one28 PodcastHonor the Lord
Jonathan Sarr
1 Peter 1:17-21
2009-12-16
one28 Wednesday worship
I. Respond with Hope (v. 13)
II. Respond with Holiness
(vv. 10-16)
III. Respond with Honor (vv.
17-21)
A. The Condition (v. 17a)
B. The Command (v. 17b)
C. The Duration (v. 17c)
D. The Reasons (vv. 18-21)
1.
The sinners’ rescue from futility (v. 18a)
a.
The futility of righteousness without Christ.
b.
The futility of religion without Christ.
2.
The Savior’s payment for sins (v. 18b)
3.
The Savior’s fellowship with the Father (v. 20a)
4.
The Savior’s coming in the flesh (v. 20b)
5.
The Savior’s gifts to believers (v. 21)
If I were God, I’d be pretty
mad.
I’ve been thinking about this
a lot lately, and I’ve even spoken with a few people about it. But I can only go off of my own experience. For my part, I love my kids a lot. I think the sun rises and sets on their
little blonde noggins. But at best
my love for my children is a faint shadow of the Father’s love for the
Son. Here’s why.
First off, I am a vile sinner
and my love is capricious. I love
my children more at certain times than others, leading me to conclude that my
love is at times conditional. The
Father is holy and so is His love for the Son.
My children are sinners. Christ is sinless and holy. I can’t even imagine loving a human who
is altogether lovely at all times and is completely deserving of my love,
because it’s never happened.
Christ, however, is pure and sinless and deserving of all praise and
love, all the time, which is why the Father saw fit to glorify the Son.
I cannot begin to imagine
ever giving my children’s life for another. I love my children more than anyone else beside my wife, and
to trade their life for someone else is unthinkable. It’s even more unthinkable to do so for someone who hated me
and who, in effect, were to kill my child.
So, imagining that I were to
actually love someone else enough to sacrifice my children to save his life,
you can BET that I’d expect some gratitude. And if the person responded with apathy or indifference, I’d
be pretty upset, and I think you’d understand why.
And yet, that’s exactly what
we do. We fail to conceive of the
sacrifice the Father made for us and act as though we deserve it.
And as if that weren’t
enough, in His love the Father executed the Son of His love. He not only witnessed the suffering of
His Son, but actually administered it.
If it weren’t bad enough to watch His Son suffer, it had to be greater
to actually be the One carrying it out.
And how do we respond to
this? A lack of gratitude? Apathy?
Perhaps praise and
excitement?
Our tendency is to sell God
short or to presume upon His grace.
This is part of why we treat the Bible like a series of fairy tales: God
is not so quick to visibly, physically correct us for our disobedience as was
perhaps in the Old Testament or even the early Church age. But that this kind of lukewarm,
apathetic pseudo-Christianity is the sort of thing that earned Israel and Judah
judgment and what made Christ want to spit the Laodicean church out of His
mouth.
Let’s think about this
another way.
Imagine you were guilty of
murder. You have been sentenced to
death by hanging, and you’re standing on the gallows with the noose around your
neck. Beneath your feet is the
trap door that will give way when the executioner pulls the appropriate
lever. In this case, the
executioner himself has the power to pardon or execute. What’s more, the one you killed was the
only son of the executioner.
Imagine now that you are allowed to address this executioner, while the
noose is around your neck and his hand is on the lever. How would you address him?
I don’t think in that
situation that we’d have trouble honoring the executioner. This mere man, who only has power to
destroy our body would earn our utmost respect and fear. But to the One who has power to destroy
both body and soul we ascribe not honor, but apathy.
Imagine now that the
executioner were to say, “I forgive you.
I declare you innocent, and I will now love you like the child of mine
that you have killed.” Would you
say, “Eh, that’s fine,” or, “Cool. You can be my homeboy.” Or worse, would you have no response
whatsoever?
If this were a human example,
and I were that executioner, I would be mad. “You killed my son, and I graciously pardoned you when you
were sentenced to death and you don’t even care! I’m going to bind you and put the noose back on your neck
and teach the world a lesson by making an example of you.”
More than likely, if you were
the one on the gallows, and you were pardoned, you’d walk away changed, and
your relationship with the executioner would be forever changed. Your position would be one of humble
gratitude, and you’d regularly express that gratitude with appropriate
honor. You would frequently
reflect on the salvation you received and it would impact how you lived.
