Good morning.
My name is Matthew Capone, and I'm the pastor here at Cheyenne Mountain Presbyterian Church,
and it's my joy to bring God's Word to you today.
If you're new or visiting with us, welcome.
We're glad that you're here, and we're glad that you're here not because we're trying
to fill seats, but because we're following Jesus together as one community.
And as we follow Jesus together, we become convinced that there's no one so good that
they don't need God's grace, and no one so bad that they can't have it, which means that
God has something to say to everyone in His Word, and so that's why we come to it in this
portion of our service, week after week, to study what God has to say to us.
If you've been with us, you know we're in the book of 1 Peter, and the book of 1 Peter is
a letter, and it's a letter written by a man named Peter to churches in the first century
that are in what is now modern-day Turkey.
At the time, it would have been called Asia Minor.
And these churches are struggling, and they're struggling because they're living as Christians,
and as they live as Christians, it's causing them to feel out of place in the world, and
it's also causing them to face opposition from the world.
Peter writes to these churches to instruct them and to encourage them.
He writes first to encourage them, to let them know that Jesus is worth it.
Jesus is worth living for, He's worth loving for, and He's also worth suffering for, and
He's worth dying for.
He doesn't just write to them to encourage them, but He also writes to instruct them.
He instructs them how they should live as Christians in this world, and He also instructs them how
to respond when they face opposition for following Jesus.
And if you've been with us, you know that this beginning of the letter where we're at has
been mostly, if not exclusively, encouragement rather than instruction.
Knowing that these folks are facing opposition, He wants to start out from the very beginning,
encouraging them of everything that's true about them and everything that's true about
God because they belong to Him.
And so we've looked at this encouragement in verses 1 and 2.
We saw that He helps them understand their identity.
They're chosen by God.
They're elect, but they're also exiles.
It's because they belong to God that they feel out of place in the world.
And then after that, we saw He talks about the fact that they are sons of God and daughters
of God.
God's their Father, and so they have benefits from that.
God's coming back to rescue them, no matter how bad things get now, and He has an inheritance
for them.
And then last week, we began to talk specifically about the topic of suffering, and we asked how
can we find joy in our suffering?
Peter shows them that because they suffer, when they suffer, they can find joy because it confirms
the fact that they belong to God.
They're not with God.
They're not following Jesus for the snacks, for what they can get, for the benefits that
they can receive, but they're following after Him because they have true faith.
We're going to continue on that theme a little bit this week.
We're ending up this section of encouragement.
Next week, we're going to head into the instruction.
We're going to continue talking about suffering.
Remember, there are three kinds of suffering.
There's general suffering that happens because of the brokenness in this world.
There is specific suffering that happens because of our foolishness and our sin.
Maybe we do something stupid, and so we have to suffer the consequences.
And then there's the third type of suffering, which is suffering specifically for the name
of Jesus Christ.
Now, all three of those kinds of sufferings matter.
If you were with us two summers ago, in the summer of 2018, we looked at the book of Ruth,
which is all about type one suffering.
Type two suffering, suffering because of our sin, shows up from time to time.
In fact, we talked about it with at least one of the Psalms.
And then type three suffering, suffering for the name of Jesus.
And you were with us last week.
You know that I talked about the fact that we have to be clear about the kind of suffering
that we face here in the United States, that it's nothing like the suffering that's faced
by people all around the world.
And in fact, this is one of the easiest times and the easiest places, most comfortable
times and the most comfortable places to be a Christian, which raises a question.
Why are we talking about suffering for the name of Jesus Christ if this is one of the easiest
places to follow Jesus Christ?
And of course, there's several reasons.
One, this is God's word for the church.
He's given us the book of 1 Peter for the church in all places at all times.
Second, there are Christians all around the world, our brothers and sisters, who are facing
suffering because they follow Jesus.
I mentioned last week that one in nine Christians around the world right now are facing intense
persecution.
But the other reason is similar to the reason I mentioned to you all over and over again
when we looked at the book of Ruth, which is that even if we're not suffering now, we
probably will one day.
And so God gives us his word to prepare us.
We have to have a theology of suffering.
We don't wait until suffering comes and then go back and try to figure out what's going on.
