So Great Salvation 1 Peter 1:3-12

We want to receive him into our lives. We just need to realize that we're sinners and condemn to death and hell for all eternity. We are utterly lost and hopeless and deserving punishment. We need to realize that God loves us so much that he took our punishment. Then crying out with a heart full of repentance as Martin Luther did, God be merciful to us sinners. Have you ever thought about how often we take many things, sometimes important things, for granted? Or become complacent, careless, and not serious about them? Now as I was thinking about some of those things, you know, you get up, you get ready in the morning, you go running out the door, and your expectation is that your car is going to be sitting there with four tires full of air and an engine ready to start. Unless you're like me and you can cheat and get a remote start. So your remote start, your expectation is the car is already running when you get out there. And that's your expectation. We assume that when we come to church, anytime there's a service, the building will be here. It'd be kind of a shock if we got here and the building wasn't. So we assume the building is going to be here, the doors are going to be unlocked, and everything is ready to go. Most of us go to bed confident that when we wake up in the morning, both feet are going to hit the floor, and you'll be off and running to whatever and wherever you need to go and do. And there's a whole list of things that we just expect to just be true and never really think about. We just, it's just, they're just always there, they're always true, we always do them, it's always that way. And we just never give it a second thought, ever. Have you ever changed just a little bit to our spiritual lives? Have you ever taken for granted to become complacent, careless, or not serious about your spiritual life? And we can become that way as well. Our Bible study laps, our prayer life lags, our church attendance lapses. You take God for granted, and you just assume that he's always going to bail you out, he's always going to be there, he's always going to be kind of at your beck and call, and that's not always the way it works. He's always there, he's not always going to just bail you out every time you think you need to be bailed out or something. But we just kind of take all that for granted, we just assume it's going to happen. So today I want to draw our attention to God's greatest gift, something that we often take for granted, something that I want to remind you of and take you back to the basics of the truth of, something I hope you get excited, or I hope to get you excited, that I hope you get reignited about. The greatest gift that God has given to us is the gift of salvation. Now, it's almost Christmas, and I'm really not going to start our Christmas series until next week, but we'll talk about gifts today. As we look at this matter of salvation, we're going to be looking at 1 Peter 1, verses 3-12. And I'm not going to take time to read the whole passage right now, we're going to look at it in chunks as we go through it, and so we'll read it as we go through. But 1 Peter 1, verses 3-12, I encourage you to take your copy of Scripture and turn to it, if you don't have a copy of Scripture with you, share it with someone. And I want to quickly consider five things. First of all, define. Second, we want to look at definite. Third, demonstrated. My fourth point today will be dealt, and my fifth point will be desired. There's a lot of points there, we're going to try and bust them fairly quickly as we look at 1 Peter 1. Before we go any further, let's stop and have a word of prayer. Father, give me thank you for this wonderful day you've given to us. Thank you for the opportunity that is ours to be here today. We thank you for everyone who is here. We thank you for everyone who's listening in some other way, or will be in the future. I just pray that you would bless them, that you would encourage them, that you would strengthen them through the power of your word. Father, may we be reignited, may we be excited again about our first love, about our salvation, about our relationship with Jesus Christ. May we have this foundation set firm and solid in our lives, so that we can build on it in a good and proper way. May we have the confidence of salvation in our lives. May we praise you for that, may we give you thanks for that. But also, again, Father, I pray that you would just be encouragement to us to know that someday we have a home waiting for us in heaven. As we look at your word this morning, challenge us, convict us as we need to be, encourage us through it. May everything said and done be from you to the power of the Holy Spirit. And we thank you and we praise you for these things in Jesus' name. Amen. My first point this morning is divine. 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4. Verses 3 and 4 please says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. Now, Christians may disagree on small, insignificant, unanswerable issues. For example, who or what were the sons of God who married the daughters of men in Genesis? I've heard two or three ideas behind that, and I'm not going to be dogmatic either way. Another thing we may disagree on. Should we paint the sanctuary eggshell white or antique white or country white? We may disagree on that, but it's okay. The one thing we cannot disagree on, because it determines our whole eternity with Christ, is salvation. Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14 say, Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. John 14, 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Concerning salvation, I've heard a lot of things. I've heard some say, or I've read, or I've picked these up from various sources, something like this. Everyone is going to heaven because God is love. I've heard people say, I've been confirmed. I've been baptized in the church. I have joined the church and follow its teachings. I've done many good works for the church or in my life. My parents or my grandparents were fine Christian people. I've done more good than bad in my life. I've read the Bible. I believe in God. I've taken communion. I pray. And the list goes on and on. But what is the Bible saying? As I look at our group here this morning, again, I'm preaching to the choir, I believe. I hope everyone here can give me this back, as good as I can give it to you, and have shared it with others. First of all, we have to realize that we're sinners. Romans 3.23 tells us, for all sin, it falls short of the glory of God. That means we've fallen short of where God wants us to be. We've missed the mark in this idea of righteousness. Secondly, we need to know there's a punishment for sin. Romans 6.23 says the wages of sin is death. And we can stop right there. I'm not going to because there's a promise that follows. It says the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Third, we need to realize there's nothing we can do to make up for our sin. There's nothing we can do to pay that price, to pay that punishment for our sin. Isaiah 64.6 says, but we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Romans 3.10 says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. We can continue on in Romans, and go from chapter 3 to chapter 5. It tells us that Jesus, God in the flesh, came and paid the price for our sin. Romans chapter 5, and I want to look at verse 6, then we'll jump to 8, then we'll jump to 18. It says, for when we were still without strength and due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Verse 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Then you jump on down to verses 18 and 19, it says, therefore as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act, a free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. I want to mention that Christ's death was voluntary, no one killed him. You know, he laid down his life for us voluntarily. He could have stopped it at any time, at any point he could have called thousands of angels down, taking him off the cross and said, I'm done with this mess. It was voluntary, he did it, he did it sacrificially. It was all that God had to offer to pay the price for us. Jesus, his son, the perfect son of God, the perfect lamb. I find that it was brutal. Christ was beaten and bruised beyond recognition as a man. He was crucified and died a horrible death. If it ended there, then our gospel, our salvation would be nothing, because at that point he's like no other, he's like any other man. Every other man who came and lived and said they were a prophet, who said they were a savior, who said they were a messiah, all of these claims, when they died, that was it. And if Jesus died and that would be it, then again, he would be no better than any other that claimed the same claim. But that he didn't end there, there's more to the gospel. You see, the Bible tells us that he rose again from the grave. He came back victorious in power, victorious over sin, victorious over death in the grave. 1 Peter 1, 3 tells us he gave us a living hope through the resurrection of Christ. Again, look at verse 3. It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. See, our salvation, all that Christ claimed, our hope, our living hope, as the verse says, is because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He did it for me personally. All we have to do is receive Christ as Savior by faith. There is no magic prayer. There are no proper words, so to speak. And I've seen people say, and they do this, and I'm not doubting that it's effective. It's not something I do. When I'm talking to someone about Christ, they say, well, repeat after me. And then they say this prayer, and then the person is supposed to repeat what they say. My method, my style of doing it is to say, tell God what you want. Tell God what's on your heart, what's on your mind. If you don't use my words, use your words. And that's just me, that's just me personally. There is no magic prayer. There are no proper words when we come to this point where we realize we need Christ as Savior and we want to receive him into our lives. We just need to realize that we're sinners and condemned to death and hell for all eternity. We are utterly lost and hopeless and deserving punishment. We need to realize that God loves us so much that he took our punishment. Then crying out with a heart full of repentance, as Martin Luther did, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. My next point, my second point, is definite. Look at verse 5 of 1 Peter 1. It says, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Here is a most exciting and stabilizing truth about salvation, at least to me. If we have truly accepted Christ as Savior by grace through faith, we are kept until our