The Spirit of Christ (Part B)

The time you spend with Jesus forms you, it shapes you, it makes you the person that you are in Christ.

Try spending no time with Him and you will prove that in the negative. Have you ever been with Christ? Why do you call yourself a Christian when you behave this way? Because you don't pray, you don't go into the Word, you don't fellowship, you don't commune with the Lord. Acts 2 42 is just a bunch of numbers to you and not a reality to be experienced.

I hope that's not the case. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Peter.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today Pastor Rick continues his message called the Spirit of Christ. He'll begin in Luke chapter 1. Luke's Gospel chapter 1, there we read, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been since the world began. That tells us we have this unbroken witness. We have this line from Adam, the first human being, all the way to the present.

No Johnny come lately is in this. It's an unbroken witness. No other religion on earth has it. They all fall off after a while. You've traced them back to Papa said. Somebody told them, my fathers have done this. Where is the proof? Where's the beef?

It's missing. So they just become insistent. You may say I don't like you mocking them. I'm telling you how it is.

If it's humorous, then it is what it is. So he says Peter does who prophesied of the grace that would come to you. That word prophecy is an outstanding word.

It means something foretold in advance, something that's fantastic, that's not normal, that's outside of humanity. It is here now, this grace, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you and it is here. This again, not the law of Moses, but the developed law of God and the grace of Christ. What is grace in the Old Testament?

It's there to teach us. We don't really see the Bible as two books, the Old and New Testament. It's really one.

And there's a progress, there's a development, one and the latter part seals the first part and defines it for us. We get that, but it's one book. It is the book, the Bible. Grace is this undeserved kindness that God gives to us. Who here deserves a holy, pure God? Who here thinks that they deserve kind treatment from him, being a sinner?

If you feel that way, you are out of step with reality, with truth, with revealed truth, with just the laws of reason. And so grace is kindness nonetheless. You don't deserve it, you're going to get it.

You're going to get this. Kindness. Grace, it saved eight souls in an ark from the flood waters of God's judgment on the earth. Grace rescued Rahab from Jericho and the fate of that city as it thumbed its nose at the miracles of God.

See, that harlot, she got it. She understood. She saw God moving through the Jewish people. His love and care for them, she wanted a piece of that and she got it. If she got it, what was wrong with the mayor of Jericho?

What was wrong with all the soldiers and the people? Everybody else refused it, she did not. Grace fell upon her and her household. Grace, it brought Ruth, that outside Moabite, into the royal family of God. And as a bonus on the life of Ruth, Naomi was blessed and refreshed and not in a spiritual sense, but in an emotional sense, born again.

She came back to life after that sour experience outside of Israel. God brought Ruth into her life through grace and blessed a heap of people. So the Old Testament prophets, they knew about grace. They also knew what stirred them, what led them, what moved them, and who informed them. They knew this.

They weren't groping around, who's this? They got it. They understood it was God. And in that strength, they wrote, they preached, they lived, and they acted. I mean, we think of a classic example, not having to do directly with the salvation of Jesus Christ and his prophecies, but you think of Elijah, if I'm a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you.

And boom, it did. And then, sort of, Satan said, do it again if it was really God. So he does it again.

Second group comes out. So the third one says, okay, look, peace. Let's not do it that way.

It doesn't work well. But the prophets understood who it was working in their lives. God was moving and sharing this message that we enjoy in greater fullness, incidentally. Whatever the details, the facts surrounding the prophecies defy naturalistic explanation. You just cannot take someone to Psalm 22 and say it was written after the crucifixion. You just can't take them to Isaiah 53 and say this was written after the, oh, Jesus self-fulfilled that.

These are miraculous events. Those scriptures were in place already. The Jews understood they spoke of Messiah. They just rethought everything after Messiah came and died and they rejected him.

Then they applied it to Israel and not the Messiah. That's what sinners do. And they're real good at doing it. And we are aware of these things. And we know what to do with them. We stick close to the Lord. We look to order our lives in such a way that he can use us. Peter gives the very best answer concerning these prophecies that we know them to be. He speaks 30 years earlier about a Psalm of David in Acts chapter 2, 30 years before he wrote this letter. He said this about David and his prophecies in the Psalms. He said, David, being a prophet, he, foreseeing this, spoke of the Christ.

The New Testament apostles understood that the Old Testament prophets were moved by God to give us this message, that they were in the presence of spiritual things, not natural things, that we are too, that when you're going through whatever it is you're going through in life, sickness or whatever else, persecution in their case, whatever it may be, God said, I will never leave you. He didn't say you will never leave me. Just make sure you don't. He said, I will never leave you. He's there. Now, what I want from God, even when there's no drama going on in my life and I'm just not feeling his presence, I want him to make his presence known. Too often he says no. Because the just shall live by faith.

Because there's no weapon against faith formed that can defeat it if you would just abide in me. And he lets me live it out. And I know it. I don't like it sometimes. Sometimes I even pout, believe it, at my age.

Hopefully you don't get to see that. That happens in the shop of prayer on my knees. We're praying for others when God so and so is going through this.

