1 Peter: Where Angels Long to Look (1 Peter 1:10-12, Jeff Kliewer)

Sins according to the scriptures. That he was buried. That he rose from the dead according to the scriptures. And then he goes on to explain the appearances of Christ to all of the apostles of Peter finally and last of all to Paul who was born untimely.

But the point of 1st Corinthians 15 there is that the gospel is the message of how Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose from the dead. And twice we hear this is what? According to the scriptures.

The gospel that we preach is not separate from the Old Testament but is only according to the Old Testament. When we say that Jesus Christ died on a cross and rose from the dead, this is nothing new beginning in 33 AD.

It happened in history at that point in time. But prophets foretold this would happen. Now young people listen for a minute. You will be challenged for your faith. You will be told that the God that you follow is made up, invented perhaps by the Apostle Paul or some other.

But what we are going to study today presents convincing really undeniable proof that Jesus is the Messiah. That he really suffered and died and that he really rose from the dead. And for all of us we need to recognize what the scripture said in the Old Testament that came true in the new.

This is something that changed my life. I remember when I was in college and I was being encountered with these lies. I was at a secular college down in Florida and these professors who were brilliant and very smart and very funny and very attractive to me in terms of drawing me in to what they believed.

They opposed the message that I believed. Until one night I opened my Bible and I said, God if this is real, help me believe. And I just started flipping. And I just let the Bible fall open and it landed at Micah 5 .2.

And in my Bible it was highlighted and it was starred and it was underlined. All three. So I said, okay God, I guess I'm supposed to read this verse. Micah 5 .2. I'd ask you young people, highlight it, star it in your Bibles or nowadays I guess you mark it on your phone somehow.

I don't know how you do it with modern technology. But when I opened to that verse it changed my life. It rescued me. It rescued me because it said, but you Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the tribes of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from everlasting to everlasting.

The prophet Micah said that Bethlehem, this small town in Judah, would be the birthplace of Messiah. And as I looked into that and I saw, wow, Micah wrote so many hundreds of years before Jesus came. And when Jesus came he was born in Bethlehem.

It confirmed the faith of my youth. I was the one who highlighted that in my Bible. I was the one who started. I was the one who put an underline there because when I grew up in an evangelical church the pastor said, notice this.

This is a prophecy that foretells the coming of the Messiah. Notice it. Mark it. Don't miss it. And I had forgotten it by that point in time in college. But the Lord in his grace and his mercy brought me back to his word and it was the word that protected me from the lie.

It was the word according to the scriptures. Like Justin Martyr, he came to believe in Christ through the scriptures and it's the scriptures that confirm the faith to us as well. So today we are moving back into 1 Peter chapter 1 and we are in the 10th verse, if you'll find that with me.

When we first opened this book two weeks ago, we studied the first verse. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And we looked at the life of Peter. How he saw Jesus and walked with him. He was an eyewitness.

And how he failed time and again demonstrating his immaturity. Jesus then restored him by saying, Peter, do you love me more than these? And Peter would say, yes. And Jesus said, feed my sheep. Three times he repeated that.

And so as Peter gets filled with the Holy Spirit and goes forth preaching the gospel, learning the Word of God for 30 years, he comes to write this book. And this book, 1 Peter, is his effort to feed the sheep.

Are you hungry this morning? Or are you just so well fed that you don't need to hear the Word of God? I don't know about you, but I am hungry this morning. I want to eat from God's Word. If I don't, I'll starve.

And that's how we are as Christians. We need to be fed the Word of God. This is the bread to us. When Jesus was being tempted in Matthew chapter 4, what did Satan try to do? Tried to get him to turn that stone into bread so he could eat.

And Jesus says, man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Father. This word is our food. Let's eat of this word today. So in chapter 1 verses 1 to 9, we learned this deep teaching last week.

And I'll have to say last week was was deep, wasn't it? It was like, if we're talking about food, it was a plate of food that just piled up with meat, right? So maybe it was hard to chew, hard to digest.

But today is not that way. Today is a rather simple teaching, but something that's deep and profound and nourishing. So let's read it. 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 10 to 12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

The main idea this morning is that angels long to look into the things of God, especially how Christ became a man to save sinners. Likewise, the prophets of old saw glimpses of Christ and long to see more of Christ.

