Reading Like Jesus 2

Good evening! It’s so good to be back together with you all after taking last week to celebrate the life and passing of our dear brother Jim Hagy.

You know, I’m so glad that we sang “Gracious Redeemer” tonight, reminding ourselves that we are saved by the grace of God alone. We’re going to lean into that same message as we turn our attention to 1 Peter 1:3-12.

Before we start wading into the Scriptures, though, I want to give you a really cheesy mental picture for what we’re trying to do tonight. So, you know school, right? You have to do homework and sit at a desk or table and take notes and read books and stuff, right? Well, Biblical Theology is kind of like school. It’s a discipline, it takes work and it takes time. It’s way better than school because it gives life instead of slowly draining it, but that’s another conversation for another day!

When I was in high school, I had a friend of mine named Jonah who would show up right at the start of the first class (sometimes he was late) with a pen in his pocket and his textbook for the class. He kept all his textbooks in his locker, so he would literally walk into school with just a pen in his pocket. No backpack, no notebooks, no glitter pens or colored pencils. Just a blue ink ballpoint pen.

It may not come as a surprise, but Jonah didn’t do very well in school. He barely scraped by in every single class, passing with low C’s because his mom would ground him if he failed any more classes.

So, you know school, maybe you know a student like Jonah. Maybe you don’t know a student like Jonah because you are a student like Jonah! Just like you don’t have to try to pass school without a backpack full of helpful tools, you don’t have to try to interpret the Bible without a toolkit full of helpful tools.

I did warn you it would be cheesy.

1 Peter 1:3-12

Let’s look at 1 Peter 1:3-12 together and hopefully my analogy will make some sense. Let’s read through it together.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

This is the Living Word of the Living God that gives us a living hope. Thanks be to God!

I know there’s so much here, and we really don’t have the time to go into every single nook and cranny of this rich passage, but take heart, Dwight will be starting a series on 1 Peter after he finishes the first part of Genesis! I’m relieved because I can focus on how this passage relates specifically to our approach to the Bible without getting into some of the other issues addressed here. Although, if you have questions about it, I promise you, I have time to talk about it with you. So do your small group leaders! We love nothing more than when you have questions about the things of God, especially when you have a Scripture reference in mind!

So, what do we see here? Broadly speaking, we see the Believer’s Heavenly Hope and the Bible’s Heavenly Author.

First, we see the Believer’s Heavenly Hope in verses 3-9. In the Greek, this is all one sentence, with each part building on and developing what came before it, until we get the end and have this beautiful snapshot of what the Christian life is all about.

Peter starts with God, from whom all things live and move and have their being. If God wasn’t there, nothing would be anywhere! But notice that Peter doesn’t just say, “In the beginning, God,” like Genesis. He starts by blessing God, praising Him for all that comes after it. Everything from being born again to our inheritance in heaven to grievous trials of many kinds to rejoicing with joy is cause to praise God and give Him our full attention.

Next, we are reminded of the Gospel. Peter says that God “caused us to be born again” because of His great mercy “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” We don’t have time to get into the ordo salutis and monergistic salvation, but for now, it’s important to recognize that Peter is starting with God and immediatly qualifying his audience as Christians. He is writing to people who have been united to Christ. This will be really important later on.

Because of the Christian’s union with Christ, we have the same inheritance as Christ in the same place as Christ. Look at verse 3. We have a living hope because Jesus is alive! Our inheritance in verse 4 is imperishable, undefiled and unfading because it is with Christ in heaven! Peter reminds us that because God is the founder of our faith, He is also the Keeper of our faith. Paul tells us in Philippians 1:6 that since God started our salvation, He will finish it too! This lines up perfectly with what Peter says in verse 5, that we are being guarded by God’s power for salvation.

