Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Well, good morning, Valley View. It’s great to be with you today. Great to be back in God’s Word together as we continue in our study of the Book of First Peter. And our theme, as you’ve seen on the screen, is finding joy in suffering. And as I thought about suffering, I thought about marriage. No, not really. That’s not a good transition. I did think about the wedding day. You’ll see why in a minute. In fact, if you’re married, you probably remember back to that day as a as a mostly wonderful day. Hopefully it was a good memory. Hopefully a lot of great things happened. In fact, I love… No comments. Settle down. I love seeing wedding photos. I mean, there’s just something encapsulated in that moment. Here’s a picture. This is of my parents wedding day photo. Eventually. Yeah, a blank screen was not their wedding day. There really was a photo. We’ll get to it eventually. I have a photo of them. I also have a photo from our wedding day. There they are. Isn’t that’s sweet? Yeah. There’s my parents. And then here’s our wedding day. That’s, our youth student minister. I grew up here with Kerry Jones, doing the service. Great guy. Very influential in my life. Whatever your photo is, when you look back at that and I see lots of smiles around the room, there’s something about photos of wedding day that just warm your heart, that brings smiles, that bring joy. But the wedding day isn’t the only part of a marriage. There’s a whole bunch that comes before that. Leading up to that moment, Julie and I didn’t just randomly run into each other that day. I happened to have on a tux she happened to have on a wedding dress. So we thought, hey, let’s let’s get married. No. There were months and years of getting to know one another leading up to that moment. But then also, there have been years, decades since then. In fact, it’ll be 25 years this year of getting to know one another. So thank you. Yeah. The point being, a lot of times when it comes to a marriage, we focus on that wedding day. But there’s a whole lot more that happens on either side of that. When Peter talks about salvation, we’re going to look at that today, how he unpacks the theme of salvation. A lot of times when we say the word salvation, when we talk about salvation, we mean that moment when someone gets saved, when someone follows Christ, that moment where they have that decision, that moment where they go from not following Christ to following Christ, we tend to focus on just that sliver of time. There’s a whole bunch that happened before then, and there’s going to be a whole bunch that happens after. And so we’re going to look at how Peter unpacks those realities of salvation today. In fact, we’re going to look at three particular realities to salvation in the book of First Peter. And we’re going to be in First Peter chapter one, verses ten through 12. And in that section we’re going to see three realities of salvation. We’re going to see salvation searched. That’s the first one. We’ll see salvation preserved. In fact, those will be on the screen. And then we’ll also see salvation observed, salvation searched, salvation preserved, and then we’ll see salvation observed as we work through these verses. And we’re going to start in verses ten and 11. And if you don’t have a Bible, we’d love for you to be able to open your own copy of God’s Word and turn to the Book of First Peter and be able to read from it. We have extra copies of the Bible page numbers on the screen are connected to the Bible that we have out in the lobby. You can grab one of those anytime that’s yours for you to keep, but turn to First Peter chapter one. I’m going to read verses 10 to 12; 10 through 11 to start us, verse ten: concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours. They 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. Peter starts out by saying, concerning this salvation, which is pointing back to everything else he just mentioned about salvation. Verses three through nine. Now, we have already mentioned Peter’s strategy for helping us find joy in suffering is to focus on action. Remember I quoted Paul Tripp and he said, What Peter gives us is marching orders. The book is chock full of commands, command upon command upon command. But he doesn’t start out that way. You don’t run up to someone who’s suffering and start with issuing them orders. You start by focusing on other things and the first 12 verses, verse 3 to 12, and the original language is just one long sentence, and it’s all unpacking that opening phrase in verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here are the reasons that you need to start with praise. Here are the reasons to give him praise and gratitude and thanks. Because gratitude is the gateway to joy. If I start with gratitude and focus on how great God is and how grateful I can be for all he’s done for me, you can’t help but end up with joy. And so that’s where he starts. Not on issuing orders, not on issuing commands. Well, let’s start by focusing on what God has done, the ways he has saved us, redeemed us, restored us, made us new in him. And we’ve looked at so much of that already. Now, what he’s going to say today in particular, is something that’s very important for us modern Americans to recognize. He starts with