But God's given us his word, as I mentioned in the very first sermon in Ruth, now over
a year ago.
He's given us his word to prepare us for situations that perhaps we don't face, but
we will one day.
Just like you read stories to your child to help them understand situations they haven't
encountered yet and talk through it with them, God also does the same thing in Scripture.
And so it's with that word about suffering, we're going to ask a slightly different question
than we asked last week.
Last week the question was, how do we find joy in suffering?
And this week we're asking the question about, how does the story of the Bible encourage us
in suffering?
How does the grand story of the Bible help us when we're facing opposition for the name
of Jesus Christ?
Christ.
We're going to be starting in chapter 1, reading verses 10 through verse 12.
And as we come to verse 10, this is in your worship guide printed near the end, as Jim
mentioned earlier.
You can probably load this up on your phone, or you can find it in your Bible.
As we read this, remember that this is God's word.
And God tells us that his word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
In other words, God has not left us to stumble alone in the dark.
But instead, he's given us his word to show us the way to go.
And so that's why we read now, starting with verse 10.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched
and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating
when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
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 preach the good news to you by the Holy
Spirit sent from heaven.
Things into which angels long to look.
I invite you to pray with me as we come to this portion of God's word.
Father in heaven, we thank you that you are a loving Father who wants us to not be ignorant,
but to know how to live in this world.
And we thank you that you want to prepare us for what may await us in the future, that
we wouldn't be caught by surprise.
And so we ask that you do that with your word this morning.
That is where people who want to follow you and people who love you, that you teach us
how to think through what happens when that leads to hardship and suffering.
And most of all, we ask that you'd help us to understand your grace, the grace that's mentioned
in this passage that you've been telling the story of for generations.
We ask these things not because we have earned them or deserve them, but because Jesus has earned
them for us.
And so we ask them in his name.
Amen.
A few years back, a theologian proposed a thought experiment, which has now become quite popular
and I'm going to pose to you as well.
Imagine that there was a work of Shakespeare, a play that we did not know existed, and suddenly
we found it.
We discovered this great work.
People have been studying Shakespeare for generations, but this was something that no one was aware
of and it came out of the dark, except there was only one problem.
This Shakespeare play, let's say it had five acts.
The problem was that the fifth act, you could do four acts if you want, the final act has
a large section that's missing.
We have the beginning of the act and we sort of have the ending of the act as well, but we
don't know what falls in the middle.
And so what are we going to do?
One option would be to write what goes in between those missing parts.
And of course, how would we write that section if we had to?
We would have to be faithful to what's come before.
We'd have to look at what happened in Acts 1, 2, and 3.
What are the characters like?
Whatever the characters are like, that's going to bind us, right?
We're not going to suddenly make the characters radically different than what they've been
in the previous chapters.
And we can't write it in such a way that the ending doesn't make sense.
And so what's happened before is going to bind us, it's going to direct us.
If there's themes that have showed up at the beginning in the first two acts, those themes
are going to have to carry through all the way to the end.
We're going to have to remain committed to what's actually been given to us in this play.
There could be another scenario.
Another scenario would be not that we have to write what's in between, but that we suddenly
find another copy, and perhaps this copy doesn't have the first several acts, but it has the
last act.
Well, how are we going to determine that this last act is actually authentic to everything
else in this lost play?
We're going to have to compare it to what's come before.
Do the characters that show up in this section, are they faithful with what's come before?
Are the themes the same themes?
Is there something that disrupts what's happened?
Now, you may be tracking with where I'm going here.
Of course, this is proposed by a theologian to help us understand what it's like to be
the church right now.
We live with a story that's come before us, and we have some idea of how the story ends.
And yet there's a gap in between.
We live after the time that the book of 1 Peter was written, and we also live before
the time that the book of Revelation talks about.
And so there's a sense in which we are part of this play, except we're the parts that have
not been written yet.
We're in the part that's being written.
That's part of what Peter's getting at here in this passage.
He tells us that there is a story, verse 10.
First, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to
be yours searched and inquired carefully.
So there's prophets who are telling part of the story.
He's talking about Old Testament prophets who would have written books like Isaiah and
Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
And these prophets are the storytellers in part.
