The Role of the Holy Spirit In Salvation

Transcript

GR1925
07/19/2015
The Role of the Holy Spirit in Salvation
I Peter 1:10-12
Gil Rugh

We are in I Peter chapter 1 in your Bibles. He brings before us in this opening chapter of his first letter the greatest subject of all subjects, the salvation that God has provided for sinful humanity. There is no greater truth to be understood and believed and proclaimed than God Himself has provided salvation for fallen, sinful human beings. The eternal God is comprised of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They form the one God and all three Persons of the Trinity are involved in the work of our salvation. It is such an awesome accomplishment that we are going to see the angels have an intense interest and desire to observe the outworking of the salvation that God has provided in Jesus Christ because remember, they are observers of salvation but they have never experienced salvation. The salvation that Jesus Christ provided by His becoming a part of humanity when He was born into the human race to die for the sins of humanity brought salvation to us but He never became an angel. He never provided salvation for angels. So angels are observers and marvel at the greatness of the grace of God provided for sinful beings.

The sad truth is that most of the people of the world are not interested. The most important subject in all the world is one that most of the world ignores and doesn’t consider worth the time and is often offended when we tell them about it. But you know, we have to be careful that we, as the recipients of God’s salvation, never lose our wonder and awe. It is terrible to put it this way but we never become tired or bored with God. We who have been redeemed by His grace and the wonder of His power by the provision of His Son, it ought to be thrilling to us every day. Our greatest focus of thoughts on what He has done for us with hearts of eternal gratitude.

You know the church tends to lose its way over time and we dissipate and wash out our emphasis and instead of focusing on God and what He has done we focus on man and what he is interested in, what he would like to hear. We turn Christianity into some other form of self-help kind of teaching. I like how one man put it when he said, “There is no excuse for triviality in preaching.” Those of us who preach and teach ought always to remember that. There is no excuse for triviality in preaching. We have the greatest of all subjects, greatest of all sources, the Word of God and the salvation revealed in that Word.

In verses 3-12 where we are focusing our attention in our recent studies and will be again today, Peter is unfolding the details of our salvation. He had started out in the introduction in verse 2: “We have been elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ.” And we noted we have all three persons of the triune God involved in our salvation. Now in verses 3-12 as Peter unfolds this he focuses on each person of the trinity. In verse 3-5 our salvation is authored by God the Father. Verse 3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again.” And he talks about the blessing and what is laid up for us as the ultimate realization and culmination of our salvation.

Then in verses 6-9 this salvation authored by the Father, if you will, was accomplished by the Son and he talks about the work of Jesus Christ, what He carried out for us and we believe in Him and we see it is the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

So we come to verse 10, 11 and 12 which talk about the Holy Spirit who is the revealer, the One who reveals and, if you will, carries out the implementation of that salvation, authored by the Father, accomplished by the Son and revealed and applied if you will by the work of the Spirit.

So we come to verses 10 to 12 in our study together and we focus on the role of the Holy Spirit. And a note, all three Persons, they are intertwined together. There is only one God and just as at the creation they were all three involved at the beginning in the creation; God the Father again being the author. All things created through the Son, for the Son and in that context we find the Spirit of God hovering over the creation that had been called into existence.

So here we want to look at the Holy Spirit and His ministry in using human instruments to tell, foretell, prophecy of the salvation that has now been accomplished. So he takes us back to the revelation in the Old Testament and shows that the Spirit of God spoke through the prophets to prepare for the coming of the Son of God who would carry out the work of our salvation by His death on the cross according to the plan of God.

So we pick up in verse 10 and he says, “As to this salvation” and that is what he has been talking about. Back in verse 5 he referred to those “who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Then in verse 9: “Obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.” And verse 10: “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied,” they anticipated and told 100’s of years before Christ came to carry it out that it would happen. It is a salvation that we enter into by faith and we will experience the full realization of it when we receive glorified bodies and are brought into the presence of the God who planned and carried out our salvation; “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you.” And the word ‘grace’ here is used as a synonym for salvation. “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you” and grace becomes a synonym for salvation for as Ephesians 2:8 says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” So this grace is the context in which our salvation occurs. It is sometimes used as a synonym for our salvation that God would provide His grace, how else would we have salvation? We couldn’t earn it, we couldn’t work for it. God would have to do it on our behalf, provide for us that which we did not deserve, could not earn. So it was the grace that would come to you.

