Angelic Curiousity

If by chance you are here for the first time this morning, we want to welcome you again and we hope to get to know you a bit.

This is primarily a gathering of Christians, but we are excited to have you with us this morning, even if you are not a Christian.

If you are not a Christian, this is a very good Sunday to come to know what we are about and why this gathering together is so important.

Now, before the Christmas season began, we began a study of the New Testament book of 1 Peter.

It's an appropriate study because it addresses Christians living in a non-Christian world.

Now, those Peter initially addressed lived in a world that was much more hostile to their faith than that one in which we live.

However, some of you have experienced a kind of hostility towards your faith that are not found here in the United States of America, but you've experienced it in other parts of the world.

We here in the United States of America still celebrate the freedom of religion, and yet hostility towards our faith is on the rise.

That means that the relationship between our faith and the world is filled with uncertainty.

But Peter wants you to know that you can have certainty in your faith in the midst of an uncertain world.

He calls this a living hope.

We saw that when we looked at chapter 1, verse 3.

And we found that hope in the Bible is something that is certain.

It's not, oh, I hope it doesn't snow tomorrow.

No, it's I know something is going to happen because it is based entirely on the certain and unchanging character of our God.

You know, I'm sure by experience that holding on to hope is pivotal.

Hope is essential.

And holding on to a sure hope is even more essential.

It's crucial because your faith, if it has not already, your faith will be tested.

Peter describes it as though we were going through a fire.

It's the kind of testing he describes.

But genuine faith holds on to Christ and will survive so that Jesus himself will be glorified.

Now the Bible calls that entire picture salvation.

Some have said that salvation is the grand theme of Scripture.

There is no more significant theme in all the world than that of salvation.

But we're not talking here about the kind of saving that refers to physical deliverance.

It's not referring to being saved from a car accident or from some devastating disease or a horrible event.

No, it's much worse than that.

The salvation that the Bible talks about is salvation from God's wrath against our sin.

The reality, if you allow yourself to really come to understand it, the reality that the Bible paints is a terrifying one.

Every human being is a rebel against God.

And every minute of every day when we rebel against God, we test his patience until the moment God exacts justice and payment for our rebellion.

But then, to our astonishment, God Himself takes it on Himself to bear our judgment.

God Himself bore that judgment on the cross.

And if by faith you see Christ bearing your sin, and you are moved by his sacrifice so that you believe in him and you believe that he paid the price for your sin and you rest in him as Lord, you are then saved from God's wrath against your sin.

It's an amazing miracle by which God grants the faith to believe in the one whom we've never seen.

That's the subject of our passage in 1 Peter this morning.

I encourage you to open your Bible to 1 Peter 1 as we look together for a few moments at verses 8 through 12.

I'll read those if you would like to follow along in your Bible, or if you'd like to use a Bible that's in the pew rack in front of you.

Again, that's 1 Peter chapter 1, beginning in verse 8, and I'll read through verse 12.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and you rejoice with a 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.

But 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.

Amen.

When I first started preparing for this morning, I neglected to remember that this is the day in which we went back to two services.

As a result, I prepared much more information than would fit in the time frame for two service Sunday.

Now, don't worry, I won't keep you much longer than the first service.

But that means that I can't go into detail in a lot of things that I want to, but I want to point them out to you so that you know about them.

I want to point out two items before we get into this in detail.

The first is in the last part of verse 9, the salvation of your souls.

We need to notice that the subject of these verses is the salvation of our souls.

Everything in these five verses, every detail relates to God taking it upon himself to save us from himself.

The second item I want to point out to you is the ending, the end of verse 12.

Things into which angels long to look.

Don't miss the strangeness of that statement.

Don't miss that Peter leaves us hanging.

What does he mean?

The Old Testament book of Jonah does something very similar.

At the end of Jonah's book, God was speaking to that prophet.

Now, I affectionately refer to Jonah as the complaining prophet, because much of the book is Jonah complaining about God's grace.

Strangely, that's true.

Jonah complained to God over and over again about God showing grace to sinful people.

In fact, he was so angry near the end of the book that he asked God to kill him so that Jonah didn't have to sit there and watch God be gracious.

So how does God step into that situation?