Now, God's the great storyteller, but he's using them as his instrument to write sections
of the Bible, and so they tell us things, and they tell us certain themes.
They know, verse 11, that there's going to be a time when there's a Christ who's going
to have sufferings and glories.
And we'll get to later what they're doing when it says they're inquiring, but here the
first point is this.
There's a story, and there's storytellers.
And these storytellers have been telling something, and this play that they're telling us about
has themes to it.
It has a consistency.
It has ideas that run throughout it.
What are those ideas?
Verse 11, they're predicting something, the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
In other words, they're telling us, they're predicting what is going to happen later in the story.
There's foreshadowing going on among the prophets as they talk about what's going to happen later
with Jesus.
And there's these themes here.
It's the three themes, the grace, the salvation of the grace, and the sufferings and the glories.
And so you might be wondering, what does it have to do with suffering for the name of Jesus Christ?
And the question that we're asking is, how do, how does the story of the Bible encourage
us in our sufferings?
It encourages us in this way.
When we suffer for the name of Jesus Christ, we can have confidence that we are living in the right story.
This is not a mistake.
Recently, I went to go see that great cinematic triumph, Toy Story 4.
I joke, but some people say it's the best Toy Story.
I'm not going to ruin it for you.
But I will tell you, at some point in Toy Story 4, Woody comes up against evil toys.
At no point while I was watching the movie did I say, this doesn't make sense at all.
This is Toy Story.
This is the perfect world where evil toys don't exist.
And why didn't I say that?
Because I've seen Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 and I've seen Toy Story 3.
I know that part of the story is that there are going to be toys in this world that have evil intentions.
And so there wasn't a point at which I thought, man, they really switched up the writers for this one.
Something's wrong.
Maybe I walked into the wrong movie.
No, this is how the story goes.
And so I shouldn't be surprised, as the story progresses, that that's going to be one of the themes that keeps on showing up.
Peter is telling these people who are suffering for the name of Jesus Christ, you are in the right story.
You should not be surprised when you suffer because that is part of the theme that has come before.
The theme is suffering to glory.
That is how the story works.
That's how this narrative arc has been going.
That's what the prophets prophesied.
This is nothing new.
And this is not a mistake.
You shouldn't be wondering at this point,
is Jesus actually the Messiah?
I was thinking this Messiah was going to come and he was just going to bring victory, right?
There wasn't going to be any suffering.
No, this character is exactly the character he was supposed to be.
Peter hits this home when he tells us something somewhat strange.
Verse 12,
Now we think of these Old Testament prophets as coming to their audience in the Old Testament, right?
God's people Israel, and giving them God's prophecy at that time for their good.
In other words, for the good of people in the Old Testament.
And that's true.
But Peter tells us there's even a greater good here,
that they don't have all the details of the things that they prophesied,
but even in not having the details they are serving,
these people living now after the time of Jesus,
how are they serving them?
By confirming for them that this is how the story works.
They can look back and go and see what has come before in the Old Testament and say,
Aha!
There's nothing surprising about suffering.
This is what it means to belong to God.
If we're following after Jesus,
we are going to follow the same pattern that he follows.
Jesus was predicted to experience suffering and glory.
Jesus experienced suffering and then glory.
There's a pattern.
We who follow him will also experience suffering and glory.
We are in the right story.
And we're in it because we follow after Jesus.
This is not a mistake.
I put it in a different way.
If there were not suffering,
then we would know that we were living in what is called fan fiction.
And there are fan fictions that exist in the Christian world.
One of them is called the prosperity gospel.
That is fan fiction.
It's not written by the real author.
There's another fan fiction.
It's called the Book of Mormon.
That was not written by the real author.
And that's the next point that Peter makes here.
Not only is this the same story,
but it's the same author.
Verse 11.
The spirit of Christ in them was indicating
when he predicted the sufferings of Christ
and the subsequent glories.
Jesus, who suffered,
his spirit was the one in the past
who inspired these prophets to write down this story
so that you would know what is to come
and that you would know that what has come is true.
The story is the same
and the author is the same.
You all know sometimes if you
follow a book series,
perhaps sometimes someone makes the choice
to keep the series but change the author.