Now it was the Spirit of God who is prophesying in the prophets. “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry.” What he is going to make clear is the wonder that Peter’s hearers, readers, that period of time in which they live are blessed with. The Old Testament prophets anticipated and prophesied of the salvation God would provide in His grace but all they could do was try to search out and understand what God was saying. That grace as John wrote in John chapter 1, verse 17: “The law came by Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

The Old Testament prophets prophesied of grace and they experienced God’s grace but the provision of that grace even as they experienced beforehand would come through the Savior that they prophesied about and they made searches and inquiries. They are trying to understand what God is saying through them; truth being revealed to them that they could not fully understand.

We studied the book of Daniel not too long ago. Come back to the book of Daniel just as an example. Daniel chapter 9 we will pick up in verse 1: “In the first year of Darius…” Verse 2: “In the first year of his reign I, Daniel, observed in the book the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.” We saw here what Jeremiah prophesied a seventy year Babylonian captivity. Now he understood something of God’s purposes and plans and then you come over to verse 24 of this same chapter and you find out seventy weeks, seventy seven year periods, week of years were determined for his people.

Now we move into information about the future and much here Daniel is mystified by. Come over to chapter 12 and come down to verse 6: “One said to the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, ‘How long will it be until the end of these wonders?’” And then the answer is it would be a time, two times and a half time, that three and ½ year period which we know as 3 ½ years from when we studied it.

Verse 8: “As for me, I heard but could not understand; so I said, ‘What my lord, what will be the outcome of these events?’ He said, ‘Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed, sealed up until the end time.’” Now many of things still haven’t occurred but we understand a lot more fully and clearly with the coming of Christ and the fuller revelation, the unfolding. This gives you a picture, here’s what the prophets are grappling with. Isaiah had to grapple with it in Isaiah 53 when he prophesied of the coming of the death of Christ and His subsequent reigning in glory and how this all worked together. Peter is going to go on to talk about.

Understand, our great privilege, we understand what Isaiah could not understand, what Jeremiah couldn’t understand, Daniel, Zechariah, the greatest of the prophets and God revealed great truth to them but how it all fit together they didn’t know. But with the coming of Christ I realize something that they could not and that is what Peter is saying. He wants his readers to understand the awesome privilege that it theirs in the day in which they are living.

Come over to Matthew 13 and then we will come back to Peter, particularly concerning the coming of Christ and His work which is the focus of Peter’s message at this time. In Matthew 13, verse 17 Jesus said, “Truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, to hear what you hear and did not hear it;” the coming of the Son of God to this earth, God taking to Himself humanity in preparation for being the sacrificial Lamb of God. Many prophets and righteous men anticipated what God promised with the desire, how will this all unfold? And yet they were in Daniel’s position. Go your way Daniel; you can’t understand these things yet. They are for a future time. And for much of that Peter is saying we are living in that time.

Come back to I Peter, verse 11, these prophets making careful searches and inquiries “seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.” This was the particular struggle in connection with the coming of the prophesied Messiah. They prophesied His suffering and His death; they prophesied His ruling and reigning in glory. How does it fit together? And the Jews as a nation just decided that they would accept one thing and reject the other. So they are not willing to have a lowly, suffering Messiah. They would only accept one who came charging in to be the political and military delivered of the nation but that wasn’t a resolution.

So the prophets in the Old Testament didn’t and couldn’t understand because they saw these things that we have talked about together and sometime you go back and forth in the prophecies. Well, one minute I have Him ruling and reigning in victory over all His enemies and the next thing you know I have Him suffering and dying, being rejected. For us it is clear, He is coming twice. The first coming to earth to suffer and die; the second coming now 2000 years after the first coming, we anticipate His coming, well that’s when there will be ruling and reigning in glory. It is all clear. What is clear to you was never clear to Ezekiel, was never clear to Isaiah, and was never clear to Zechariah. It was a puzzle, the pieces had been revealed to them but how they would fit together they could not know.

