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So once more, welcome to this second in the short series of meditations. As you have heard, those who planned these sessions have suggested to me that I should meditate with you particularly on the sufferings of our Lord. That these meditations should be based, if possible, on the first epistle by Peter, though I have their permission to go outside that epistle, if so I deal it- feel it appropriate.
So tonight. again, as last night, we shall be thinking of the sufferings of Christ, and from two particular aspects that both are found in Peter's first chapter of his first epistle. We shall be thinking together eventually of the predictions of the ancient prophets that spelled out the sufferings of the Messiah, and then the glories that should follow. In the second place, we shall be thinking of the sufferings of our Lord as our great Passover lamb, by whose blood we have been redeemed from our empty way of life, futile as it was, brought into the purposes of God.
By God's grace, our meditation will be do two things for us. It shall purify our faith and leave it smaller, maybe, but more solid and therefore more valuable. And in the second place, it shall help us to perfect our hope by asking us to think vigorously about the implications of our Christian hope.
So with that, let us begin to read again in Peter's first epistle. And I want to read now a number of verses, and if I may suggest to you that as we read them, you notice one of the dominant themes that fills Peter's mind as he writes these words. We begin in chapter one, verses three to seven. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the
last time, wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations. That the approved part of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though nonetheless is tried by fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. And secondly, let's begin in this same chapter, verse ten.
Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel to you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into.
And then let us proceed in the third place with verse thirteen through twenty. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy.
And if you call on the Father, who without respect of persons judges according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation, manner of life, that is, received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.
With that, let's turn over to chapter two and verse 10. Peter is addressing his fellow believers. He says, who in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God. Next we read in chapter four, verses two and three, That he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, wherein they think it's strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you. And finally, for the moment, in verse seventeen of this chapter, for the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.
And if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? So may God give us good understanding of his word. It seems to me to be quite obvious from the verses we have read, that Peter himself was especially interested in time. Well, that is the word that we have noticed reoccur in the passages we have read.
And if we probe more deeply, we shall find he regarded himself as living in an exceedingly momentous time. The centerpiece of all the ages of Earth's history. And not to put a too fine a point on it, the center point to which past eternity, as we name it in our frailty of thought, looked forward, and to which all the eternity to come shall look backward.
And the key to this interest in Peter's concern for time and its relation to eternity is to be found in his early verses, where he speaks almost at once of the resurrection of our blessed Lord Jesus. At first, as we are aware, when Peter heard our Lord talking that he must go da- down to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the authorities and be crucified.
Peter objected most explicitly. This be far from you, Lord. Peter was not foreseeing Christ suffer. That was not merely because of his love for the Savior himself. But Peter felt that if our Lord was rejected by the religious authorities in Jerusalem and crucified, then all that he had ever invested in Christ would go down the drain. And he'd invested a lot, as he caught ca- ca- counted it.
In response to our Lord's invitation, he'd left his boat and the nets, and very frequently left his home and followed Christ around Galilee and then Judea. Had been sent by Christ on the missionary journey around the cities of Israel. Learned to love our Lord, of course, but had invested much time and much energy in our blessed Lord and his kingdom, and felt that if our Lord was now to go to Jerusalem, and instead of being hailed as Messiah King and rising to his throne, at which point, of course, Peter would have at least one chariot, wouldn't he?
And perhaps be first, though all the other disciples disputed who was going to be first in that coming kingdom as they envisaged it. One thing Peter had not heard, presumably. Our Lord had said that he was to go to Jerusalem and be crucified, but then the third day he would rise from the dead. And when that resurrection took place, it was like, says Peter, being born all over again. God has begotten us again, says he, unto a living hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
We can feel the pulse of Peter's heart as he expresses the word, the wonderful excitement, the sheer amazement of it, the resurrection from the dead that opened a whole new world, opened the whole of eternity, opened the way to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us. It was like, I suppose, as it happened to Israel when they had marched footsore throughout the desert and at last came to the brink of Jordan.
In front of them was Jordan in flood. And when Jordan floods, it fills the surrounding valley with water to nearly a mile across. And then there is the forest of thickets, thorny bushes, tangled bushes. And when they were overcome with the water, it was almost suicide to try and walk through them, when you couldn't even see where the brink of the river was, and had to face water on the other side.
