So let me ask you Christians, when you heard Jesus first speak to you, do you remember? Do you remember at any point in your life that He has spoken to you? Are you ready to give that up for anything?
You better not be. Peter was not. He heard the sermons, he saw the miracles, but it was the character of the man Jesus Christ that moved Jesus. Peter the most, and everybody else too. The love.
More information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick continues introducing the book of 1 Peter, in 1 Peter chapter 1. Jesus named him a rock, pitros, a movable rock, but not a small rock. That's a different Greek word. Peter will use the other word, lythos, when he speaks about the living stones. But Jesus named him a movable rock, in contrast to Petra, the massive rock, the immovable rock. So you've got these three Greek words of a rock that we're working with.
Pitros, for the movable rock that's large, lythos, for the smaller rock like gems or stones on the ground, if these rocks would cry out to me, there was that word in the Greek used by Matthew, for example. And then, Petra, for the massive rock. First, pardon me, John's gospel, there we find that Peter's brother brought him to Jesus Christ. No, literally brought him to Jesus Christ. Today, when we lead someone to Christ, we say, well, he led me to Christ.
But, Andrew physically takes Peter to Jesus Christ. John's gospel, chapter 1, verse 41. He found his own brother, Simon, that's again the Greek for Simeon, the Hebrew name, and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated to Christ. The Hebrew word for Christ is Messiah, and the Greek word for Messiah is Christ. Anointed is our English word, but he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus looked at him, he said, you're Simon, son of Jonah, you shall be called Saphas, which is translated a stone, end quote.
Now, what's with the safest thing? Well, that's Aramaic for stone. And so, when the writers of the New Testament put their stylus to parchment, they used the Greek language. And that word for Saphas, they used the Greek word Petrus to interpret what Jesus meant. He's not a rock like Jesus, but he's a rock nonetheless. And Peter, of course, was, it's an interesting story of a man named a rock who had moments in his life where he was movable, but overall, he was not. He was everything that Christ said he would be, and so he wore that name. He wore it with honor.
He starts out this letter, Petrus. Christ called me that, and I'm not letting it go. An apostle, why is this important? Authority. Authority submission to it does not come easily. Many people look for an opportunity to find problems with authority just so they can rebel against it and make themselves feel like, I did something today.
But you can't get away from it. And in Christ especially, the church was built on the testimony and the blood of the apostles and the prophets. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19, the household of God, then verse 20, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. The household of God.
Do you belong to it, or are you an outsider? It's up to you, the church, built by these men because God did it that way. Just like the Old Testament was built by the prophets and the kings and the priests and the people of God, he saw Jesus raise no less than three people from the dead and then himself. Yeah, I know, the Bible says God, the Father rose, but the Godhead is one, and you're just not going to divide them any kind of way.
You turn it. The Godhead is manifested to us to help us get an idea of what's going on and just how thorough God's knowledge of us is. And his coming to earth as a babe born in a manger and then living through this life, but virtuous nonetheless, is educational for us. So that when we see him in the wilderness and he doesn't budge an inch to Satan, we understand no one can withstand a face-to-face assault of temptation from Satan on their own. He did because he's not like anybody else. He is the creator of the universe. Peter saw these people dead.
Then he saw them alive simply because of Jesus Christ. Those who scoff at these things are themselves scoffed at by God. God said, are you kidding me?
I put the sun up there, the moon, the blue planet that just runs perfectly in the universe. Nothing slams into it to kill it, and you scoff at the fact that I can bring a life back? Am I supposed to honor that?
Am I supposed to be impressed with some credential you've made up? And we who believe, we fall down at the feet of the one who does these things, like Peter did. You know, when Peter saw Jesus do his first miracle, you know what Peter did? He fell down at his feet and said, depart from me. I am not a righteous man.
I can't handle this. And thank God the Lord did not listen to Peter. And so he saw also the transfiguration of Jesus Christ. The Greek word is metamorphos. We get our English word metamorphos, metamorphosized.
Changed. The radiant splendor of Christ was upon him in front of the eyes. Those three men that were there on the mount of transfiguration somewhere in the promised land, it's unspecified and good because somebody would have put a monastery there or something and have you another opportunity to commit idolatry. But that elevated appearance of Jesus Christ, he never forgot it. He's going to talk about it in his letters. Peter never forgot these things. And he didn't strut around boasting about them. He just laid them out as they needed, when they needed to be said, he brought them forward. But he had so many other things to say because of God working in him. He saw Jesus walk on water in a storm carrying an elephant. No, he didn't.
There was no elephant. But he could have. He could have. I mean, the fact that he walked on water, do you need anything else?
The fact that it was in a storm just adds to it. The fact that he's even talking and passing them on the boat. Peter saw that. And he wasn't going to give it up for them. So let me ask you, Christians, when you heard Jesus first speak to you, do you remember at any point in your life that he has spoken to you? Are you ready to give that up for anything?
You better not be. Peter was not. He heard the sermons. He saw the miracles. But it was the character of the man Jesus Christ that moved Peter the most and everybody else too.
