The Joy of Our Salvation

This is a picture of First Peter, apparently, an early copy. And I don't know. And I think the week before, right, he was. So here we have the region of Bithynia and Pontus, where this letter is directed to, way up north in Asia. I think it was called at that time. It's to Jewish Christians in this region. I just note that Paul was, remember he was blocked from going up there to Bithynia? That the Holy Spirit said, no, you can't go up.

And instead sent him to over to Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia or yeah. Macedonia. Thanks. Yeah, not Mesopotamia. That man from Macedonia came and told me he couldn't go up there, but he could go west. It's addressed to Jewish Christians under intense persecution. And it's because of this man. Anyone know who that man is? Julius Caesar? Oh, close. Nero might have set the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. They're not sure if he did or not.

But then from a young age, he started persecuting his family around him. poisoned his stepbrother, Britannicus. His mother got him to the throne by marrying his uncle, and then she murdered his uncle. Politics haven't changed. Yeah, he comes from a good family. And then Nero then murdered his mother for criticizing his mistress. Okay, and it doesn't stop there. Then he murdered his wife, and then he later murdered his mistress by kicking her to death when she was pregnant with her unborn child. So this is the guy. He married another woman after having her husband killed, sort of like David, right?

Then he blamed Christians for the great fire and began a reign of terror about 64 AD. So that reign of terror included crucifixion, of course, torture, tearing apart by lions or dogs. They would strap meat to the people and then throw them to the wild dogs.

Or they'd light them on fire and light them up at night, act as lights, and they'd drag them behind fast-moving chariots in the Circus Maximus track. So all sorts of persecution. And then, so apparently, he dictated this for the whole region and I think a lot of these people would leave Rome and they went to Bithynia. They traveled east to escape this. But now they're being persecuted up there where Peter is riding. So this is the background to Peter. So just more of a review from the last couple of weeks.

And it's just, I think that big theme is bearing up under suffering or suffering now glory to follow might be an arch theme for first peter so let's quickly review uh... this three through five First Peter, I should have chapter one, right? First Peter one, three through five.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time uh... so last week bob covered these two words for blessed one means to receive blessing eulogio and the other to merit blessing eulogatus uh... and those two words are incorporated here in your text above three through five or verse three uh... merriman says that The word is unique to God the Father, somehow in the Greek. It's reserved for God the Father alone. It is unique to him, how Peter words that.

Mercy, according to his great mercy. Mercy is this, Bob was talking about that with you all, and you, we were trying to define mercy. And here's another definition. It's a swaging of, a swaging of misery, or lessening it, to tend to it and relieve its intensity and the severity of suffering. That's what being merciful is.

And Merriman here, again, to a living hope, and you could say to a living hope or unto a living hope in verse 3 there, but he's adamant that it's into a living hope. is how he defines ice in this case so you're instead of going onto it or towards a living hope you're shot right in or uh... maybe injected right into the living hope uh... if you think of uh... have you ever seen a picture of a cell or video of a cell and then they have a little microscopic needle and they go into the cell they breach the cell wall and the needle goes in that's sort of projecting into that cell.

And that's kind of how this living hope being projected into it kind of works. And it makes sense because we're in Christ at our new birth. He is the source and author of our living hope. So we're in the living hope. Does that make sense? I think that's a good kind of caveat that Merriman had.

So the fact that The born again to a living hope is imperishable, undefiled, not fading away. It's not subject to my favorite thing, which is the law of thermodynamics. So it won't be disintegrating or rotting away ever. It's not subject to the laws of earth. It's in heaven. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is out of the dead one.

So he came out of the dead people when he was raised, out of the dead, and so we are the same, out of the dead. three through five is a double security the inheritance is kept well-guarded in heaven up in heaven and then in first five we are protected by god uh... garrisoned by god protected for the inheritance so there's a double security there uh... so willing cali sums up this this section because this is important little three verses right it sort of sets up the whole the whole letter as to what he's gonna be basing his the rest of the letter on to bear up under suffering kelly says here it is a living hope of reaching heaven through christ in a glorified state by and by we are on earth redeemed as pilgrims and strangers going across a desert and waiting for christ We are also now quickened together with Christ and raised together with him and seated with him in the heavenlies.

First Peter opens out to us the divine life now as ours, aided by the sustaining power and gracious direction of God to guide us through the dread and howling wilderness of this world. Just as the Israelites, if you think back to them, in the wilderness, in that wilderness, were guided by a cloud or a pillar or a fiber. So we do now, in this life on this earth, walk by faith. We don't have that, we don't have any visibility here, so we have to walk by faith. Of which the Lord Jesus himself, when he was here on earth, was the blessed pattern and protection of walking by faith.