But then, the miracle happened. By the power of God, the waters of Jordan split in two. And there was the inheritance, staring them in the face, the thing they walked for for forty years, now open to be enjoyed and entered into. Pale picture indeed. Of how Peter felt. He looked for the kingdom, certainly, based in Jerusalem. Christ sitting on the throne of his father David.
When would that end? Now before him stretched an unimaginably vast inheritance. Oh, the joy of it. Born again, says he, begotten again by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Let's take just a second or two in our hearts, that God may make real to us this inheritance that is ours as well, and was so keenly felt by Peter.
So now, he says to his audience, wherein, of course, you greatly rejoice. Though now for a season, do you see, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations. And I can imagine some of the early Christians that got this letter saying, yes. But that's how it is, you see.
He talks of a salvation ready to be revealed. But when you study the fine print, it is ready to be revealed in the last time, you see. It's all in the future. Peter, why can't it be now? You sound a little bit like Peter, like as if it's all pie in the sky tomorrow, you know. We have trusted you. We believed that Jesus was the Messiah. He was the coming prince.
He was God's king. We put our faith in him. Were we not right to expect a glorious experience? How comes it, Peter? That since we put our faith in Christ, life has been worse than it was before. We never had persecutions like this before, Peter. Why has it got to be in the last time? Why not now? I wonder if you've ever felt like it.
Perhaps you have never. Have mercy with those, and I've met them often, who feel precisely that, that Chri- Christianity is all pie in the sky tomorrow, nothing now. How will Peter explain it to them? He says, my dear brothers and sisters, there is a need be behind this waiting period. You see, wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be.
Did you notice that, if need be? You are in heaviness through manifold temptations. Why is that a necessity? Well, for it, for this reason, and here I shall have to trouble you with more exact Greek translation of the verses, that the approved part of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, but in spite of it is tried with fire, the approved part of your faith might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the necessity? The need be? The need be is the purifying of our personal faith. You say, but wait a minute, Mr. Preacher. When we get home to glory, into this glorious inheritance, we shan't need faith. I found a lot of Christians believe that.
Faith, they think, is what we walk by now, you see. We walk by faith, not by sight. But when we get home to glory, thank the Lord, we should no longer need faith. So they think, because we shall see the Lord. Have they forgotten that the apostles did see the Lord here on earth, but very often their faith let them down and they doubted him. I know, but you say when we get home to heaven, Mr. Preacher, haven't you learned this yet?
We shall see Christ in his glory, and it will be real, and we shall walk not by faith then, but by actual sight. We shall see the Lord. So we shall. Oh, don't let me undercut that by any means. You shall see the Lord. How wonderful it shall be. And I tell you what, I may add, because I'm authorized to say it, that when you see him, you'll be like him. You shall see him as he is. So then you won't need faith. Really?
Are you proposing to be omniscient like God? Or will there be things that you don't know? And when God tells them you, you'll have to take it on trust. Yes? I don't know what job the Lord has for us when we get home to heaven. I sometimes try to think about it, you see. Mm-hmm. And my imagination perhaps runs away with itself. But we shan't be sitting in glory, shall we? Seated on chairs, armchairs preferably, and uh, and singing choruses all day long, forever and eternity.
I hope not really. We shall join the choirs of heaven, surely we shall. But then our Lord talked of us of being his body, his executive powers, in his administration of the universe as yet to be. And when I think of that, I get all excited, you know. For God is not hard up for idea. God is so big that he's always doing something new, do you see? There was a time when he wasn't the creator.
Then he had this marvelous idea, and he created the universe and our world within it and us upon it. Tremendous, and the variety was beyond description. He's not content with that. There was a time when no member of the Godhead was human. Have you absorbed, have I absorbed yet the wonder of this? God is so big that he carried out the plan to enter his own creation and become human.
without ceasing to be God. I say again, God will never be hard up for ideas. And then he has created through Christ, the body of Christ. For not unto angels has he subjected the age to come of which we speak. This present ang- uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, time, this present period is under the administration of angels, but not that coming one.
One in a certain place testified, what is man that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man that thou visitest him. And that glorious plan of God that should one day have man ahead of all the principalities, powers, mights, and dominions is fast on its way to being achieved through the incarnation of our Lord, unceasing God, yet become truly human. And now, miracle of miracles, we by his spirit formed with him into one body.