That is why Peter wanted his
readers to focus all the time on what they’d been given in Christ. Despite what they deserved, God had
looked on them with favor and chosen them out of the world as His own. What could men do to them?
If this is not your regular
response to your salvation, perhaps you’ve never been saved.
Our offense is infinitely
greater than mere murder not because of what we’ve done, but because of Whom we
have offended. We have violated
the standards of a holy God.
The most natural thing in the
world ought to be our righteous fear of the Lord.
Our passage for this evening,
1 Peter 1:17-21 is at the end of a paragraph that begins in verse 13. Leading up to that paragraph the
Apostle Peter encourages them to focus on their salvation and the glories of
their inheritance and the grace that will be brought to them at the revelation
of Jesus Christ. This is because
their life was hard, and they were suffering as believers are supposed to
suffer. The visible, the seen
things of the world were being taken away by men, and Peter wanted them to
focus on what they possessed that was “imperishable, undefiled and unfading,
kept in heaven for” them: their inheritance in Christ.
So he fills their minds with
these glorious promises and great reminders in verses 1-12. In this paragraph, verses 13-21 Peter
gives his readers instruction on what the Christian’s most basic, obvious
responses to his salvation ought to be.
I think our problem is that
our familiarity with the Bible handicaps our wonderment. It’s the same thing with the story of
the flood as with the story of David killing Goliath as it is with the story of
our redemption: we’ve heard it so many times that it sounds like fiction and we
become apathetic. Can I just
caution you against that?
Peter sees fit to remind his
readers of rich truths about God and salvation, but catch that: they’re reminders. They (like
we) need reminding lest they become jaded and fail to praise God for the riches
of their salvation.
Read with me 1 Peter
1:13-21.
So, the last time we were
together, we started to look at what these responses should be. Peter
identifies three attitudes that should characterize all believers in response
to their salvation: hope, holiness and honor.
The Christian’s hope is in the God, His Word, His faithfulness and His
promises. Hope in God should be
contrasted with hope in men, which is our own basis of reference. Our hope is generally in men or in things
that God has not promised, and so we are often disappointed. We are told not to
“get our hopes up” because they’re likely to be disappointed. We cannot conceive of a hope that is in
something that is rock solid, guaranteed to deliver. Such a hope is a sound investment of our hearts and our
attention.
Our holiness is a natural response to our salvation, as well. God has commanded our holiness as it is
consistent with His character.
That’s why He says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” But grateful obedience to the One who
has loved and redeemed us is also a natural response to our salvation, so we
want to obey His laws because we love Him. Further, in commanding our holiness, God has not commanded something
that He will not bring about personally, as His Spirit resides within us. It’s as though He says, “Be holy, and I
will personally make you holy as My Spirit directs you.”
There is a third attitude
that ought to characterize the believer, and that is honor. This is the fear of the Lord, and this honor is the
subject of our lesson for this evening.
In our passage for this
evening, Peter gives us rich, wonderful theological instruction and reminders,
but we must keep in mind that he gives them as a rationale for his greater
command of the honor of the Lord.
In other words, he says, “Fear God. Here’s why…” and then he offers rich truths about the love
of God and how He has saved us. So
tonight, as we learn more about the work that the Father has done to redeem us,
remember that this is under the umbrella of the command to honor the Lord.
A. The Condition (v. 17a)
17 And if you
call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,
This is to say, in effect,
“if you’re a Christian,” since there is nobody else who calls “on him as Father
who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds,” and since this is
actually required for believers.
God judges impartially. That
is not to say that He does not look with special favor on His children. In fact, Christ is judged for our sins;
we are not judged at all. But this
is to say that, rather, God’s standard for our holiness is the same for all
men. The requirement for all men
is holiness for salvation, and all men fall short. He has an impartial, unbiased standard for all men. He is no respecter of persons, and
nobody gets a free pass, but that is only because of his holy and righteous
character.
But rather than being
frightening, these words are intended to encourage Peter’s readers, because men
are all wicked, and God judges impartially, so men are equally damned to
hell. But we have redemption
through the righteousness of another: Jesus Christ. As those who have been saved, then, the most natural
response in the world ought to be our fear of God.
