Take Comfort In Your Savior’s Ordination

So our sermon passage today is going to be 1 Peter chapter 1, mostly focused on verses 20 and 21.

! But I like to read the broader passage because it's just glorious. It's wonderful. So I read this trusting it's God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, clear, sufficient word.

Let me read the verses 20 and 21 first so you can get the focus. He, indeed, Jesus Christ, was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through him believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

This will be our focus for today, but hear this glorious passage. Let's start at verse 1 through 21. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Grace to you and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen you love, though now you do not see him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or in what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, who was in them, was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

To them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you, through those who have preached the gospel to you, by the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels desire to look into.

Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, Be holy, for I am holy.

And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves through the time of your stay here in fear, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish or spot, he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who through him believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Lord, our minds are so limited. We confess that you are the incomprehensible, eternal, triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we worship because you have manifested yourself through Jesus Christ.

Lord, we pray that by your spirit, you will manifest yourself in Jesus Christ once more today to your people. In power we ask, Lord, for your glory.

Amen. There's only so much that we can care about. Isn't that true? You start to feel saturated, and at some point it's just, I can't care about that football team or this other thing because there's only so much we as human beings can care about.

So if that's true, and this is the time where it's the end of a year, we're hearing like the best of 2025, everybody's trying to evaluate this past year. My encouragement to myself and maybe to you is this.

Life is too short for us to take our cues from the world on what we should care about. Best-selling books, most-watched video links, most-read blog posts.

Ultimately, we're listening to the world, and the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So to an extent, who cares, right? Who cares what people were watching or reading in 2025?

As fallen humans, we'll always find voices that will tickle our fallen, twisted, itching ears. That's not where we want to take the cues from on what we care about.

Let's consider a better perspective about what you and I should care about. Consider the perspective of those heavenly beings that are immortal, created by God.

I'm talking about angels. These angels got to watch God form the world with His voice.

They got to watch God destroy that version of earth with the flood. And they've observed our species over every generation. Can we take our cues from the angels about what we should care about and pay attention to?

Think about angels' minds. They're not restricted like our human minds are. We are part of fallen flesh and we're human beings. So I imagine those angels, if they even do this, but I imagine if they were to listen to what the latest tech genius of 2025 has to say, and they're spirits, they don't have bodies and they're tireless, so they wouldn't actually do this.

But if they could, they would yawn. Angels could care less about that. Think about the other things that make the headlines. You know, fighting over economics or geopolitics.

It's like a boring rerun from previous centuries. But if you look at the angels' response to what God does in redemptive history, this is where we get a glimpse and the angels are singing about the birth of Jesus.

And look at our passage today. Look at verse 10. The Old Testament prophets, inspired by the Spirit of Christ, they foretold something magnificent.

It was the suffering and the glory of God the Son in the flesh. That's what got the attention of the angels. God revealed that His gospel was being foretold through the Scriptures for our benefit in these last times.

The church, those of us who have Scripture, what is it that captures the attention of the angels? It's the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 12. This is what angels desire to look into. So for the month of December, with God's help, and if He'll allow us, our focus will be to do just that.

To gaze at the person of Jesus Christ. The theme of this series is the only mediator. And our focus for today is very narrow on the person of Jesus.

For today, I encourage you to take comfort in your Savior's ordination. Take comfort in your Savior's ordination. Look at verse 20 one more time.

1 Peter chapter 1, verse 20. For He indeed, Jesus Christ, was foreknown or foreordained before the foundation of the world.

That's our encouragement today. We'll ask three questions to try to appreciate this glorious revelation that God has given. The first one is, when? When did God do this?

The second one is, why? Why did God do this? And then finally, for whom? When, why, and for whom? Let's begin with the first one. When was Jesus Christ ordained for His ministry as our mediator and Savior.

We're told that He was foreordained in verse 20 before the foundation of the world. Peter uses this word that you can break down the roots in the prefix to it would be pre-known.

Jesus Christ was pre-known of God before the foundation of the world. To know someone in this sense is to know them as a person, is to know them in relation.

So the person of Jesus Christ was foreknown, foreordained in His office by the triune God before the foundation of the world.

See, it's way more than a mere prediction of what God would do. It's a prescription. It means that God has predetermined, He has appointed Christ beforehand.

