Our Bedrock Salvation - Part A

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, Timothy, God desires all men to be saved. That's God's great desire. It's God's great hope is that people would come to salvation. But we run the risk of losing our gratitude for salvation, the simplest, most basic component of the Christian life.

And we run the danger of not realizing just how good we have it. Just what a great deal we have been given. The gift of salvation in Jesus is the greatest thing we could ever receive.

Do you rejoice in that every day? Today on Connect with Skip Hiting, Skip shares just how fulfilling your new life in Jesus can be. But before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that shows you how you can live in the peace of Jesus and free from your worries.

So how is your stress level on a scale of 1 to 10? Stress as a thief, a robber of peace and joy. Here Skip Heitzig with a pointed observation. If you don't live with an anchor of faith, you're going to drift in a sea of anxiety. And most people in the world, they don't have anything to anchor.

They have no real grand scheme or purpose in life. We want to help you live with an anchor of faith so you can learn to lean into God in times of anxiety by sending you three powerful resources. Skip Heitzig's new booklet, Overcoming an Anxious Mind. His teaching, Worship and the Uncertainty on CD. Plus, the War is Over worship CD. This bundle is our thanks when you give $35 or more today to help expand the Bible teaching outreach of Skip Heitzig. Jesus as Savior brings peace with God, but Jesus as Lord brings the peace of God. Call now to request these three encouraging resources when you give. 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we'll be in 1 Peter chapter 1 for today's study.

So let's join Skip Heitzig. In the book of Peter, 1 Peter chapter 1, he gives them the full scoop of their salvation. Saving a life is wonderful. But saving an eternal soul is even more wonderful.

And it's that salvation that's on Peter's mind as he writes the next few verses of 1 Peter chapter 1. You see, his audience has been suffering oppression and persecution and trials. And if you know anything about suffering, it causes your eyes to look downward.

You are weighed down. You are looking not at the hopeful horizon, but at the painful path. And you need the encouragement to look up and get your thoughts refocused into the right place. And essentially Peter does that in these verses. He has a theme, a recurrent theme in this book. So far, the word salvation appears three times.

It's the focus. It's the highlight of the book so far. Look at verse 5, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Verse 9, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And now in verse 10, of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully. Salvation. There is not a more assuring, more comforting word in all of language than the word salvation. It appears 400 times in scripture. Saved, saving, salvation.

400 times. It is a broad scope of meaning. It can mean anything from being saved physically from harm's way to being saved eternally from sin and death and hell. And just as I that day in Jerusalem learned the full scoop of the story of how my son was saved, so Peter gives to them the scoop on their eternal salvation. You'll notice in verse 10, of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you. Searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the suffering of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed, not to themselves but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

Things which angels desire to look into. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, Timothy, God desires all men to be saved. That's God's great desire. It's God's great hope is that people would come to salvation. But we run the risk of losing our gratitude for salvation. The simplest most basic component of the Christian life and we run the danger of not realizing just how good we have it.

Just what a great deal we have been given. When you said yes to Jesus Christ or should I say when God said yes to you. That's salvation.

I've told you before that when I first came to Christ I was watching Dr. Billy Graham on television and I turned it off after hearing the gospel and then I went into my room, and I immediately thought, okay, let me get this right. You gave your son your best you gave all to this world. In exchange, you want me, you want me to give you my life. So you gave Jesus, you want me to give you this broken life. And I just thought, excuse me, but God, you're getting a bum deal. This is not great in terms of what you're getting out of this deal. But then I immediately thought, but I'm getting like a killer deal.

And I'd be stupid to pass this up. And I think from time to time we need to stop and realize what it means to be a saved man or a saved woman. What our salvation means to us.

What Peter tells them is not only do you have salvation, let me tell you how great it is, let me tell you a little bit more about what you may not be realizing. Sort of like an insurance policy. You know, most of us have insurance policies for life or for home or for automobiles. Most of us don't read the insurance policies I've discovered. You discovered that?

You just know you have one. You don't read the fine print until you have to make a claim. You want to find out if you're going to get reimbursed because you've got to dish some money out. Does what happen, is it covered in the insurance policy? And then you find out, oh, yes, they cover everything except what you need at that point. Yes, we cover everything for your car except your drive train that fell out on the road two miles back.

