04/19/09 Hard Times - High Calling Pt. 1

We ended our study of 1^st Peter three weeks ago

without completing the thought Peter was sharing with us.

We were looking at 1^st Peter 1:14-19,

a passage that actually begins a verse earlier with the word Therefore...

It is a passage in which Peter begins to share with us

what a healthy response on our part will look like

if we have correctly understood what he’s just told us in the first half of this first chapter.

In that first half of the chapter

he offered us a thrilling picture of our God -

His love for us,

His commitment to us,

His longing to call us to Himself,

His willingness to work with us and in us for the rebuilding of our lives.

Everything Peter said

simply screamed the reality of our God’s deep personal love for us.

And then, after sharing with us those truths,

Peter says Therefore...

And with that word

he begins to talk with us

about our reasonable response to God

given His actions toward us.

We heard Peter talk with us first about our attitudes - girding our minds for action and fixing our hope on the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Then we heard him offer us a call

that our actions, our daily life choices

tell the truth both about who we really are - sons and daughters of God,

and about our God Himself.

OK, that’s where we stopped,

but it’s not were Peter stops

in his description of this God who has joined Himself to us.

In verses 20 and 21 he goes on to say,

1PE 1:20-21 For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

And to understand what Peter is saying here

and why he’s saying it

we need to keep in mind why God gave us the Bible.

This isn’t complicated, of course.

What He’s doing with this book

is providing us with an absolutely reliable source

of correct information

about those things that are crucial for every human being to know.

And at the top of that list

is correct knowledge about our God

and correct knowledge about ourselves.

OK, Peter has just told us

that God has redeemed us from our futile way of life

with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

Just that statement alone is amazing to the extreme -

the God who created us

redeeming us from our rebellion against Him

with His own blood sacrificed for us.

Now, if that is all we were given

we would certainly be powerfully confronted

with God’s love response to us.

But what God did for us

is even more remarkable than just that.

You see, Peter wants us to know

that God’s redemptive plan for us

was not and never has been a plan “B”.

When God created this world

and placed us in it through Adam and Eve

He had no hopes and no illusions about them or us

remaining faithful to Him.

As He watched Adam and Eve follow through with their rebellion

He wasn’t thinking, “OH NO! Where did I go wrong? What more could I have done to keep them faithful?”

Even before this world existed,

even before Adam took his first breath

or Eve first felt the cool grass under her feet

God knew we would rebel.

He knew that we would look at this incredible physical creation around us

and, rather than seeing it as the expression of His love for us that it is,

we would simply take it all for granted.

He knew that the only way we would ever begin to gain

even a tiny grasp of the true nature of His love for us

was when we were confronted with His response to us

in the face of our open rebellion against Him.

EPH 2:4-7 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

There was no other way.

And so, before any of it ever happened,

before any of the physical world even existed

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit

predetermined their plan

for communicating to us

the true nature of their love for us.

Which is why, immediately after telling us of Jesus’ blood poured out for our redemption,

Peter goes on to say,

1PE 1:20 For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world...

The “He” obviously refers back to the One whose blood was poured out for us - Jesus.

And Peter wants to be certain we understand

that none of it happened by accident,

none of it happened by chance,

and none of it happened as a knee-jerk response to a good creation gone bad.

From before the beginning of all things

there has never been a plan “B”.

There has always, only been a carefully designed plan “A”,

God’s plan of the ages

perfectly designed to confront the human race

not with our failure, as we are so often told by the religious community,

but rather to confront us

with God’s response to us in the face of our failure.

It is a plan designed to confront us with the depth of His love for us,

a plan with roots that reach back before any of the physical creation ever existed,

a plan in which, before anything existed,

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit

were in perfect agreement

that God the Son would willingly enter into time and into this physical world as Jesus

so that He could then offer Himself willingly

as the perfect offering for our sins against Him.

For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world...

And when we see some of the things that are said in other passages

it gets even more remarkable than that.

It is a common misunderstanding about the creative work of God

that God the Father created this whole thing

and then He in some way assigned the redemptive work to the Son,

perhaps in the way that a man would build a garage

and then give his teenage son the assignment of cleaning it out when it got dirty.

It was nothing even remotely like that, folks.

I’m getting a bit off track here,

but I want to read a section of a passage written by Paul to the Colossians

because the information it contains about Christ is staggering.

This is Colossians 1:15-20,

and the important thing to remember as I read this

is that it is absolutely clear in the passage

that Paul is talking not about God the Father,

but rather about God the Son - Jesus Christ.

We are so accustomed to limiting our thoughts about Christ

to who He was and what He did during His few years on this earth

that we can easily fail to recognize who He was and what He did before that

and what He will yet do in the future.

But listen to this.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

Now, I read that whole passage

simply because it is such a glorious picture of our King,

but the main thing I wanted to point out is found in that second sentence where Paul says,

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things have been created through Him and for Him.”

He is telling us

that it was actually the Son who did the creating.

It was the Son who brought this world

and all of us into existence.

Which means that when He was creating us

He knew that He was bringing into being

the very ones who would despise Him,

and reject Him,

and hate Him,

and use His name as if it was a little piece of filth,

and nail Him to a slab of wood.

He knew He was creating

His own executioners.

And yet it was with that full knowledge

that, before He created any of it,

He put in place His plan for our redemption.

And then Peter takes this remarkable truth

and he makes it personal for us.

“For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

And it’s that last phrase that’s so critical to what Peter is doing in these two verses...so that your faith and hope are in God...”.