The love. That's why on that day when Malchus dared reach out to arrest Christ, Peter tried to cut his head off. Fortunately for Malchus, Peter was a poor aim and he only got the ear because he wasn't aiming for the ear.
He was aiming to cut his head open. That was brave love, but it was foolish love because Christ had already laid out to them what was going to happen and what was supposed to happen. This man personally knew Christ in human form and he was hand picked and sent out with authority and so he says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, I was there, I was chosen, I'm here now and I am working on behalf of the kingdom for these pilgrims. That's his next word here in verse 1. Strangers, you could translate it that way too, those traveling through.
Not going to be here long, just passing through. I have a destination to go to. 1 Peter 2 verse 11, Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul. What does that mean war against the soul? It wants to take you to hell.
That's what it means. Everything that God is working in you, the flesh will try to work against us. That's the curse that is upon us, but the blessing is the filling of the spirit. He speaks of the dispersion, the diaspora in the Greek and mostly, for instance, in James chapter 1 it is used, it speaks of the Jews that were scattered about the Roman empire. Many of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity had no interest in going back to the promised land. They learned to be merchants and they were preferring that lifestyle over the lifestyle in the promised land and they went around and found a bunch of Gentiles to sell things to and they lived pretty well. Nothing necessarily wrong with any of that, but they were known as those of the dispersion, the diaspora. Well, by the time the church, this time in history, 64 AD, the Gentiles are just flooding into the church now. They're coming out of paganism. When they heard the gospel, so many of them said, you know, I'm done with that stuff.
I want Christ. And this large area, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, this is a huge, it's about a third of modern day Turkey. Peter is using it more than likely to believers throughout the Roman empire because when you look at the letter, at one moment he's writing to Jews and the next you hear, he's writing to Gentiles. He's writing to both and he's using a language that they both understand because it's attached to the Old Testament. And that the scripture, the New Testament scripture was still being formed at this time, so the Old Testament was the dominant document until the letters of Paul started circulating and James and the Christians would read these things and the Spirit would let them know this is scripture.
This is something to preserve. These are words to follow because they come from those whom I have sent my apostles and or slash those under the authority of the apostles such as Jude and Luke, for example. And so, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, as I mentioned, a very large area in the ancient world. In the book of Acts at the day of Pentecost when the church was born, when the Holy Spirit was given to the believers, we read in Acts chapter 2 that there were those there, Parthenians, Medes, Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia. So Cappadocia, Pontus, and Cappadocia can be pronounced Cappadocia, but I'm going with Cappadocia. Pontus, another place mentioned. On the Black Sea, so as Cappadocia goes that far to the north also, Pontus goes there. Aquila, remember Aquila and Priscilla, those of you who are Bible students, that dear couple that even saved Paul's neck at one point, very loyal couple to Paul, and he never forgot them.
He ended up calling Priscilla, Aquila's wife, you know, Prisca, sort of just a term of affection, of honest love. Well, her husband Aquila, he was from Pontus, Acts chapter 18 verse 2, and he found a certain Jew name Aquila, born in Pontus, and then Cappadocia. That is a region of the world, it's very beautiful. The Christians, there's so much rock there, the Christians hewed out of the stone all sorts of places to live and hide out, especially in the 7th through the 13th centuries during the Muslim aggression, invasion against them, that's where they would go. We read in Acts chapter 16 verse 7, after they had come to Mysia, they tried to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So when Paul and Barnabas wanted to go to Bithynia, they realized that God didn't want them to go, so they didn't go. Unlike so many today, I'm going anyway, because this is where I feel like I need to go, and they don't have the leading of the Spirit. Pardon me.
I'm glad you can't see that in slow motion. Well anyway, Bithynia is another area that wasn't for Paul, but it was for other men, and now here's Peter ministering there. In verse 2 now, he says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of blood, the blood of Jesus Christ.
And sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace be multiplied. I just want to take that word, foreknowledge, just for a moment, and then I'll come back to it. Everything with God is foreknowledge.
I mean, not with us, but with him. He knows it all. And not only does he know it all, he knows what to do with it all.
He even has a place to put it. So, many Christians get so tangled up by words that they end up abusing them and departing from the simplicity of their meaning. So, let's try to open this up. The elect. Anyone who turns to Christ for salvation according to the plan of the gospel is elected to salvation.
Elections are based on decisions, and decisions, ideally, are based on information. The gospel is preached, you make a decision. I elect to follow Christ. Then, Christ will elect to let you be saved.
Not complicated. Earlier in Scripture, it was a term used almost always for the Jews, the elect people of God. But once the Christians came along, it was expanded and also restricted in many areas. You don't just go to heaven because you're born Jewish anymore than you go to heaven just because you're born in a Christian home.
You have to come personally. So, God has elected to salvation those who accept his plan. That's what it means. Salvation is impossible for any who resist or insist on resisting God's invitation. Those rebelling are not elected. Those who decline the invitation, they are not elected.
They are not part of the elect. And those with a theory to uphold, they confuse the meaning of such a simple word. So, it's not whosoever wills to come to Christ, but whosoever wills to come to Christ and stay with Christ. And I love that about the gospel because it is real.