these words– they searched. look back in verse ten– concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched. It’s really important to remember and recognize that there’s been a lot of people go before us who have thought about the Bible, who have carefully studied the Bible, who have looked at the Bible for decades, centuries, millennia. We’re not the first people to think of it. And so when we think about salvation, there’s the reality of what has happened now in our lives. But also other people have thought about what is salvation. Other people have thought about the Bible for a long time, and there’s a whole lot more to it. In fact, theologians use this phrase when they talk about salvation to try to encapsulate a full picture of salvation. They use this phrase the order of salvation. They like to say it in Latin, so they sound fancy, but it just means the order of salvation. We’re going to put these on the screen so you can see. This encapsulates a lot of what happens when someone is saved. And some of this refers to what happens previously. Some of this refers to what happens in the moment that you say, hey, I am now saved. Some of this happens refers to what will happen in the future. Let me caveat as well. There’s arguments about what is the proper order and what steps should go in or not. And I’m not getting into all of that. I’m not trying to make some strong statement about what it should be. This is one example just to show you you’ve seen a lot of these terms in Scripture. You’ve run across these if you’ve read various books of the Bible, if you read Romans, you see those he calls, he justifies those. He predestined, he foreknew, he calls, he justifies, he glorifies. You see some of these strings of statements that describe what it means to be saved. And so you see here there’s election gospel call regeneration. Usually conversion is what we’re talking about. When someone is saved, there is a moment of faith and repentance in their life. But after that, and of course, at that same time, justification, adoption, sanctification, all that is true of us too. But then there’s perseverance. You continue to grow in your faith. You continue to walk with him. You continue to understand what that means. And then where does that head? Death and glorification, where I go to ultimately experience the fullness of that salvation, living with him for eternity. And so people have thought about this for generations, for millennia. That should create some humility in us. There’s this weird idea, I think, in our modern culture, that anyone before the iPhone is kind of a caveman, right? You know, they they obviously knew nothing. We are very enlightened. If you had to go answer the phone off the wall, you’re basically a Neanderthal, right? But but we, however, have it all figured out. But many have gone before us, whether it’s in technology and theology, and we stand on the shoulders of so many who have searched and searched and searched, and in particular, what he’s talking about here are the prophets, the Old Testament prophets. The Old Testament prophets sat around searching God’s Word, diligently searching, looking, wondering, God, how are you going to work all this out? What are you trying to do? We got to know. We’d love to see. What is it that you are doing? Have you ever had these moments where you’re searching for something and you realized later you were staring right at it and totally missed it? You opened the fridge looking for the ketchup, and you’re convinced someone has been through your house stealing all the ketchup. But it was someone else comes along, goes here it is, right here in the middle, right in front of where you were staring. Or have you had this happen? I’ve had this happen where someone comes to you and ask you, have you seen my glasses and where are they? They’re here. Or even they’ve been here, right? They’re looking right through them and not seeing them. Jesus actually points this out about Scripture. Look at Luke flip over to Luke real quick. Luke chapter 24. Because Jesus, after his death, there’s this period before he’s fully revealed, and a couple of the guys who had been in Jerusalem and heard about what happened and were hoping, they said, in fact, we had hoped that he was the Messiah. We had hoped that he was the one. Jesus is walking along the road with him, the road to Emmaus, and they don’t even realize it’s him. And here’s what he says to them as they’re sharing with him the events. And they had hoped it was him, and he responds to them this way. Verse 25, he said to them, O foolish ones, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And then verse 27, this is critical. Verse 27 is critical to understanding the role of the Old Testament, connected to the role of the New Testament. Sometimes you hear people say something like, I don’t really like the Old Testament God. I like more the New Testament God. They’re the same God, by the way. It’s it’s not like we got rid of that old version and we upgraded to the new version. It’s the same God. These two volumes are intimately, intricately, purposefully connected. And here’s what Jesus says about that. Look at verse 27 and beginning with Moses. And Moses refers to the first five books of the Old Testament, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted, he