We just read, in the unity of our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our infinitely holy God, triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in His infinite wisdom decreed that God the Son would take on to Himself a body in order to unite a people to God.

What a glorious truth. Thomas Watson commented, God's counsel is the cause of all things. The thoughts of a man may be frustrated, but the counsel of God cannot.

He does not consult with us. God consults with Himself. This illustration was helpful to me. Maybe it would be to you as well.

We see some of these massive trees out here, you know, cottonwood trees, or picture like a massive oak 40 feet up into the air. Before that tree got to be so tall and magnificent, it started as a small little acorn or a seed.

The entire genetic code of this magnificent tree, its height, the leaf shape, the strength, it's already written into that tiny acorn. The tree was foreordained inside the seed, you could say, before it ever breaks the soil.

Similarly, the tree of our salvation, the wonderful decree of God, the plan of our salvation by the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, were in the mind of God before creation itself even began.

God chose Jesus Christ to reveal His glory. There's an old hymn and it has this line that Christ, be my first elect, God said, then chose our souls in Christ our head before He gave the mountains birth or laid foundations for the earth.

Brothers and sisters, how in you can I, how could we be cold towards such a wise God? Think about how God's love to save us has burned hotter than the sun since before God even created the sun.

God has never had a cold moment toward you in eternity. This is an ancient love found in God Himself, His very essence.

Let His love for us in ordaining Christ for this work be a great comfort. Our confession of faith affirms this. God was pleased in His eternal purpose to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to be the mediator between God and man.

Ephesians 1, 4, and 5 says that God chose us in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him.

In love He predestined us for adoption in His beloved Jesus Christ. The enemy wants to accuse you and me and one of the fears that can creep up in our minds is that when I sin this is a surprise to God or that my sin is too terrible or too recent for God to forgive.

Let's look at Christ. Remember how God foreordained Christ for you and me. The remedy for our sin was prepared before the world even began.

God's grace is eternal for His people. You and I can't out-sin God's decree that predates our own existence.

Revelation 13, 8 says that Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. This is such great news.

It reveals to us that the glorious truth that our God our Creator our Savior He is not reactionary. The plan of salvation is older than the problem of sin.

God didn't discover that you and I are sinners and we're lost and then scrambled to find a Savior. That would contradict what our passage says very clearly today.

God appointed Jesus Christ as Savior first. He knew that you and I would be lost and that would be a great display of His grace to us in Jesus Christ.

As someone put it, before the first star was kindled or the first mountain was raised, the Father had already identified His Son as the Lamb.

Let this expand our minds. We receive the gospel with a childlike faith and yet our salvation is not a fragile thing held together by our own understanding even.

Certainly not our daily performance. It is anchored in the bedrock of God Himself from all eternity. Our salvation, the eternal destiny of our souls was designed by God.

He's the architect of it all from beginning to end. This is when Jesus Christ was ordained. It's before the foundation of the world. Second question, why was Jesus ordained?

Would you look at verse 9? we're told that Jesus was ordained for the salvation of our souls, for the salvation of His people.

This is the purpose for which He came as God's servant. Ordination implies an ordainer and a person being ordained.

And so this points us to the agreement between Father, Son, sealed by the Holy Spirit. Throughout church history it's been called the covenant of redemption. God's eternal decree to make peace with man through Jesus, God the Son, who would become the servant.

In Isaiah 42, 1, we're given a beautiful insight into the why behind our salvation. It reads, Behold, from God's perspective, my servant whom I uphold, my elect one in whom my soul delights.

See, God the Father delights in His Son who will serve as the servant, the one to accomplish this plan of salvation. God was pleased to save through Jesus Christ and Jesus was pleased to become a servant of God.

The Father looked upon the Son and delighted to appoint Him as the captain of our salvation. salvation. So the why Jesus was ordained, it was motivated by God's pure, unsurpressible, overflowing, divine love.

The very essence of who God is. God delights in your salvation. God is not stingy with His mercy. He is bound by His own delight and promised to provide salvation for all who will come to Christ.

He wants to save you more than you want to be saved. Take joy in the fact that saving you and saving me was not a chore for God. It was His eternal delight in His Son.

It's God's pleasure to save. The beautiful thing we see in this passage is that God's overflowing love and joy and delight, He shares it with His people.

