon you. Obviously, Peter is using this terminology in a more metaphorical sense, but a very real sense. And that’s what we’re going to consider for my sermon on this Lord’s Day evening.

But before we dive into the significance and meaning of what it what it means to be sprinkled with Christ’s blood, let’s first of all, consider the reason why Christ’s blood needed to be shed. Why Christ’s blood needed to be shed, it was not optional. Let’s go back to the very beginning. Man was created good and in the image of God. But as the word of God reveals, our first parents, Adam and Eve, who were real historical persons, Adam and Eve chose by their own free will to disobey a direct command of God. You know the story of what happened in the Garden of Eden. By disobeying God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, By that act, they declared their independence from God and they rejected his word.

Indeed, they chose the lying words of the serpent, Satan, over God’s true and trustworthy word. Now, we need to remember that Adam was appointed by God to be the covenant head and representative of the human race. The representative principle is strong in the scriptures. And since Adam represented the entire human race as the initial covenant head and representative, when he sinned, we sinned in covenantal solidarity with him. And that is why we are born with a sin nature. Brothers and sisters, let me make it clear. You and I are not sinners because God created us sinful. Such a thought is utterly blasphemous. God is a good God. If God created us with an evil nature, Then God himself would be evil. No, he created us good and in his image. Well, how then did we inherit?

How did we get a sin nature? Well, we didn’t get it from God. We inherited it from Adam. our covenant head and representative. And that is why we were born with a sin nature. The Bible says that because of our fall in Adam, we are all by nature and by choice, by fall in nature and by choice, sinners, rebels against our creator, traitors guilty of committing cosmic treason against the infinite divine majesty. Now, because the true and living God is infinitely holy and just, His holy and just character demands that sin be punished. Because we have sinned against the infinite holiness of the infinite Creator God, we therefore deserve infinite punishment for our sins. And some would say, well, can’t I make up for my sins by my penances, my good deeds, my acts of charity?

No, friends, you cannot do that. By our own good deeds or religious endeavors, we could never pay the infinite debt of our sin, nor earn that perfect, everlasting righteousness that we would need in order to serve as our title to heaven. You see, in order to get into heaven, it’s not enough to just have your Your sins forgiven. It’s not enough to just have the slate wiped clean. That’s enough to keep you out of hell. But in order to get into heaven, think about it. Heaven is a perfect place. God is a perfect God. Heaven is a perfect place. You and I need a perfect, everlasting righteousness to serve as our title to gain entrance into heaven. And we don’t have it in ourselves. And so. This is why we so desperately need a perfect, sinless Savior.

A Savior who will not only pay the infinite debt of our sin, but who will also credit to us His perfect, everlasting righteousness. And that’s precisely what Jesus Christ did for those whom He represented as the second or last Adam. My friends, the good news is that out of love for hell-deserving sinners like me and like you, God the Father sent His eternal Son into this world in order to save His people from their sins. That’s why He’s called Jesus, Yeshua. The word Jesus means the Lord is salvation. And as we’re told in Matthew 1, the angel directed Joseph to name Him Jesus. Why? Because He would save His people from their sins. Sin is a big deal to God because God is holy and righteous. Sin is such a serious offense. Because sin is such a serious offense against God, only God has the omnipotent power and grace needed to save fallen humanity from their sins.

However, since it was man who sinned against God, God could only save mankind by taking to himself a human nature body and soul, and by representing fallen man in that human nature. And that is precisely what God did in the person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the infinite God-man, the Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. God the Son, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity in the Incarnation, He took upon Himself a sinless human nature, body and soul, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is fully God and fully man. True God and true man united in one divine person. And that is why He can serve as the mediator between God and man. The only saving religion that there is, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because only the Gospel of Jesus Christ presents to fallen sinners a perfect, sinless mediator. A mediator who provides not only atonement and cleansing from our sins by His precious blood, but a mediator who provides the gift of His righteousness credited to us, received by faith alone. And so, because of the obedient life, the atoning death and the glorious resurrection of Christ, The moment you hear the Gospel and the Holy Spirit opens your heart and calls you through the effectual call to trust Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin. The moment that the Spirit regenerates and converts you. At that moment, your sins are forgiven. The benefits of Christ’s shed blood are applied to you and you receive. You are clothed in Christ’s perfect, everlasting righteousness. So that, judicially speaking, when God the Judge looks at you, He sees not you in your sin.

