Passage: I Peter 1:10-12
Intro: We live in a world that requires constant change, continual upgrades in order to keep our attention.
1. don’t know about you, but I get physically tired from the constant onslaught of new technology.
Il) email ad this week offering me a whole host of things that I had never heard of.
2. we get bored if there isn’t something new just around the corner.
3. this tendency of our human nature can do what might seem to be impossible.
4. it may cause us to become somewhat ho-hum about the gospel.
5. how many times can we hear about Jesus dying for our sins, rising from the dead, until we are ready to move on to something fresh?
6. the truth of the matter is this: the gospel of Jesus Christ is a body of truth so infinitely deep that it only gets old to the person who is content to stay on the surface.
7. Peter didn’t want that kind of shallowness for the recipients of this letter, especially in light of their suffering.
8. the shallow answers don’t work for a person in pain, for the persecuted believer wondering if God has left him.
9. as believers, we are part of a plan so grand, so massive in scope, so infinite in purpose, that it is sometimes very difficult to find our place in it.
10. but clearly Peter believed that if we could get a glimpse of the grand design we have been blessed to be included in, it could change our whole perspective on life in general and the Christian life in particular.
11. to be a believer, in this time and this place, is a blessed privilege beyond anything we could imagine. Here’s why.
I. We Experience the Faithfulness of God
1. the difference between being an OT saint and a NT saint is huge.
2. perhaps we envy them the physical manifestation of God in fire and smoke, thunder and lightning.
3. the temple, the ark, the sacrifices.
4. but it’s important to recognize that those who lived in that time and were the most attuned to God would have given anything to be where we are
5. v10, “the prophets”, men to whom God spoke, through whom He transmitted His truth, His word.
6. they wrote hundreds of prophecies that they didn’t quite understand
7. imagine being the prophet Micah, and writing this prophecy.
PP Micah 5:2
8. and then wondering when, and what would his name be, and who would the parents be, and etc.
9. imagine being Isaiah, and writing about the suffering of God’s servant to pay for our sins
PP Isaiah 53:5
10. and wondering if it would happen in his lifetime
11. but they knew, as Peter points out, that they were writing about what later generations would see.
PP Joel 2:32
12. and these people suffered!
PP Hebrews 11:37-40
13. the desire of many thousands of people, people who suffered for a faith in a person’s name they never knew, has been made known to us.
14. we are the recipients of promises kept, of prophecies fulfilled, of faithfulness manifested.
15. the complete forgiveness of sins that Isaiah could only dream about is ours through the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
16. the OT sacrifices were only the shadow of the reality that we know by promise kept and by experience.
17. to us has been given the greatest of all gifts, to be reconciled to God through the sacrificial death of God’s one and only Son.
18. and that gift has opened up others.
II. We Know the Heart of God
1. as much as God revealed Himself as gracious and forgiving in the OT, people had a hard time believing
PP Exodus 34:5-6a
2. because the people of Israel sinned constantly, they continually knew the judgment of God
3. their prophets, God’s spokesmen, pointed century after century to the coming of One who would heal their wounds, pay for their sins permanently, reconcile them to God.
4. but look at v11! We know the name of the one who was to come, we know the exact nature of His sufferings and precisely what those sufferings accomplished.
5. and when we look at the person of Jesus Christ and His powerful death and resurrection, the very heart of God is revealed to us as clearly as a sunrise on a clear Arizona morning.
6. He is revealed as a God of perfect righteousness, of unspeakable love, of limitless grace, of infinite mercy.
7. in the OT, God was one who needed to be propitiated, to have His wrath deflected by countless sacrifices.
8. but now we know something about God; that His love is so vast and His justice so pure that He has propitiated Himself, has paid the price our sin required by the sacrifice of His own Son!
Il) actions tell the story. Talk is one thing, but as Saddam Hussein is finding out, some people are committed enough to a principle that they act!
9. we don’t wonder about the heart of God, do we?
10. In spite of Satan’s protesting lies, we can look at the cross of Jesus Christ and the empty tomb of Jesus Christ and draw some powerful conclusions
11. in addition to this wonderful revelation of God’s loving heart, we also how different His nature is than ours, how the things He values are strikingly different than the values of this fallen race.
12. in v11, Peter uses a formula that reveals the values of God.
13. “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” Notice the order!
Il) football coaches have put this in another way…”No pain, no gain”
14. God is willing to pay the price necessary to achieve the best for His children, even if that means suffering for Himself and His Son.
15. God has higher priorities than personal comfort, personal peace.
16. and He will jeopardize comfort, His and ours, if there is a higher good to be achieved.
Il) our president and his allies have concluded that Saddam Hussein poses such a threat that they are willing to subject soldiers to suffering, themselves to political fallout, the resistance of other world leaders
17. but know this in the middle of your pain, your suffering…
18. the heart of God is completely love, and
the suffering you know is like the suffering a godly parent will allow in his child’s life to achieve the greater good.
Il) why do we make our kids read books and learn to do math and memorize the periodic chart? Because the glories are worth the pain!
19. and for God, the suffering He experienced in pouring out His wrath on Jesus was justified by it’s result; the forgiveness of our sins and our reconciliation to God, and His own tremendous glory!
III. We Are Bearers of the Aroma of Christ
1. the gospel of Jesus Christ is a wonderful plan to free captives of a repressive spiritual regime
2. we have been freed, not only from sin, but to be a part of God’s eternal purpose.
3. let’s think about that purpose. We tend to think it begins and ends with us, with our salvation.
4. but the gospel is an invasion plan whose purpose it is to fill the earth with the sweet aroma of God.
5. Satan’s first lie was about the character of God; that He was cruel, unloving, unjust.
6. God’s plan has been and continues to be to reveal the truth about Himself to people who need to be reconciled to Him.
7. this is why He sent Jesus, to reveal Himself as loving, gracious, kind, tender and merciful…in concrete action.
8. and this continues to be His plan!
9. we saw during our Christmas series that Jesus came to destroy the work of the devil.
10. and since a huge part of Satan’s work is to tell lies about God, a huge part of God’s plan is to tell the truth about Himself.
11. it’s interesting that God did not unleash terrible military weapons against Satan, nor does He seek to outspend him, like the world might do.
12. instead, God rescues people from captivity and calls them to become vessels bearing the very fragrance of God, the aroma of Christ, into a lost world.
13. when the church doesn’t do this, watch out!
Il) Crusades, religious wars.
14. but when it does, hospitals, evangelism, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless
15. Think of it! By cooperating with the Holy Spirit as He remakes us in the image of Christ, we can play a significant part in fulfilling the plan of purpose of God right where we live, right where we work.
16. God came to save us and to work through us to rescue others, to become a part of the invasion force.
17. the most powerful force in the world today is not the US military or Saddam Hussein or Wall St.
18. it is the church of Jesus Christ, empowered by the Spirit and invading a lost and dying world with the love of God.
Conc. And each one of us is part of that process, and the competence we demonstrate in our task, the purity of the aroma of Christ which we give off, is not overly critical to the whole process, but is of incredible importance to those within smelling distance.