explained to them and all the scriptures the thing concerning himself. So here’s what Jesus did. He’s walking along with these guys. We’re going. We thought it would be him. And he says, if you were reading, you would have seen. You should have seen. It was there. God, what are you going to do? How are you going to work all this out? I love that we gather here on Sunday mornings. I really do. Man, I love worshiping, I love being in a room full of people who are singing and singing praises, singing things like be blessing and glory and honor and power forever. But hearing others proclaim that it gives me so much encouragement. Inspiration wants me to be motivates me to want to walk more faithfully with the Lord. I got to tell you, as, as important as all that is together. You’ve got to be searching God’s Word on your own. You have got to be in His Word, on your own. There is no substitute for that. I mean, I really enjoyed watching a lot of the Olympics over the last few weeks. I mean, who who else caught some of the Olympics along the way? It’s okay to admit it. Yeah, we watched and by the way, I found myself inspired and encouraged. My patriotism grew. I wanted the U.S. to dominate everyone. Why should anyone else have another medal? Right? I, it was awesome. And yet I didn’t get any. I didn’t get a lick fitter watching the Olympics. There was no part of me that got in better shape just watching. Now I was inspired to go try a little harder, work out a little more, but there was no substitute for getting out there, working, putting in the time on the treadmill or the bike or the weights or in the pool. Whatever. You got to be searching God’s Word on your own. Come here, learn from others. Grow. But we’ve got to be. There’s no substitute. And when these folks, these Old Testament prophets were searching carefully, wondering, Lord, when are you going to show up? There’s something about that mindset that should drive us to still today. Yeah, we know about Christ. We know who he is. But the way he continues to work in my life, I’ve got to be searching his word every single day. For him to move, for him to direct. So they searched diligently. But look at why they searched diligently. Verse ten. You searched inquiring carefully. Verse 11. Specifically, what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating. Part of my part of what I’ve wondered at times is why are there seasons when I am more stirred toward spiritual things, and seasons when I might be less stirred toward spiritual things? Why were the prophets so burdened to understand God? What are you doing? And how does your word fit together? What are you saying? This verse right here says The Spirit of Christ was stirring them. And this is important to realize. Back in the Old Testament, hundreds of years ago, generations ago, God was stirring. Christ specifically was stirring people in the Old Testament to look for him, to find him. Christ was pointing them to Christ. Now, that phrase Spirit of Christ primarily refers to the Holy Spirit. It’s also used to help us understand that hint at the divinity of Christ. But it’s a little bit like Christ is having having to lead them along to himself. I thought of if you’ve ever done an Easter egg with a two year old– Easter egg hunt– you know it’s not a hunt. You. They’re looking at everything but the Easter eggs. You’re kind of nudging them along. Hey, maybe look over here. Maybe look right there and you’re actually dropping them in front of them as they go searching diligently. But I need help. And the Spirit of Christ is the one who stirs that up. He is the one leading us along, and he’s stirring them and leading them and pointing them to himself. See, in your searching, you’re not left alone. It’s not like you have to open this gigantic book that’s bigger than any book you’ll probably ever read, and figure it all out on yourself. The Spirit of Christ was stirring them, moving them as they searched for him in His word. So searching, looking, looking diligently. Probably the best example of this, as I thought of what it means to search for him, shows up in Luke chapter two, and you probably recall this story of Simeon and Anna, two prophets who were waiting for God to reveal himself. They were waiting, and they had heard directly from God that they would see his plan fulfilled. They would meet the Messiah. Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to the temple to be dedicated, and they get to hold him. And each of them says something along the lines of, this is it. This is the one. This is everything I’ve been looking for. This is everything I’ve been searching for, and it’s almost like I’m ready to go now. This is everything I had hoped for. I remember being in a Bible study with a guy. There was a guy on my street, Joe Teeter. He was about 80 years old, back in little Rock, on our street in our neighborhood. He decided to start a Bible study for just some of the men on our street. And probably a dozen guys came to his house, and every house that came, a guy from every house you could see from his front porch, every one of the homes. It was just this really centralized study right on that street. Joe was a great guy, just so kind and loving and caring, and he cared so much for just men to know Christ and to know God’s Word. But not