It is. God treats us with an element of respect. I'm going to respect your decision.
What's it going to be? Will it remain that way when tested in persecution? Again, Peter at one point, he cracked.
But he didn't do it a second time. Loving Jesus is a choice. It's up to you, like it or not. Revelation chapter 22 verse 17, And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him who hears say, Come, and let him who thirsts come.
Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. And you've got, of course, those masterminds that come along and tell you it doesn't mean that. That there's no such thing as free will when it comes to salvation, but you have it everywhere else.
You can go to whatever kind of stake you want, but not when it comes to salvation. It's just madness. All right, I spent too much time on that.
You should see what I cut out of my notes. And Calvinists are this, and I just, come on, you've grown now, you're mature. Well, it's irritating because so many people mess up the simple things of scripture. To the foreknowledge of God the Father. Again, God has always had a plan. He's not learning or figuring out as he goes along. He just knows it.
It's done for him. Airlines. They don't have any say-so of who wants to fly on their planes. They do have a say-so of who is allowed to fly. In other words, you can say, well, I want to fly, I don't know, all the airlines I know are extinct. TWA, Pan Am, Eastern, they're gone.
So, I don't know. Big Whale Airlines. You might want to fly on their plane. All right, well, you go get a ticket. They know you're going to fly. They didn't force you to fly to get the ticket. If you are a hostile individual, they can prohibit you from flying.
We understand the simple law of life, and it applies to the gospel. If you don't want to fly, then don't. You won't.
But if you do, it's there for you. Revelation 3, verse 5. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but I will confess his name before my father and before his angels. You want to fly into heaven, you better go with Christ Airlines. And if you go with Christ Airlines and behave yourself according to the plan of salvation, you're in. Is that not fair?
Why would anybody object to that? God the Father and sanctification of the Spirit, he says, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, the Godhead is in this one sentence. God the Father, sanctification of the Spirit, the blood of Jesus Christ. It's such an important event that all of God is into this, and no part of God is disinterested in our salvation. No angels are in this list, and no human beings, no created being is in that list.
Mary's not in that list. Just the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They make up what we know to be the Godhead, also called the Trinity. The will of the Father, the process of the Spirit, the cross of Christ. Justification, the salvation, that word you find in your Bibles in the Roman letter, it's salvation. It's an interesting word from 2 Samuel concerning God's behavior towards those who are problematic. He devises means so that his banished ones are not expelled from him. 2 Samuel chapter 14, verse 14.
That's the woman of Tekoa. She's laying out a story, but the Holy Spirit takes a snapshot of that statement and says, that's what God does. He devises means so that his banished ones are not expelled from him. He makes a way for the lost soul, the sinner, the disobedient one to be rescued. Once one is saved, sanctification takes hold, they're saved, they're set aside. It is a lifelong process of development to be like Christ. And then glorification is the final destination, that's heaven. 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 4, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved for you in heaven.
We're almost done. He says, for obedience. Why do so many Christians find that word obedience so distasteful? They don't want to hear it preached, they don't want to be held accountable.
What should God have said? For disobedience. We're saved for disobedience. We're saved so that you can wreck the place.
Not at all. Obedience is something we all want. 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 16, as free.
That's what we are. Yet, not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Bondservant is a willing servant.
I am his servant, I am his slave, because I want to be and he allows me to be. The sprinkling of the blood of Christ, well that came through the death of Christ. It's a Judaic picture, it goes back to the book of Numbers.
Peter's audience would have grabbed this right away. They would see that what was written in the law of Moses was an anticipated the coming of Jesus Christ. Exodus 24, and Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, this is the blood of the covenant of Yahweh, which he made with you according to all these words.
Jeremiah then makes commentary on that. Many centuries later he says, behold the days are coming, says Yahweh when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. So no longer the sprinkling of blood as a symbol of the fact to come, but the actual fact, the cross of Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins.
He says, grace to you and peace be multiplied. Peter knew grace in the midst of persecution. Acts chapter 12 is when they killed James with the sword. James was Peter's friend, the first apostle to be killed, to be murdered, martyred. We read it in verse 3 about Herod's action and because he saw that it pleased the Jews he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now Peter knew he was going to die, he didn't know when, and maybe he thought, well now's my time. And then in verse 6, and when Herod was about to bring him out that night, Peter was sleeping bound with two chains between two soldiers and the guards before the door were keeping the prison.
He had two men next to him and other guards outside, and he's fast asleep. He wasn't bothered. He was persecuted.
He didn't know what was going to happen, he didn't care. So when he writes to these Christians, he says, I know what you're going through, I've been there myself. You're facing death, you're facing beatings, your bank books are being attacked, you're being fired.
I know what's happening, your family's being messed with, I understand. At the end of this letter, and this is where we're close, at the end of this letter Peter writes, I have written to you briefly exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand. You stand in this, what I've been writing to you about facing persecution. You remain faithful to Jesus Christ.
This life is not all that. The righteous would say, amen. 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.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-03-23 16:49:31 / 2024-03-23 16:58:53 / 9