Well, the very last verse of the book ends like this.

God says to Jonah, Should I not pity Nineveh?

That great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also much cattle.

Huh?

Okay, who are these people that don't know their right hand from their left hand?

And why the cattle?

Do you see what I mean?

We're left hanging.

We don't have answers.

The book just ends.

Jonah doesn't tell us anything else.

God doesn't answer the questions.

Well, similarly, Peter does not tell us anything that helps us understand angels who long to look.

What does he mean?

Why is that an important statement to make?

Is that something that we should know instinctively?

Well, Peter, as does Jonah, employs a literary device to make us think.

The answer is not given on purpose, so that we might pause and think, what does he mean?

What is he talking about?

Now there are answers to those questions, but to arrive at the answers, we need to understand the context.

So as we look at this passage about salvation, we need to understand two significant points that the author makes.

Those two comments really pertain to the Christian's response to salvation, and then the Christian's reasons to rejoice in salvation.

Notice first the Christian's response to salvation.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him.

And you rejoice with joy.

Salvation is monergistic.

That's a theological term that refers to the responsible agent in salvation.

Monergism comes from two different Greek words, one that means to work, and the other that means to be alone.

Put them together, to work alone.

And in this case, it refers to God.

God works alone to accomplish our salvation.

Look at verse 2.

According to the foreknowledge of whom?

God the Father.

In the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ.

Do you see anybody other than God in there?

No.

Verse 3, God the Father has caused us to be born again.

Verse 5, he keeps us by his power so that we will finally and fully experience salvation.

In verse 4, we see that God not only saves us, but he grants us the privilege of sonship so that we might become children who inherit.

You compare that to the parallel passage in Ephesians 2.

We even find that the faith that we express in Christ is a gift itself from God.

All of this is the work of God.

Those who come to Christ by faith in him are then privileged to obtain the outcome of their faith.

God grants salvation, he draws, he gives faith, he saves, and then we, as the recipients of that gift, are privileged to obtain the outcome of our faith.

What is the outcome of our faith?

The salvation of our souls.

Now that's something that you have.

You have eternal life as a present possession if you have come to faith in Christ.

But you are also obtaining it as you walk with Christ and follow him, and it will be fully realized and fully completed when we see Christ.

Those whose faith is genuine respond to that truth in three ways.

They respond with love, with belief, and with rejoicing.

Now you're familiar, I'm sure, at least most of you, with that biblical triad.

You probably have it hanging somewhere in your home.

Faith, hope, and love, right?

Apostle Paul said, these three remain.

In verse 3, there's hope.

In verse 8, there's faith and love.

But if we just isolate our understanding to verse 8, Peter does something interesting.

He replaces hope with rejoicing.

Faith, believing, love, and rejoicing.

He wants us to know that being born again to a living hope produces love, belief, and rejoicing.

I can't help but think that Peter is speaking from experience here.

Do you remember that that night in which Jesus was betrayed?

They were in the garden of Gethsemane, and Peter thought the wise thing to do was to chop off somebody's ear.

He wasn't aiming for an ear, though.

He was thankfully he missed.

You remember that night?

And Jesus was arrested and he was led off to the high priest's home?

And Peter followed at a distance, right?

He followed at a distance until they got to the high priest's home, and Peter remained outside in the courtyard around a fire to keep warm.

While there he was asked three times about his connection to Jesus.

Each time he denied knowing Jesus.

Not once, not twice, but three times.

Sometime later, after the resurrection, Peter decided to go fishing along with a few other disciples.

Unknown to them, Jesus was on the shore of the Sea of Galilee waiting for them.

Jesus miraculously provided a massive catch of fish.

He had them bring it in, and then Jesus cooked breakfast for them.

Must have been the best tasting breakfast you've ever had.

Although I can't imagine fish for breakfast.

At that breakfast, Jesus asked Peter, you remember this, right?

Do you love me?

He didn't ask him once.

He didn't ask him twice.

He asked him three times.

Three times he asked Peter, do you love me?

And at the end of that it says, Peter was grieved and he said, I don't have anything else to rely on but your sovereignty.

So Peter said, Lord, you know everything.

So you know I love you.

