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What I'd like to do is sort of pull away from our historical reflections and actually stay in a text with you for our final session together. I don't plan on taking the full time. We are going schedule-wise to 1230.
I won't take the full time as I work in a text with you. And so what I think we'll do is when I'm done with this session, we'll pray. And then I'll just have a few moments if there's any question and answer on Luther or Calvin.
And if not, then we can proceed right to the most important part of the day, which is lunch. But I will carve out some time. We won't go the full time. I will carve some time towards the end. So if you have some questions about Luther or questions about Calvin or the Reformation itself that in my presentation may have surfaced, or questions you might have from your previous study or previous exposure, by all means, I would be glad to spend some time answering those with you.
So you can be thinking about that if you'd like, if you can multitask and listen and think. And we'll end with a question and answer session. Our text, though, is 1 Peter 1, verses 22 to 25. Both chapters of Peter's epistles, the opening chapters, have as their main topic Scripture.
We have in 2 Peter 1, that delightful text that gives us insight into the doctrine of inspiration, that we have, as Peter says, not followed cleverly devised fables, but that we have followed the word that God has revealed, the inspired word, so that men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke.
But we're going to be in 1 Peter 1, where Peter also ends this chapter with a delightful text on the word of God. The doctrine here that we'll be talking about is the doctrine that further is where the rubber meets the road on our authority of Scripture, and it's the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.
So here then the word of God, 1 Peter 1, verse 22, and we'll read to the end of the chapter. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.
For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
And may God indeed bless his word among us this morning. As you think about those verses, and I should have asked you to do this, make you work, try to identify what is the main verb in this text. Now on your pastor's desk, I saw that his fellow pastor friend, Ted, who was here last night, had given him a grammatical diagram of a Greek text of the New Testament.
I won't ask you to write a diagram, that will bring back horror stories from your English days, right? But if you were to diagram the sentence, or try to identify in the sentence what the key verb is, what do you think it is?
I'll give you a little help. The key verb in this verse is in verse 22. Love one another. That is the main command of this text. It is in fact an imperative. It is something that we are compelled to do.
It is something that we are commanded to do. And then everything else in this text is subordinate, supports this main idea. The first thing we find is the kind of love that's talked about here. It's a love that I think we would all want.
Look at this. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart. That's the kind of love we all long for in our relationships, we all long for in our families, we long for this in our churches, isn't it? We long for this in the body of Christ.
We long for this kind of love to be true. And it is in fact this kind of love that meets one of the most fundamental and significant of human needs. But where Peter spends the bulk of his time, verses 23 to 25, is explaining how this kind of a love is possible and what makes this kind of a love work.
What grounds, what motivates, and what enables this kind of a love that's described. Now it's also set within the context of the phrase that precedes it. And the phrase that precedes it is having purified your souls.
So we don't start off with some sort of ethical command that we are to jump to and pull off on our own. We start off from the recognition that we are in fact new creatures in Christ. That this is only possible because of what Christ has done in us, and making us new, and purifying us.
That this type of love, as hard as people may try to pull off on their own, they'll never pull off outside of Christ. So no matter how laudable and commendable we see demonstrations of human love, and when we see them, we should in fact commend them and applaud them culturally.
They fall short the kind of love that's described here. It stems from a regenerate heart. It's only possible because of regeneration. But the bulk of what Peter wants to tell us is verses 23 to 25. And here we find that this kind of love that I think is what we all desire, and what we all in fact truly need.
And remember, Peter is learning this second hand. This is what Jesus told him, isn't it? That this would be the mark of the church. That this would be the mark of the disciple. They will know you by your love.
And that heartfelt prayer, that prayer of Jesus there in the garden. That the same love, this is setting the bar high, isn't it? That the same love that marked the inner Trinitarian relationship would be true of Christ's church on earth.
And when you begin to think about what the New Testament does with love, and how the New Testament puts love out there for us, the kind of love that the New Testament talks about. It's a love that we just long to have.
A love that we long to have operating in our lives. You know, it's one thing to read, husbands love your wives, right? Piece of cake, we can do that. But then they add this piece that quite honestly is unfair.