He sees his son. He sees Jesus and Jesus’s righteousness. Praise be to God. The long and short of it is, friends, is that Christ needed to shed his blood on the cross because that was the only way that God’s elect could be saved from their sins. There was no other way. The God-man had to pay the penalty for sin and had to provide that perfect, everlasting righteousness which is necessary to gain entrance into glory. Dear listener, have you trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and His shed blood on the cross of Calvary to cleanse you from your sins? Do you look to Jesus and Jesus alone as your righteousness, your redemption, your sanctification, and your wisdom? Jesus in the Gospel offers Himself to you. He offers full and free pardon. And He not only offers to wipe the slate clean, to cleanse you through his blood, to sprinkle you with his blood.

He offers to clothe you in his righteousness. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. So we see the reason why Jesus had to die, why his blood had to be shed. But let’s next consider in more detail the significance of Christ’s blood. Peter, in opening his first epistle, reminds his readers and therefore reminds us. that we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. This is one of the blessed blessings of the of the gospel. What is the significance of Christ’s blood? You know, modernists and liberals and rationalist Bible scholars often scoff at the biblical doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. They said, oh, that’s just blood and gore religion. And to suggest that it is, in my mind, is the height of arrogance and blasphemy.

These folks don’t understand the significance of the shedding of blood as it is revealed in the scriptures. What is the significance of Christ’s blood? Well, we need to kind of look at the Old Testament background a little bit. Let us, first of all, remember the important principle that is revealed in the scriptures that the life is in the blood. If you are in an accident and a major artery is severed and you bleed out, If you have a severe wound and you are swiftly losing blood, as your blood drains from your body, your life drains from your body. The life is in the blood. Let’s take a look at Leviticus 17, verses 10 and 11. Some of the Old Testament background to this concept of being sprinkled with the blood of Christ. Leviticus chapter 10.

I’m sorry, Leviticus 17 verses 10 and 11. Leviticus chapter 17 verses 10 and 11. And in this passage, the Holy Spirit through Moses instructs the old covenant people of God that they are not to eat meat with the blood in it. It says in verse 10, if anyone of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. Either cutting him off, either meaning excommunicate, put them outside the covenant community, or perhaps even this perhaps might even indicate a threat of death. Why is it that eating meat with the blood in it at this particular point in redemptive history carried with it such a severe penalty? Look at verse 11.

The Lord explains, for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it, I’ve given this blood for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. That blood does not belong to you. It belongs on my altar, God is saying to the people. And I provide that blood to make atonement for your souls. So by ingesting the blood instead of offering it on the altar, that was an act, an implicit act of rejecting God’s provision of blood atonement. Now, I want you, as we reflect on that passage, notice that God is the one who provides this blood for atonement. The blood is a gift from God, not something that man earns by works or merits. When we say, looking forward towards the New Testament, the New Covenant, when we say that Jesus Christ poured out his blood on the cross for sinners, we mean that he poured out his very life on the cross in order to redeem us.

The blood represents the life. And to say that Jesus gave his blood for us means that he gave up his life for us. He substituted his life on the cross, bearing our curse so that we might receive his blessing, his grace, his forgiveness. So the blood, the life is in the blood. The principle that we read in the Old Testament is that the life is in the blood. Another principle that is revealed in scripture is that sprinkling with blood was a symbol of cleansing. Sprinkling with blood was a symbol of cleansing. Let’s go to another passage in Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 14, and let me read verses one through seven. Leviticus 14, verses one through seven, which contains instructions for what was to be done in the case of lepers in restoring them ritually to the covenant community.

It says this. The Lord spoke to Moses saying this shall be the law of the leprous person for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall go out of the camp and the priest shall look. Then if the case of leprous disease is healed in the leprous person, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed, two live clean birds and cedar wood and scarlet yarn and hyssop. And the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water. He shall take the live bird with the cedar wood and the scarlet yarn and the hyssop and dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the fresh water.

And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease. Then he shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird go into the open field. Again, we read that today and we think this is kind of a strange ritual what’s going on here. But again, this is meant to anticipate and point us to Jesus Christ. This passage tells us that when a leper had been healed of his leprosy, he was to be sprinkled with the blood of a bird. This ritual was one of the means by which the former leper was ritually cleansed and therefore welcomed back into the life of the worshiping covenant community, sprinkling with blood. We learn from this passage, therefore, that sprinkling with blood is a symbol of cleansing from sin and impurity.