Why aren't you moving faster? This is an excellent, this is a teachable moment. I have some of the best arguments presented to him that he cannot refute. He just ignores them. And he files them in the pile of the righteous.

Yeah, baby. My prayers are preserved in heaven because they count. And I cannot measure, I cannot measure what goes on in this life by what goes on in the spiritual realm. His ways are higher than my ways. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts and pass my finding out when he says so. If he wants me to find out, he'll tell me.

If not, he won't tell me. We live or we die by this. Christians who have been Christ-centered versus self-centered have gone to the stake believing this. And we look at their life stories and we applaud them and we say, I want to be like that too.

Should I ever be faced with what they were faced with? Acts chapter 4 verse 13. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they realized they had been with Jesus. That's why Peter is saying what he is saying in this section of scripture. He was with Jesus. And that's why we now come to verse 11. He says, searching what or what matter of time the Spirit of Christ who is in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

What gives him the nerve to say this? The Spirit of Christ who was in them? The Old Testament prophets? He was with him.

That's what gives him the nerve. Peter learned more from Christ than anybody could ever log in a book or record or write down. Not only Peter, all those men that were with Christ for three years. They were exposed to so much just watching the reactions of Jesus.

They could remember how he looked at the widow as she put in her two mics. The look on his face before he said a word was instructive and informative and worked into them ministry that they could otherwise never have. Forming in them men that they would become because of their time with Christ and much of that is the same to this day. The time you spend with Jesus forms you, it shapes you, it makes you the person that you are in Christ.

Try spending no time with him and you will prove that in the negative. Have you ever been with Christ? Why do you call yourself a Christian when you behave this way? Because you don't pray, you don't go into the Word, you don't fellowship, you don't commune with the Lord. Acts 2 42 is just a bunch of numbers to you and not a reality to be experienced.

I hope that's not the case. When you go through tough times, a lot of things are put on pause as you work through it and Christ gives you margin space to do that, be encouraged. You will return back to your mission, your second mission.

Your first mission is the one that is handed to you at the moment. So here in verse 11 he says searching what or what manner of time. This is not to do with the duration of time but the distinctiveness, the ages that is. They were searching to find out the age of salvation and Messiah, when it would come. They would look at each other's scriptures. Daniel talks about reading what Jeremiah said. As you read Jeremiah, you find out he was reading what Isaiah had written before him.

These men searched the scriptures to better understand. When God moved and told them things, he didn't tell them everything. And as he mentions in verse 11, I might have referenced this as being in verse 10, so I've corrected it.

And so there, you can't come after service. That was verse 11, Pastor. You said verse 10. Some of you are saying, I don't know what you're talking about.

That's good. Verse, the Spirit of Christ was in them. Again, Peter, you knew this how? How did you know the Spirit of Christ was in Isaiah? You mean the Holy Spirit?

No, I mean the Spirit of Jesus, the Christ, my Lord. And you know this how? I lived with the man for three years. And I can tell you there's more to the man than being a man. He is the Son of God. And so Peter reports that Jesus was active in the ancient prophets long before the birth in the manger. He existed.

He functioned. He self-existent. He's eternal. That means eternity past, eternity forward, without beginning, without end, from A to Z, the alpha and the omega. No one else has this distinction on them.

No one else. He is the sinless one, the eternal one. And this statement, the Spirit of Christ was in them, bears silent witness to his deity, that Jesus is God, that Jesus is God the Son.

The pre-existence of Christ is exclusive to him. And no one else, no human, no one who has ever taken human form can come even close to being who he is and who he was when he walked in ancient Israel. He is divine, without sin, as I mentioned, glorious above all. He is the Holy One of Israel.

He is the Holy One of the Church. And before his birth in Bethlehem, again active in human affairs, other apostles knew this and they wrote about it. Paul, and let me just add this, when God revealed these things to his prophets, he left room for his apostles to develop what they started, to finish it. And from Acts chapter 2 to the end of Revelation chapter 3, you have the apostles giving us revelation about this salvation that the prophets said was coming.

And then they lived. And the apostles come along and they develop it for us. And they stand there with guard rails in their hands saying to the Christians, stay between the rails. And here they are, the precepts of Christ. Romans chapter 8 verse 9, but you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. If you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you don't belong to him. Well, the same Spirit of Christ that Paul is talking about, the same one Peter is talking about.

That's why we know he is without beginning, without end. Galatians 4, he says, because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts. The Spirit of Jesus Christ. So the Old Testament prophets, they had the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

This is critical to understand. The Spirit of Christ, which is in them, is here in our New Testament. It is in our Old Testament. It is in our Bible. They prepared those Old Testament prophets for the coming of the Savior because it was him in them doing the preparation.

Jesus was preparing for Jesus through them. This explains, this is the critical part, this explains why we love the Old Testament as Christians. What Christian does not love the Old Testament? We understand that much of it belongs to the law of Moses. We are able to filter that out through the New Testament and once that process is complete, we love it all and we go into strength of it all.