And in God's good plan, seated already in heavenly places above all principalities, ma- powers, mights, and dominions. For what purpose? For being the executives, the body of God's Son, for all eternity. Cor, doesn't your heart thrill with that? Hey, what? No longer any aches and pains, possessed of powers that we can only now dream of. God's executives for the running of all the universes and things that ever shall be.
And I come back to my point. When the Lord indicates to you that you are to go over there and administer some, well, I'm hard up for words myself, some galaxy or other. Will you do it? No, Lord, I can't do that. And you won't have the faith to do it? You say, will it require a lot of faith? Well, you tell me. If you were put in charge of a developing a galaxy, maybe, or something of the sort in those eternal realms.
Would you have the faith to do it? God is determined. And that's why the little need be while is. If need be, for a little while. You are in, in heaviness through manifold testings, that your faith may be purified, so that the final lump, so to speak, of faith will be solid gold without any intermixture, mixture of undesirable things.
And that solid lump of faith will be found to glory and honor at the appearing of Christ. We are, uh, well aware of the metaphor. Gold is valuable, but gold can be intermixed with dross. An experienced goldsmith, therefore, will take the gold and extract the dross from it, knowing when he does so, that the gold he gets out will be a little bit less than what he put in.
For the reason that the dross has been taken out of it, and what is left is solid gold. And because in that sense that I've tried to describe, we shall forever have to trust God. God is working on our faith. So that when we get home to glory, it might be pure gold without dross in it. You say, what do you mean by dross?
Well... Why, if I may ask you, why do you believe in Christ? Why do you believe in his deity? You say, well, my mum told me. That's a very good reason for believing in the deity of Christ. You say, and my Sunday school teacher told me too. Yes, I see. That's very good too. Is it by your personal experience? What if you grew up and had to go to a factory, a university, where doubts are hurled at faith in the deity of Christ, and all sorts of arguments are brought forward to undermine your faith in his deity.
Could you stand it? What the goldsmith does, as you know, is to take the gold, put a Bunsen burner under it, melt the gold. The dross rising to the surface, he skims it off, and then lets it solidify once more. That can be, in our personal experience, a painful thing. I remember in my youth conducting a fortnight's sessions of lectures in a particular assembly.
And afterwards, a senior man came to me and said, David, may I talk? I said, yes. He said, you know, some years ago, my wife took cancer. And we prayed that the Lord would save her and deliver her from it. He didn't do that. The cancer became so hideous that we prayed the Lord to take her home. He didn't do that either, he said.
And left her to suffer. Now she's gone. David, he said, I don't know where I am. Yes. What he thought was solid gold seemed to have melted a bit. That's a common experience. But it's the Lord that's supervising it. And I would like to point out to you, and particularly to my younger brothers and sisters, that God has spent centuries on providing you with strength for your faith.
Says Peter, for he is now referring to the Old Testament prophets and their predictions of the sufferings of Christ, first, and then the glory that should follow. And when the prophets learn from the inspiring spirit God's program for Messiah, first his sufferings, then the glories. They understood perfectly well what the Spirit was saying.
What, uh, concerned them was this: what time did it refer to? And what particular circumstances would it involve? What time, what manner of time the Spirit that was in them did signify when it testified the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. And to them it was revealed, and here we prick up both our ears, that not unto themselves, but unto you. They were ministering.
That's to be taken literally. God spent centuries inspiring the Old Testament prophets to provide us with clear indications, patterns, prototypes, types of all kinds, of what his program was to be when he sent his dear son into our world. And you can take the prototypes and the types, both in history and in prophecy and in poetry, and see in them, not only a record of things past, but in them the principles that God was going to follow when his dear son should come into our world, and then suffer, and then the glories.
Oh, my dear fellow Christians and my younger fellow believers, please read what God has written. For your faith's sake, read it. All those delightful things in the Old Testament, how glorious they are, aren't they? I think of Passover. It was a festival in Israel remembering the past, how God brought them out of the land of Egypt and sheltered them from the avenging angel by the blood of the lamb on the door.
