Loving and Believing in the Unseen Christ - 1 Peter 1:8

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

I'll turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter one, no surprise there. Today our focus will be on verse eight.

00:07

We'll start by reading verses three through nine of 1 Peter chapter one. Blessed be the

00:15

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

00:36

In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

00:53

And though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

01:06

So last time back in August, as I'm sure you all remember, we looked at verses six and seven. You don't remember that?

01:14

We examined the blessings of our salvation. We saw that as we contemplate the blessings of our salvation, it inevitably results in joy.

01:22

You see in verse six, in this you greatly rejoice. We looked at the nature and purpose of trials.

01:28

We saw that trials serve to show to us the genuineness of our faith. The fact that we can go through trial, we can come out of trial in faith, it shows that it's a

01:36

God -given faith. It's not just a simple human faith. And lastly, we saw that faithful, joyful perseverance through trials results in reward.

01:45

You see that in verse number seven. Praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ when we see him face to face.

01:54

That brings us to verse eight. This is where we'll be today. Verse eight, and though you have not seen him, you love him.

02:01

And though you do not see him now but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory.

02:08

The main point of the verse, Peter's intent, is to commend the faith of those who believe in an unseen

02:13

Christ, to commend the love and faith of those who have never seen him. It is remarkable to Peter that we could put such love and faith in a person whom we've never seen, with whom we've never had direct communication.

02:28

It connects back to the prior passage. It shows the greatness, the esteem in which we ought to hold our faith.

02:36

It shows it's a faith that not only perseveres through trials, but it's also a faith that isn't informed by direct communication, by sight, by perception.

02:47

And that's, to Peter, marvelous in the sense that he marvels at it. So I wanna be clear on how

02:53

I'm gonna share this verse with you, kind of the plan.

02:59

Of course, I wanna share with you the main intent of the passage, but in order to do that, I have to spend a lion's share of the time on these two subordinate clauses, and I checked with my daughter,

03:09

Jamie, to make sure that I'm using the term correctly. These are subordinate clauses, or dependent clauses

03:16

Peter uses here. They're very similar. You see them here in verse eight. The first one is, and though you have not seen him, and the second one is, though you do not see him now.

03:26

All right, so the only difference in them is the tense of the verb to see. So they're the same basic idea.

03:32

Peter is denying that you have seen him and that you see him now. All right, so we're gonna break that down first.

03:39

First of all, the easy part. And though you have not seen him, start with the easy part, which is who is him. Him is clearly a reference to Jesus, since we saw back in verse seven that perseverance through trials results in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ when we see him face to face.

03:55

Now Peter's contrasting that in verse eight to a time when you, though you have not seen him this time.

04:03

So him is a reference to Jesus Christ. You have not seen him. You haven't seen Jesus Christ.

04:09

Now the verb seen. It can mean to see with your eyes, mean to see physically.

04:15

You know, I can see Jess in the back there. You use it that way. But we also use the word in the way this does to mean things that don't refer necessarily to physical sight.

04:26

When we say, oh, I see, that doesn't necessarily mean that we see with our eyes.

04:31

It means that we have some perception. We receive some communication. We might say, I see what you're saying.

04:36

I see what you're saying. Well, we don't actually see what you're saying. All right, we understand or we perceive.

04:43

We have received some communication. And so Peter is here saying, the verb here is you have not seen him, meaning you have not received any sort of communication, direct communication from him.

04:57

You haven't received communication from Jesus Christ. Now you know that there are visions.

05:03

There are visions in scripture that are not physical visions. You know that. We'll look at some of those later.

05:09

The context here would indicate Peter's referring to any kind, and we gotta get this straight from the beginning.

05:15

This is important. Peter's referring to any kind of perception or communication from Christ.

05:22

Not just seeing his physical body. Why do I say that?

05:29

Because of the context of the verse, the meaning of the verse. Love and faith in a person that had been communicating with them through visions or voices or signs or symbols or whatever.

05:41

That wouldn't be marvelous. That wouldn't be commendable faith. That would just be normal faith, normal human faith.

05:49

Nothing really commendable in it. I'll give you an example. When you came in today, you sat down in a chair.

05:56

Everybody's sitting in a chair. Now some of you sit in the exact same chair every single week.

06:02

So for you, you have faith that that chair's gonna hold up your weight because you think it's that same chair, right?

