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“Concerning This Salvation…”

Truth for Life / Alistair Begg
The Truth Network Radio
October 28, 2024 4:04 am

“Concerning This Salvation…”

Truth for Life / Alistair Begg

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October 28, 2024 4:04 am

Some people believe the Old Testament was rendered obsolete once Jesus completed His earthly ministry. Continuing a study in 1 Peter, Alistair Begg explains why it’s so important to understand the whole Bible. Study along with us on Truth For Life.



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This listener-funded program features the clear, relevant Bible teaching of Alistair Begg. Today’s program and nearly 3,000 messages can be streamed and shared for free at tfl.org thanks to the generous giving from monthly donors called Truthpartners. Learn more about this Gospel-sharing team or become one today. Thanks for listening to Truth For Life!









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There are some people who think the Old Testament was Well, with our Bibles open at 1 Peter, what we have essentially in 1 Peter is a handbook of Christian discipleship. You may never have thought of it in those terms, but I want to assure you that that is essentially what it provides, written to Christians scattered around the first-century world.

Peter covers just about everything that is necessary for someone who is laying down the foundational blocks of their Christian convictions. And actually, if we were indexing the first nine verses that we've already looked at together, one word stands out above and beyond the rest. In actual fact, it's kind of the central theme around which everything else is gathered, and it is the word salvation.

The subtheme, I think, would be hope, so that we would be thinking primarily of salvation and then subsequently of the hope that comes to us as a result of the nature of saving grace. And we have discovered that this salvation, to which Peter refers, has been planned by God the Father, has been procured by God the Son, and is applied by God the Spirit. Now, it's clear as you look at the opening phrase of verse 10 that Peter has not yet finished with this subject. That's why the tenth verse begins with a phrase concerning this salvation. And what we're about to discover is that it was a matter not only of proclamation, but it was also a matter of investigation, because, we're told, these same prophets searched intently and with the greatest care. So I want to notice, first of all, this whole matter of the investigatory role of the Old Testament prophets.

It may appear somewhat uninteresting, but in actual fact it's not. It's very, very important, because it points above and beyond everything else to remind us of the unity of Scripture. I meet people from time to time who only, by their own confession, read the New Testament. Somehow or another, they've discovered that they've made the decision that the Old Testament was for a different time and for a different people.

Somehow or another, they're not in the right dispensation or whatever it might be. Well, then, they're wrong, and they need to know that, and they need to get back and into the Old Testament. And if we were any doubt concerning it, these verses help us to that conclusion. The Old Testament, along with the New, is concerned with grace and with glory. The necessary correction provided by Jesus for the despondent disciples on the Emmaus road is, I believe, as necessary for us this morning as it ever was then.

To what am I referring to? Luke chapter 24. And if you turn to it, you'll see what I'm mentioning here. Luke chapter 24. And you remember the road to Emmaus, the disciples thinking that the story should have ended far differently than just with the death of this Jesus?

They had hoped for so much more, and it seemed now like it was over. And Jesus arrives and walks along beside them, without them realizing it is he. And then in verse 25 of Luke 24, he said to them, How foolish you are! And how slow of heart… Now, notice the next phrase, to believe all that the prophets have written. In other words, he says, Listen, guys, you don't really know your Bibles.

You have not been reading your Bibles. If you had been paying attention to the truth of the Word of God, which for them was the Old Testament Scriptures, you would have remembered this. And then he asks, and his question is posited upon what the prophets had written.

And so he says, Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. Now, I wonder, have you ever done that exercise of going into your Old Testament and finding prophetic words concerning Jesus, making a note of them on the left-hand column of a notebook, and then going into the New Testament and finding their fulfillment?