I want you to note here in verse 11: “Seeking to know what person or time.” I mean how this all fit together, what would this person be and when would it happen? “The Spirit of Christ within them was indicating.” This is a reference to the Holy Spirit and you see the intimate connection of the three persons of the godhead. The Holy Spirit being referred to as the Spirit of Christ here, connected with the ministry of Christ and the revelation concerning the truth of Christ and He is the One speaking.

Turn back to Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8. The three persons that comprise the one God as you might expect are very intimately and closely connected but they must be distinguished. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. The Son is not the Spirit. They are closely connected so the reference to the Spirit of Christ. Look in Romans chapter 8, verse 9: “However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ…” So here the Holy Spirit is referred to both as the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ because He is connected with both of them in His ministry; sometimes distinguished in that – the Spirit of God being sent by the Father being in effect sent by the Son. But it is never reversed. The Spirit never sends the Father nor sends the Son in the Scripture but the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ and ultimately associated in that way and has that unique ministry of being the revealer now of the Father and the Son.

You know the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. They are spiritually discerned. It’s the Spirit now who dwells in us because the Spirit searches all things even the depths of God as Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his first letter. And if you don’t have the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ dwelling in you in this day, you don’t belong to Christ. He is a seal and His indwelling presence is indicative of our belonging to Christ, our belonging to God and having Him as our Father.

Turn over to Galatians chapter 4, Galatians chapter 4, verse 6. This is in the context, verse 4: “When the fullness of time came God sent forth His Son born of a woman, born under the law.” People confuse sometimes the Gospels with the Epistles. You need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ was born under the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law is in force until we move through the Gospels. So we have to be careful. We have our New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but they are recording the life of Christ under the Mosaic Law. The church does not begin as you are aware until Acts chapter 2.

So God sent forth His Son. Born of a woman, born under the law that He might redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” And here he calls the Spirit, the Spirit of His Son and when the Spirit of His Son comes into our hearts we are regenerated, that is the baptism of the Spirit who identifies us with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection applies the work of Christ to us. We call God “our Father!” That work of salvation again involving all three persons of the triune God and here God sends the Spirit of His Son.

So there are different ways to refer. It doesn’t say, God sent forth His Spirit that we just read in Romans 8, He is the Spirit of God as well as the Spirit of the Son but here also there is distinguished the uniqueness of His work in applying the work of the Son in redemption to us according to the plan of the Father. He is the Spirit of the Son here.

One more reference, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians chapter 1 and these aren’t exhaustible, obviously, but samples. Verse 19, Philippians l:19: “For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” And not only that indwelling presence of the Spirit but that ministry of the Spirit in providing protection and deliverance from the desires of his captors from his Roman imprisonment here. He was in a Roman prison when he writes Philippians.

So come back to I Peter chapter 1. The Spirit of Christ in verse 11 was in the prophets, indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow where we get one of the passages would indicate the inspiration of Scripture. “All Scripture is inspired by God.” God breathed. But inspiration has become the word that is often used. It is the Spirit of God within them. The Scriptures are supernatural. Here he is focusing particularly on the prophetic portions but all Scripture is God breathed Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. It comes from God as His Spirit moves men to write. That is what we are talking about here. It is the Spirit of God in them.

So we believe in the inspiration of the Scripture. This is God’s Word, not the word of men and what has happened again the cycles go on but the desire to be accepted in the scholarly world has moved even those who call themselves evangelical to adopt critical methodologies in handling the Scripture that come out from scholars who do not believe in the full inspiration of Scripture and so the desire to mix things together ends up with a less than inspired Scripture.

Now here we are told, the prophets prophesied because the Spirit within them was indicating. Could there be any mistake? No.

Come over to 2 Peter chapter 1, 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 20 a: “Know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” You either believe what God says about His Word or you don’t. They recognize that and then they choose not to believe it. We better be very careful. We try to take the thoughts of unbelieving men and wed them with the Scripture and try to come up with some kind of compromise. There is no compromise.