06:08

That's my chair. All right, well all the chairs are the same and they do actually get moved around a little bit just so you know.

06:15

All right, so that may not be your actual chair. But you sat down on that chair and it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

06:22

You looked at the chair. It looks like a chair that would hold my weight. I have experience with this kind of a chair.

06:28

When I feel it, it feels like a chair. I guess it sounds like a chair. Chairs don't make any sound so it's appropriate, right?

06:36

That's normal human faith. There's nothing commendable or marvelous about that, is there? Like, oh man, you show such great faith.

06:43

But if somebody said, hey, we're using invisible chairs today. They're all invisible chairs. And you sat down in them.

06:49

And you trusted that you could sit down in that invisible chair. That would be kind of different, right?

06:56

That's a little bit more than simple human faith. Now that would be displaced faith. But faith in Christ is not so.

07:04

Faith in Christ is commendable in that we have no direct communication. We have nothing that would give us that normal human faith in Christ.

07:14

Okay? That's a marvelous thing here. This is love for Christ and faith in Christ through trials for Christ, even though we have never seen

07:23

Christ and will not see him. So Peter seems to be able to say confidently to his readers that they had never seen him in the flesh.

07:31

They said, you have not seen him. Peter had obviously seen him. And this was written to people outside of Judea.

07:38

So I think that's the context here, is that he's saying you haven't seen him as had Peter. Peter had seen him in the flesh.

07:45

It's possible that some readers of this letter had actually seen Christ in the flesh.

07:50

It's possible. It's possible John read the letter. Those sorts of things are possible. But Peter's point is that in general, the readers of this letter would not have been in the area of Judea during the life of Christ.

08:02

They would not have seen him in the flesh, and so they would not have seen him at all. Okay? Peter also says you do not see him now.

08:12

What is now? Now is just a reference to this lifetime. Peter had just used this earlier, a couple verses back, to tell you that trials are now.

08:23

So the period of time in which trials are is now, and trials are during our lifetime. So that's what now is.

08:28

So he's saying you haven't seen him in the past, and you will not see him in your lifetime. You're not seeing him now. And remember,

08:35

I'm using seeing him, any sort of perception, any sort of extra -biblical communication from Christ.

08:42

You're not experiencing that. You've never experienced it, and you're not experiencing it now. That's what he's telling him. Hmm. Wasn't it possible, though?

08:53

Wasn't it possible to see him after his ascension? Isn't it possible to see him now? Can't we see him today in the broader sense of hearing a voice or perceiving him somehow through our senses or in our spirits?

09:06

Don't people have visions and hear voices and see signs and get special communication that helps their faith, that it increases their love for Christ?

09:16

Isn't it possible he might come and give you some special encouragement or some guidance through a difficult decision?

09:23

Couldn't he do that? Couldn't he visit us outside of his body? Couldn't he make himself known even today?

09:30

Yeah. Of course he could. He's omnipresent.

09:37

He can be at all, he is at all places at all times. He can make himself known if he chooses to do so.

09:43

That's really not the question. The question is whether or not such a thing is reasonable to expect from our study of the

09:51

Scripture. Is it reasonable to expect that we would see, hear, perceive

09:56

Christ as a normal part of our Christian experience? And the answer to that is no.

10:03

That is not the testimony of Scripture. We're not told to look for him.

10:09

We're not told to listen for him. It's nowhere given us as a reasonable expectation that that should be part of the normal Christian life.

10:18

We're just not. We're not told to listen for his still small voice, try to discern messages from things that happen and birds flying across our path and all that kind of stuff that people write books about.

10:29

We're not directed to see him now in the course of life on this earth. Now if you disagree with that,

10:36

I guess I would have to search the Scriptures to help you find a passage that said something like you do not see him now.

10:43

Oh, here's one, 1 Peter 1 .8. You cannot see him, you do not see him now.

10:51

And remember the point of the verse again. We are commended for loving and believing in him whom we cannot see.

10:56

If seeing and hearing and communicating extra -biblically with Christ or the Spirit or the Father, if that were normative for the

11:03

Christian life, why would this verse be here? It doesn't make any sense in that context.

11:10

Wouldn't Peter say something like, look for him, listen for him, read the signs, learn to understand the signs, these inarticulate clues that you have to interpret.