You see, there is such a strong progression in what Peter is saying here,

a progression designed first of all to communicate truth

and then to reveal to us what will happen inside us

if we correctly hear and understand that truth.

Peter begins by revealing to us God’s plan of the Ages -

His design of a world system in which He could create beings

that had real, true free will - the ability to make choices that were in no way predetermined by God,

and yet, at the same time,

put in place a revelation of Himself

that allowed us to see both his love for us as revealed through His death in our place for our sins

and also His absolute authority over death

and His ability to offer us eternal life with Him beyond the grave,

as demonstrated through His physical resurrection from the dead.

This free will thing is hard stuff for us appreciate

because it’s so much a part of our life that we don’t even see it.

But can you see what God has actually accomplished in this whole thing?

This balance that exists between our free will

and His revelation of Himself to us

is, to my thinking, among the most remarkable aspects of our existence.

I mean, really!

How in the world could God create us, and love us,

and yet then put in place a world system in which

we could actually choose to believe He didn’t even exist,

and yet at the same time,

if we truly want to find Him and know Him honestly,

we are able to enter into a discovery of His love that becomes the consuming fire of our lives?

Have you ever heard people say things like,

“If I were God I would do something about that!”

Or, “If there really was a God who was good and who cared,

He would never allow this evil or that evil to exist in our world.”

What we’re saying when we make statements like that

is that we want God to obliterate free will

by revealing Himself in such a way

that simply blasts the human race with the reality of His presence.

But that isn’t His way

because He doesn’t want people coming to Him

who do so simply because His revelation of Himself gives us no other choice.

Do you know who does do that?

Or, I should say, who will do that in the future?

Satan.

When he brings his man on the scene in the form of the Anti-Christ

he will establish a world system

in which submission to him is the only reasonable, obvious choice.

He will establish a world monetary system in which no business can be conducted

without his direct permission and control over it.

That doesn’t sound like free will to me.

And he will place a companion next to the Anti-Christ

who will possess incredible supernatural powers,

powers that he then uses to force the human race into submission to the Anti-Christ.

Let me read you just a little of the description of him given to us in Revelation.

REV 13:12-15 And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed. And he performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men. And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. And there was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast might even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed.

That doesn’t sound much like free will to me.

That’s Satan’s approach to world domination -

drive the human race into submission

through fear and intimidation.

But that’s not God’s approach.

No one will ever stand before God

and say, “Well, really I had no choice because You forced me into submission.”

All those who ultimately come to Him

will do so because they gained a glimpse of His love

and knew they could not live without Him.

And that’s what we have Peter revealing to us in these verses -

God’s careful revelation of Himself to His creation,

a revelation in which He will not violate our free will,

and yet a revelation in which we truly can find Him, see Him as He really is

if we want Him, seek Him no matter what the cost.

And then he ends this statement

by telling us what our lives will look like

when we have correctly seen and understood God’s revelation of Himself to us.

He says God has done what He has done

so that He can bring us to the place where ... our faith and hope are in God...”.

What a statement!

That’s where we’re headed, folks.

Did you think this whole God thing

had something to do with our becoming good church people,

or highly skilled in Christian doctrine,

or bold proclaimers of a Biblical world view?

What God wants,

what He seeks,

the reason He has done all that He’s done

in the revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ

is to make it possible

for some of us to see Him with such clarity

...so that our faith and hope are in God...”.

Our faith...

That just means that our spirits have discovered

that He’s really there and He’s really good.

Picture a little boy entering a dark room

and then hearing a noise and knowing that he’s not alone.

And then picture that little boy hearing a voice that says,

“Don’t be afraid, my son, it’s me - your daddy.”

That’s the foundation of faith -

our spirits awakening to the discovery that we are not alone,

and then our discovering that the One who is with us

is the One who loves us with an everlasting love.

HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

But faith in Jesus Christ here, now, in this world

is always a choice,

a choice based on our seeing His love for us at some level

and then responding to that love.

Which is why all true discovery of God

begins at the cross.

It is the place where we can see Him most clearly and see His heart response to us up close and personal.

And our hope is in God...

And here Peter is simply telling us

that as we come to see our God more and more correctly

we will recognize more and more

that all of those things we truly long for the most in this life

can never come to us through this world system in which we live.

That doesn’t mean we attempt to create some sort of protected,

artificial separation from the world around us

through a commune or monastery or compound,

because this world system is not a place, its an attitude.

But it does mean that increasingly

the choices we make in this life

are rooted in and grow out of what is happening between us and our God at the spirit level.

To hope in God

means, at least in part,

that we choose to follow His leadership, His way

even when it makes no sense whatsoever on the basis of this world system.

We do so

because we literally HOPE IN GOD,

we literally believe

that our God will directly, personally intervene

in the daily details of our life

in a way that causes our lives to work the best they possibly could

as a result of our making choices consistent with His leading.

To hope in God

is to choose honesty and integrity over profit.

To hope in God

is to choose what’s right over what feels good if the two are in conflict.

To hope in God

is to choose submission to those in authority over us

believing that even when their motives are wrong,

God will work through them for our good.

To hope in God

is to draw our true sense of security from His presence

and our true sense of purpose from His love.

It is no small thing,

and certainly no instant thing

for a human being to have their faith and their hope in God.

In fact, when it happens, where it happens

it is the greatest revelation of the power of God we will ever know.

And it is also

what brings the greatest sense of purpose, peace, and fulfillment we will ever know.