So this is to say, then,
nothing more than “if you’re a believer….” Then he issues the actual command in
the second part of the verse:
B. The Command (v. 17b)
conduct yourselves with
fear
Biblical fear, that is, the
fear of God is the same sort of fear as we talked about earlier with respect to
the executioner. It is appropriate
reverence and respect. It also has
to do with the sort of attitude I want for my children to have toward me; I
want them to love me as one who would die for them and as their daddy, but I
also want them to have a fear of consequences that I will carry out when they
are disobedient in order for that fear to effect their right living. I think that these attitudes are
effectively wrapped up in the command to honor the LORD.
MacArthur observes a
connection between these three attitudes: “Hope and holiness produce a life of
worship, the most foundational of spiritual virtues: ‘The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.’” In effect, Peter’s third command here
to Honor the Lord is the natural outflow of the two commands that precede.
C. The Duration (v. 17c)
throughout the time of
your exile,
You’ll recall that in verse 1
Peter calls his readers “elect exiles.”
Being elect of God is cause for encouragement and the reminder that
their home was not of this world would also lend perspective. That is all wrapped up in the term
“elect exiles.”
Exiles are strangers; they
are forced – for a time – to be estranged from their homes. Do you think of heaven as your
home? Is that where your heart
is? Is that where you long to
be? Do you look at your time here
as that of an exile? Because it
is. Believers are here for
specific reasons, including glorifying God in our suffering, our evangelizing
the lost, our building up of the church and so on.
So if they are to “conduct
[themselves] in fear throughout the time of [their] exile,” how long are we
talking? Well, if they are exiles in life, then they’ll be exiles their whole
life; their whole lives would represent their “stay” in this world.
He already told them that
this suffering was but for a little while. Verse 6 says, “In this you rejoice, though now for a
little while, if necessary, you have
been grieved by various trials.”
But undoubtedly it will be their whole lives. The point here is that he is charging them to remain
faithful throughout the time of [their] exile. That
is, the whole time!
But now he transitions to a
number of reasons why God is worthy of our honor. And they center on what He has done for believers. So again, I remind you, that as we look
at these reasons, remember the overall charge to honor the Lord, as these are
all good reasons to do so.
D. The Reasons (vv. 18-21)
1. The sinners’ rescue
from futility (v. 18a)
18 knowing that
you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers,
I think that the futility
Peter is mentioning here has two key pieces: the general futility of life that
they’ve inherited from their ancestors, and the futility of their
religion.
First, the futility of righteousness
without Christ. Life is vain and then you die. The lot that men inherit is
fundamentally futile. We think of
an inheritance as some valuable monetary gift from one generation to the next. Well, in the greater scheme of things,
our monetary success and possessions mean nothing. MacArthur says it well: “Even the grandest
accomplishments unbelievers seem to achieve are pointless from eternity’s
perspective.”
And this is despairing. In light of this, there is no hope for
mankind apart from Christ. We
cannot break away from this monotony and hopelessness. Apart from Christ, the very best you
can do – the very best – will earn you nothing but hell. If that’s not futility, I don’t know what
is. And from that, we have been
ransomed.
Second, the futility of
religion without Christ. The reason I think that Peter is making
a point about their religion is because of what follows related to Christ’s
blood in the second half of verse 18.
In the Old Testament we have
moral and ceremonial laws that He has instituted. These included a payment for sins in the form of animal
sacrifices. And I think Peter’s
audience was well aware that the payment of sins that Christ made was far
superior to the blood of bulls and goats.
Herein lies the
futility. The blood of bulls and
goats covered our sins, but Christ’s blood removes them.
But this religion apart from
Christ is completely futile. For
the most pious, obedient servant of God, the very best he could experience
apart from the sacrifice of Christ is a covering up of their iniquities. He could obey and carry out ceremonial
law after ceremonial law, and it would never be enough to eradicate his sin. In fact, all it ultimately did was
reveal his guilt and point him to Christ, which was its intent.
“And from this”, says Peter,
“you were bought with a price.
“You were ransomed,” the text says. Christ paid a price that we could not pay. But without the ransom of Christ, there
is no atonement, no payment for sins.
That is reason for us to give
God praise and to conduct ourselves with fear, but Peter’s just getting warmed
up.