salvation is completed. That is, until we get to heaven. That's when our salvation will be complete in a theological sense. We will never lose our salvation. We will never get kicked out of his family. Our eternity is secure forever, but it goes back to that caveat. If we have truly accepted Christ as Savior, I believe there's a lot of people that someday is going to stand before God, and the scripture says so, and God's going to say, depart from me, for I never knew you. It's going to be a sad day because they were religious, they did good things, they did all these wonderful things, and God's going to say, and the scripture says, they're going to say, Lord, look at all the marvelous works I did in your name, look at all the wonderful things I did. He's going to say, I didn't know you. I don't know you. You're not my child. Depart. Okay? Salvation doesn't mean we won't have to struggle with sin. 1 John tells us that if we proclaim to have no sin, we're a liar. I think, boy, that's blunt. He doesn't say, well, no, that's not right. He says, you say you have no sin, you're a liar. The truth is not in you. We make God a liar because he says as long as we live on this earth, we will have a struggle with sin. Sin will come into our lives. That's not a goal of ours, by the way. It's not our goal to say, well, you know, God said we're going to sin, and it's okay, so I'm just going to go do it. That's not what that means. That means we're going to struggle with sin, and sometimes we're going to fail. And, of course, God then has a way to take care of that sin. We don't have to get resaved. It just says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When we sin, we just have to go to him and say, God, I blew it. Lord, I messed up again. Is that something I desire to do, but I did it, and I'm sorry. And, again, with that part of repentance, I'm going to turn around. I'm going to keep working on this. I'm going to try not to do it. So what's so exciting about this truth of salvation being definite? Excuse me. It means that I'm his, and he is mine forever and ever. I don't have to worry about whether I'm saved or not. I know a lot of people who struggle with that. You know, they struggle with their salvation. Am I saved? Am I not saved? I said, did I lose my salvation? No. If you are truly saved, if you've come to Jesus Christ as Savior, you won't lose your salvation. You lose your fellowship with God. That's a whole different matter. Scripture says if you don't do anything for Christ, if you truly got saved, you're going to be sorry because you're going to stand before him on Judgment Day, and the works are going to be put to test. And 1 Corinthians says you're going to suffer loss, but you'll be saved. You're going to be saved. If that's all you have, you're going to get it to happen. But the loss of rewards are going to be tragic in your life. So I don't have to worry about whether I'm saved or not. When I mess up, I know that God still loves me. When I disobey, I am still God's child. I may get disciplined from God, but I am still his child, and he still loves me. In fact, if he disciplines me, it's because he loves me. Hebrews 12, 6 reminds us, For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. It's like a good parent. When your child messes up, you punish them. When we mess up, there is results or are results. Punishment will come. It tells me that I can walk by faith with God and confidence and security knowing that I am forever kept by God. Our house was a very interesting place. It really was. I still remember one time we had eight kids all living there. I don't know about my kids, but they were little. We went on a bike ride, and everybody in town was passing us. So here, the ten of us were riding. Peg was in the front, and I was in the back, and there were eight kids in between. Now, my kids knew they were there forever. Whether they liked that idea or not, they were there forever. No matter what happened, no matter what they did, they were stuck with me, and I was stuck with them. And, yes, we fought and argued, just like any parent in any house with eight kids, but they were still there. In fact, things really haven't changed that much. Again, over the holidays, we had all of them, and now they bring their own kids back home. I think I counted 20, 21 at our house for lunch. They're comfortable at our house. They're comfortable with Peg and I. Because, in a sense, it is still home to them. It's the funniest thing. I mean, I've been here 40 years, and if we talked about going to St. Louis, I would always say going home. I'm going home. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going back to Mom's house. So I still call that home. And so, in a sense, it's still home. It is also home to them. When they were young, they got in trouble. I know you can't imagine my kids ever getting in trouble because they're the perfect children. And you can ask Andrew about that, he knows. You were perfect. Still have. Now you have to ask Sam about it. Okay, they made messes. My wife just mentioned the other day, talking about Andrew being perfect. She just mentioned the other day the hole in the wall that he and Josh put in the wall. Where is it at? It's a corner knocked off somewhere by the steps. Oh, yeah. With Nerf guns, right? Yeah, they were having a Nerf gun war. She said they were old enough to know better, but they knocked a corner off the wall. I thought you were talking about the other hole that Betsy pushed me with the pool table. Yeah, that one too. In case you didn't hear, they were moving the pool table, Elizabeth was shoving the pool table into the wall. There's a hole in the wall there. Okay, so they learned, and they grew, and they were all mine. I hate to say they acted like me, but they probably did. And even when they didn't like something, they may have been mad at us, and they were still mine, and they were still stuck in our house. And now they have their own families, and it's so much fun to watch the mother's curse come into it. And you all know the mother's curse. I hope you have a child just like you when you grow up. In some cases they have two or three, just like them, that I love. Except Andrew, he's got dogs. You know, but the mother's curse works. It's great. And as a grandpa, I might be a little guilty of promoting some of that frustration with their children that they have. I can poke a bear a little bit and send him back home. Or fill it full of sugar and send him back home, whichever the case. Our foster kids, however, were different. They were not ours. Their position was not permanent. They knew it, or they were hoping that anyway. They never really totally, truly totally settled into our home, no matter how hard both Peg and I tried to make it home for them. Reality is, they were not. In a spiritual sense, in our spiritual lives, I want to tell you today, I accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. It is definite. I am home. I am at home with my heavenly Father. And that's the key. And at the end of things, when this life is over, I can say, I'm going home. Thirdly, demonstrated. Look at verses 6-9 of 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1, 6-9 says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while it be you have been grieved by various trials. The genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold it perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found praise, honor, and glory in the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Trials don't come to steal our salvation or our joy. Temptations sometimes want to steal our joy and our walk with God. But trials that God allows into our lives don't come to steal our salvation. They don't come to steal our joy. Trials come so that our faith may be matured and purified as through fire. So that we may learn joy unspeakable and full of glory. That our pure, genuine faith may be found to the praise, honor, and glory of God when we finally see our Savior face to face. These fiery trials and tests strengthen, prove, and improve our faith and salvation. In theological terms you want to throw a big term at you, it's called progressive salvation. Now, I hesitate to use the word progressive today because that takes us a different direction. You talk about progressive theology and so on. But this is an ongoing salvation. It's interesting when you study the doctrine of salvation, we have been saved, we are being saved, we will be saved. There's three parts to that as it breaks down. And I'm not going to go into the whole theological discussion today. But this matter of being saved is that someday we will finally be complete. Our salvation will be complete. Our journey will be complete. And we will stand face to face with Christ, our Savior. Short point for that one, we'll move on to number four, Del. Look at verses 10 through 12 of 1 Peter 1. Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what matter of time, the Spirit of Christ was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us, sorry, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things which angels desire to look into. They want to delve into them. This passage tells us how special we are. How special our salvation in Christ is. The Old Testament prophets inquired and searched diligently, again, the word Del fits right in there, that's why I entitled it, I point that. They desired to understand and know this salvation. They desired to understand and know about the Messiah and what was going to take place. They prophesied about our salvation though they didn't quite understand entirely what was to come concerning Christ. And they did it for us so that we could understand it. Look back at the words and cross, at the cross, look back at the words of the cross and put the pieces together. So as the prophets were prophesying in the Old Testament, they didn't understand exactly all that was going on. They knew and they understood the Messiah was coming. The Savior was coming, the Christ and he's going to be a wonderful counselor, mighty prince and so on. But they didn't understand how it would all come together. So then we come along after the cross and we can look back and we can see their prophecies and we can see the cross and we can see the things happening today and we can see things coming in the future that were prophesied way back in the book of Isaiah and some of the other prophets. And we don't totally understand all of it yet. It's becoming clearer and clearer every day as we see the events of this world unfold how things could probably, most probably possibly at least in our minds will fit together in future events. We see the improbability and for my devotions right now I'm reading through Matthew and just how things were falling together there that the prophets didn't