We don't cover that. So Peter says, not only do you have a great insurance policy, this one comes from heaven. It's been going on a long time and it's so great that even the angels are checking it out. They marvel at it, they ponder it. So that's how these verses divide up. Verse 10, 11, and 12. The prophets predicted it, preachers proclaim it, angels ponder it.

And that's what we're going to unpack today as we go through it. First of all, prophets, the prophets predicted it. Verse 10, of this salvation, the prophets have inquired, that's the Old Testament prophets by the way, they've inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied or predicted of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Who were the prophets? Prophets were spokesmen. They were spokesmen for God.

Look at them like field agents, field reps. They represented God by giving a message from God to a group of people. It's like they came and they said, and now a word from our Creator. And they gave a message, something that God wanted people to hear.

And their messages centered on two things. They proclaimed God's word and they predicted future events. They proclaimed God's word, they predicted future events, and all of it was anticipating salvation. Think of the prophets like archers. You know the guys with the bows and the arrows? And the prophets shot arrows of truth up into the air. But they didn't know exactly where those arrows would land. So Isaiah shot up his arrows and Daniel shot up a few arrows, and Zechariah and Zephaniah. Daniel shot up some arrows. They pulled back on the prophetic bow strings and out launched that prophetic missile of truth high into the sky until it disappeared into the sky over the horizon. And they wondered, where is it going?

Where is it going to land? And did you know that about 330 predictions were made about what Jesus Christ would do, who He would be, where He would be born, what would happen to Him? About 330 arrows were launched into the sky over a 1600-year period.

And all of those arrows fell on one person, Jesus Christ. Here's just a sampling. Trust me, I wouldn't try to go through all 330.

It would be a great study, but it would take us like 330 days to do it. So here's just a sampling of some of the predictions they made. They predicted He would be born of a virgin, Isaiah 7-14. That He would be born in Bethlehem, Micah chapter 5 verse 2. That He would be born into the tribe of Judah, Genesis 49, 10. That His ministry would begin in Galilee, Isaiah chapter 9 verse 1.

They predicted He would work miracles, Isaiah 35 verse 5 and 6. That He would enter Jerusalem on a donkey, Zechariah 9-9. That He would be betrayed by a friend, Psalm 41-9.

That He would be sold for 30 pieces of silver, Zechariah 11-12. They predicted He would be wounded and bruised, Isaiah 53-5. That His hands and feet would be pierced, Psalm 22-16. They predicted He would be crucified between two thieves, Isaiah 53-12. They predicted that His garments would be torn and those around would cast lots for them, Psalm 22-18. They further predicted His bones would not be broken, Psalm 34-10. That His side would be pierced, Zechariah 12-10. They predicted He would be buried in a rich man's tomb, Isaiah 53 verse 9. And then they predicted that He would rise from the dead, Psalm 16 verse 10. Now that's just 16 predictions.

16 arrows shot up. That's to say nothing of all the glories that would follow, the millennial glories that would follow. Isaiah the prophet, Daniel the prophet, Ezekiel. They all speak of the millennial kingdom, the reign of Christ upon the earth.

Now let me remind you of something. The sheer odds, the sheer odds of any one person in history fulfilling 330 predictions, it's crazy. The idea that all of those prophecies, all of those arrows would fall on one person, the odds against that are astronomical. I mean, there's certain things humanly impossible to pre-arrange.

You didn't arrange where you were going to be born, who your mother would be, what tribe you would come from or town you would be born in, et cetera. I have a little book in my library, and I pull it out from time to time called Science Speaks by Dr. Peter Stoner. Peter Stoner was the emeritus professor at Westmont College in science and applied mathematics. And he did a book all about this, calculating the odds of one man in history fulfilling the predictions made about Christ that he indeed fulfilled. So for example, he says in his book, if you were to take eight, just eight of the predictions, I gave you 16, for one man in history to fulfill eight things foretold about him before he was born, for him to actually see those things come to pass, the odds of that would be one in 10 to the 17th power. To visualize that, said Stoner, you could take the state of Texas and fill it two feet deep full of silver dollars. If you could do that, you'd be a very rich person, but let's just suppose you could do that. You fill the state of Texas, two feet thick full of silver dollars, you pre-mark one, you send a man and blindfold it, the odds of him selecting the one silver dollar you have pre-marked is one in 10 to the 17th power.