What a picturesque view of the Christian life! If what Peter writes here is true, and I believe it is, then our whole world gets flipped upside-down! Suddenly, I’m not the center of the universe; God is! Suddenly, my spiritual estate doesn’t depend on how smart I am or how gullible I am but on God’s truth! Suddenly, I don’t have to worry about losing my salvation because it comes directly from God! He will hold me fast.

But Peter goes on. We enjoy all the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus, but we also have to endure all the burdens of life within this world. We don’t suddenly get an easy life just because we found Jesus. God doesn’t usually take away all our problems. In fact, many times, God uses hard times and difficult situations to shape and fashion us into the likeness of Christ. Look at verses 6-9 with me.

Peter says we are grieved by various trials so that our faith might be proved genuine and lead us back into a spirit of praise to God. Peter makes a puzzling comparison to Jesus Christ, saying that He is revealed in and through the proving of our faith through trials. When we suffer well the deaths of loved ones or really bad breakups or failed tests or ruined friendships, we point the whole world to Jesus. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but Jesus has gone before us, and the testimony of his endurance through great suffering gives us hope and joy.

So, to sum it up, we have seen the Believer’s Heavenly Hope is Christ Jesus Himself. We can’t see Him or talk to Him like Peter could during his days on earth, but we have the same love for Him that Peter has in heaven with Him. Peter has already obtained the outcome of His faith, and he offers the very same thing to us: a new birth, a living hope, an inheritance guarded by God Himself for any who would turn from their sin and turn to Christ.

What does this have to do with Biblical Theology? A whole lot! If we apply what Peter is saying here to the discipline of Biblical Theology, we learn two major lessons. First, to do Biblical Theology properly, you have to be a Christian. Peter presents Christianity as the central hub around which everything else in life rotates. If the Gospel changes everything, it changes the way we read the Bible, too. He writes about the testing of our faith in verse 7. If we’re going to do Biblical Theology, we have to read the Bible in faith, trusting the God who wrote it!

Second, we learn that Biblical Theology may be difficult, but it is infinitely rewarding. There is an infinite multitude of trials that we face as believers, but we have a hope that all of them will prove the preciousness of our faith. You may look at a really difficult passage of Scripture and think, “Man, I really don’t see anything that points me to Christ here!” To that, Peter says, “Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” Why can he say that? Because now you’re reading with an eye to your Savior, seeking Christ while He may yet be found.

So, we have seen the Believer’s Heavenly Hope for Hermeneutics, now we move forward to see the Bible’s Heavenly Author in verses 10-12. There’s really one main point that I want you to take away from this section, then we’ll break off into our small groups and discuss it further. The prophets themselves, filled with the Spirit of Christ, had to search and inquire diligently into the Scriptures they themselves were writing, and they themselves struggled to understand it all! It was Christ Himself speaking through them, but they had to think deeply about all these things to try to understand it all. They needed to use their toolkits, but even then it was revealed that they were ultimately writing for us!

There are truths within the Old Testament that even the prophets didn’t understand! How much more careful should we be when we read the Bible by faith as Christians and try to understand Biblical Theology!

Just a couple tools to help us get to the Bible’s main point, then we’ll go upstairs. You can find all three of these in your handout with some quick definitions I came up with. The first one is exegesis. We start by reading the Bible. We have to actually open it up and figure out what it says. Next, we have hermeneutics. As we read the Bible, we improve our exegesis and develop habits, principles, or tactics for understanding it for all its worth. We can take and apply truth from one part of the Bible with us into another part. As we read the Bible, we start to form a systematic understanding of what it says or teaches on a given subject. All three of these tools, exegesis, systematics and hermeneutics shape and form one another. Basically, the more you read the Bible by faith, the better you can understand it. These are things into which angels long to look!

My closing application is this: Look once again upon Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. He is speaking to us today in His Word, offering life to those who find Him there. Though we do not see Him with the eyes of our flesh, we can see Him portrayed in all His Beauty with the eyes of our faith when we use our tools for good Biblical Theology.

Don’t show up with just a pen, but bring your best. Seek the Lord diligently, and you will find Him.