Well, friends, again, as I said, this points us to Christ in the New Covenant. And through the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross, through His precious blood, we believers are cleansed from our sin. Our sin is like a spiritual leprosy. But through the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, we are cleansed from that spiritual leprosy and we are welcomed back into the covenant people of God. Sprinkling with blood was also a symbol of setting apart or sanctification, consecration, setting apart for service to God. Let’s take a look at two very short passages, Exodus 29, 19 to 21, and then Leviticus 830. But let’s go back, first of all, to Exodus chapter 29. Verses 19 through 21. Making you skip around in your Bibles this evening. As we compare scripture with scripture, Exodus 29, 19 through 21, we read these words.

And this was instructions that the Lord gave to Moses for the consecration of the Aaronic priests, you shall take the other ram. And Aaron and his son shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, a symbol of being identified with the ram. And you shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar. Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar and of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and his son’s garments with him.

He and his garments shall be holy and his sons and his son’s garments with him. Holy, set apart, consecrated for the service of God. And then Leviticus eight, verse 30. Leviticus chapter eight. Verse 30, again, dealing with instructions for consecrating Aaron and his sons for the priesthood. It says, Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and of the blood that was on the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron and his garments and also on his sons and his son’s garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments and his sons and his son’s garments with him. Again, from our 21st century perspective and living as we do under the new covenant, these rituals may seem rather strange, but these verses, what do they teach us? Well, they indicate that it was through the ritual of sprinkling with blood that Aaron and his sons were consecrated or set apart to their priestly service to the Lord.

And you may say, well, that’s interesting, Pastor, but we’re not priests today, are we? Well, we’re not priests like Aaron was, and we’re certainly not priests like Jesus is. We don’t offer atoning sacrifices. But through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood, we Christians are likewise set apart to be a kingdom of priests unto God. And we are indeed called in this priestly service to offer unto God the spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, both with our lips and by our obedient lives. In fact, getting back to our passage for today, Peter, in this very epistle, speaks of our priesthood as believers. If you skip ahead to chapter two and look at verses four and five in First Peter, chapter two, verses four and five, it says, As you come to him, that’s Jesus, as you come to Jesus, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be what?

To be a holy priesthood. Peter’s Peter’s addressing believers in general. He’s not addressing ministers or elders. He’s addressing all of God’s people. We are being built up. not only as a spiritual house or temple, but a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And that’s what we do, by the way, when we sing praises to God and offer our prayers to God. We are offering to God sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. And the reason that we can do that and have those sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving accepted by God is because we have been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. And there’s many other things that could be spoken of in terms of the significance of the sprinkling of blood. But the final point I want to make here under this second point is that the sprinkling of blood confirms the covenant between God and his people.

According to Exodus chapter 24, verses 1 through 8, which I read to you earlier in the service, Moses confirmed the covenant between God and his people by doing something rather strange, by sprinkling them. with the blood of the covenant by, you know, if you were standing around Moses on that occasion, Moses would throw some blood on you. And that would be a sign of the confirmation of the covenant between God and his people. Likewise, think about our Lord Jesus when he instituted the Lord’s Supper. When our Lord instituted the Holy Supper, he indicated that his shed blood would ratify and confirm the new covenant. For example, consider our Lord’s language in Matthew 26, verse 28, Matthew 26, verse 28, which is Matthew’s account of our Lord’s institution of the Holy Supper. I’m going to start with verse 27.

It says. And he took a cup. And when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my what? This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Because of Jesus’s shed blood on the cross, God’s elect are confirmed as the beneficiaries of the covenant of grace. And by the benefits of Christ’s sprinkled blood, which we receive through our faith in him, we receive all of the saving benefits of that covenant of grace. Through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood, we receive all of the blessings of the new covenant. Praise be to our faithful covenant, God, for his wonderful mercies to us in Christ, our Savior. So we’ve considered why it was that Christ needed to shed his blood.

We’ve considered, as we’ve looked at various scripture passages, the significance of the sprinkling of blood. But finally, let us consider the blessings of Christ’s sprinkled blood, the blessings of Christ’s sprinkled blood. There’s many things, many blessings that come to us because we are sprinkled with the blood of Christ, because we are cleansed through the blood of Christ. And let me just mention a few. First of all, believer. Through the blood of Christ, your sin has been atoned for and thus your sins have been forgiven. Now, we are tempted to think, well, yeah, that’s the message that unbelievers need to hear. They need to hear that they are to trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And that certainly is true. Unbelievers need to hear the good news so that those among them that are of God’s elect may be may be drawn to Christ. and may come to trust in Christ as their Lord and Savior.