And Stoner even got more elaborate. He said the odds of one man in history fulfilling 16, we just gave you 16, of the predictions made about Jesus Christ that he fulfilled would be one in 10 to the 45th power. And again, whenever you have numbers, you got to visualize it because it's like, yeah, whatever, that's a number, so?

So this is what it would be like. If you could get enough silver dollars to make a ball so big that from the center of that ball to the circumference edge of that ball would be 30 times the distance the earth is presently from the sun, which is 93 million miles. So 93 million miles times 30 is the distance from the center of your silver dollar ball to the edge. You pre-mark a silver dollar, send somebody in that globe, the odds that he could find the silver dollar is one in 10 to the 45th power. Then Stoner went on to say, what about 48 predictions?

And it gets so crazy that he has to use electrons, not silver dollars, because there's just no way you could do that. Now here's what I want you to know. There are 25 books in the world thereabouts that claim to be scripture. All of them have one important ingredient absent from them.

All of them, except for one, have something missing. Prophecy. Predictive prophecy. The Quran doesn't have it. The Upanishads of the Hindus don't have it. The writings of Confucius, they don't have it.

They're absent from them. The Bible has predictive prophecy. So the prophets made all of these crazy predictions. The problem is, they didn't understand everything they wrote.

In fact, I would even say they understood very little of what they wrote. They shot the arrows out, and they were looking like, now where's that going to land? Example, in Isaiah chapter 6, God commissions Isaiah to go proclaim to a nation the desolations that will come, and Isaiah asks a question. How long, O Lord? The prophet Habakkuk says the same thing when the predictions are made about Judah and Jerusalem.

O Lord, how long? We studied the prophet Daniel for months. Daniel didn't understand everything.

Daniel 7 says, I was grieved in my spirit within my body because this vision troubled me, and he had to ask the angel who was standing by him what these things meant. So these prophets predicted these things, and then they looked at what was written to try to figure out what it all meant. There were two basic things they were trying to understand.

Notice what it says. Searching what, verse 11, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Now, some translations say searching what person or what time.

Basically, those were the two things they wanted to know. Who am I writing about? When will these things happen? What's the timing and the circumstances around the coming of the Messiah? I mean, imagine Isaiah the prophet writing what he wrote.

Okay, so listen to how this sounds. Isaiah 7, 14. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.

Here you go. What does that mean, God? I'm sure God would have to say, don't worry about it.

You wouldn't believe it if I told you. And so it was with Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Daniel, and Micah, and Zechariah, and the rest of them. I mean, it's like 25 men all trying to put together one of those 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Every one of them has a few of the pieces, but none of them have all the pieces, and no one has the picture on the front cover of the box.

Add to that, most of these guys didn't know each other and lived hundreds of years apart. That's what being an Old Testament prophet was like. David had a few of the pieces. Moses had a few of the pieces. Isaiah had a few of the pieces. Daniel had a few of the pieces.

Zechariah had a few of the pieces, but no one prophet had them all. But when all of those pieces were put together, the picture on the front of the box was Jesus Christ. And so Jesus walks from Jerusalem toward Emmaus with two of His disciples. And they're bummed out because they don't know why Jesus died on that cross, and they don't think He's alive from the dead.

He happens to be right next to them. And in revealing Himself to these two apostles, Jesus says these words, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written. Ought not Christ to have suffered and enter into His glory? And then Luke says, Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in the Scripture all things concerning Himself. On one occasion, Jesus even said to His disciples, Many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it.

And to hear what you hear and have not heard it. Folks, that's why we study all the Bible. If you ever wonder, why do you study the Old Testament? So we can understand the New Testament. Because you've got a whole bunch of predictions made in the Old Testament. You've got to know where they're going. Those arrows were shot up.