It becomes our own. The love of God the Father for God the Son overflows by God the Spirit onto those who God saves.

Look at 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 8 and 9. At the revelation of Jesus Christ whom, having not seen, so by faith you love.

That's a work that only the Spirit can do. Though now you do not see Him yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

You know this joy that God's promise is true. You truly are saved in Jesus Christ. Watson pointed out, Christ took our flesh upon Him that He might take our sins upon Him.

That's why He did it. The hymn captures this as well. Oh, the sweet wonders of that cross where God the Savior loved and died. Her noblest life my spirit draws from His dear wounds and bleeding side.

God the Son and our second London Confession chapter 8 paragraph 1 encourages us, God was pleased according to the covenant made between the triune God to set Christ forth for us as our mediator.

See, there's only one possible mediator between God and man and this is the mediator that you and I most need. It's God the Son Himself. Why did God send His Son to save us?

Because of His overflowing mercy. Because He is love. In Revelation, we get this glorious picture of living waters flowing from God and the Lamb, flowing from this gospel revealed through Jesus Christ.

And here in Colorado, if we drive to the mountains this time of year, some of the waterfalls are starting to freeze and they look beautiful. You can still see some snow melting as we have those warm days and it's rushing down.

It can get to the bottom of a mountain and it can be a mighty white water rapids. And those rivers begin in a hidden spring usually high up in the mountains where we can't even see it or find the source.

This is like the eternal covenant between Father, Son, and Spirit. And the river down below is the visible result. But the pressure and the life and the source are high above, unseen by those of us down here in the valley.

The water of life flows to us only because of the love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit covenanting to save a people through Jesus Christ, the mediator, in the heights of heaven.

we look around us and we know this in our own lives that many are dying of spiritual thirst. And if we step one half step back away from Christ, from the source, we feel that spiritual thirst and we need to plunge back in, don't we?

God's love flows through the abundance of the blood of Jesus. There's no limit. It's more precious than anything in this world. It's the precious blood of the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.

It will never run out. Jesus Christ has been lifted up and He's offered freely. Come and drink. Don't let the enemy trick us again.

The greatest possible pleasures for those of us that God made in His image can only be found in God's will. Think of this thought.

we're told here it's the delight of God to set forth Jesus. Jesus is His beloved in whom we are chosen. If the Father delights in the Son that much, you and I can only experience such joy if we delight in the Son also.

This is God's will. Delight in His Son. There's no other source of happiness. forgiveness. This is the why Christ was ordained.

The third question, which sinners was Jesus Christ foreordained to save? Which sinners was Jesus Christ foreordained to save?

We get this in our whole passage, but let's begin by looking at verse 20. We're told that Jesus was manifest in these last times for you. keep reading into verse 21.

For you who through Him believed in God. Which sinners is Christ ordained to save? Those who believe in Jesus.

He is manifest. The Spirit reveals Him to you and me who behold Him by faith and receive Christ as God has freely given Him. And through Jesus we believe in this glorious gospel of God.

Isn't God so kind? See, His secret counsel between Father, Son, and Spirit did not stay secret. Peter says in verse 20, God was pleased to manifest Jesus.

To manifest means to make visible. Our Lord Jesus made Himself not only visible but touchable. Put your hands, put your fingers in my hands and the wounds.

His disciples eyewitnesses like Peter could behold Him bleeding in His body on the cross. God the Son truly took on a body.

He truly was incarnate. Spurgeon pointed out, He that made man was made man. in the Athanasian creed that we just read.

It was in God and Trinity and the Trinity and unity. That's who we worship. And this is possible because Jesus manifested the Trinity, the full light of God's glory.

a wonderful analogy for us is the sun. We're part of the solar system so as the earth rotates around the sun we experience life under the sun.

And at sunrise something very special happens. See, all night long the sun was there and never went away. But in our part of the world it's dark. The sun is real and it's burning with immense heat and light just as God is real.

And God exists in power and glory and burning light. But over the night time on this earth the sun is hidden from our side.

And then at dawn that sun that was there all along becomes manifest. The rays reach us. We can feel the warmth and we can start to see again.

That's what Jesus Christ coming in the flesh did. He is the light of God breaking over the horizon to warm the earth.