And if you haven't, then let me encourage you to do so. Because it is one of the great verifying features of our Bibles. And our friends, as they speak to us about these things, they've got no idea about this. And we can show them, as I'm going to show you in a moment or two from now, that there is a progressive unity throughout the whole Scriptures. And it is unified in the person of Jesus Christ, to whom the prophets looked and concerning whom the apostles proclaimed. Now, how was this possible? Well, Peter tells us how it was possible. How were the prophets able to write these things? Who spoke of the grace that was coming to you, they searched intently and with the greatest care, they were trying to find out the time and the circumstances—now, not the next phrase, because this was how it was possible for them—to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing. So back in the Old Testament, when you read Amos, and you read Jeremiah, and you read Isaiah, and you wonder what all is going on there, there's myriad things going on. But foundational to it is this—that somehow, in the amazing purposes of God, the Spirit of Christ was at work in these Old Testament prophets. And their theme was the same as what we find in the whole of Scripture. Their theme was that they were predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

Now, notice that—the sufferings and the glory that would follow. What was it Jesus said in Luke 24 to these disciples on the Emmaus road? He said, You're really slow to realize that in the Old Testament prophecies they were speaking about the grace and the glory. And when Peter writes to these young believers, he wants them to know that there is a cohesive unity between what the prophets had been predicting and what the apostles were proclaiming. Now, it was because Philip understood this that on the road going down to Gaza, in Acts chapter 8, with the Ethiopian eunuch, you remember, who was reading the prophecy of Isaiah, it was because Philip had been grounded in this truth that he was able to take that Ethiopian individual who was reading from the Old Testament prophecies, and he was able to begin with that very Scripture and proclaim to him the good news concerning Jesus Christ. The way to assess whether we have reached the point where we have grasped this in our Christian pilgrimage is to set about the task of proclaiming the gospel without using the New Testament at all. If you only had Genesis through Malachi, could you lead somebody to faith in Jesus Christ?

Because that's exactly what Philip did. And all the glory of Christ is contained in the Old Testament Scriptures. It doesn't arrive in Matthew. From the very beginning, Genesis 3.15, the word of God concerning what will happen regarding the serpent's head being bruised and crushed, points immediately forward in the first book of the Bible to the sufferings and the glory of the Lord Jesus. This is a reminder to us that if we're going to get to grips with our Bibles, if we're going to take, as it were, the discipleship course that Peter provides, it demands more than simple cursory glances and the simple memorization of little bits and pieces.

I want to encourage you to become students of the Word of God. Now, notice that we're also told concerning these prophets that they were like putting pieces in a jigsaw without ever realizing how the completed puzzle would look. It's not that they were irrelevant in their day. It's not that they were speaking simply inspired riddles which had nothing to say to their times. No, again, in the great purposes of God, while they spoke directly to the issues of their historical context, there was another dimension to their words which was pointing forward to the Jesus who was to come. And the wonder of what he is saying here, whether we realize it or not, is simply this—that the least disciple of Jesus today knows more, is in a better position to understand the Old Testament revelation than the greatest prophet before Jesus ever came.

So that because you've been placed in Christ this morning, you're able to look back and survey the panorama of Old Testament history and put the pieces together in a way that Isaiah never could, in a way that Amos never did. And that is the wonder, again, of the work of the Spirit of Christ. That brings us to our second word, the word revelation. Because verses 10 and 11 concern the investigation they made, and verse 12 concerns the revelation they received. Now notice the phrase with which verse 12 begins, It was revealed to them.

In other words, they discovered that they had a God-given place in providing instruction for Christian believers. First Corinthians, in chapter 10, Paul alludes to this—1 Corinthians 10, 11. These things Paul is writing now happen to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. To Timothy 3.15, words that we know well but fit within this context, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Simply stated, we understand this. What was the ministry of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament? The ministry of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament was to point forward to Jesus Christ. What is the ministry of the Spirit of God post Pentecost? The Spirit of God was poured out in a time of renewal and refreshing, at the birthday of the church, as it were. And what was the Spirit's ministry?