Where are they going to land? In the New Testament. But if you just read the New Testament, it's like you go to a field with a bunch of arrows and you ask, where did these things come from? You've got to read the Old Testament.

That's where they shot those things off at. So as one scholar put it so beautifully, the new is in the old contained, the old is in the new explained. That is the New Testament is in the Old Testament contained, the Old Testament is in the New Testament explained.

You need both to see who and when those arrows were shot and how they were fulfilled in Christ. Look at verse 12. To them, that is to those prophets He's still speaking about, it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which have now been reported to you. At some point those prophets began to understand that what they were writing about was going to be fulfilled at a distant time, far into the future.

It wasn't going to happen in their time. Some things they predicted did, but much of it was going to happen beyond their time. And Peter is saying to his audience, you're the audience, you're it, you're the recipients.

I can just cite a couple of examples. Moses in Deuteronomy 18 made one of the earliest predictions of the Messiah and he put it this way. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like unto me from among your brethren, him you shall listen to. In the book of Daniel, which we studied at length in Daniel 10, 14, the angel said to Daniel, I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come. Daniel 12 verse 4, But you Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end. I find this extremely encouraging. I find it encouraging that my salvation was never an afterthought.

I was never an afterthought. It was all planned in the mind of God who gave a message sent from heaven, given to and through prophets, fulfilled in Christ, proclaimed by the apostles and received by you and I. Because life happens, sometimes life happens so suddenly it takes us off guard. It's so surprising. What Peter is saying is this whole salvation enterprise was not surprising to God. It's all part of his eternal plan and you're part of his eternal plan. See sometimes things happen and we think, that's so random what happened.

Redemption isn't random. It's all part of God's great plan. The prophets predicted it. Second thing I want you to note is preachers proclaim it.

Oh, by the way, a little piece of trivia. This is the only scripture where prophets, preachers and angels are talked about in the same section. The Bible has a lot to say about all three of them, but it's the only place where all of them are put together. The prophets predicted it, but notice preachers proclaim it. Look at verse 12. To them it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

Prophets predicted it, but they did not originate it. It came from heaven to the prophets through the prophets and it was picked up by preachers who preached it to anyone who would listen. And who does he refer to those who preach to you? Well, primarily the apostles. In that day and age it was Peter and it was Paul and it was John and James and the rest of them going out and sharing the gospel. It was the earliest apostles who preached the gospel to people.

In fact, Peter, the author of this book, was the first preacher in the early church, the day of Pentecost. He stood up and preached. Thousands of people got saved. Came into salvation. Sometime later Peter and John were going into the temple.

There was a man who was lame from birth. He was picked up, healed. Peter preached a message and he said in that message, nor is there salvation in any other for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So what began with the prophets and was passed on to Peter and the apostles was preached to anybody who would listen. Now, fast forward 2,000 years to Albuquerque, New Mexico, 930 service Calvary, Albuquerque.

Here you are. The reason you are here is because of the faithfulness of those who picked up that message and preached it and others heard it and preached it and others heard it and you and you and you and you and you and you and you are all commissioned to take up that banner and to preach the gospel to this generation and to the next generation. That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series Rock Solid. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way to connect you and others to God's word. When Jesus walked the earth, he was known for loving the most unloved and marginalized people in society and he does the same today through you and me, his people. I want to ask you to consider partnering with this ministry as we expand the reach of these Bible teachings to include folks who might not otherwise hear the life-changing message of the gospel. Here's how you can give right now to make that possible. Give us a call at 800-922-1888 to make a donation. 800-922-1888 or give online at connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. This is vital to help connect more people like you to Christ.

So thank you for giving generously. Did you know there's a great biblical resource available right at your fingertips through your mobile device? Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app. You can dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Hytsek and the YouVersion Bible app. Now, before we go, tune in to watch Connect with Skip Hytsek on the Hillsong Channel on Saturdays at 4.30 p.m. Mountain or catch it on TVN on Sundays at 5.30 a.m. Eastern. Check your local listings and be sure to come back next week as Skip Hytsek shares how you can walk in Jesus' life while living in a dark world. . Connect with Skip Hytsek is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.