I can quote Paul as an authority with equal enthusiasm as I would quote Ezekiel or Jeremiah or any other child of God in the Old Testament. We stand up and we applaud the words when Esther says, if I die, I die. We say, that's the Spirit of Jesus in her. Ruth makes that speech, your God will be my God, your people will be my people. What Christian does not stand up in their heart and say, yeah, yeah, that's me too. Because the Spirit of Christ was in the lives of those people bringing about these effects and he's with us now.

They faced hardship and they faced suffering just like you and I do. Naomi had to be saying to herself, what is going on? Her husband died, her two sons died, she's left with two daughters-in-law, one of them leaves her and Ruth, what does Ruth have to offer? Allegiance. It's what Christ wants from you and me, allegiance. Loyalty to stick with him no matter what. So when he says, I will never leave you or forsake you, we answer back and I will never leave you nor forsake you. We are married, we are together. We are joined and what God has joined together, let no man tear apart, not even myself.

That is the idea. It was indicating when he testified beforehand, the Spirit informing the prophets, indicating. It is a grotesque thought, again, to say that God cannot speak to humanity through men. It is grotesque because it leads to the doom of souls, human beings, real people. We have a lot of people on this planet, they act like they care more about people and animals and we need to care for people and animals.

I'm certainly not against any of that. But not at the exclusion of the Maker, not at the exclusion of God and his Word. It's a big planet.

There's a lot of people on it. There are many people that follow false religions that have never heard the Gospel and they're decent people as people go. God will do right when it comes to their day of judgment.

That's all you and I need to know. He will do right. Paul talks about this in Romans, in the early chapters of Romans. God is not unmindful of these things. But we are responsible for the light we have and we are to shine it when we can and fight the good fight. And there are many fights but there's only one good one.

There's only one worth investing the life in. He mentions here now in verse 11 the sufferings of Christ. That's what they spoke about. The Jews call it the sorrows of the Messiah. That's his cross. As I mentioned, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53. Lay out the cross. None of my bones are broken, David writes.

The things in Psalm 22 could have been written about no experience in David's life. They fit perfectly into the crucifixion. Isaiah 53, I mean, he was wounded for our transgressions bruised for our sins.

Who are you going to say that about? Somebody could say, I was bruised for your transgressions. Yeah, but you didn't take them away. You just got bruised for them.

I need someone to take them away. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist recognized it and he heralded it. He shouted it out. They were given a considerable, considerable body of truth, but it lacked high definition.

But without what they had, there would be no high definition. It was so structured by God that when these things were finally fulfilled, the apostles, they got it. And so many others did also. But the Jews could not understand when it mentions, when Peter says, he mentions here the sufferings of Christ. He will mention that several times through his two letters because he was there to see it. And he tells us that he was a witness of the sufferings. Yeah, I know, they all ran. But from a distance, Peter could see enough.

We'll cover that when we get to it. The difference between his coming to redeem and his coming to reign is laid out in the prophecies, but they could not tie them together. The rabbis, some of them, even went so far as to say, well, there's two messiahs coming. One will come and suffer for Israel and the other will come and reign, be sovereign for Israel.

See, they couldn't understand with the information that they had. It was one messiah. We understand there's two comings. There is the first coming of Christ when he came to redeem us.

There will be the second coming of Christ when he comes to reign over the earth. Luke's gospel, Jesus, expecting the Jews to have known this. He expected his disciples to have figured this out just from the writings of the prophets. And so he says, Luke 24, then he said to them, O foolish ones, how many times has Jesus said that about you? I didn't want to say how many times he said about me because my counter is broken when it comes to that, but O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, but not Christ who have suffered these things and to enter into his glory. Because the prophets wrote it.

That's what he's referencing here. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Side note, if Christ took the time to expound all the scriptures, should not pastors do the same or should they just leave out?

Should they just pass over? If they're not going to go through the whole Bible verse by verse, then at least let the Bible go through them verse by verse. There have been many great men of God who did not preach verse by verse, but they went through the Bible verse by verse and they preached out of that. That is what Christ is talking about. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, that's Genesis all the way to Malachi, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. It is all about Jesus.

So we have a victorious Messiah in Psalm 2, for example, in Isaiah 11, for example, and as I've referenced already, the suffering Messiah in Psalms and Isaiah. Also, currently we are between the two appearances, the church age, which none of the prophets saw. Christ saw it. The apostles even struggled to get it. Paul was so blind to it, he was killing Christians because he didn't get it. The ancient prophets, they chose to believe what they saw, what they knew to be true, yet unclear, they held to what they knew was true.

And that which was unclear did not knock them off the truth, as we see happen so often to people. We must choose to believe Christ unseen, and that's why I went back and read that portion of the Peter where he says, having not seen you love, that is faith. 1 Peter 1 8, whom having not seen you love, though now you do not see him yet, believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible full of glory.

Some of that should find your way into your singing in the assembly. And the glories, we're now at the bottom of verse 11, and the glories that would follow, the resurrection, the ascension, the birth of the church, the salvation age that we are in, of the Gentiles. Isaiah 53 verse 11, he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied.

In other words, the cross was worth it to him. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of 1 Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. And we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.