This is God’s Word. We believe in verbal inspiration. You begin to move away from that, “well the ideas, the thoughts are inspired.” What does that mean? How do you express your thoughts without words? And if you don’t get the words right how do you have the correct thoughts? This is where we move away from even in our translations dealing with verbal inspiration. We believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture. God inspired the very words and it is not dictation because He selected the men He would speak through and who would write it and the record is what we have written of the Spirit is guiding and all that. They were moved by the Holy Spirit. God using their personality but the words that came out were exactly what He would have. So we get into “well that was the thinking of the times.” No. That is God saying how it is.

Come back to Acts chapter 1, just a couple of passages. If you don’t start with a clear understand that this is God’s Word where do you go? Then you have to have somebody sort out what is God’s Word and what is not. Acts chapter 1, verse 16, here Peter is speaking and they are going to replace Judas because the 12 had become a special unit and verse 16 concerning Judas Peter says, “Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled.” It had to? Why? The Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas. Since the Holy Spirit was using David’s mouth to give the prophecy, thus have it recorded so it was passed on it had to be fulfilled. Otherwise the Spirit of God made a mistake. You see there is a simplicity that gets complicated with the scholarly world and we get in all the different kinds of criticism.

I was reading some of this periodically and you know they want to talk about, “Well we have to keep in mind there is the human author and the divine author.” Well, I realize the Holy Spirit is using human instruments. There is only one author, God speaking through the mouth of David. Now using David and his personality and style so we can see different styles and the different writers that God has selected but none the less it is the Holy Spirit speaking by the mouth of David. He is not just putting an idea in David’s mind that now David puts out however he would decide. No, it is a lot tighter than that. It is the Holy Spirit speaking by the mouth of David.

Come over to chapter 3 and Peter is the speaker here as well. Verse 18: “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets that His Christ would suffer He has thus fulfilled.” There is clarity, simplicity. It is the things which God announced. How did He do it? Thundering from heaven? No, He used the mouth of the prophets but as Peter speaks, what is he saying? It was God announcing it, using the mouth of the prophets like He told Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 1 we recall, “I have put My Word in your mouth;” “My Word in your mouth.” That is what I believe about the Scripture. It is God’s Word within the mouth of individuals then recorded, written down. I take it the Spirit of God, they say “Well, everybody wants to talk about the original autographs that believes in the full verbal inspiration but we don’t have the original autographs. No, but I take it that we have an accurate record.

I believe it was William Barclay, the great Greek scholar who as far as I can tell was not a genuine, converted man. He said anyone that says we don’t have an accurate record in our New Testament has never really studied the manuscript. It is not really an issue. Now there may be a debate. He was a universalist so he didn’t necessarily believe what the Scripture said but it’s not an issue over do we have an accurate record that can be trusted. So of course God has preserved His Word otherwise it wouldn’t have done any good for us if He did give an accurate and clear Word but it had been so corrupted now how do we sort out what is true and what is not. We have by grace a preserved Word.

You are in Acts, come over to chapter 4, verse 25 and the disciples here celebrate. We break into the thought here and God, picking up God from verse 24 “Who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father, David, your servant said, ‘why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples devise futile things?’” and so on, going back to Psalm 2. What was it, the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David? David was the human instrument but this is more than just the word of a man. This is God’s Word coming through the mouth of a man.

So that’s why we have to come back to the Word of God for everything. It is our absolute, final authority. Where the most scholarly people who study the Word agree with it they are wrong. That’s just it. This is God’s truth. I mean where are we left?

I’ve shared with you about one man who is recognized for his great scholarship and has written a number of commentaries that in an article here in the last few years “if science shows there was no literal Adam and Eve that will be alright with me.” It won’t be alright with me. I mean they can do it if they want but it won’t change my view but it changes his. Then who is the authority Science or the Bible? So on we go. Not that some men haven’t misinterpreted Scripture. We want to be careful in our handling of Scripture. That is why we have to be careful. It is God’s Word.

Alright come back. We have to get back to Peter. What do they prophecy about? They predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow; the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. Those are the two aspects. He would suffer and die, He would be raised and reign in glory; the sufferings and the reigning, difficult to understand when you are prophesying. After the fact it is more clear.