understand. How could the Messiah be from this place to this place to this place to this place while as you go through the history of Jesus in his early years, how they moved from place to place to place to protect Jesus. And the Bible says in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be a Nazarite and he would be from the city of Bethlehem and he would be from Egypt. How can all that happen? And now we can see it as we look back. Point number five, desire. If we look at the end of 1 Peter, I'm going to read all of verse 12 but we're going to look basically at the end. To them it was real, let's talk about the prophets not to themselves but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. I really just want to look at that last phrase, things which angels desire to look into. Think of this for a moment. We think of angels as being far above us in intellect and knowledge and strength and power and who you go on and list. One of the things angels don't have or don't understand is salvation in Christ. They desire to look into this matter, they desire to know what it's about. They desire to grasp it and again you look at the verse which angels desire to look into they cannot comprehend this thing of salvation in our lives. It would be like me and probably you too, maybe you're smarter than I am and you can do this trying to comprehend the fine details of nuclear medicine. I'm sure some of you might be able to understand it, right? I know I could. Perhaps we could prepare and teach a PhD level class on quantum physics. I can't do that, that's impossible, I don't understand any of it. That's the same boat the angels are in when it comes to salvation. This great gift that we have from God, the salvation that we have from God, the prophets foretold it, they didn't understand it. The angels look at it, they desire to look into it because they can't comprehend it. This great gift of salvation is so unique that God gave it to us for us so that we can have eternal life with Him. And even the angels, it's so unique to us, it's so special to us that even the angels have to sit and desire even an understanding of it. Now, maybe I'm, maybe it's just me and I'm weird. Weird, okay, I know that already. But this gets me very excited about what I have in Christ. My wife always, she razzes me because I'll do videos and I'll, you know, I always, I get nervous in front of cameras. I know it's hard to believe, right? But I still get nervous in front of them. And, and so when I get, when I'm up here by myself and I'm glad nobody's up here when I do this. I'll make a video clip about something or anyway, whatever I'm doing with it. I'll set the camera up and I'll turn the, I'll turn the goopies around so I can see it. And I stand in front of it and I try to look excited. I never know what to do with my hands because I know I can't, if I type my hands down I can't talk. So, so I'm standing there going this kind of thing trying to figure out what to do. And excited is not the look on my face. And I'll say something like, I am so excited to tell you about this. And she always says to me, you don't look very excited in the video. And it's true. I don't. So sometimes I'm excited but I don't look very excited. But this gets me excited. What do I have in Christ? Beginning with this thing of salvation. And this unique thing of salvation that's unique and special only to humans. But even the angels, all their power and all their glory don't understand. Can't comprehend. Desire to look into it. But as we conclude, I want to ask, has your salvation become a stale fact to you? Perhaps you need to look into it again. Rediscover what Christ did for you. Renew your desire to properly use the gift that Christ has given to us. In fact, that's really part of what communion is all about. To take us back in remembrance of what Christ did for us. Have you ever even accepted the gift to start with? Do you know that you are truly saved? That you truly have the gift of salvation? If not, that's the place you need to start. How has God spoken to you? And how will you respond? Let's close in a word prayer. Father, can we thank you for this wonderful day and we thank you for the opportunity as ours to be here. We thank you for your word and what it teaches us. We thank you beyond that and even more so this morning as we considered our salvation. We thank you for that unique and beautiful gift you have given to us. We don't have to worry about our ticket to heaven so to speak. We don't have to worry about how we're going to get there. We don't have to worry about if we're going to get there. We know that Christ's death paid it off. By simply believing, as hard as that is for some people to realize, with this repentance of our own selves, our own sin, Father, in accepting you we can have what is bought and paid for and have that security of knowing that heaven is ours. That it is our home. That we will someday be there. Father, I thank you for that truth. Ignite us with that truth. Excite us with that truth and help us to live for you based on that truth. Help us to build on that truth. On that firm foundation. Help us to build our lives on it. Help us to live for you. To speak of you. To testify of you. To witness for you. To be ambassadors for the kingdom of heaven. Father, we thank you for all these things. And I ask them in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.