A store that sells husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch. ... You may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building! So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. . . On the first floor the sign on the door reads: Floor 1 - These men have jobs and love the Lord. The second floor sign reads: Floor 2 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, and love kids. The third floor sign reads: Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, and are extremely good looking. “Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads: Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop-dead good looking and help with the housework: “Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads: Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop- dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak. She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads: “Floor 6 - You are visitor 4,363,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store. Watch your step as you exit the building, and have a nice day!
Peter writes about these hunters of a different kind: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 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 preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:10-12).
So the main point of this Passage is that we should be amazed at the greatness of our salvation. That this greatness is shown by the fact that prophets of God and angels of heaven long to look into it. Jesus said to His disciples on one occasion: “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matthew 13:16-17). Peter and Jesus are telling us that salvation in Christ is amazingly wonderful. We should appreciate what we have because so many generations before us have searched and longed for this discovery.
Recently, a team of eighteen people in our church took a mission trip to India. In order to arrive in Bangalore, India we flew from Fayetteville, AR to LAX (about a three hour flight). We sat in the airport for around seven hours. We then flew to Taipei, another fifteen hours, and then to Kuala Lumpur, an additional four hours, where we rested in a hotel for about three hours. We finally arrived in Bangalore at midnight only to take a bus trip to Dharmapurri that did not arrive until 6 am. If the hotel had a bed of nails, I would have been happy to sleep on it after this two-day trip. I slept from 6 am to noon and what made this sleep so wonderful, was that it was so long in coming. That is exactly what Peter is telling us – salvation in Christ is wonderful because so many godly people searched for this treasure.
More on this search next week, but today our text is verses eight and nine just before the verses we just read: “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, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9)
1. Suffering is not an Accident
Peter is writing to Christians in modern day Turkey where they are spread out over 300,000 miles. To get an idea of how spread out these believers are, if we began at Chicago, IL as our center. 300,000 square miles would extend as far north as the tip of Michigan and as far south as St. Louis, MO and KY. It would also extend as far east as Columbus, OH and westward to Des Moines, IA. To all of these scattered believers in Christ, Peter says that suffering is not an accident: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:5). He repeats much of the same thought later: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Peter 4:19).
Paul also says that suffering is not an accident: “When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:21-22). And again, Paul say: “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…” (2 Timothy 3:12)
Lastly, Jesus says that suffering is not an accident: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
2. Where You Get Your Joy Matters
“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” (1 Peter 1:8). There are three reactions each believer has for Jesus Christ mentioned in verse eight: love, joy, and faith. The reason for our joy is the great future God promises us and His unswerving commitment to keep it for us and us for it. In other words, our joy is based on the happiness of our future with God and the certainty that we will make it there. Christian joy is almost synonymous with Christian hope. What gives joy its quality? I don’t mean merely its intensity, but its moral character? What makes joy ugly or beautiful? Depraved or noble? Dirty or clean? The answer is that the thing enjoyed gives joy its character. If you enjoy dirty jokes and bathroom language and lewd pictures, then your heart is dirty and your joy is dirty. If you enjoy cruelty and arrogance and revenge, then your heart and your joy have that character. Or the more you get your joy simply from material things, the more your heart and your joy shrivel up like a mere material thing. You become like what you crave.
Peter says (in verse 8) that Christian joy is inexpressible and glorified. So how does it become that like that? It becomes like that because Christian joy is the joy of craving the preciousness of Jesus and the reliability of Jesus It’s the good feelings of being attracted to Him for who He is and the good feelings of being confident in Him for what He will do. You become like what you crave. Christians crave Christ. Therefore they become like Christ. Christ’s preciousness and reliability are inexpressibly great, and so our joy is inexpressible in Him. And Christ has in Him all the glory of the universe and of God, and so our joy in Him is a glorified joy — that is, a joy being changed from one degree to another by His glory as we are attracted by its preciousness and as we are confident in its reliability. We become what we crave and what Christians crave above all else is the glory of Christ. So our joy is “inexpressible and filled with glory” because it is joy in loving Christ and trusting Christ who is inexpressibly glorious.
3. You Must See it to Believe it
“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” (1 Peter 1:8).
But how do we come to crave the preciousness of Christ and trust the reliability of Christ if we can’t see Him? How do you love Him and believe in Him, if you can’t see Him? We See Him in Another and More Important Way. I think the answer to that question is that even though we don’t see Him face to face with our physical eyes, we do see Him in another way that is even more important.
“and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand’” (Romans 15:20-21).
Hundreds of people in Jesus’ lifetime saw Him physically and never really saw Him. “Seeing they did not see,” Jesus said. There is a seeing that is infinitely more important than seeing with the eyes. How does it happen? How is 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 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 Syrophoenician woman,
— the Centurion,
— the widow of Nain,
— Zacchaeus,
— the thief on the cross,
— the thronging crowds.
They saw a snippet here and a snippet 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. You are taken into the inner circle of the apostolic band where you never could have gone. You go with Him 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 sketches on hillsides but in rich God-inspired 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 with no place to lay His head, His courage in the face of opposition, His unanswerable wisdom, His honoring women, His tenderness with children, His compassion toward lepers, His meekness in suffering, His patience with Peter, His tears over Jerusalem, and His power to still storms and heal the sick and multiply bread and cast out demons.
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:14-17).