And Christ is God triune God eternal sun. And his incarnation was the sunrise that brought the light of the eternal triune creator into the darkness of world history.

God could have done this in a lot of ways. Think about how to behold God completely unveiled would kill us.

We physically could not handle seeing God in a display of his glory. Those who got a glimpse even of an angel would fall on their faces and tremble in fear.

A.W. Tozer commented this about the incarnation. the awful majesty of the Godhead was mercifully sheathed like you would put a sword in a leather pouch in the soft envelope of human nature to protect mankind.

That's who Jesus Christ is as our mediator. The evidence of God's magnificence is Christ.

put before us. If you continue to say I don't see my need for Christ. If you're unwilling to close your eyes to this world and let the spirit open your eyes by faith to Christ to see the sunrise that he has brought that's to ignore the manifest one.

The one that God has put forward and said look at him. and that's to embrace darkness forever. So which sinners was Jesus Christ foreordained to save?

The target audience in verse 20 is for you. He was foreordained for you who believe. See this church now we look back at verse 2.

it's a circular letter given to these churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. In other words real places, real locations, local congregations like this one.

And in verse 2 he calls people in those churches elect according to the foreknowledge of God and God if you have received Christ manifest it's because you are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.

It's because the spirit has set you apart has sanctified you and is in the process of sanctifying you. And it's for obedience and sprinkling in the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

The second London confession of faith also says from all eternity God gave the Son a people to be his offspring and in time these people would be redeemed.

That means in a moment in history Christ would accomplish that salvation that he had promised long ago. And in time each of these souls that God elect would be called.

That means the Holy Spirit will take the work of Christ Christ manifest and effectually draw you to see Christ. And each of those souls will be justified.

A moment in time you will pass from being condemned by sin under the law to being saved righteous united to Christ and you will be sanctified and glorified in him.

He knew this from the very beginning and he will see it through all the way to glorification and the life to come because of your union to Jesus. The eternal son stepped into time took on flesh he went to the cross for the sake of his people those who believe in him by faith those are the sinners he was ordained to save.

In 1 Peter chapter 1 if you look at verse 8 we're encouraged about this work of the spirit to cause us to believe though you do not see him yet believing you rejoice and in verse 9 receiving the end of your faith the salvation of your souls he causes us to believe by faith and he saves our souls fully and finally through Jesus Christ Spurgeon commented on the sinners that Christ was ordained to save with this he said it was not a necessity that Jesus should save any he saved some because he would have mercy on whom he would have mercy Romans 9 15 it was his own free will that moved God to our salvation so maybe you're thinking again today is

Christ really for me am I one that he has manifested himself to save look at verse 1 I'm sorry chapter 1 verse 21 he says it's for you who through Jesus believe in God the answer is yes if you look to Christ you are the you in this verse God the son didn't manifest himself to condemn you Jesus Christ manifested by God to save you Athanasius pointed out that Christ became what we are that he might make us what he is if God is drawing you to himself making you more and more little by little imperfectly for a lifetime to love him to be more like Christ this is the very purpose for which he came be encouraged Jesus was manifested for sinners like you and me he now manifests himself to others in this world through you and me his light now reflects the glory in his people and sometimes we don't even know it you could be having a horrible week you can be beating yourself up under the enemy's accusations and you have had this happen someone will just tell you a comment there's something different about you or your family or you all at church there's something different about the way you are and we have to say it's nothing to do with us this has to be

Christ in us if you knew who I am for myself there is nothing admirable or praiseworthy but by God's grace this is our lives become a more and more visible display of his invisible grace the world is watching us let's gaze at God's love in Jesus Christ this is the most beautiful sight that we can behold let's marvel at him together we long to look into God manifested in the person of Jesus Christ like the angels do to stare at him with the eyes of faith to wonder at him and if his spirit is kind even to weep at how much God loves you and me not because of who we are but despite who we are amen he was manifest in these last times for you take comfort in your savior's ordination

Jesus Christ was indeed foreordained before the foundation of the world for you and me let's thank him oh lord we praise you for the gospel that you have revealed through jesus christ foretold in all of the old covenant accomplished by jesus christ and applied to us by your holy spirit lord we pray that your your spirit will gently kindly comfort encourage strengthen build up sustain your people father for christ's sake for your glory in us and your glory in the church as you manifest yourself to the world amen do