11:23

That's how you will love him and believe in him. That's what Peter would say. Wouldn't he say to these believers to look for those sorts of experiences?

11:33

Seems like that would be the approach he would take. If that were in fact common. But it isn't, that's what makes your

11:42

God -given faith so commendable, so impressive. It's not based on visions and voices and extra -biblical communication.

11:49

It's based simply on the Word of God. So I hope that you understand that, that we shouldn't expect to see or perceive directly communication from Christ, from the

12:00

Spirit, from the Father, we shouldn't expect that. It's just not part of the normal Christian experience.

12:06

And I know that's bad news for some within the broad Christian tradition. Christianism quotes here in my notes.

12:13

You can see that. You can zoom in on whatever that thing is, I suppose. I hope if I ask you if you've ever seen

12:22

Christ, that you would say, well, no. I have understood him,

12:30

I have seen him in the Word. That's true. But if I simply ask you have you seen

12:35

Christ in the sense of you've received some direct communication from Christ, I hope that you would say no. But there are rank unbelievers out there and nominal

12:44

Christians and even some genuine, genuine though misled Christians that will say that they've seen

12:51

Christ with their eyes or they've otherwise communicated with God. The Catholic Church. It's rife with visions of Mary and Jesus.

13:00

We're not Catholics. We're not Catholics for a lot of reasons. This wouldn't make the top 10, so we won't go into that.

13:07

The charismatic tradition. Very busy heaven tourism industry, right? Lots of people going to heaven.

13:14

And those trips always seem to include some communication with some blasphemous version of Christ or the

13:20

Father or the Spirit or all three somehow combined. There's just all kinds of, in the charismatic tradition, all kinds of casual conversations with Christ.

13:30

Christ talking to people and they have conversations with him. We're not charismatics. But even in the broader evangelical tradition, there are all sorts of special communications that people claim.

13:43

Beth Moore. There's a lot of talk about Beth Moore today. Beth Moore and Jesus have lots of casual conversations.

13:52

Jesus told Beth Moore to comb some, or to brush somebody's hair one time. I don't know the context of that.

13:59

I don't care, but she says he has very often had given her visions, personal questions, and statements for her to share with her audience.

14:10

Sarah Young. I'm not gonna ask anybody if they have read any of Sarah Young's books because I don't want to embarrass anybody.

14:18

You should be embarrassed if you have. She hears from Jesus all the time. Sarah Young.

14:26

She writes it down in her bestselling books, Jesus Calling, you've heard of that. Her actual theology is not what's most troublesome, the theological content of what she writes, but she writes as if she speaks for Jesus Christ.

14:40

She writes in the first person, as if she is Jesus Christ speaking, Christ speaking through her to you.

14:46

And then she revises it in later editions. As Jesus got a few things wrong, he had to go back and fix them like the first edit, all that.

14:57

She gins out book after book. Here's some of them. Jesus Calling, Jesus Always, Jesus Today, Jesus Lives, Dear Jesus, Jesus Calling for Christmas, Jesus Calling for Graduates, Jesus Calling Kids, think about that one.

15:13

Jesus Teyama, that's for Ed. She has a,

15:21

I don't know exactly what this one's called. It's basically, it's Jesus Calling People with some extra cash to buy a leather -bound edition of Jesus Calling.

15:29

It makes you wonder what's next. I think you could have fun with this at your lunch table today. Jesus Calling Collect, all right.

15:38

Jesus Texting, I don't know. Jesus Calling a Square Dance, that's for John in the back.

15:47

It's really ridiculous, isn't it? It's blasphemous to say that you speak, that he is speaking to you and you speak for him.

15:57

He's not calling you outside of scripture. Somebody may be calling Sarah Young, but it's not

16:03

Jesus. Now, it's common, though, even in theologically conservative evangelical circles like this one, that we speak of the

16:14

Lord or the Spirit giving us some sort of special communication. We need to be more careful about this.

16:21

God told me this. I'm not saying God told me this. I'm using,

16:26

I'm saying people say, God told me this. You hear people say that, like, I felt a burden. The Spirit led me to do this or that.

16:35

The Lord placed this on my heart. There is no extra biblical revelation given to us today.

16:44

There are no meaningful visions. There's no communication given in fake trips to heaven, vague patterns in the bark of a tree or the wood grain on a door, a hawk soaring across your path, any of that stuff.