But according to our Lord, when he kept the Last Supper with his disciples in the upper room, Passover was not only a memorial of the past, it was a prototype of the future. And said Christ, I am about to fulfill the pattern of that Passover. There are hundreds of them. All pray read it. And ask God to show you.
For God has had it written to strengthen your faith. And I remember in my student days, when I tried to learn a little Hebrew, and the professor of Hebrew cast doubt on the validity and the accuracy and the inspiration of Old Testament. I was driven to this in the end. I said, Lord, I can't answer his problems. Um, what I'm going to do is to take the New Testament, and I'm going to gather everything you said about the Old Testament, you see.
And when I did it, I was astonished to see how much he had talked about the Old Testament. And I had to choose, would I trust the Old Testament professor or the Lord Jesus? I decided to trust the Lord Jesus and read the Old Testament in the light of it, and oh, what wonderful things. I wish I had the time to tell you. So this n- this little period until the Lord come. It is deliberately designed by God to purify our faith in readiness for the glorious tasks that lie ahead when we're called upon to reign with Christ and be his executives in the ages to come.
And from turning, uh, thinking of this, the order of the events, the sufferings of Christ first, and the glories that should follow, and the purpose of the interval in between for the purifying of our faith. Peter turns in the second half of his first chapter to what he calls the time of our sojourning here, according to the authorized version. Beautiful translation, except it's scarce modern English. What Peter means is the time which we exist as resident aliens in this present world, sojourners.
For this world is not our home, is it? But we have to be here a little while. The time of our soddening. Spend it well, says Peter. Why? Why should I? Well, because God is judge. That's why. And as judge, he is critical of the way we spend this little time of our sojourning here on earth.
Critical. Sorry, I didn't know that. I thought, uh, the Lord was very loving. Well, so he is. But if you were wealthy enough to give your, uh, son of seventeen years old a brand new BMW or something, and he drove it carelessly and didn't pump up the tires or put oil in the sump and bashed it into the, to the wall and this, that, and the other, wouldn't you be a little critical? Particularly if you bought it. It is precisely what God has done, according to the end of chapter one of First Peter.
He has bought us out of our futile way of life, with no ultimate purpose. He's bought us not with silver and gold, but with the invaluable blood of Christ. Bought my little time. Should he not be critical of how I spent it?
The Lamb indeed was foreknown, says this verse, from before the foundation of the world. God had that great sacrifice of his son in mind, long before the world was created. But he has manifested him in these last times for you. God. has bought it. At this cost. Now, there was a thing about the Passover.
You see, when we read of Christ redeeming us by his blood, Peter then adds, by the blood as of a lamb. And that very simile, as of a lamb, of course, evokes in our mind the memory of the original Passover, does it not? When Israel were bought and delivered and redeemed out of bondage to Pharaoh and saved from the destroying avenging angel by the blood sprinkled on the lintel and doorposts of the house in which they sheltered.
And when I see the blood, says Christ, said God, I will pass over it, that the destroying angel might not penetrate to come at you. But you know, there were conditions in the Passover. The Passover was a feast that you ate. You talked about eating the Passover, because in that ceremony, the central thing was eating the Passover lamb. It's blood on the lintel and doorposts, the lamb itself sacrificed, roast with fire, and eaten.
And you couldn't eat it just anyhow. If you wanted to eat the Passover lamb, then you had to have your shoes on your feet, your staff in your hand, and your loins, if you have any, girt. Let's put it into modern English. We can understand a staff for journey. We can understand shoes on our feet, but what on earth is this all about loins? Don't have loins nowadays, do we? Loins of beef maybe or something, but yeah, well, it's your middle bit anyway.
And when the ancient Israel was about to travel and walk hard, he would tuck up his flowing robes that they used to wear and tuck them under his belt that he might free to be free to stretch his legs and mentally walk. On the farm where I worked in my youth, if men were going to lift a heavy load, they first girded up their loins with a very thick belt to help take the strain of lifting the load. If you were going to be eat the Passover lamb, you couldn't eat it anyhow, you had to eat it with your shoes on your feet, staff in your hand, loins girded, ready to move out and start the journey to the promised inheritance.
If you were not prepared to journey, you couldn't eat the Passover. And when we think of the sacrifice of our dear Lord, how he was and became our Passover lamb, delivered us from the avenging angel. Brought us forgiveness. Then we remember that's not all. His redemption will not be complete until he has redeemed our very body and transformed it into a body like his glorious body.