Things can get a little weird.
Maybe you followed a television show
and they had a certain writer for two seasons
and then they switched the writer
and suddenly the characters changed as well.
Some of the themes changed.
The overall feel of the show was different.
That is not what's going on with the Bible.
We have the same story
and the same author.
And so as these people are suffering,
they know this is not a mistake.
This story is being written by the right person
and that person is Jesus.
And so even as we are facing opposition from the world,
we know that we're living in the right story.
We know that it's not a mistake.
It's more than that though.
It's not just the same story
and the same author.
It's also a new chapter.
We hear that these prophets,
they know that they're predicting something.
They don't know exactly what it is
and how it's going to work.
They're inquiring
into what person or time
is being indicated.
In other words,
they're trying to figure out.
We know that this is a
going to be a Messiah.
It sounds like he's going to suffer.
That doesn't sound quite right.
So we're going to try to figure out
what time is this going to happen?
What kind of world events
would be occurring
that this could take place?
What kind of Messiah would this be?
The kind that's not just going to come in
and conquer for us
but the one who would suffer.
And they're trying to figure this out.
They have clues in the Old Testament.
They can't find the solution.
Same thing happens today.
Just a few weeks ago,
Apple did their annual unveiling
of all their new products.
And if you followed tech news beforehand,
you know that there were many prophets
who were searching and inquiring,
carefully inquiring
what type the new iPhone might be.
Of course, they didn't know, right?
They had many different hints to work with,
hypotheses, guesses.
I saw one article that said
everything that we know
about the new Apple Watch.
And you open the article,
there's nothing that they know.
It's all guesses, conjectures.
Oh, that's clickbait.
Okay.
These people are revealing,
these prophets are seeing a story
that's now been revealed.
And so they don't just know
that they're in the right place
and the right time
and the right story,
but they're also at a specific time
in the story.
So I'm going to ask you a question.
If you had a major illness,
at what time would you want to be alive?
Would you want to have that major illness
in 1989 or 2019?
Easy, right?
You're going to want to have it in 2019.
If you are a college student
and it's the night before a big paper is due,
would you like to be living
in the age of the typewriter
or would you like to be living
in the age of the computer?
Some of you are going to say typewriter
just to be ornery.
The answer is computer.
We live in a time
that is privileged medically
and a privileged time technologically.
We experience and know things
that people in previous generations
longed to look into.
And we have things and privileges
and benefits
that people in previous generations
could only dream of.
Peter is telling these people
that they live in a time
spiritually of incredible privilege.
Because they know and experience
the full benefits of God's grace
which previous generations
could only dream about
and wanted desperately to know.
In other words,
if you were going to choose
any time to be a Christian
or someone who belongs to God,
when would you choose?
Do you want to be in the time of Moses?
Would you like to live
under the time of Abraham?
Do you have some nostalgia
about being in the desert
for 40 years?
What time would you choose
to be in the people of God?
Peter is telling them,
despite what you're facing,
you are in a privileged time spiritually.
You are in the time
that people want to be.
Now you might think or say,
well, you know,
if I was going to choose a time,
I would choose
when Jesus is walking on the earth.
That's the time spiritually
I would want to be.
That's the real highlight.
Okay, let's work with that.
You want to live in the time
when Jesus walked on the earth.
That's great.
You are in Western Europe.
You never meet Jesus.
You're in Northwest Africa.
You never meet Jesus.
You're like me,
some kind of Western European mutt.
Wow, you never meet Jesus.
You live in Israel,
but you live kind of
in the southern part of Israel,
far away from Galilee.
Odds of you meeting Jesus,
very low.
These people receiving this letter
lived after Jesus
and never met him.
It's the time
after Jesus returned
that is the time
of spiritual privilege.
Remember,
Peter told them earlier
that they love Jesus
even though they haven't seen him.
That wasn't because
none of them were alive
when Jesus walked the earth.
It's because Jesus
didn't visit Asia Minor.
And so it was after his death
that the gospel was carried out
from the place
where it started
from Jerusalem
and it's taken to these believers.
And so you're not just
in the right story,
you're in the right place.
Everyone else
in redemptive history,
those who came before you,
only got to read
the beginning of the mystery novel.