17:02

Listen, if you don't get anything else, I hope you get other things, but we have a very clear, very thorough, very extensive, detailed communication from God, and you have a reliable English translation of it in your lap right now.

17:25

What more do you need? This is what drove

17:31

Sarah Young. She needed something more. What an insult.

17:38

Look, after you've mastered, there's about 800 ,000 words in your Bible. After you've mastered every last one of them, maybe you might need some extra biblical communication.

17:49

It'll never happen. Not even in eternity will that happen. We will never plumb the depths of this glorious written communication.

18:00

You could spend a lifetime on 1 Peter. It's a small book. You could spend a lifetime on it. You feel like you have, right?

18:07

Let me, remember how much time we spent on Ecclesiastes? I found something out a couple weeks ago.

18:14

Jim has taught that three times. Now, think about that. Three times in the book of Ecclesiastes.

18:21

You read through Ecclesiastes like, oh man, I wonder what's next. When you're doing your reading through the Bible, but there's that much content in the book of Ecclesiastes.

18:31

There's no limit. So let's look at some objections to this. If we don't see him, what about the visions in Acts?

18:41

Stephen, Ananias, and Paul, they had visions of Christ. Don't these prove that Jesus does, in fact, communicate with his children?

18:51

I kind of debated on how much to go into detail, so I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail on these. You remember some of the accounts.

18:58

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, he was accused of going against Moses in the law, and he was stoned to death.

19:06

And as he was dying, he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

19:16

Wasn't this a vision of Christ? Didn't Stephen see him? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he saw

19:22

Christ standing at the right hand of God. Now, he was either given a vision of heaven, or he was given a vision into heaven.

19:31

I don't know, but he didn't have a lengthy, casual conversation about brushing someone's hair, or anything like that, but he did have a vision of his master, the one he had been defending as the righteous one, as he was dying, as the first Christian martyr.

19:46

So yes, in this important instance, he did receive a vision. He saw

19:51

Christ, he saw him. Paul, at least twice, Paul, see, he saw and heard

19:57

Christ on the road to Damascus. You remember the account of Paul's conversion? Acts 9,

20:03

Paul refers back to that event in 1 Corinthians 15. When he refers back to it in 1 Corinthians 15, he puts it in a list with bodily resurrection, post -resurrection appearances of Christ.

20:16

So that indicates to us that that was an actual bodily appearance of Christ to Paul. So I believe

20:22

Paul, I believe, I don't know, rays of light, light beams of light, whatever you call, light waves, they bounced off of the body of Christ and into the eyeballs of Peter.

20:34

I believe that this was a bodily vision of Christ. The voice box of Christ spoke the words to Paul, and he heard them.

20:42

So he saw him, he communicated directly with Christ. Paul had another vision of the temple of Jerusalem.

20:49

He says, he relates this in Acts 22, and he says that he was in a trance, and he saw Christ, Christ warning him to leave.

20:56

This was after Christ's ascension, Paul saw him. This appears to be more of a dream -like vision.

21:03

It's authentic and genuine, but not a physical vision. Okay, Ananias. He was a disciple of Christ in Damascus.

21:11

He received a vision of Christ when he was told to go and confirm Paul's conversion. This is verse 10 from Acts 9.

21:19

Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, here I am, Lord.

21:25

And then he received some other direction. He was given this vision of Christ. He was told to participate in the confirmation of what

21:31

Christ called the chosen instrument, Paul. Paul was his chosen instrument, and Paul was to bear his name before the

21:37

Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. Did Ananias see him? Yeah, he did.

21:43

He saw him, and he heard him. Legitimate vision of Jesus Christ. So how can Peter make the statement, then, you have not seen him, and you do not see him now, when in fact,

21:50

Steve and Paul and Ananias, they saw him after his ascension into heaven? Well, Peter's writing around 64

21:58

AD, remember that? The events, Acts is probably recorded about the same, around that same time.

22:06

But the events in Acts occurred earlier. They occurred before the close of the canon, before the sign gifts had ceased, before miracle workers had departed from the scene, before the apostles were all but gone from the earth.

22:18

Jim did a series on Acts years ago. He did a really excellent job of showing us this is a transitional book.

22:25

You see it in the book of Acts itself. It's a transitional book. We can't take every single miraculous event that happened in Acts and believe that it's normative for this age of grace.