So I agree with Merriman in this section that yeah, this is yet future, this inheritance and things that's waiting up in heaven, but it's also a present reality, right? A present tense reality that is enjoyed by us now. and that it's also written that way so and he's commending those believers up there for for their greatly rejoicing here in verse six verse six is in this you greatly rejoice even now for a little while if necessary you have been distressed by various trials uh... when i thought of this verse it the situation here dovetails so nicely into this verse second corinthians four seventeen for our light momentary for our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory that's the holman christian standard bible uh... reading of that for our momentary light affliction is producing for us and absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory and you see how peter in verse six is this suffering is even now for a little while kind of a parallel there and uh... let's look at how we're rejoiced can you see how we're rejoicing this situation when you think back to verses three through five in here now so this three through five is like a package of riches uh... salvation package of riches that uh... you know beginning and ending of this and he states that so nicely it's a sphere of riches that we can be rejoining in uh... in the midst of trials And it's revealed to be ours now, presently.

Eternal life is ours now. You think about it, well, you're gonna die, we're gonna die, but not really, because Christ says in John 11, 26, and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. So we're never gonna die, we're just gonna change. locations, chains, spheres, from the physical to the spiritual. And it'll be pretty seamless. So that's eternal life that we have now. So in this, in the fact of three through five, we greatly rejoice.

And that is agalostis. Anyone can get that Greek word? You know how you get up here, Roger, or Miles, and then you have this, the Greek word, you can say it at home, but then when you get up here, you're like, agalasthene, A-G-A-L-L-I-A-S-T-H-E, and that's from agon and holome. Anyone want to care to guess what that means, those two words together?

No, it's much, much keeping. How's that? It's good. It's much, greatly rejoicing. The wedding that we were at last weekend, you know, because it was a Nigerian wedding, and they don't stop it. They just keep going. Leading there, yeah. So it's, you're, being so joyous, you actually leap. And I thought of that. Who's the layman, right? Didn't he get up and leap and jump about? And he was Aglaosdene. Aglaosdene.

Yeah. Or the abs winning the Stanley Cup. Yeah. Did they win? I lost. Oh, they lost. OK. I haven't even heard of. OK. Oh, that's too bad. So you're not leaping around this morning, Bob, apparently. Well, that's sad. Well, the Broncos are coming up. That's our hope. No, I'm leaping in my faith, though. Always leaping in my faith. Oh, good. Yeah, good. Yeah.

We could say that our blessed hope is the Broncos for this next game. No. How about the Bengals? Our earthly blessed hope, yeah. or our hope, yes, so, or the, yeah, okay. All right, so, back to spiritual things. Isn't it fun how... Back to the real stuff. Yeah, the real, yeah, the real's good. The realities of, yeah, of life. The stuff that matters, how about? So leaping and skipping with ecstatic delight is the notion here.

And these verses, three through five, that package is the stabilizing facts of salvation and deliverance. I like how Merriman puts that. Or strength and stability under testing. is what Peter gives us in three through five. Because verse six refers back to that, right? So under the stressors and strains of constant trials, Peter commends the Jewish Christians up there, the sojourners, for their, they seem to be rejoicings, and because that's in the present tense, indicative mood of fact, and it's in the middle of voice, so they're really involved. in this rejoicing, as we should be. So I'm calling it the 1 Peter 1, 1, 3 through 5 package. That might be clunky, but does that make sense? That it's a kind of a standalone package for this letter?

And that includes we are born again, of course, and they are and we are. We have a living hope. We have an unchanging, secure inheritance in heaven stored up, never fading or diminishing. And this is review. It's on the earth now. On the earth now, we are protected and garrisoned by God's omnipotent keeping. And that's wonderful news. In addition to present salvation from the penalty of sin and the power of sin, we have a future salvation awaiting for us in heaven, which will be imperishable, raised in power, raised in glory. We'll have a spiritual body. It's 1 Corinthians 15 through 44. So that's all this entails, this package of blessings, salvation blessings.

So he says, even now, for a little while, he tells these Jewish Christians up there, And that means that various trials aren't guaranteed necessarily, but aren't they certain for all believers? I would say they are. They're at God's discretion. They are temporal, as he says, because they're for a little while. Even if they're lifelong, think of that, if you have a lifelong trial, it's still a little while because you know we're not around forever.