And they got to see
all the clues
but they didn't see the answer.
You now
live in the part
of the story
where you get to see
the answer.
You get to see
how that suffering
Messiah was revealed.
You get to see
the goodness
and beauty
of the gospel
that it was more
than anyone
in the Old Testament
could imagine.
And so
Peter's telling them
in one sense,
yeah, it's stressful.
But what a great time
to live.
No one
in the history
of the church
would trade places
with you.
And there's a sense
in which no one
in the history
of the church
would trade places
with us.
Because even more
than the recipients
of this letter
we've been able
to see
how the gospel
has expanded
throughout the world.
And we can find
on the internet
in five seconds
more information
about the revelation
of Jesus Christ
than anyone
before 33 A.D.
could have.
Feeling out of place
in the world
and facing opposition
from the world,
Peter reminds these people
that while the world
may feel like
a place that's not
their home,
spiritually,
they live
in the best time
possible.
And they live
in the best time
possible because
of this grace,
the salvation,
verse 10,
that the prophets
who prophesied
searched and inquired
carefully about.
Things into which
angels long to look.
People are longing
to know,
angels are longing
to know,
the reality
of this grace.
And what is the grace
that they're longing
to know that we
understand the recipients
of this letter
embrace and know
and have as their
confidence and their hope?
It's the reality
of this suffering servant.
And so I'm going to
turn back to Isaiah 53,
which you'll have
in your worship guide.
We read it as our
Old Testament reading
this morning.
This is what the prophets
prophesied that they
did not understand
that the readers
of this letter did.
Isaiah 53.
Who has believed
what he has heard from us
and to whom has the arm
of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up
before him like a young
plant and like a root
out of dry ground.
He had no form
or majesty that we
should look at him
and no beauty
that we should desire him.
The prophets didn't know
exactly what that was
talking about.
We do.
It's talking about Jesus
who is a real man
in real time
in real space
and actually came
and lived on this earth.
Lived a perfect life
that we couldn't
and died the death
that we deserve.
And by doing that
he was a young plant
and a root out of dry ground.
He didn't have
the former majesty
that he would have had
had he stayed in heaven.
Verse 3.
He experienced
the themes of this story.
He was despised
and rejected by men.
A man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief
and as one from whom
men hide their faces
he was despised
and we esteemed him not.
Even those who follow
after God
did not see Jesus
for who he was
sometimes.
And Romans 5
tells us that it was
while we were still sinners
that Christ died for us.
And so part of the privilege
that these people have
is they know
how it's going to work.
The grace comes
when Jesus dies
for people who hate him.
Verse 4.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows
yet we esteemed him stricken
smitten by God
and afflicted.
But he was pierced
for our transgressions.
He was crushed
for our iniquities.
Upon him
was the chastisement
that brought us peace
and with his wounds
we are healed.
All we like sheep
have gone astray.
We have turned
everyone to his own way
and the Lord
has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
This is what the readers
of 1 Peter understand
and we understand as well
that those who came
before them did not.
The full reality
of God's grace
that he comes
for sheep
who have gone astray
and he lays
all of our sins
on Jesus
as that sheep
to take them away.
And so as they're
facing suffering
in this world
for the name
of Jesus Christ
the readers of 1 Peter
know
that they are
in the right story.
That story
is written
by the same author
and they are in
the most glorious chapter
that has come
so far.
And they're in
the most glorious chapter
because they finally
understand Jesus
that he's the one
who comes
and dies
for his enemies.
And those who are
his enemies
can turn
in faith
to Jesus Christ
and experience
this same salvation.
And so that
is how the story
of the Bible
encourages
those who are
facing suffering
for the name
of Jesus Christ.
Christ.
Please pray
with me.
Father in heaven
we thank you
for the privilege
of living in a time
when we understand
and know the gospel
that we're not
wondering or searching
but we know
about Jesus
and we have the privilege
of having access
to your word.
We ask that you'd
encourage us with it
that when we face
the themes of suffering
and glory
we would know
that we're doing it
because it's part
of the story
and it's part
of what Jesus
has done for us
the pattern he sets
and the way
we follow him.
We ask all these things
in Jesus name.
Amen.