22:37

Much of what happened in Acts is unique in all history. And the church always understood it so, until about 1906, the

22:44

Azusa Street Revival, when the charismatic chaos began, and people began for the first time in church history to think that those things were normative for today.

22:53

Other than some fringe heretical groups, for 1900 years, everyone had understood that those things in Acts were unique to Acts, to that period of time.

23:02

So we shouldn't think we should have miraculous, special, revelatory communication from Christ, as they had.

23:08

They were living and hearing and seeing the scripture and recording it for us.

23:14

It's in the canon from which we now benefit. We're just not told to expect that sort of thing.

23:19

In fact, we're told we have not seen him and do not see him now. Note this, no such visions that we see in Acts were given to James, the

23:30

Lord's brother, the pillar of the church in Jerusalem. To Andrew, Peter's brother, the one who brought

23:35

Peter to Christ. Timothy, Barnabas, Silas, Jude, the

23:41

Lord's other half -brother, Mary. It's very rare.

23:47

These sorts of visions are extremely rare, even in Acts. What about John's visions?

23:54

Well, John had a vision of Christ, didn't he? The book of Revelation, written well after 1 Peter, he had a vision of Christ.

24:02

Didn't John see him? Yeah, he did. 11 times in Revelation, John says, I looked. And four or five of those times, depending on how you interpret one of them, he saw

24:14

Jesus Christ. So he saw Christ. He saw him.

24:21

So doesn't the fact that the apostle John, Christ's closest associate on this earth, one of the pillars of the church, he had a

24:30

God -breathed vision of Christ recorded for all Christian history, it was given to John expressly by the

24:36

Holy Spirit, doesn't that mean we should all expect extra -biblical revelation all the time? We should all expect to see visions of Christ all the time, telling him to brush somebody's hair, things like that?

24:47

Can't you see there's a difference in kind between revelation given through the

24:53

Holy Spirit to be recorded in Scripture, and just these casual conversations that people are having with Christ?

25:01

Peter's telling us we have not seen him and we do not see him. This is the nearly universal common experience that we should, as Bible -believing

25:09

Christians, expect. He doesn't say, look, most of you are still seeing him in patterns in your toast and in the shape of your

25:16

Cheetos. He doesn't say that. Most of you are seeing him in the clouds and receiving some sort of vague communication from him that you're not really sure, but he doesn't say,

25:27

I'm gonna speak to you so you can write millions of books to sell to global people. We ought to think it's kind of ridiculous, right, to think that Jesus would spend that much time with the likes of Jesse Duplantis.

25:42

It's, no. The visions and acts in John are extremely rare. These are just not, they weren't even the norm at that time, at the time of the apostles.

25:52

It wasn't even the norm then. Very rare. It's about as rare as raising somebody from the dead, but only a little lunatic fringe of the

26:04

NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation. They're the only ones I know of that are running around claiming resurrections.

26:11

Why? If you're gonna claim that God speaks to you, you have visions of Christ that he speaks to you somehow, why not raise people from the dead?

26:22

So let's look at some objections to this. In all of this, do we put

26:28

God in a box? Heard that? You put God in a box. Do we put limits on God?

26:38

No, we don't put God in anything. He puts us in a box.

26:44

It's a glorious, marvelous box from which we can relate to Christ. Look, if God has described the box and he has given its dimensions, its boundaries and its borders, we ought to, as obedient children, live in that box.

26:58

If God teaches in his word that we do not see him now, we ought not to expect to see him now.

27:05

If he says he doesn't speak outside of his word, we ought not to expect to hear him outside of his word.

27:11

If he tells us the scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work, we ought not to look for other means of adequacy and better and more exciting equipment.

27:32

He's given this book, he's told us it's sufficient. How blasphemous, how idolatrous to seek more.

27:38

How ungrateful, how demeaning to the word of God and to God himself. We just don't need it.

27:45

We just don't need voices and visions and ridiculous antics to love and trust the savior.

27:50

We just need to study and learn and heed his inspired word. Are you saying that God is not active today?

28:00

You're saying God's not active? No. God is sovereign.

28:07

God does everything. Everything that happens, God does it. God is the first cause of everything.

28:12

He holds everything together from the most minute particle, and I know they're always inventing new particles, I don't know what they are, quarks and that stuff, he holds all that together, to the most massive galaxy, to the entire universe, he holds it all together.