Peter was a fisherman when Jesus called him to leave all of that behind and follow him.

After betraying him, Peter must have felt that there was nothing left for him to do but to go back to fishing.

Denied the Lord three times publicly.

What's left for me but just go back doing what I know to do?

But in a gracious restoration, Jesus asked him, Peter, do you love me more than these?

Probably referring to the fish and the process of fishing.

Peter, do you love me more than fishing?

That's a tough question for those of us who love to fish.

But it's not just about fishing, is it?

When Jesus calls us, we are called to love him most.

More than husband or wife, more than father or mother, more than sister or brother, work or hobbies, pleasures or desires.

That's why Jesus repeated the commandment from Deuteronomy and gave it the classification, the greatest commandment.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

The Christian does that.

Not perfectly.

Just look at Peter.

But as a general state of life, the one who has experienced God's salvation loves him more than any other thing.

That saving faith, and that growing and strengthening love moves the one who loves to believe even more.

So as we grow in our knowledge of salvation, of our understanding of who Christ is, and our love for Jesus becomes deeper and richer, we begin to cherish the truths of Scripture, and in them we find a place to rest.

Why is that?

It's because of this.

When we open the pages of our Bible and we read and meditate on what is written in them, we see more and more of the one who saved us.

That's important because of something that is repeated here.

You have not seen him.

You do not see him.

The one who has experienced God's amazing grace loves and believes him without ever having laid eyes on him.

We affectionately refer to him as doubting Thomas.

Thomas wasn't around the first time the disciples were gathered together and Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection.

And so the other disciples say to him, Hey, we've seen the Lord Jesus, he's resurrected, and Thomas says, uh, no.

Not unless I see him and put my finger in the holes in his hand and put my fist in his side, I will not believe.

He brashly asserted that he needed physical evidence of Jesus' resurrection before he would believe.

Because he's gracious, there was another time a little later when all of the disciples were together and Jesus appeared to them.

And Thomas declared his allegiance to the risen Lord.

And then Jesus said these words to him.

Blessed are those who have believed without seeing.

Blessed are those who have who have not laid eyes on me, who have not seen me, and yet have still believed.

Interestingly, the account of in John's Gospel of Thomas's disbelief comes shortly before the record of Jesus asking Peter if he loved him.

Thomas doubted, Peter denied.

But both of them affirmed their love and their belief in the resurrected one.

And so will every other believer in Christ, not because they've seen Jesus with their physical eyes, but because they have seen him with the eyes of faith.

I like the way how the way John Piper describes how this happens.

Listen to what he says.

How does it happen?

How does this kind of seeing happen?

It happens through the word of God.

When the gospel of Christ is preached, we can see Christ more clearly for who he really is than many could see him in his own lifetime.

If you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with openness to Christ, you can see the true glory of Christ far more clearly than most of the people who knew him on earth could see him.

Nicodemus, the Syropheenician woman, the centurion, the widow of Nain, Zacchaeus, the thief on the cross, the thonging crowds.

They saw a snatch here and a snatch there, but in the Gospels, you get four complementary portraits of Christ inspired by God and covering the whole range of his teaching and his ministry.

The Gospels are better than being there, Piper says.

Let that sink in.

The Gospels are better than being there.

Why?

He goes on, you are taken into the inner circle of the apostolic band where you never could have gone.

You go with Jesus through Gethsemane and the trial and the crucifixion and the resurrection and the meetings after the resurrection.

You hear whole sermons and long discourses, not in isolated snatches on hillsides, but in rich, God-inspired texts and contexts that take you deeper than you ever could have gone as a perplexed peasant in Galilee.

You see the whole range of his character and power which nobody on earth saw as fully as you can now see in the Gospels.

You see his freedom from anxiety when there was no place to lay his head.

You see his courage in the face of opposition, his unanswerable wisdom, his honoring women, his tenderness with children, his compassion towards lepers, his meekness and suffering, his patience with Peter, his tears over Jerusalem, his blessing over those who cursed him, his heart for the nations, his love for the glory of God, his simplicity and devotion, his power to still storms and heal the sick and multiply bread and cast out demons.

You get to see that.