everybody in there knew Christ, even though most of them had gone to church. One guy in particular, we started to study the sermon on the Mount and we said, hey, go home, read this section in Matthew, be ready and we’ll discuss it next week. And we came next week. And he came to the study and he said, guys, before we start, I just got to say something. All my life I’ve been searching for something to live by. All my life I’ve wanted something to live by, something to guide me. And this is it, I found it, I finally found it. How many of us have felt that way? You know what I’m talking about? There is this..there was this hole. This vacuum. Where you thought, something’s got to fill this, and I don’t know what. And I’m. I’m trying. I’m trying romance. I’m trying addictions. I’m trying something because it’s got to get filled. And Christ is the only one who can fill it. And this guy found that. Searching. Lord, would you show up? Give me hope, give me peace, give me purpose, and ultimately give me joy. Searching diligently. That’s the first reality of salvation is the searching you see here. The prophet’s searching, looking desperate, wanting to see. Now let’s look at the second reality here. Look at the first part of verse 12, because the first reality was salvation searched. Now we’re going to see salvation preserved, salvation searched, salvation preserved. Look at verse 12: …of the prophets It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that they have now, that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things to which angels longed to look. Two words we’re going to inspect. In this verse it was revealed to them, and it has been announced to you, revealed and announced. Salvation has been preserved for us. So the Old Testament prophets were searching for something. In fact, Jesus tells the disciples they longed for this day. They longed to see this day that you now have experienced. It was hidden from them. It wasn’t fully revealed. They were waiting for it to be revealed it, but it has now been announced to them. But here’s what’s interesting. Even though the realities that Christ would come as the Messiah, as the suffering servant would die on our behalf, would be raised again, even though that was hidden from them. What it says here is that there was something revealed to them, the reality that was revealed to them, look back at this, is that they were not serving themselves, but you, even though they didn’t know how it was going to play out, they knew one thing. It’s this isn’t about us. We’re here to serve future generations. The work we’re putting in now, the prayers, the searching, the study, the prophecy, the efforts, all of this. It’s not about us. And so when Ezekiel was writing down his vision of the valley of dry bones and he said, those bones didn’t stay dead, they came alive. He was writing that for you to know that God takes dead things and makes them alive. Who’s experienced that? It goes from death to life. When Jeremiah wrote about the fact that God will take a heart of stone. And I’ve had those moments of the heart of stone, and he turns that into a heart of flesh. He softens the heart. He puts his law within us. When he was writing that down, he was writing that for you. Rick Warren talked about this in his book Purpose Driven Life. That book has sold something like 50 million copies, and it’s in almost every Goodwill you ever go in, right? I guarantee you, you go in there, you’ll see 3 or 4 copies of it. That’s great. It’s a great book. And he starts out the book this way life is not about you. And that phrase is, at the first rate, incredibly offensive. All right, so you’re telling me I’m self-centered? A great way to start a book here, Rick, way to win friends and influence people. Not about you. Yet also, it’s also incredibly comforting because you know, you know what I’m talking about. Life has never been worse than when I’m totally absorbed on me, and it’s probably never richer than when I’m focused on serving others from a place of health pouring out into the life of others, giving, serving, watching God move through that. That’s excitement. That’s joy. That’s delight. And the prophet Saul from long ago. It’s not about us. It’s been revealed that we’re here to serve future generations. And you know, when I think of Valley View, I think it’s really important for us to remember that we are also serving future generations. I mean, most mornings when I drive into church to come into the office and to begin to study or counsel or meet with people or whatever, I usually start by doing just a lap around the church, in my car, just driving around in my pick up, a stray Coke bottle here and there, or some trash. But I primarily pray, God, would you move today? Would you give me wisdom on how to use my time? Would you guide the staff here today? Would we walk full of your Holy Spirit? Show us who to minister to. When to say yes, when to say no, how to be full of your spirit. And then I pray for you as God brings you to mind. God, would you move in their life? Would you protect them? Would you heal? Would you comfort? Would you guide? And inevitably, as I’m driving around, you know, I grew up here and I’m driving around and I there’s just some part of the building that strikes a memory. And I think of that snot nose kid