28:25

He is constantly active. If we've talked at all about these sorts of things, you know

28:33

I don't believe in anything as strongly as I believe in the absolute, complete, total sovereignty of God in everything.

28:42

I believe he is, there's a sense in which he is the only active one. Everything else is just subject to his activity.

28:52

He's intensely, supremely active in everything. In your body, in your life, and in your family, and in your church, and in your work, he's active.

29:02

I'm only denying a certain set of activities that he himself denies. You don't see him, you haven't seen him, and you don't see him now.

29:11

We shouldn't expect to see him in the broad sense of that word. But what if we have an impression, you know, an impression, a nudge, a feeling?

29:22

We should do this or that. Couldn't that be from God? Couldn't that be from God? Here's the point,

29:29

I have no idea. I have no idea, and neither do you.

29:37

That's the point. You can't know. You can't know if whether some impression or some thought that you have is something that God is telling you to do or not.

29:48

You just can't, we're not given any assurance that we ought to expect that sort of revelation of God's will.

29:56

And we don't need him. We just don't need him, not at all. We have a book of books that's sufficient for any decision we need to make, anything we need to go through.

30:07

Okay, so we haven't seen him, we do not see him now. But that's not the point of the passage. So that's the introduction.

30:16

That's part of the point of the passage. But there's a couple of verbs here. Though you haven't seen him, you love him.

30:24

Though you do not see him now, you believe in him. There's a couple of verbs here that we want to look at. So first, you love him.

30:33

What does it mean to love? This is the agape love, it's the love that's described in 1 Corinthians 13. I did a message on 1

30:40

Corinthians 13 a long time ago. It was the worst message I've ever done, I'll just be honest with you. And so don't go back and listen to that.

30:46

If we could delete that from the website, that'd be good. Josh says no. But it's a great chapter,

30:55

I just didn't do that well with it but the idea of Christian love is explained very well in that chapter.

31:00

If I had to boil it down to one term, it would be this. It does not seek its own. Some translations say it's not self -seeking or does not insist on its own where, is not selfish.

31:12

That's the basic idea of Christian love. It's a sacrifice of self for the benefit of others, it's done willingly and it's done consciously, it's done with warm affection, it's done reasonably under the notion that the person whom

31:24

I love is as worthy of good as am I. So it's done reasonably in that sense.

31:33

But what does it mean to show this kind of sacrificial love for Christ? We're commended here for loving

31:40

Christ even though we haven't seen him. So how do we show that kind of love for Christ? In John 14, 15, the

31:46

Lord says this. If you love me, you will do what? Keep my commandments.

31:54

If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So when it comes to demonstrating love for Christ, it largely means, it shows itself in obedience to the commands of the new covenant.

32:06

There's a lot of positive and negative moral teaching in the New Testament. Love of Christ entails, in large part, living in obedience to those commands.

32:16

1 John 5, 3, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

32:23

In the context of 1 Peter, love for Christ shows itself in obedience to his commands through suffering and persecution, even to the point of death.

32:31

Suffering for doing good, that's what 1 Peter's about. You're commended for loving Christ, for living in warm, willful, determined obedience to him, even though that often can cut against the grain.

32:43

That can lead to persecution, suffering. Now, a little bit of a side note.

32:49

I want you to see the irony of that coming from Peter. Maybe irony isn't, I'm not sure what the right word is, but there's some special emotional experience here, given

33:00

Peter's history with Christ. So when you think of Peter, what do you think of first? His denial, his betrayal, his big mouth.

33:13

He was very brash. He was rebuked by Christ and actually referred to as Satan. That's a pretty severe rebuke, right, coming from Christ?

33:21

So yeah, he had some issues, you might say. But yeah, most of you are gonna remember his betrayal.

33:27

He denied three times that he was a follower of Christ. He had just earlier claimed he would lay down his life for him, and then when the time came, he cowered in fear and he betrayed his master.

33:39

You also remember his renewal. Peter asked him, or Jesus asked him three times if he loved him, and finally

33:45

Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.

33:51

And Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. Now think about that.

33:57

So here Peter is telling his readers, you managed to do that which

34:02

I failed to do. Even though Peter, he had spent a lot of time with Christ.

34:07

He had seen him, he'd seen the miracles. He had participated in the miracles. He picked up the loaves, the fish.