And we should recognize our privileged position in history where we are able to look intently at Christ and his plan of salvation. So what the angels long to see and what the prophets long to see, we can now look intently at in the Word of God.

We can search carefully and inquire of it and it changes us when we do. So the first point, the angels and prophets long to look into the things of Christ. How many angels do you know about from the Bible?

You guys have heard of Gabriel, right? In fact, we have someone named Gabriel at church. You guys know about Michael? We have some Michaels. Have you heard of the four living creatures that surround the throne of God?

They're angels. Have you heard of Seraphim and Cherubim? These are angels. These are created beings that are not human, but they are creations of God. Some of them live to worship God and they surround his throne.

And Hebrews 1 says he makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire. These creatures are on fire and they breathe out praise to God 24 -7. Others are defenders. Hebrews 1 teaches that as well, that they defend the believers and they serve us.

That time when you almost got in a car accident, but it didn't happen, how do you know that a guardian angel didn't just steer that car to make him make him miss you? How many times have we been protected by these guardian angels?

He makes his angels flames, his servants wind. So these angels are powerful and mysterious, but we learned something about them here. They long to look in to things. You say, wait a minute, things? That's kind of general, right?

Look at the text, 1 Peter 1 verse 12. At the very end, things into which angels long to look. What are these things that angels long to look into? Well, we learned that from the text. These are the things that the prophets also longed to look into.

We're in 1 Peter chapter 1, now verse 10. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. They were inquiring. What does it mean to inquire?

To ask a question. They're questioning, they're searching, they want to know something. They're hungry to learn. The prophets of old and the angels alike wanted to know about certain things. Now what are those things?

Look in the text. Concerning this salvation. That's the first. They want to know about salvation. The prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours. They want to know about this grace that is to be yours.

They search and inquire carefully. Verse 11, they want to know what person is this about. They want to know what time is this referring to. Notice, when the prophets wrote, they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse 11. Inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating. When he, that is the Spirit of Christ, predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. When the prophets wrote the Old Testament, they wrote words that they did not fully understand.

So which is inspired? The author or the text? This is important. The text of Scripture is inspired by God, not the author. That's how it could be that David, who was a prophet according to the book of Acts, could sin with Bathsheba and have Bathsheba's husband killed and fall into sin so many times.

In those ways, he was not inspired by the Holy Spirit to do those things. But when he wrote Scripture, the Holy Spirit so took him over that the things that he wrote were written by the Holy Spirit. Fully human in that David himself wrote them, but fully divine in that he was so carried by the Holy Spirit that these scriptures are actually God's words to us.

And so what they wrote didn't always make full sense to them. They didn't know exactly what they were talking about. They understood part of it and they had a reason for writing what they were writing and they got that, but it inspired questions as they wrote.

It inspired them to say, who is this person that I'm writing about? Picture Isaiah writing, all we like sheep have gone astray and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was crushed for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brings us peace was laid upon him. As Isaiah writes these words in the 53rd chapter, he knows he's writing about somebody to come. He knows he's writing about Messiah, but he doesn't know the name Jesus.

He doesn't know what this means or when this will happen. He has questions about the things that he's writing. So in the first point, the angels and prophets are longing to understand salvation. They're looking down.

Just imagine this. Imagine Gabriel and Michael and living creatures and cherubim and seraphim. They're looking over the balcony of heaven at the earth and as time unfolds they see that the world becomes wicked and people are doing nothing but wickedness all the time.

And so God says, I will judge them. And the angels say, this is right. And they watch and they see that God pours out wrath on the earth and the entire world is destroyed with a flood except for one family, righteous Noah and his sons and their wives and his wife.

Eight people in all spared as God pours out wrath. And then he watches this new world unfold and people grow up and the world and spread out to fill the earth and wickedness is on the earth again. And the angels are looking over and saying, God, you're right to judge.

And instead they watch and see the Son of God, Jesus, whom they've worshiped and they praise from all eternity, from the moment of their creation until now, they praise this one. He takes on flesh and he's born to a virgin named Mary.

What is he doing? The angels are looking from heaven saying, why has he gone and taken on flesh? And then he grows and he's rejected and he's spat on and he's crucified. And the angels are looking from heaven saying, why is this happening?

What is God doing? And then the gospel begins to be preached. Jesus has risen from the dead and Peter begins to preach. And one after another, lights are turning on. As they look at the earth, light is beginning to shine out of the lives of these dead sinners.