2. The Savior’s payment
for sins (v. 18b)
not with perishable things
such as silver or gold, 19 but
with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or
spot.
Talking more about this
payment, the Father atoned for our sins with the sacrificial and sufficient
blood of Christ.
Notice that throughout this
passage Peter contrasts the spiritual and the temporal. Whether he’s pointing to the futility
of life apart from Christ versus with Christ, or the silver and gold versus the blood of Christ, he’s driving
home that their perspective has to be eternal, and they must focus on the
unseen.
The purchase of their souls
was not an earthly purchase requiring perishing earthly resources. Rather, since the offense of their sin
is spiritual in nature, this is a spiritual ransom, requiring a spiritual currency: Christ’s blood.
Peter cannot divorce himself
from his Hebrew roots as he compares the blood of Christ with the blood of “a
lamb without blemish or spot.”
This is fitting, since the lamb was intended to be a picture of Christ,
but like the lamb, Christ was without blemish.
3. The Savior’s fellowship
with the Father (v. 20a)
20 He was
foreknown before the foundation of the world
Don’t dare separate this from
the preceding verse(s). Peter is
teaching here of the eternality of this plan of God. This is not mere prescience (knowing beforehand). The Father wasn’t just aware that Jesus
was going to come to earth to die; the Father sent the Son.
Peter is pointing out that it was the plan of God all along to send
Christ to die for our sins. This
was the plan long before there was
sin to atone for! This plan was in
the mind of God from eternity past.
Shouldn’t that cause us to honor Him?
As an aside, do you see how
ridiculous it is to talk of God’s foreknowledge as just knowing beforehand what
is going to happen? That doesn’t
inspire us to praise Him nearly as much as the truth, that God ordained to
redeem men millennia before they needed redemption!
4. The Savior’s coming in
the flesh (v. 20b)
but was made manifest in
the last times for your sake,
Though He was foreknown
before the foundation of the world, He actually came in the flesh to actualize
the Father’s plan. This coming in
the flesh as a man was necessary to die a man’s death to atone for men’s sins. The second Person of the Trinity who
was directly involved in creation “was made manifest in the last times” for
whom? “For your sake,” says Peter.
This coming was for the
benefit of believers. Do you
realize that nonbelievers experience only minor moral benefits of Christ having
come in the flesh, setting a good example for humans to follow? But the real benefit belongs to
believers.
And here again, our
familiarity handicaps our wonder. We’re
talking about the One who had perfect fellowship with the Father and the Spirit
for all of eternity past, and He set that aside to come as a man to redeem us
so that we could be joined to Him in eternity.
This ought to cause us to
conduct ourselves with fear throughout the time of our exile.
Finally, we see the Savior’s
gift to believers.
5. The Savior’s gifts to
believers (v. 21)
21 who through
him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Through Christ we are believers in God. Throughout the New Testament we have the rich principle of
our inheritance in Him. He is our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Advocate, our
Righteousness and our very Inheritance.
All that we have we have in Him and by His grace. Positionally we are already in heaven
with Him in glory.
Further, we are believers in
God through Christ because – though we are believers – we didn’t
get that way on our own. Even our
belief is a gift from Him; He enables our belief and He gives us faith.
“So that…” points back to the
end of verse 20 and the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. Minus the parenthetical thoughts it
could read like this: “He was made manifest in the last times for your sake…
so that your faith and hope are in God.”
We come back around to faith
and hope as we did in the opening verse of this paragraph. Faith deal with our attitude toward the
present and hope deals with our attitude toward the future. It comes back to the certainty of
the object of our hope. Our hope
is in the God-Man who appeared, not in some myth from the minds of men.
And this faith is
salvific! It is faith that saves,
and this information would be no treasure if it did not mean that we were
saved.
CONCLUSION
I made the case when I
introduced this paragraph last time that certain information requires a
response. When you know a piano is
falling toward where you are standing, you move. When you know that the Father sent His Son to the earth to
die for your sins, you fall on your face in reverential worship. You don’t say, “whatever,” or “good
move, God.”
1. What is your response to your salvation?
2. Do you think of heaven as your home? Do you want to go there now? How does that impact your living now?
3. How can you maintain the wonderment of your
salvation?
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