Macaulay says these are necessary for the purpose of our growth, our spiritual growth, and to reveal God's glory. That would be my dad's big thing is revealing God's glory and glorifying God. The purpose of trials is where he would come down on that. And then Miles Stanford would say, I've been listening to him, it's all to conform us to the image of Christ.

You know, we started out in the gate garden is god said let us make man in our image but then sin came along mark that so adam was cursed so we had to go at different route from adam and he sent christ and now the the last adam is who were he's trying to conformist to the image of of christ uh... from Adam to Christ there, and that's sort of thing.

So I came up with this. How does this look? Here you are born, and here's your lifeline. Then you're teen years, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and then you die eventually. But there's your trials, some short trials, some long trials. some intense trials, the ones with a high wavelength would be intense but short, and then don't they overlap, don't they dovetail, and they're various. So I tried to, that's sort of the scientific approach to looking at this. And at the same time, and I like that, because the teen years, right? When you're a teen, everything's a little trial.

I mean, those were tough times. So those are the various nature of the trials. And in that, he says, you'll be distressed even if you're distressed by these various trials. And distressed is better to be made sorrowful. sorrowful, or be brought to grief.

And I have a couple of verses from Psalm and Job, Psalm 119.28, to kind of give us the flavor for that.

David says, my soul, it could be David, it could be someone, I think 119 is David, my soul melteth for heaviness. Strengthen thou me according to thy word. Psalm 69 20, I'm full of heaviness. And I like that heaviness is a part of this being distressed too. When you're in trials, it can be very heavy, heavy of heart. I'm full of heaviness, he says.

I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and no comforters. I found none. And then Job saying, if I say I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my, there it is again, heaviness, and comfort myself. I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent, is what Job says.

So we get that flavor of being distressed in these various trials. So they're not enjoyable. They're not so fun. So the word for various is poikilos. And poikilos means all sorts and all colors of trials. And this was easy because this slide was from my James. I just covered this in James. Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. So trials is prosmos. So all shapes, sizes of prosmos events coming at us at any given time. In Greek, it's various trials is poikilos parasmos.

And last time I said, that sounds fun, but it's not. It's the combination of those words. So there's two types of this parasmos. In the bad sense, it's an internal temptation to sin. That's A, the first sense. Or it could be adversity, affliction, and trouble. And I think that's what Peter is referencing up in verse 6.

Or it could be the third way, Weiss says, a trial, a prosmos trial, can be to try or test with the hope that the one put to the test breaks down under the test. So you think of When they manufacture cars and they run it into a wall with a crash test dummy, they're trying to get that car to break down under that test so they can see where it breaks and then they can improve on the car. That's a way to test by Prasmos. In the good sense, though, it's to test or try intentionally with the purpose of discovering what is good or bad or evil or what power or weakness one has in a person or a thing. uh... and a good sense is to the same adversity affliction and trouble up in the at the bad senses so you can have adversity affliction trouble that's bad but in a good sense adversity affliction trouble is is good like in verse six uh... and we'll get to this in verse seven uh... because that brings out the gold of our faith is what we'll look at So God in Jesus Christ sometimes perazos us to search us in the good sense of trials.

He never sends the bad sense. and the bad sense of A or C, if you go back up to the bad sense, he doesn't tempt sin, nor does he give us trials to break us down. You'll hear that a lot. He's not trying to break people. He's just trying to bring out that gold is what he's after.

So that the proof of your faith And the proof of your faith is dokmion, which is testing in view of approval. That's the word for dokimon. And that is, it's clearly defined in this verse 7. So now we're in verse 7. So that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise and honor and praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And we'll go more into verse seven next week, because that's a big verse as well. So that the proof of your faith, that proof, that word for proof is dokmion.

I'm saying it's defined in verse seven exactly because and this is what it's describing I have a picture of a plain brown ugly rock right but this rock apparently has gold And to extract it, you have to crush it, you have to grind it, you have to put it through a high-pressure roller mill, add water to it and slurry it to separate out the gold, and then finally you refine it at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

You heat it, melt it, and at that temperature, When it reaches that temperature, it melts. And the metals in the alloy separate out from one another. And upon melting, the gold will sink to the bottom of the crucible. At the bottom, it's collected by the lead. It attaches to the lead, where it's formed a hard, compact lead button, is what it's called. And the other metals and impurities are left behind. So that's how they do it with rocks, and that's all they did in Telluride back a hundred years ago. We have scars of that all over the place. So you can take an ugly rock, but you can get gold out of it.