They're coming alive. They're believing something and coming alive. And the angels are longing to see what does this mean? Salvation is being extended to the ends of the earth. Grace now extended to those who deserve wrath.

The angels are astonished by what they see. The sufferings of Christ. How could this glorious Son of God be suffering like this? And the glories to follow. They want to know what's going to happen next.

That's what the prophets wanted to see. This is where we're left this morning. We're in a waiting time. We're waiting on the return of Christ. As we sit here today, we have been promised the return of King Jesus.

And we're looking forward to that. We're looking ahead to the return of the King. But our faith can dry up. What keeps us strong? What keeps us looking? It's the fact that God's Word, as preached through the prophets, came through so far.

The sufferings of the Christ took place according to the prophets. It's the fact that this Word is trustworthy. And so the angels long to see. The prophets foretold. And here we are. This is the second point.

We have been given something even better than what the angels and the prophets longed to see. The angels never sinned. They never needed salvation. The ones who sinned were utterly cast out. They became demons.

But the angels that never sinned didn't need a Savior. They were kept perfect and guarded that way by the power of God. Jesus didn't become an angel to save angels, did he? He became a man to save men.

And so what the angels cannot know by experience is salvation. They can't know what it is to be saved. They can't know what it feels like to be given grace because they never sinned. And the prophets who looked ahead could only see like looking through a dark glass.

But they couldn't know the name Jesus. They couldn't see the cross and picture Jesus suffering and dying there and rising from the dead. They could only see so far. Brothers and sisters, as we sit here today, we have the Word of God more fully revealed than the prophets did.

We have the testimony of Peter who beheld his glory. We have John who touched him. He says, I touched him in 1st John. He begins that way. And so finally, the last point. The Old Testament that we were given inspires faith in us because it foretold all the things that Peter, the eyewitness, highlights in these verses.

So we've said that the reason these verses are here are to inspire us and to inspire our faith. And we're given something even better. This was given for us, for our sake. But it begs the question, what did the prophets write that produced faith in us, that serve us that way?

What did the prophets see? And this is food. This is a sword for the battle. If you'll take hold of this, you will be strong and your faith cannot be defeated by the lies of the enemy. The first prophet that we have writing in the Old Testament is who?

Moses. Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. When Moses started to write, he understood some things, but was Moses there at the creation of the world? How does he know to write, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth?

It was by the Holy Spirit filling Moses in the desert, and he began to write. And in that first chapter, he says, let us make man in our image. How would he know to say, let us make man in our image? Angels don't create.

Who is the us in Genesis 1, 26 through 28? It's the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit speaking one to another. Let us make man in our image. Then in the fall of man, in Genesis chapter 3, you know the story.

Satan tempts Eve, and she gives in, and Adam also follows her leadership, and they fall into sin. But in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, we're told that God will send a seed of the woman, someone who comes from woman, i .e. a man, a person, who will crush the head of that serpent while being struck in the heel.

This verse, Genesis 3, 15, is the first place that the sufferings of Christ are foretold. Catch this now, because in real time, when Jesus was pinned on that cross, a stake pinned him through his heel.

He was struck in the heel, literally, a death wound that killed him, and yet in that, it crushed the head of the serpent. And the fall of man, which brought sin into the world through Adam, was now defeated by the new Adam, Jesus Christ, who crushed the enemy on the cross, Genesis 3, 15.

Moses wrote about that, but he didn't know what he was saying. He didn't fully grasp who it was, when it was happened, what's the time and the place, who is the person, what is this suffering? He longed to know more, and so he writes the story of Abraham in the 22nd chapter of Genesis, taking his only son, Isaac, and laying wood upon him, carrying it up a mountain to lay down as a sacrifice, the father giving the son on the wood of that sacrifice on a mountain, which is probably the same hill where Jesus died.

And Isaac, not being the substitute sacrifice, gets removed from that altar, and in his place, a lamb, a ram that was caught in the thicket, was brought out and laid on the altar and slaughtered there.

And Moses wonders, why this shedding of blood? And Abraham says, my son is spared, I receive him back on the hill of the Lord it has been provided. You see, in Genesis 22, we do learn about Abraham's faith and that obedience that led him to lay down the life of his own son, but moreover, we learn about the father who gives his son on that hill called Calvary and lays him on wood and sacrifices him there.