Has Jesus loved the church? Really? You have to say that? That's the kind of love that's being talked about here. Earnest, zealous, pure, totally selfless, totally giving, totally longing to see the other flourish.
That's the kind of love that's talked about here. It's the kind of love we all need. But it's rooted in the Word. So let's see what Peter does here. And I think in the process we're going to learn something about the sufficiency of Scripture.
We're going to learn something about the Gospel. We're going to learn something about discipleship. He says, since you have been born again. Now again, this sort of reiterates what was said in the first half of verse 22.
This purified your souls. So we've been born again. And now he proceeds to talk about what we've been born again by. Not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. And this contrast then, he pulls out this text from Isaiah chapter 40.
Now, I think it's very instructive to go back to Isaiah chapter 40 and take a look at it. What he's doing here is contrasting this perishable versus an imperishable word. And I think this is helpful because if this love that Peter is putting out for us is something that speaks to the human longings of the soul, that sort of perennial human condition, then it would follow that there have been a number of solutions proposed to try to show that answer to the fundamental human condition can be met.
That was true of Greek philosophy. That was true of the Romans. That was true of the other ancient Near Eastern mythologies. That was true of every piece of human wisdom up to the first century. And all of those are essentially perishable seeds.
The answers that have been put forth to speak to that fundamental human condition that we all long to see a reality in our lives. All of them fall short. And there's only one thing upon which it can be predicated, and it is the imperishable.
It is the living, the abiding word of God. So he launches into this quote from Isaiah chapter 40. If you come back to Isaiah chapter 40, you see here this wonderful book. If you've been reading the book of Isaiah, you know that up to chapter 40, it's rather bleak.
Great stuff to put your kids to bed with. Oh, here's this country. You know what's going to happen to them? They're going to get judged and wiped out. Let's read about it. Night, night. See you. Love you.
Middle child. Night, night, middle child. Then all of a sudden at verse 1, we come to this comfort. Oh, comfort my people. And in fact, the tenor so changes that there has been a view put forth that there's actually two Isaiahs.
In fact, some argue there's three Isaiahs, but that there's two Isaiahs that chapters 1 to 39 are written by an author and then a different author composes chapter 40 to 66 because they are so different.
And that's not true, of course. But what is true about that is that there is a fundamentally different tenor as we get to chapter 40, and the first word is a clue to that. Comfort. Oh, comfort my people.
And so we all know the beloved words of Handel's Messiah, right? And we can hear those words. I do. Every time I read this text, I hear the words of Handel's Messiah being sung. And here we have the book of comfort.
Now, let's take a look at this. The quote is going to come down much later at verses 6 to 8, but I want you to see the context of this because I think the context is very instructive. When we see Old Testament citations in the New Testament, sometimes the New Testament author is just sort of cherry-picking.
They're just literally pulling out the particular phrase or the particular verse from the Old Testament to prove their point. Sometimes, though, the New Testament author is so embedded in the Old Testament text.
Remember? These were all Jews. They had cut their teeth on the Tanakh, the Jewish Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. It was woven into the very fabric of their lives. And so sometimes when a New Testament author is picking up a strand from the Old Testament, yes, they sort of mean that particular point, but it's also instructive to look around it because they may be very well drawing upon what is around that context of the Old Testament, quote, to further drive home, like an exclamation point, the point they're trying to make in the New Testament.
And I think this is one such place. Now, I'll make a case for this in a little bit, but I want you to see the context here. So chapter 40, verse 1, we begin with, Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
The language prior to chapter 40 is not one of tenderness. And cry to her that her warfare, all of this conflict, strife, turmoil that has been characterized in these previous chapters, it's ended. Her iniquity is pardoned.
And she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Israel had broken covenant, and in breaking covenant, Israel had opened itself up to the penalties of that covenant. And now God had poured out his wrath upon Israel.
And ultimately, he's going to pour out his wrath on the new Israel, on the son, the representative of Israel of Christ. And then will flow mercy from God to his people. So verse 3, a voice cries in the wilderness.
Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
There's an insurmountable desert between Babylon and the Holy Land. It is a treacherous path to take. And the prophecy here of Isaiah, prior to, on the eve of captivity, anticipating Israel's being taken into captivity, judgment for her sins, and then in God's mercy, anticipating that God will redeem them once again, and bring them back into his land.
And that's just a foreshadowing of the return from exile that will come when Christ bears the cup of God's wrath. But there is this obstacle in the way. It's a desert. There is this obstacle in the way for Israel to be pulled back out of the land of Babylon and sent back to the Holy Land.
And this obstacle, the prophet tells us, is going to be no longer a problem. Those valleys and those mountains, it's as if some massive grater, some big caterpillar grater is going to come in and just level the whole thing and make one straight highway straight from Babylon right back to the Holy Land, right back to the promised land.
That God will see to it that no obstacles will stand in his way, and God's people will be put back in the land. A voice says, cry. And I said, what shall I cry? Cry this. All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows on it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. And there it is, verses 6 to 8.
That's the quote that Peter picks up on at the end of 1 Peter. Now, it's a sentence that he leaves out. Surely the people are grass. This is what was standing in the way of Israel, the people, the mighty people of Babylon who were the ones that brought them into captivity in the first place.
This great and massive and mighty nation. And we lose sight of this sometimes. We tend to think of Israel in the Old Testament. Israel, right? Israel was just a tiny sliver of land. Remember New Jersey, the place where you're going to go if you don't read the 95 Thessalonians?
Israel was about the size of New Jersey, and as I like to say, about as worth as much as that too. It's a rivalry thing. It's sort of like you guys in Vermont or you guys in New Hampshire. That's what we do in Pennsylvania with New Jersey.
But anyway, Israel is just this tiny sliver of land, always at the mercy of these massive superpowers. Egypt and its grandeur. Assyria and its grandeur, not to mention its maliciousness. And then Babylon, and then the Medo-Persian Empire.
These are massive empires with massive armies and significant cultural accomplishments that millennia later we gawk at. And in the middle of that is this tiny little people called Israel. And so what words of comfort these truly are to Israel.
Surely the people are grass. No obstacles standing in your way. But what is at the center of this is what Israel can bank on. And what Israel can bank on is that God's word will remain. And remember, this is to a people in exile.
And to people in exile, appearances are daunting, depressing, discouraging, and disillusioning. Appearances show that everything is the opposite of what God promises. And to a people in exile, there is nothing more distant.
There is nothing more far off than the homeland. And yet that is simply a metaphor for how far off and distant God's promises are in appearance. And what Israel in exile needs to hear is that God's word lives, abides, endures, and his promises are real and bankable.
And you can count on it. And you see everything around you that you think is reality is temporary. This is C .S. Lewis, right? Shadowlands. Shadowlands are not the world to come. It's the world that we live in is the shadow.
And the world to come is the reality. But we get consumed by the appearances. I think Peter picks up on this. When he comes then back to 1 Peter 1, you could make the case that there are all kinds of ways that we could live our life.
There are all kinds of things that can govern how we live. There are all kinds of things that can sort of meet the needs of the human condition expressed in this idea of love that Peter holds out as the ultimate thing that we want to see as a reality in our lives.
And what better culture to see this variety of things that vie for our attention than the Greco-Roman culture with its philosophies and its poets and its worldviews. And as Peter surveys all that stuff, he says, all that stuff, all this grandeur that is around us of this Roman world and Rome and her empire that surrounds us in the first century, all of this stuff will fade.
And it is fundamentally frail. As Peter is writing this back in Rome, the city of Rome, where Peter was the first Pope. I'm just playing. See if you're awake. You know what was happening in Rome? Nero was emperor and he was building a statue to himself.
He called it the Colossus. It was 50 meters tall and it was a likeness to himself. And then Peter writes, all the flesh is like grass and all its glory, like Nero and his 50 meter statue to himself, is like the flower of grass.
The grass withers and the flower falls. Nero was likely the emperor that oversaw the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul. And Nero was a madman and he was despicable and he was hated by the Romans. And the minute he died, do you know what they did to that Colossus statue?