When a person experiences being born again to a living hope, and they grow in love and believe in this one that they see in the pages of Scripture, their spirits begin to rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

If you wonder why people would desire to set aside a part of their Sunday mornings, week in and week out, month after month, year after year, to come and to sing together and to pray together and to hear the word of God publicly proclaimed, if you think that is strange or odd, wonder no longer.

These are merely responses to God's amazing grace.

We have experienced the great mercy of a sovereign God.

This is further detailed in the second portion of our text, verses 9 through 12.

Here we see the Christians' reasons to rejoice in God's grace.

We don't do this for no reason.

There are reasons, and Peter now begins to tell us some of those reasons.

He sort of itemizes them.

It's not tax time quite yet, so I can use that term freely, I hope.

Notice again the theme, though.

Verse 9.

Obtaining the outcome of your souls, of your faith, I'm sorry, the salvation of your souls, concerning this salvation.

Those statements emphasize the rescuing done by God alone.

But they set up those four statements telling us why we rejoice.

The first reason to rejoice in God's grace is because his saving work was foretold with great interest.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully.

Now, generally speaking, Peter references the Old Testament prophets through whom God spoke to prepare his people for the coming of the Messiah.

They knew that God promised a person.

How do we know that?

Well, Isaiah spoke of a child to be born, right?

Of a son to be given.

But they didn't know specifics.

They didn't know who his parents would be.

They didn't know what his name was going to be.

They didn't know him personally.

They couldn't see him.

And while they searched and searched and studied and studied, delving deeply into the text of scripture that they were writing, they could not tell exactly when the promised one would be born in Bethlehem Ephratha.

Isaiah wrote of the suffering servant, didn't he?

He wrote all about his suffering.

But Isaiah could not begin to imagine God the Son hanging on a Roman cross.

God's chosen prophets could not grasp the details surrounding the ascension of Jesus into heaven to the right hand of God the Father, where he remains until he returns for his own.

They couldn't know, they wanted to know.

They studied, they labored, they worked hard to understand their own writings that the Holy Spirit was giving them to write.

They wanted to know, but God said, No.

You cannot know.

But you can know.

You can trace God's hand through the pages of completed Scripture.

You can see his very first prophetic statement in Genesis 3.15.

You can trace the fulfillment of God's promise all the way through the Gospels.

That same interest, that same searching, that same inquiring accomplished today by loving hearts and believing minds leads to love, to faith, and to rejoicing in God's glorious plan.

The second reason to rejoice in God's grace is seen in verse 12.

And that is God's saving grace was promised by others.

But there are two important words there.

God's saving grace for us was promised by others.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.

They wanted to see God's restoration of his world, but God said no.

He made it clear to them that their purpose in writing the pages and pages and pages of prophecy was not for them, it was for you.

They were not privileged to see the fulfillment.

That's why Hebrews 11, 13 says, These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and believed in them from afar.

Those pages and pages and pages of Old Testament prophecy were written so that you might see Christ in them.

And seeing Christ in them enables you to recognize God's gracious provision of salvation throughout the pages of Scripture, moving you to rejoice.

Now there's a third reason, and that is that God ensured that the good news of saving grace in Christ found you.

In the things that have now been announced to you.

God was not content to just say, okay, here's the message, and I hope you receive it.

I hope somewhere down the line you get a chance to hear it.

No, that's not the way God works.

God ensured that he put pastors and teachers and evangelists and family members in your life so that you would hear the gospel message when he wanted you to hear it.

And that began thousands of years ago with the prophetic record.

Do you see?

Do you see God's hand here?

God sent himself, the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, from heaven, so that that spirit might give apostles and prophets words to write.

So he might give people the courage and the boldness to speak of that news so that you might hear it.

God announced, he recorded, he recruited, he empowered, and he emboldened people so that you might hear the good news.

God accomplishes every aspect of bringing salvation to you.

What amazing grace.

How sweet is that sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was blind, but now I see.

God's work is astounding, even to angels.

Now it seems to me that angels know far more than we do.

They've been around far longer than we have.

They saw everything from the very beginning.

They saw Satan's rebellion and all of his angels with him.

They saw Adam and Eve's disobedience.

They have seen sin and disaster and rebellion for centuries and millennia.