All of Psalm 22 - we won’t go back there but you can jot it down. It is a prophetic Psalm prophesying what would happen in the crucifixion of Christ and the awfulness and the agony of that.

Let’s come to Isaiah because there are a number of things. Come to Isaiah, well get to Isaiah first, Isaiah 2. Here we have the glories of Christ. In Isaiah 2:2: “It will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains.” The mountains are symbolizing a kingdom we saw that when we studied Daniel. “All the nations will come to it.” And this is where verse 4, “The nations will hammer their swords into plowshares.” There is an example when you take things out of context which I believe this portion is on the United Nations building in New York. It ain’t going to happen today. It is going to happen when the Messiah comes.

You come on over to Isaiah chapter 9 and in chapter 9 you will see the first two verses are said when Christ was on the earth this was fulfilled. And Jesus said this Scripture is fulfilled in your eyes in this day as He read this portion but He stopped here after verse 2 because when what follows on there going to talk about the victory of the Messiah. Down in verse 6: “A child will be born to us. A Son will be given to us. The government will rest on His shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over His kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.” Well wait a minute. You see what happens here. The first two verses were fulfilled at the first coming but we have yet to see the fulfillment of what those verses are that I just read. Christ didn’t go on to say that is being fulfilled. And some who spiritualize say, “Well the kingdom began, He is ruling in the hearts of men.” So you take the first two verses that were fulfilled at His first coming and take them literally. Then you get to the verses that have to do with His second coming and you spiritualize them. Well, what kind of way is that to handle Scripture? But you see the confusion of the prophet. Well, it’s hard to put them together.

You come over to chapter 11 and you have the same thing with the “A Shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from His roots. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him” and so on but then we move to the second coming and “He will judge the poor and rule” and “the wolf will dwell with the lamb” and so on down in verse 6 and following; “they will not hurt or destroy in all My kingdom.” Well, that is not going on today if you watch the news.

So you come over to Isaiah 53 which is perhaps the height of Old Testament prophecy focusing on Christ and His suffering and His death and here you are talking about chapter 52, verse 14: “His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” Chapter 53, verse 2: “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him. Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men.” Verse 5: “He is pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities.” “He is cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people,” verse 8. “His grave was assigned to be with the wicked men, yet with a rich man in His death.” He dies a criminals death but He is buried a rich man’s burial.

All these things, how does this all fit together? I mean the beauty of it. Peter is saying we have lived to see this. You know I would say we are even a step further than Peter’s readers because we not only see the fulfillment of these Old Testament Scriptures we have the completion of the explanation with the New Testament revelation culminating with the book of Revelation. So we have a fuller and clearer view. In Peter’s second letter he says, “You know Paul has written things in his letter that are hard to understand” because Peter didn’t have the collected, completed New Testament before him. We live in a day of fullness of revelation, how privileged we have seen the fulfillment of Scripture how that He could be “pierced through for our transgression, crushed for our iniquity. All we like sheep (Isaiah 53:6) have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” We’ve seen it, we understand it. God sent His Son to this earth to be the sacrificial lamb to pay the penalty. We have a greater privilege, he says, than Isaiah who wrote it because he wrote it but he couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t clear to him. He wrote what we read in chapter 2, chapter 9 and chapter 11 about the reign in glory; now about Him dying, being buried. It is not a problem, He is coming again. There are two parts, the Old Testament doesn’t reveal it. And sometimes the prophecies are like in Isaiah. They are woven together. If you start at the beginning of Isaiah and read it, what do you have? Well you read about the glories of the Messiah. By the time you get to chapter 53 He is dying and being rejected. I thought He was going to rule and reign in glory. We already covered that. No, well I don’t know how it all fits together then, the position of the prophets and the glories to follow.