They used it as a quarry and they dismantled it and on its site they built the Colosseum. And it was called the Colosseum to mock the statue of the Colossus of Nero. Before he was even cold in the ground, they were trying to erase the memory of his presence in his own empire.
The grass withers and the glory of it fades. Peter is reminding his audience, which by the way is an audience in exile, just like Isaiah was reminding his audience, which was an audience in exile, that appearances are contrary and in light of those appearances, there's only one thing that lives and abides and remains and it's the word of God.
There's no better way to express the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. It alone, Scripture alone lives and abides and remains and everything else, everything else will fade in its temporary. Flip with me over to John chapter 6.
Peter learned this first hand. This is a great chapter. It's long. It's very long. It starts off with more than 5 ,000 and then the crowd leaves and the next day, we don't know how many, but they recognize that Jesus had left in a boat so whatever's left of that crowd follows him in a boat and then Jesus starts teaching to that group that follows him in a boat and they leave.
So here we are in a space of two days. Jesus goes from well over 5 ,000 to 12. This is like the opposite of the church growth movement. Jesus needed a PR man because this is not what you do. You don't go from 5 ,000 plus to 12 in 48 hours.
It's not good. It's not good for business because it was what Jesus was saying. They liked the show. They liked the bread and the free lunch and they loved the show, but when Jesus said, you need to eat of me if you want to see the Father, the text tells us they grumbled and rather than placating the crowd, Jesus ups the ante and he says, we'll go one further.
You can't even come to me unless the Father draws you and at that they leave and so here we are, verse 66, and after this, after all this teaching, many of his disciples turned away and no longer walked with him and so Jesus said to the 12, 5 ,000 plus, we're down to 12, what about you?
Do you want to go away as well? And Peter, we've got to give him credit, usually he says stupid things, but he gets it right this time. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
Where are we going to go? Where else can we possibly go? You alone have words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Peter learned firsthand that this living and abiding word of God is the only thing that will meet the deepest and truest of human needs.
It is the only thing that will give us ultimately what we need and what we even want. The kind of love, the kind of relationship, the kind of shalom, the kind of harmony, the peace with God, the peace with each other, and not to over psychoanalyze this, but even a peace with our own self.
It only comes through one source, the logos, the word. Peter learns this. But what's interesting, now I'll have you flip back to Isaiah chapter 40. Remember I told you that I think Peter has more than just the quote in mind and I'll make my case.
After he quotes verses six to eight, notice what goes on in verse nine of Isaiah chapter 40. Get you up to a high mountain. This is great. Get you up to a high mountain. O Zion, herald, that's a word that means preacher, preacher, proclaimer of good news.
Lift up your voice with strength. O Jerusalem, herald of good news. This is an Old Testament, it's a Hebrew genre idiom of parallelism. And things are repeated for emphasis. And so we have O Zion, O Jerusalem.
Get you up to a high mountain. Lift up your voice. Herald the good news. Herald the good news. You know this. Parents know this. Why do you repeat things? Because you want your kids to hear it. Why do you repeat things?
Because you want your kids to hear it. Why do you repeat things? I was talking to Dave, one of the Daves, who brought me here. We were talking about the concept of an infinite loop. And he said the confident, his teacher explained to him what an infinite loop was.
He held up a shampoo bottle. And on the shampoo bottle it said, rinse, lather, repeat. Get it? Rinse, lather, repeat. You're in an infinite loop. You'll never get out of the shower. We repeat things for emphasis.
And the emphasis here is herald of good news. Lift it up, fear not. Say to the city of Judah, behold your God. Behold your God. Behold the Lord God comes with might. And His arm rules for Him. Behold His reward is with Him and His recompense.
That's judgment before Him. But then now there's this tenderness. And He will tend His flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in His arms. He will carry them in His bosom. And He will gently lead those that are with you.
What is Isaiah to Harold? What is the crier of chapter 40 to Harold rather? The crier of chapter 40 is to say, look, there's God. And look, He is our shepherd. And yes, He's judged and He's a God of wrath.