Certainly they they know the scriptures inside and out, I would think, far better than we could ever know them.

They have a deeper grasp of what the pages of Scripture communicate than any human being.

Certainly they they have a fuller understanding of what Isaiah saw.

You remember Isaiah?

Isaiah 6 had a vision of God, himself high and lifted up.

And the angels declaring, holy, holy, holy.

And Isaiah thought he was going to die.

The angels have a greater understanding of God's holiness than even Isaiah did.

And if they have that understanding of how holy God is, then certainly they have a greater understanding than we do of how rebellious and sinful our nature is.

They understand the fallness of humanity far more than we could ever imagine, because they understand God's holiness.

It is astounding to those angels that the holy God Himself would stoop so far as to become a human being to die so that you could experience his grace.

A form of the word look, angels long to look, a form of that word is used in the account of Peter and John running to the tomb on resurrection morning.

Again, I often think that Peter is writing from experience.

They had heard that the tomb was empty, and so Peter and John ran to the tomb, and as if at some sort of track meet, John outran Peter.

He got there first, and scriptures tell us that John bent down to look inside.

Intrigued by an open tomb, John bent down to take a look.

Similarly, the grace that is yours in Christ is something that moves angels to bend over, to see for themselves how the Lord of all creation could bring about salvation for sinners such as me.

They long to see the fulfillment of God's promise just as the prophets did, just as God's people in every age do.

You are the recipient of so great a salvation that angels long to see God actually doing that because it boggles them that he would ever do it in the first place.

That ought to move you to rejoice.

The essence of faith is a confident hope in something that is unseen.

But for those who have been given eyes of faith, God's work through Christ crucified can be seen all throughout the pages of Scripture.

That's why the Apostle Paul could write to the church at Corinth, it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.

It's only those who by faith in Jesus Christ and Him crucified come to God's saving grace that can actually begin to see it, to make sense of it.

The heart, the mind, and the soul of a Christian should respond to God's salvation with longing for its completion, with love expressed in devotion and service, with rejoicing in the celebration of God's word through songs, through prayers, through preaching.

But here's the amazing thing.

Life still goes on, doesn't it?

We can't forget verse 6.

There are various trials that come.

There are going to be times when life feels hopeless, when there are struggles, when there are uncertainties, when things don't make sense.

And yet, somehow, in some strange way, because of God's amazing grace, Christians can still rejoice in the midst of the trials.

The one who has experienced the living hope found in God's amazing grace rejoices even in trials.

That doesn't mean it's always the same.

Sometimes our rejoicing is muted, isn't it?

Sometimes it's telling ourselves, okay, I know this is true, but I feel like I know this is true, but I feel like this.

Sometimes rejoicing is great because the suffering and the trial is gone, and so we're able to rejoice freely.

Those the changes don't matter.

It's the fact that the one who has experienced the living hope has something different because now they're seeing him who is unseen.

They're loving him whom they've never seen because they believe in him.

And there is a joy that is inexpressible.

Maybe you don't know that kind of grace.

Maybe you don't have that kind of living hope.

Come to Christ and rest in his work for you.

Believe in him and then join the rest of us in rejoicing in him.

Let's pray together.

Our Lord Jesus, we confess to you that too often we don't rejoice in the way we should.

Too often we let this world and its sinful devices get the better of us.

We allow the struggles to displace that hope that resides within us.

But we ask that by your Spirit you would take off the scales that blind us.

Remove the chains of sin and the things that so easily trip us up, so that no matter what you bring our way, we can say, I don't see, but I believe.

Lord Jesus, though we have not seen you, we love you.

We don't see you now, but we believe in you.

And together we rejoice with an inexpressible joy.

We do that by being thankful for what you've done.

Grateful for all that you've accomplished.

And that gratefulness we express to you in all the ways that we do when we gather together.

And we anticipate doing this with all the saints when you come for us.

When the angels are together with those who have been redeemed.

Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Could you stand as we sing together, please?

From Revelation chapter 15.

Revelation 15 · chapter mention

And they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty.

Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations, who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name, for you alone are holy.

All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed, and we have seen them.

Amen.

Go with the Lord's blessing.

You're dismissed.