So that Christ might be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. So no matter where we open our Bibles, if we open them in the Old Testament, we find the Spirit of Christ at work, pointing forward to Jesus. And we open them in the New Testament, and we find the Spirit of God at work, pointing again to the Lord Jesus. That may seem very straightforward, and yet it is very important to us to understand that the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles, through their combined witness, were making it possible under God for men and women to experience God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. They weren't serving themselves when they spoke, but rather, they were speaking of that by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Ephesians, which concerns the church and the foundational elements of it, makes this perfectly plain. Ephesians 2, and verse 18, for through him—that is, through Jesus—we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on what? Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Now, this is what Peter is driving home here.

And before he concludes this and moves to application, he adds one interesting and important little sentence. At the end of verse 12, look at what it says. Even angels long to look into these things. So the prophets put the pieces in the jigsaw and never saw the finish. The apostles discovered it as Christ was resurrected from the dead. We read our whole Bible and begin to put it together, and while all this is going on, the angels, as it were, are hanging from the ramparts of heaven and are looking down and marveling at this whole wonder of salvation.

Someone put it this way in a song. Holy, holy is what the angels sing, And I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring. But when I sing redemption's story, They will fold their wings, For angels never felt the joy That our salvation brings. And Peter is consumed with this salvation.

Well, you say, fine. The prophets focused on it in their words. It was the object of the angels' interest and remains so.

It was the purchase of the Savior's blood. That's verses 10–12. So what? Well, let me conclude by telling you, so what?

That's why the therefore… That's what the therefore is there for, in verse 13. Just when people were beginning to say, And how does this relate to me? Peter says, Let me tell you. Because of what has just been said, there is a need for energetic, disciplined activity on our part. If we were with the school class now, we would say to them, Underline the action words. Take a pen and underline the verbs. Go through and circle the action words. And you may do that as you just read forward from verse 13.

It's full of action. Now, notice carefully that this is not a call to action to anyone other than those who are fitting 1 Peter 1-2. This is a call to action for those who have been chosen by God the Father, sprinkled by his blood, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. To call men and women who don't know God to live holy lives is a chronicle of despair. So this isn't a call this morning for people who want to be more religious to find certain things to do to gain acceptance with God. This is a call which is posited upon the fact that these individuals have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the dead, from the dead. And having been born again to a living hope, now what do I do? Well, Peter says, Let me tell you, because all of this has happened to you in salvation, this then is how we need to live.

It counteracts the notion prevalent in some circles that Christ's likeness may be obtained by passive observation, by just sitting back and letting it all wash over us, not for a moment. This is a call to active participation. Let me try and summarize it under two phrases, and I'll give you two subpoints under each phrase. First phrase, prepare your minds for action. Prepare your minds for action. It has a ring to it, this phrase, at least in my response to it, of what we might hear a squadron leader saying or calling out to his pilots through his radio system as they are about to engage in conflict. And that's exactly what Peter's doing here.

He says, let me give it to you in one phrase, prepare your minds for action. In other words, conversion is a mind-altering experience. Yes, it is. Don't let anybody say that it isn't. And don't let's be afraid of ever suggesting that it is. Of course it is.

It has to be. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We have been moved, as you read in Ephesians 4, from the futile thinking of what once marked us in our darkness, and all of our ignorance of God and of his purposes, and our minds have been changed. Well, says Peter, you make sure you get a grip of your thought processes.

That's my own paraphrase. Get a grip of your thought processes. If you want to live the Christian life and you lose it between your ears, you are in deep trouble. More of how we live and what we do and what we say has to do with responding to this phrase, prepare your minds for action, than it has to do with many other things. The old King James Version uses the phrase, gear up the loins of your mind.

The picture from Exodus of how the Old Testament people were told to take their long-flowing robes and to tuck them up into their belts when they ate the Passover, because they might have to get moving very, very quickly. And Peter is saying, in the same way as an individual would gather up his kilts, as it were, and stick them into his belt so that he could run, then you must get a grip of your mind so that you might be ready for action. What kind of mind is a prepared mind? What kind of individual is going to mean anything for God? Those who mean business. Those who are rolling up their sleeves to the task.