We can never forget that. But He will gently gather us up as helpless lambs. And He will, in fact, lead us into the fulfillment of all of the promises that He has declared for us because He is our God.
And He is mighty. And nothing will keep Him from that. Harold, the good news that our mighty God will redeem us. And He is a promise-keeping God. And He will lead us like a faithful, gentle, strong shepherd.
Now go back to 1 Peter chapter 1. And look how Peter ends this. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. I think Peter had in mind the big chunk of text when he quoted it. And we can look at this and we can say, isn't this great that somewhere, at some point in time, God used a human instrument to preach the gospel.
Not officially pulpit, but the idea of proclaiming the gospel of Christ as the savior of sinners. That somebody at one point in time preached the gospel. Aren't you glad for that? That you heard the good news.
And yes, God drew you to Himself. But He used that human instrument. It's not how I would do it if I were God. I wouldn't use us. And it even stumps Paul. That's why he says we're jars of clay. It even stumps Paul that we carry about us the aroma of the gospel of Christ.
It stumps Paul. It stumps me. But that's how God has chosen to do it. That through human instruments we proclaim the good news. Someone did it for us. Aren't you glad? I wonder if we've lost sight of the fact that this is in fact the good news.
That's what the sufficiency of Scripture tells us. In Peter's day it was the Roman world. In our day it's the modern world or the post-modern world. I don't know. Maybe it's a combination of the two.
But we can be lulled into thinking that people don't need this gospel. We can be lulled into thinking they're okay. And we forget the fact that the flower fades and the glory of it passes and there's only one thing that abides.
And it's the one thing that we must preach. Do we really believe that this is the good news? That's what the sufficiency of Scripture means. That the gospel is the good news. And when we believe the sufficiency of Scripture not only do we embrace it and not only do we, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, relish it and enjoy it or as the prophet says, your words were found and I did eat them.
But we also recognize that we need to get ourselves up on a high mountain. And we need to say to a world that is in desperate need. We need to say to a community that is around us that is in desperate need.
This is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we can't even do one better than the crier in Isaiah chapter 40. Because something has happened in between Isaiah chapter 40 and 1 Peter chapter 1.
And that thing that has happened is that the shepherd has become a sheep. And that Jesus is not only our shepherd but he is the lamb that was slain for our sins. And so we can say to a world from our perch on the high mountain.
Behold your God. Behold your Savior who is your shepherd and your sheep. And this is the good news. That he was the lamb that was slain for you. And all of those obstacles all of those impediments that immeasurable valley of that gulf that has separated you from God is now made level.
And there is a straight line of access to God because of this sheep. Because of this lamb that was slain for you. This is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what gets us out of bed every morning.
That this good news was preached to us. And that we have a Savior who has gently lifted us up and carries us in his bosom. And this is the message that you must proclaim to a world that desperately needs it.
The sufficiency of scripture tells us that scripture is in fact the good news. That we should be so grateful that at one point in time somebody preached it to us. And that we have a calling. All of us.
Not just your pastors. Not just your elders. But we all have a calling to preach this good news. And as this good news is at work in our lives we will love one another earnestly from a pure heart. A sincere brotherly love.
That is exactly what the world needs. Because of the sufficiency of the seed upon which that love flows and is grounded in this building. This word. This scripture. This is the good news that was preached to you.
Let's pray. Father God we are so grateful for your word. That you have given us your word. That you have not only given us your word but that you have opened our eyes to see it in all of its truthfulness.
In all of its power and in all of its beauty. We thank you that this is a living word that abides and remains. We thank you that this is the good news. We thank you for the gospel message of a gentle savior who is our shepherd and is our lamb.
Slain in our place. Slaughtered in our place. That his blood, his precious blood as Peter calls it was shed for us. We thank you that this gospel was preached to us. Help us not to be selfish with it.
Help us to proclaim it. Give us boldness to get up on our mountain and point to a world that is in desperate need. Behold your God. Help us to take this task seriously in our own lives to see the word of God at root in us.
And to see through our lives and through our work and through our words that we in fact proclaim this gospel, this message of good news. We ask that you would grant that to us and pray these things in Christ's name for his sake.
Amen.