Then in Exodus chapter 12, they're caught in slavery, and Moses sees this happen. Take the blood of a lamb, slaughter the lamb, and mark the doorposts of your house on the top and on the sides. And when the angel of death sees that blood on the doorpost, he will pass over.

He will not kill you. You will be spared. That wrath will not fall upon you. See, the Passover lamb of Exodus 12 was pointing us to one and only Savior, Jesus Christ. And then we get to the book of Leviticus and all of these sacrifices that seem so redundant.

Each one, shed blood, take blood, lay hand on the animal, and then slay the animal. Lay your hand on the animal and send it away. You impute your sin to the animal. And in all of these things, you have the shedding of blood.

You get to Leviticus 17 11 and we learn why. Life is in the blood. And I have given the blood on the altar to make atonement for your sin. Moses writes those words. He's talking about the blood of Jesus taking away our sin.

Moses didn't fully get it when he wrote those words, but as we look back and we have the words of the prophet, we see there's only one way to be forgiven. Hebrews 9, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

And all things, nearly all things, need to be cleansed with blood. The book of Numbers, the people are falling into sin again and dying, being bitten by snakes because of their sin. And so Moses is told, take this bronze snake and raise it up on a stick and whoever looks at that snake on the pole will be forgiven.

We know John 3 16, right? Read the context of John 3 15. Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that whoever looks on him will be forgiven. That serpent represents 1 Corinthians 5 21. That God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that in him we would become the righteousness of God.

What am I saying? When Moses lifted up that serpent, he was drawing a picture to say the Son of God will be lifted up as a sin offering to whoever would look upon the Son of God will find forgiveness of sin.

Deuteronomy, he promises a prophet that's greater than himself, Deuteronomy 18 15 to 18. And so Moses was writing about the Christ all the time. What about King David? We mentioned him already. In 2 Samuel 7 verse 16, we're told that David's son would always be the king.

And sure enough, when Jesus comes, he is a physical descendant of David through Mary and through Joseph. Both lines trace back to David. But David writes the 22nd Psalm. We don't have time to go through it now.

David writes about the experience that he was going through. David was suffering at the hands of wicked men, but he begins to describe his sufferings in ways that do not make sense for his life, because it never happened to David.

He says that his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. That happened to Jesus on the cross. He says that I am pierced through my hands and my feet. That never happened to David. That happened to Jesus on the cross.

He says that soldiers gamble for my clothes, which happened to Jesus on the cross. Wild dogs surround me. Prophecy after prophecy in Psalm 22. In Psalm 110, he talks about how the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

The fourth verse goes on to say that this Jesus, who he was prophesying, is a priest of the order of Melchizedek. Read Hebrews chapter 7 and know what that means. Micah chapter 5 verse 2 is a prophecy of the Lord.

He says, if the Lord had rescued me, the Messiah would have to be born in Bethlehem. Some of you guys know from Sunday school, Zechariah 9 .9. Remember that one? Zechariah foresaw, behold, your king comes to you, gentle, humble, having salvation, riding on a donkey.

Imagine that. The prophet Zechariah saw that much. Jesus riding in on a donkey. What time? When? When will this happen? He didn't know. But did Daniel know the time? Daniel chapter 9 verses 24 to 27. We'll study it another time, but it's enough to say now that Daniel said the exact day when Messiah would be cut off.

Seventy times seven years. 490 years from a certain point in time, which is 444 BC, when Artaxerxes gives the command to go and restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah is cut off. Daniel says there shall be 69 sevens.

483 years. You take that on the Hebrew calendar from 444 BC, it arrives at 33 AD, and to the month of the Jewish Passover. Daniel foresaw the time. It's exciting stuff. Listen, it's a simple sermon today, but there's a lot there.

The idea is simple. Listen, the Old Testament prophets foretold the sufferings of the Christ and the glories that would follow. His resurrection, his ascending to the right hand of the Father, his session where he's seated at the right hand of the Father, and he intercedes for those to whom that belong to him.

All of these things were foretold by the prophets. So when they came true, and when eyewitnesses wrote down the Gospels, it's according to the Scriptures. Back to 1 Corinthians 15, 1 to 4. The Gospel is not the invention of apostles.

It's not an invention of the first century. All of these things were foretold throughout history and culminated in the cross and in the resurrection. So with that, we are going to move into communion, and then after that we'll close with one song.

Usher for me.