Come over to Luke chapter 24, verse 25. And here is after His resurrection and this is that well known account on the Road to Emmaus. He is meeting with some of His disciples and they don’t understand. You know, I don’t know what happened. He was crucified, he was buried and then some went to the tomb and they found it empty that morning and they said they saw a vision of angels and said He was alive and man, this, here they are. They still don’t understand. They spent three years with Christ, His explanations and instructions, it all happens. He’s been crucified, He’s been buried. He’s been raised. The angels said He is alive. They say, “Man, we don’t know what to make of all this. You know Jesus said to them, verse 25: “And He said to them ‘O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter in to His glory?’” And then He takes them back and begins with Moses and the beginning of our Old Testament, you know the books and explains to them the things to Him. Verse 31: “And their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.” This is Him, He’s alive. Then they go and they are telling others and you have the other appearances.

Down in verse 45: “Then He opened their minds (at this later appearance) to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations – beginning from Jerusalem.’” “I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you,” and Luke will pick up his account in Acts chapter 1where Jesus tells them, “Wait in Jerusalem and until the promise of the Spirit from the Father is sent you.” And then we have the beginning of the church with the coming of the Spirit in Acts chapter 2.

You get a gap here. In Acts chapter 1 they will say, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom?” He says, “That’s not for you to know the timing now.” They know now that it is sometime after the crucifixion and resurrection but they don’t know how long. They get an indication. “You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Your job will be to be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the world.” He gives an indication. He doesn’t say with the coming of the Spirit I will set up the kingdom. “You are going to proclaim forgiveness of sins for those who will repent and place their faith in Me and the work that I have done.” And sometime later we will have the kingdom.

So we come back to Peter and Peter is thrilled. He understands what Isaiah didn’t understand, what the Old Testament prophets didn’t understand. They predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. So verse 12: “It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but You in those things which have now been announced to you through those who preached the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, - things into which angels long to look.” That which was revealed to the prophet was for the benefit of a future generation like the angel told Daniel, “Daniel, these things are concealed from you. You are going to die. These things will happen at a later time.” It was revealed to them but it wasn’t primarily to them this was being revealed. They were preparing you for the coming of the Messiah. This is the condemnation of the Jews. They should have been ready with a Biblical understanding. That doesn’t mean they could put it all together but if they really believed their Old Testament but he said they wouldn’t. “You search the Scriptures and the Scriptures testified of Me.” But they still continue to reject Him. They would only have their version of truth. The portions they don’t care for they stifle. They were serving You. Think about that.

We live today and the revelation is complete. We have the completed New Testament. Peter writes this. He didn’t have the book of Revelation. He will be dead and gone before that is recorded. Dead and gone before these letters of the New Testament are put together. How blessed are we to have the complete picture. It doesn’t mean every detail is clear to us. Some thigs we are going to have to wait and see but we live with a fullness of revelation and a clarity that the Old Testament prophets didn’t have and quite frankly, Peter didn’t have it. Peter said Paul wrote about some of these things that are hard to understand. We know Peter struggled with the church, and the Jew and the Gentile and how this is all going to come. Not until we get to the book of Revelation is a lot of these things unfolded with clarity that puts an order to things that prophecy now we can see how we work through that 70th week of Daniel and the events there and the culmination with the second coming of Christ and the establishing of a millennium. Now we can see something. The eternal kingdom has a 1,000 year beginning and that is why we can have sin and rebellion in that kingdom because it won’t be a permanent part of the eternal kingdom. It will be part of the first phase of the eternal kingdom which will be 1,000 years. Some of these things now I understand now what couldn’t be known.

They were serving you because “In these things (verse 12) which now have been announced to you through those who preached the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.” In John 14, 15 and 16 we won’t go back there because of time Jesus said that He would send the Holy Spirit and it was important that He go to heaven because until He goes to heaven the Holy Spirit can’t come. The Holy Spirit has always been present but coming with the uniqueness of ministry He will have as a result of the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ is unique. The establishing of the church in Acts chapter 2 and so Peter says we have been preaching the Gospel to you. These are people he is writing to who haven’t had that firsthand experience. They have heard it from those who preach the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. You ought to understand the privilege this Gospel being preached to you was what the Old Testament prophesied and they were doing it for your benefit who would be the recipients of that coming of Christ. Old Testament prophets of course benefited from it because their salvation was based on it but they never understood that. They trusted God by the reformed theology they did not have a full understanding of the Gospel and didn’t believe the facts of the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. They believed the Word of God and what He promised and the fullness of understanding comes to us.