And isn't that what he's saying exactly in verse 7? And he talks about gold, and he's there, he's trying to get out the gold. And he's testing it by fire, you have to refine it by fire. And so this other phrase of verse seven, in the B part, even though tested by fire, and that, tested, that's another word, that's dokimatsomeno, dokimatsomeno, in the Greek interlinear, that means, and that's a present middle participle, so it's a participle. And it's in the present tense, So he's doing it now, he's testing by fire now. And the middle voice, right? So that means he's intensely interested in the outcome of this doki mazo meno, this tested by fire, to see what comes out. And that means being refined. That's what it means. So that's the refining process.

That's why we're kind of talking about mining this morning. It's very apropos to this verse. So, the conclusion to all this, and I'll continue with the other parts of verse 7 next week, but uh... god is at work uh... by approving and testing with those elect jewish dispersion uh... elect jews up there in the dispersion up in uh... pontus and glade uh... bithnia he he was involved with them then and now with us in going after the gold of our faith his view is not been pointing out the dross so his focus isn't isn't into bad things, his focus is on the gold. Getting out the gold and separating out the gold of faith from the dross, if that makes sense. We'll come up with this at the end, which is much more pleasant.

And that's worth a lot of money, that gold. For the internet people who don't have access to slides, put up a picture of gold bars and beautiful gold bars that Donald Trump, I think, would like a lot there. But that's the gold. I think those are his. Yeah, those, yeah, on loan from Donald Trump. Yeah, he likes that gold. So there it is. So that's where we'll leave it this morning. And I'll put the dead study on Paras Mas versus Doki Mas. I notice that he changes. The first one was Paras Mas. This was the derivative. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. right and then prossimus is tech fire but this don't you must is it also testing fire in to prove out for the good it's yet test for approval and i'm not relating this unless we discuss this next week i'm not relating any of this too the beam a seat judgment things because yeah i i can't trials and testing of our faith here.

Because initially I was thinking about that because we're run through that slurry in heaven when we're taken up. But that's works coming through. And this is just our faith down here. Down here on earth, yeah. So there we go. Just one there, one of the translations uses the word for verse 7, the genuineness rather than proving. The process of course is getting to the genuine material, the genuine subject that is true of our faith. Oh, that's good. The genuineness. Yeah. Right. And that's going to be the gold. Right. And you can see...

Do you ever think that God is... Because you can easily think that God is trying to test you and bring out your faults. And that's why the testing comes along. But it's really... He's going after... the good things, so that's an encouraging and comforting thing to think about. But in some ways, it's hard. In the Christian life, keeping your wits about you, as they say, is pretty important, because you can kind of get down on yourself.

It's like, well, I've had this issue and that issue, and it never seemed to change. But even that, he's got a long view. Yeah, because even that would be the dross. But he's going to make that go away. Well, Andrew, your dad kind of permanently granted in my mind the idea of the infinite onion. you know, without illustrating it.

And I think that's what a lot of trials have to do in relation to the old man, is we're discovering what I'm made of, and more and more we're realizing, well, then I've got to live by faith in the Lord Jesus. He's the object of our faith. And so trials do a lot of that, right? We find out what we are. Yeah, and I guess you could say, for him, he's not But he is interested in us too, discovering, and Miles Stanford is big on this, in discovering the self-life. And he's going to make that known to you.

And then, knowing how bad the old nature is, the sin nature, but instead of improving on it, you, by faith, you depend that you're dead to it, right? You can. And then the constant dying to self. And then Lillies Trotter, that book, she's very good at that concept.

Yeah, and just, that's a concept. But that's for us discovering what the self is. He knows, but we have to learn it. At the same time we're learning who we're getting to know, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a dual purpose there. He's got us doing a lot on this planet. Just another comment? Yeah, it seemed like one point here is a timing issue.

This will happen at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Yeah, and I'll get to that next week, because that's on the back end of verse 7, yeah. So yeah, good point. So when he is revealed, and we'll look at that next week. And I'll have to tackle that in this coming week.

But yeah, it's, but would you say he's revealing himself now to us too? I think so. We're learning more and more about him, and he's revealing his person and character to us in the here and now, and in the future too, so. Okay, so we'll close there. It's right on time. Trains run on time apparently here. Okay, I'll pray us out here.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we could study your word here in First Peter and we just pray that we can apply these truths to our lives and be with us in the next hour and as we gather for fellowship after that. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.