But we Christians, we, too, need to hear the good news, not just once. We need to hear it over and over and over again, because each and every one of us has a little Pharisee, a little Judaizer in our souls saying, well, I can fix this. I can do it myself. I can pick myself up by my bootstraps or I can help Jesus save me. I’m not completely helpless. I can do something right. then that little pride, that little proud Pharisee in us starts to rise up. Friends, nothing but the blood of Jesus can cleanse us from our sins. The good news is that through the blood of Christ, through His atoning sacrifice on the cross, your sin and mine has been atoned for. And thus, through faith in Christ, God-given faith in Christ, our sins have been forgiven.

Our sins have been forgiven. Get it through your thick skull, Christian! Your sins are forgiven! Do you believe it? Do you really believe it? Our Lord’s death on the cross was a penal substitutionary atonement for sin. What that means is that He took the penalty that we deserve. He suffered in our place, in our stead. His atonement on the cross purchased the gift of saving faith for you and for me. And through that faith, that God-given faith, you and I have received the full benefits of His precious shed blood. Yes, it is true. Jesus even died for your sins of unbelief and your rejection of Him when you were still in an unsaved condition. I’ve heard some suggest that, well, Jesus died for every sin except the sin of unbelief. Well, if that’s the case, I’m hopeless because I still struggle with unbelief.

And either I can remember, I don’t know about you folks, some of you have been raised in faithful covenant homes and you can never remember a time when you didn’t repent and believe. Praise God for that, if that’s your testimony. But for some of us, we can remember a time when we were still in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. We can still remember a time when we did not know or trust in the Lord, when we were unbelieving and unrepentant. But Jesus died even for that unbelief and impenitence. Oh, what marvelous, super abounding grace. Another blessing of Christ’s sprinkled blood. You, believer, have been consecrated, set apart, to belong to Christ forever. Yes, you’ve been set apart to serve, but you’ve also been set apart to be His beloved, blood-bought child, both for time and for eternity.

You are His now. You are His forever. And because atonement and forgiveness have been provided for you through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood, you can know the blessing of a clear conscience. Oh, how many walk around with a load of guilt on their consciences. Skeletons in their closet from the past. Things that they look back on their lives and they say, I’m just so ashamed that I behave that way or that I said this thing or that I, you know, I sinned against the Lord on that occasion in that way. How many walk with a load of guilt on their consciences? How many are tormented by an accusing conscience? Few things are more painful, subjectively speaking, than an accusing guilty conscience. The Bible indicates that the wicked in hell will not only suffer in their physical bodies, the indescribable torments in their resurrected bodies, but subjectively and internally, they will also suffer the throbbing pangs of an accusing conscience, which will never be relieved.

It will be like the worm that never dies. An accusing conscience can rob you of peace, It can strip away the comfort that the gospel promises are intended to bestow upon believers. And it can even lead to the kind of mental anguish that is encountered by the psychological profession. It can even lead to suicide. But friends, there is an antidote to the poison of a guilty conscience. And that antidote is the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. The only lasting solution to a guilty, accusing conscience is the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. I know I read this earlier in the service, but let me read to pass two verses as we close our time in the word this evening. Hebrews 9, 13 and 14. The author of Hebrews writes, for if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Dear listener, do you enjoy a clear conscience? Or is your conscience still plagued by guilt because of past sins? Has your conscience been sprinkled by the blood of Christ? You say, well, you know, I’m still struggling with sin, so I still have a guilty conscience. His mercies are new every morning. His covenant faithfulness remains. Even when we are faithless, He remains faithful. That’s not an excuse to be faithless. It’s not an excuse to give ourselves over to antinomianism or anything like that. But brothers and sisters in Christ, God knows, God, your Heavenly Father, He knows that you failed in the past. He knows you’re going to fail tomorrow and next week and the rest of your life. But He still loves you. And the blood of Jesus was shed to cleanse you, not only from those past sins, not only from your present struggles, but even from those future sins.

So rest upon Christ. Take His yoke upon you. Learn from Him. Remember, Jesus said, I am gentle and lowly in spirit. He will not crush the wounded. He will not snuff out the smoldering wick. He is compassionate. He is merciful. Trust in Him. May God bless you and me as we are sprinkled in our consciences by the blood of Jesus. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that you loved us to such an extent that you gave your son Jesus to take the curse upon himself, to take our curse upon himself. that we might receive your blessings of grace. We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would sprinkle our consciences clean by the blood of Christ, that you would renew us by your spirit, that we might live lives confident in Christ and show forth gratitude by our obedience to you.

We pray these things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus name and all of God’s people said. Amen. Let’s respond to what we’ve heard this evening by rising and we’ll sing as our closing hymn. Nothing but the blood. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 278, 278.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

October 15, 2023