“Things in which angels long to look.” The word, ‘that longing’ it denotes an intense desire. It is a desire with a preposition on the front and it is an intense desire. They longed to look into these things. When I started I said the angels are observers of salvation, not the recipients of salvation. They are beholding the wonder of God’s saving grace as it has been experienced in your life and my life. They are in awe because the angels who sinned were eternally confirmed in their lost condition, Hebrews 2; Christ did not become an angel. God is not obligated to provide salvation for sinful human beings. There was no saving grace for fallen angels. That is why our salvation can be called grace. The angels have this intense desire to look into it, to observe it but they have never experienced it.

Back up to Ephesians chapter 3, Ephesians chapter 3. Paul is talking about the ministry that God has entrusted to him has been a stewardship, verse 2 of Ephesians 3: “If you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me” which was what – preach the message of God’s salvation and the work God was doing in bringing together Jew and Gentile into the church.” This is verse 3: “By revelation there was made known to me the mystery;” “The mystery of Christ,” the end of verse 4. “That which was not made known in other generations to the sons of men.” The church was not revealed in the Old Testament. Salvation of Gentiles was revealed but not the church. The salvation of Gentiles in the Old Testament is in the context of the kingdom and Gentiles being part of that kingdom. “The Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promise in Christ through the Gospel.” And what is it? It was given to Paul, verse 8. He called himself the least of the saints. “This grace that gift as an apostle, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God.”

Some make fun of the fact we say that the church was not revealed in the Old Testament. That is what Paul says here. It doesn’t say it wasn’t part of God’s plan. It was not a part of God’s plan that had been revealed and it wasn’t revealed until it was revealed to Paul with its fullness.

Peter is the one who preaches the message in Acts 2 that begins the church but Peter doesn’t have the understanding. Remember you get to chapter 10 of Acts and he doesn’t think the Gentiles could be included in God’s work of salvation. Paul doesn’t get saved until Acts chapter 9. In Acts chapter 10 Peter is still not and God makes clear and he understands to that degree.

Note verse 10: “So that the manifold (that multi-faceted, multi-colored) wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenlies.” Remember in Ephesians 6:18 we referred to it in an earlier study today; it is a spiritual warfare in the heavenlies. He is talking about angelic beings, the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies. This manifold wisdom of God and His grace of salvation, the angels come to know of it through the church. You note the danger. We have believers for a long time. These truths have just come through and you know pretty soon we just take them for granted. The angels don’t. They behold in your salvation the awesome multi-faceted grace of God that He saved sinful, hell-deserving beings. He did for them what He never did for the angels. Angels who served in the glory of His presence and He never provided salvation for them when they sinned but for us, sinful, wretched human beings and the angels know something of the grace of God and His salvation as they observe the church they has experienced God’s saving grace. How amazing it is. There are other verses but we won’t take the time to look at them.

I hope we never get tired. I get concerned for the church and after we have been saved awhile we cool down. We come, yes, I know, it is wonderful. It ought to be more wonderful today than it was the day I got saved because I have matured. I have a clearer understanding of what God has done for me in Christ than I had when I was first saved. I believed it. I knew I was a sinner. I knew Christ died for me but I didn’t understand. We are growing in His grace, the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It ought not to become more average to me. It ought to become more wonderful to me.

That is what Peter is telling them. You understand what a great privilege it has been, that has been given to you and what great privilege has been given to us to have the completed revelation of this truth concerning God’s saving work and a clearer unfolding of how it will all turn out and the role we have that we will have for eternity as he writes to Ephesians in chapter 2, “We will be testimonies of God’s grace for eternity.” You and I will be in heaven among the angels serving in the presence of God. We will be there as those redeemed from sin, eternal testimonies that God is a God of infinite grace.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the riches of our salvation. Lord we would never tire of giving You praise, thanking You for this grace. Lord, may it be more wonderful to us with each passing day. May it be a message we delight to tell to others. We can testify in the power of the Spirit of Your saving grace that has touched our lives that can change their lives. What a blessing it is to be a minister of Your grace, representing Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. Use us to that end in the week before us we pray in Christ’s name, amen.