that whatever age or stage, that out of touch nerd, that weirdo, or that insecure kid looking for something, looking for identity. I think back to that kid and I go, and if God could stir in his life, what’s he going to do for this generation? What’s he going to do for the kids to come? How is he going to use this church to reach Valley Station, PRP, the South End, and even go across the world? You know, be praying for our kids. You never know how God is going to use someone. When I pray for kids. I encountered this prayer a long time ago. Pray this for them. Pray that they would come to know Christ at a young age and walk faithfully with him for a lifetime. There’s this weird view of life that somehow you have no choice but to go through awful things and then come back around to following Christ. That may happen. That’s no judgment on you if that’s been your story, God uses that. But also, I think. God wants us to come to know him at a young age and walk faithfully with him for a lifetime in the joy and delight that comes from that has got to be incomparable. We need to pray for our children that that would be the path he has them on, that God would use this church to raise kids who are passionate about Christ and I see that at play here. So I love the fact that we have so much investment in our children’s ministry and our students, and how God is using that to stir up the young, to know him and follow him. He revealed this to the prophets, and I think we know that as well. If we’re called to be living for future generations, not just for ourselves. So salvation searched, salvation preserved. But then there’s this confusing phrase at the end of the section salvation observed. Look at the end of verse 12. He says it this way: they were serving not themselves, but you, through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things into which angels long to look. What does that mean? How do we get our minds around things into which angels long to look? There’s a couple of different ways, and they’re talking about the realities of salvation still. Salvation observed, salvation overlooked. There’s a couple different ways to take that. One way would be they long to look at it but couldn’t. That’s one way you can take it. They really wanted to understand it and see it, but couldn’t. But looking at these words here, they longed, they hungered, they desired. It’s the same word we would use for a good desire or a bad desire, of the longing. Much like you can be hungry for things that are good for you like a good steak, good quality steak, or you could be hungry for something that’s not good for you, like okra at the same time, right? Hunger. But it says the word look. They hungered. I’m sorry. They longed to look upon the realities of salvation. That word look was used to also describe it. Probably a better word to use might be something like peer. It was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to describe the situation. You remember how Isaac and Rebecca, they were… Did I get that right? Is it Rebecca? Oh, goodness. Somebody help me out. Isaac and his wife, Rachel. Where are my biblical scholars? Isaac and his wife were traveling through the land of the Philistines, and they were going there to settle. And Abimelech said, you can stay here no problem. But what did Isaac do? He lied and said, this is not my wife. This is my sister. Because he was afraid they would kill him and take her. But Abimelech was looking out his window one day. This is the same word. He was peering out. They couldn’t see him. He was looking out upon them, observing them, and he saw them interacting. And he said, that’s not his sister. Whatever he saw, he realized there’s more going on there. He was able to look upon, observe from a distance without them recognizing. I think when we think of the angels, that word applies. It’s not like they didn’t know Jesus’s plan. The word angel means messenger. He used them to tell us his plan. And here they are in heaven, looking down at his plan that they know about, and they’re looking at how it plays out in our lives. They’re looking at salvation, God taking things that are dead, moving them to life. And they’re looking on from a distance and they’re full of joy. They’re full of delight. You know, we live in a world that takes no delight in your salvation, disdains your salvation, abhors, probably hates you for claiming Christ would love for nothing else than for all of religion, Christianity, the Bible, all of that to just disappear. How do you move forward when the world hates you? It sure helps to know that heavenly beings are looking down with joy and delight. When we lived in Little Rock, I had a home office and I had a window that faced the front yard, and I’d be working inevitably in my yard and occasionally one of my children would end up in the front yard just playing, and you’d see this 4 or 5 year old. Just delighting in the day, just twirling in the yard. And I would just freeze, try not to even breathe. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to do I don’t want them to see me seeing them that might disturb them and make them stop. Because watching them so innocently play, delight, joy. That brought me joy. So much joy. How much more joy for the angels to see what God is doing in your life, and to rejoice.