34:13

He'd seen the transfiguration. He'd been able to ask questions. He had seen

34:18

Christ, and he was actually seeing Christ at the very moment that he betrayed him, that he chose not to love him.

34:28

That was powerful. He denied any association with him at all. I don't know the man.

34:35

So it's as if Peter is saying here, look, though you have not seen him, and you don't see him now, you love him.

34:43

I saw him, and I didn't love him. Your faith is amazing.

34:50

Your love is amazing. That's what Peter's saying. Now to be fair to Peter, after his renewal, he was a man of great courage.

34:58

He did suffer for Jesus. He was in prison, he was beaten. He ultimately, traditionally, he was hung on a cross upside down.

35:09

But he's marveling that the Christians can love their master whom they haven't seen when he had such difficulty loving the master that he saw.

35:18

Not only that, it's not only marvelous that we love him, but also that we believe in him. The word translated believe in, it's a unique combination of words that's only found in the

35:28

New Testament. As the idea of placing one's faith or belief into Christ, it's as if we look around for something to believe in, and we believe in this, and we believe in this, and then we move our belief towards Christ, our faith toward Christ, our trust, and once in him, it resides with him forever.

35:49

That's the notion. He is the one in whom we believe. Not just the one we believe, but he is the one in whom we believe.

35:58

For everything that we believe. We believe in the forgiveness of our sins because we believe in him.

36:04

We believe in perfect righteousness, a credit to our account because we believe in him. It's all in him.

36:11

Our inheritance, the hope of heaven, it's all in him. He is the object and the source of our faith.

36:19

So you haven't seen him, you won't see him, yet you love him and believe in him. And Peter says the result of this is joy.

36:27

You greatly rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory. So the word for greatly rejoice, the same one we talked about last time, y 'all remember that?

36:35

It's a physically expressive form of joy, like you just can't hold it in. That's the type of joy.

36:43

He calls it inexpressible. The word means that it can't be uttered in speech and words, it's higher than speech.

36:51

So do you ever wonder why we sing? Like why singing?

36:57

Why is singing part of worship? There's a way, there's something about singing, and you see

37:06

I really, I have no real way to express this kind of fit. There's something about singing, we can express ourselves in ways that we can't necessarily in just speech.

37:19

Especially when it comes to emotion like joy. We can express our joy in singing in ways that we can't.

37:24

And you know, we'll sit around and we'll talk, and we'll talk about the gospel, we'll talk about the Lord, we'll talk about heaven, and we can express a lot of joy.

37:31

But there's just something about singing that expresses it a little more comprehensively, isn't there?

37:38

But even then we can't fully express this joy. He also calls it joy that's full of glory, or glorious joy,

37:46

NIV has glorious joy. The word translated glorious or full of glory, that particular form is only here, but it's a form of the very common word for glory, doxazo.

37:57

It's where we get our word doxology. One of these days I'd like to do a sermon on what that means, what glory means.

38:04

It has some different meanings, but I can't do that today. For today it's enough to say that this particular joy is a joy that brings proper praise, and glory, and honor to him.

38:16

It's a heavenly type of joy. It's the joy that will be ours constantly in heaven.

38:21

Grudem has this in his commentary. Quote, it is the joy of heaven before heaven, experienced now in fellowship with the unseen

38:29

Christ. End quote. This is a joy that's kind of unique.

38:35

It doesn't have any shame, no disappointment, it's not awkward, the bills don't come due, it's not embarrassing, there's no regret.

38:47

It's pure. It's unadulterated, happy, holy, imperishable, undefiled, unfading joy.

38:54

The joy in our relationship to Christ. You haven't seen him, yet you love him. You don't see him now, yet you believe in him.

39:03

And in loving and believing in the unseen Savior, you have a joy that the unbeliever cannot know, can't be expressed.

39:12

It seems like a good time to sing a song of praise. So let's pray together, and we'll sing a song to glorify our unseen

39:20

King. Father, we are grateful for your word.

39:26

We're grateful today just to remember the goodness of our Savior toward us.

39:32

This is the time of year we remember the incarnation, the tremendous sacrifice of love that that involved, for the God of the universe to be born and laying in a manger, born as a man.

39:42

Unbelievable. And so we praise you, Lord. And I pray for each one that's here that they will grow in their love and faith in their unseen