If we do not roll up our sleeves to the task of the gospel in our day, then we will amount to virtually nothing for God. What kind of mind is a prepared mind? It is a controlled mind.

That's what he tells us. Be self-controlled. Be sober.

Don't be caught up with all the wash and flow of the society around you that gets blasted to have a good time. Rather, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Be self-controlled. Have a Psalm 1 mind. Have a Philippians 4-8 mind.

Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are of good report, if there's anything lovely, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And you need to have a focused mind. Focused. Your hope set fully. Your hope set fully. Phillips puts it, resting the full weight of your hopes upon the fact that there is going to be grace given to you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

So what is the application? One, prepare your minds for action. Two, live as obedient children. You will notice that as he applies the need to live as obedient children, he gives us a word that calls us to negative and then to positive. As obedient children, negatively, he says, don't conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold. Don't allow yourself to be influenced and controlled by the features of a life that is history to you now.

Once you lived in ignorance, you didn't know any better, but now you know. So he finishes positively, but as he who has called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. Or as Phillips puts it, be holy in every department of your lives.

Called by God, enabled by God to take on the family likeness. Holiness is not a list of things, do you know that? Holiness here is not about actions as much as it is about attitude. What does it mean to be holy?

It means to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. See, we've fallen into the trap, many of us, of believing that this is holy activity. So if we fulfill this activity, therefore ipso facto we must be holy. The Pharisees exploded that mythology, didn't they? They had the activity down pat, but they weren't holy.

Holy actions will flow from holy attitudes, but holy actions are possible without the inner spirit. And so, Peter wraps it up, and he says, And the reason I'm telling you this is because, verse 16, it is written. And that's all there is to it.

See how biblical Peter was? Here, he said, is the ground of my word to you. It is written in holy Scripture. God said it. That settles it. Now, does this have application?

I think it does. We go back into a world tomorrow of shifting values, we go amongst people with shaky convictions, and we're called upon to express to those people around us the unchanging holiness of the heavenly Father. And the evil one has done much to discredit the notion of holiness in the minds of many of us, especially young people. I want to say to you young folks this morning, holiness is beautiful. Holiness is beautiful. Virginity in marriage has got to be beautiful. Purity in married life has got to be beautiful. Faithfulness has got to be beautiful.

See, because God made us, and he knows what's best for his children. So we're not going to go out this week and be kamma, kamma, kamma, kamma, kameleons, are we? We're not going to walk out and be, in the words of the songwriter, a walking contradiction, partly truth, and partly fiction, are we?

No. We're going to say, dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm. And dare to make it known.

Why? Because this salvation the prophets foretold, this salvation the apostles proclaimed, and this salvation the Spirit applies to our lives, that we might be holy in every single department. This is God's Word, 1 Peter 1 10 through 60.

I commend it to our further study. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. As we heard today, we are called to prepare our minds for action, and to focus our hope on the grace of Christ. We want to recommend to you a book today that will point you in that direction. The book is called The Glorious Christ, Meditations on His Person, Work, and Love. If you enjoy reading the work of the Puritans, but find it sometimes challenging to understand their writing style, this book, The Glorious Christ, is an adapted and updated version of popular works from Puritan writer John Owen. This collection of meditations explores the profound mysteries of Jesus Christ. The author is Chris Lundgaard.

He's a longtime student of Owen's work. He has compiled a thought-provoking book that will give you an intimate encounter with the eternal glory and majesty of Jesus, no matter how long you've been a believer. Ask for your copy of the book when you donate today to support the ministry of Truth for Life.

You can give online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening today. Are you a resident or an alien in the place where you currently live? Tomorrow we'll find out why all of us as Christians are resident aliens, no matter what passport we may hold. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-10-28 05:46:52 / 2024-10-28 05:55:51 / 9

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