Meanwhile, we're left. But this is our hope. Our hope is the entering into that final inheritance reserved in heaven for us. And says Peter to his fellow believers, God give you the grace to perfect your hope. So do you now put a girdle on the loins of your mind? That sounds odd to a modern Irish speaker, doesn't it? What it means is, prepare yourself to do some very hard thinking.
You have this Christian hope? Then scripture calls upon us to gird up the loins of our mind and think of what it implies. And what is the progress we're supposed to be making along the road towards that inheritance? And us perfect our hope, not being waylaid by this or that desire and lust that you used to have before you got converted, but logically thinking it through, working out, and following the line of hope towards that great inheritance.
Suppose, suppose you had been in Egypt on a magic carpet or something, and could land a month or two after the Israelites had left Egypt. And walking around the pyramids, as all tourists do, you came across an Israeli that you happen to know around a pyramid. So you say, Zechariah, pleased to see you, old chap. Mm-hmm. And having got over the greetings, you would then say, and um, uh, I notice you're still here.
Yes? Um, why aren't you out with the rest of your people, you see, journeying across the wilderness, you see? Um, towards your inheritance. Don't you believe in your inheritance? Oh yes, he said, I, I do, you see, I do believe in it. But, you know, they're, they're extremists, really, those chaps walking across a wilderness, you know, day after day, month after month, towards an inheritance they've never seen. You see, they're extremists, and that's all right. I don't commit, I don't, uh, criticize them, but I find it pleasant here, you know.
It's by the Nile, really, you see, and we have very good cafes here where you can get the last word of, uh, cooking and cuisine, you'll see, and there's plenty of employment and so forth. You say, oh chap, don't you believe in the inheritance? Yes, oh yes, I believe in the inheritance, yes. Well, how are you proposing to get there? And he said, well, I don't know, I, I, I, I, I don't think about that, you know, I think it will, will happen somehow. What would you say to him?
Hadn't you better start thinking and perfecting your hope by working out its implications and the progress that you are supposed to be making. Peter exhorts us thus, and to remember this, that God has waited centuries for your little time of sojourning.
And mine too. And he's bought us with the blood of his dear son of incalculable wealth. And he's watching what we do. For it will soon be past. This little time of our misogyny. And then the great inheritance. When I was a farm laborer, as I was at one stage, we got one week's holiday a year.
Well, for the other fifty-one weeks, I didn't much mind, you see, whether people interfered and wasted my time or anybody else's. But when it came to that one week, oh, only one week in a year. I wasn't having anybody interfere with that and waste the time. And I repeat, God has waited centuries for this little while of your sojourning here and mine.
And he's bought it with the blood of his son. Says Peter, if we call on him as father who judges every man according to his deeds, let's pass the time of our sojourning here in reverent fear of him, that we may please him by thinking through our hope and its implications and living accordingly, that when the time comes, we may be found to His praise and His glory. God grant us that we may listen to these stirring things, by God's grace, allow him to purify our faith, by our deliberate effort to think through the implications of our hope.
Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for the delightful way that thou hast given thy servant Peter to talk to us, for his fatherly care, for sharing with us his own imperfections, but his resolute determination to serve the Lord Jesus. We thank thee, Lord, for his treasureful language.
We perceive behind it are the realities, the practical realities of the story of thy giving of thy dear son. Solid human bone and flesh. God incarnate. For his sacrifice and redemption, we thank thee. Only help us now, we pray. We thank thee for those whom thou hast helped in this congregation over many long years. By thy grace, their faith stands to this moment, and thou hast perfected their hope to a large extent, and they're on their way to be with Christ and like him.
We pray for the rest of us. Lord, help us to take thee seriously. Again, to measure the cost of thy redemption. Help us now, we pray, to gird up the loins of our mind and think rigorously through the imprecations of our hope, that we may not be waylaid by this or that fleeting fancy, but with thy grace may pursue the journey deliberately assured of its goal.
We pray this, that the name of the Lord Jesus might be honored now in our lives, and that our faith, being proved and tried and tested and shown to be genuine, might be to the praise of his glory and his grace when at last we see him. Bless us now, we pray, with thine evening blessing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
