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The Grace That Should Come
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, CA, USA
Delivery: 2008-08-09 20:19Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2008-08-09 20:19Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kirl-1peterpt03.php
Considerations in 1 Peter 1:10-12
The people of God 2,000 years ago were animated by a powerful vision. Today’s church runs after a thousand different fads, moods, motives, and goals. Why the difference? What has been distorted or even lost?
Peter can remind us. He says that the deliverance planned for us has been the subject of prophetic interest down through all the ages. Of course, in speaking of the prophets, he is looking to the Tanakh (Old Testament). Those prophets, says he, enquired and searched diligently with reference to what would be the personal spiritual experience that later believers would know. Literally, he says that they “prophesied of the grace that should come unto you.”
Some today urge that there is a great divide between the faith of the Tanakh and of the New Testament. But all of its talk about grace coming to God’s people is built upon the prophets of the Bible books already existing when Peter wrote. For this salvation “the prophets have enquired and searched diligently . . . searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11).
Here we have two points specifically mentioned: (1) the sufferings of Christ, and (2) the glory that should follow the sufferings of Christ. To what then does Peter refer? “Prophets” is plural so he must have two or more Scripture passages in mind. Remember, the passages that Peter refers to must speak both, to the sufferings of Christ, and to the glory that should follow. While many touch one or the other, not as many plainly touch both.
The Seed of the Woman
One passage that we think of, almost inevitably, is God’s speech to the serpent in Genesis 3:15.
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.
This was something that God promised to do. It could not be done by man. Adam had obeyed—and hence, joined—the rebel. Now it would be in mercy undeserved that God would “put” enmity between man and the master of evil. How? God would contest Satan’s slavery of man. “Between thy seed and her Seed” there would be war, contest.
Satan’s seed would be the numerous followers of their own flesh. They would join themselves to the clammers rising from their disordered, post-Fall humanity. They would own the inclination to self-indulgence and corrupt their characters with that—and then continue to strengthen it. Satan’s seed would be the many who would take the broad road that leads to the destruction of themselves and to others (Matthew 7:13, 14). They would be coerced and coercers, men willing to use force to get their way. Especially against all holiness would these make war.
The Seed of the woman would be Christ. After 4,000 years God would come. He would descend from heaven as Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). The Word would become flesh (John 1:14). He would be made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, and then crowned with glory and honor. He by the grace of God would taste death for every man (Hebrews 2:9).
The suffering of Jesus is seen in His bruised heel. He would crush Satan the serpent under His foot, but the serpent would not go down without a fight. He would strike and wound Jesus, but not fatally. Jesus would suffer.
He suffered through His life. The Bible records but little of His earliest years, but we learn that He underwent suffering and testing in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry (Luke 4:1-13). He learn how He was almost thrown off a high ridge after His announcement at the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:16). Throughout His ministry in Judea He was stalked, hounded, His words bent, His every move watched, His every “departure” from their vision of what orthodoxy was, noted.
At the end He suffered heart anguish at the betrayal of His own disciples and of Judas. He was beaten and abused in the last hours before the cross, and finally suffered in being crucified. Yes, His heal was bruised. But in death He conquered.
Satan Himself was defeated at the cross. Christ would not come down. Satan was shown to be a murderer; His character was unmasked as never before. And yet, the controversy was not ended even at the cross. A decisive step was taken there; the salvation of man was made possible; Jesus lived not as a God but a man and did not sin. He Himself became the sacrifice of atonement at the cross.
But there is another sense to Jesus’ suffering that did not end at the cross. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15). Satan is down but not out. He is still living, still deceiving, still forcing and persecuting (Revelation 12:12, 17). Every attack on you and me is also an attack on Christ, and when Satan leads any of the least of Christ’s brethren into temptation, he is also harming Christ (Matthew 25:31-46). But Christ will finish the crushing of Satan under the heals of His followers in the end-time (Romans 16:20). That is the glory that should come. That is the aspect that is future to the cross. That is where our lives become the field of battle for final victory for Christ.
Prophecy of the Fiery Serpent
Another prophetic incident showing the suffering of Christ and the glory that should follow is given at Numbers 21:8, 9:
And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
This may not have been so clear as a prophesying of the future at the time, but looking at it now, thousands of years later, we see. This was a true historical incident. It happened in the actual exodus. God’s people rebelled then just as Adam and Eve at the Fall. God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and put it up on a pole. This is also what the Father and Jesus had agreed to in the beginning. Long before the cross they had arranged with each other that Jesus would do this. As soon as there was sin there was a Savior. Jesus did live and die and go up onto the pole. He who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:20). He became like the serpent on the pole.
He foretold that when He was lifted up, He would draw all men unto Himself (John 3:14, 15; 8:28; 12:32). He did and does. Every one of us is bitten; we are headed for eternal death. We are dying of the poison of self-inflicted sin. But the offer is made! He is drawing. Will we look and live?
Jesus’ death on the cross tells of His suffering but the looking and living part tells of the glory that should follow. If we look and if we exercise faith in Christ (God gives us this faith)—if we will accept that He was made sin for us—then we may look and live. Then we will discover His victory. Remember, this is no mere legal victory, but it is the discontinuance of sin in His people. This is really a description (looking and living) of a sealing process. We are not sealed today not because the fiery serpent was missing from the pole, but because God provided the fiery serpent but those who claim to obey Him refuse to look and live. We keep blinking and looking away; there are so many bright lights and distractions. The command and the power in it for us remains: look and live!
Other texts come to us in the same way, opening our understanding of the sufferings of Jesus and the glory that should come, like Isaiah 9:1-7, Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Malachi 3:1-6, and more.
Grace For Us
Stangely, some persist in unclarity. The help and power of God is and always has been grace. It has always been glad to extend grace to us. Grace is not license or some kind of stand-lone forgiveness; grace is the strength of God sent to the believer in His need. God sends it to all who want it. Believers have always needed it, and in the last days especially will it be. Grace will be seen in starkest contrast at the end of time.
Notice now 1 Peter 1:12:
Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
The prophets prophesied. Theirs was a hard task. Isaiah was sawn in half, Jeremiah thrown in bottom of a well (Jeremiah 38:6), Daniel fed to the lions (but God intervened) (Daniel 3). But they learned that there was more ahead. Although persecuted and even murdered while serving God, not every question was answered. Daniel, for example, was not given every detail:
And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And He said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end (Daniel 12:8, 9).
Even Daniel, standing at the center of biblical time prophecy, was not able to understand all of them. But that was OK. He began to realize that it was not to himself or even so much to his own generation but to those who would live especially in the time of the end that He was prophesying. Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, Malachi—they ministered to us. They did so by faithfully recording their prophesyings, but also through the labor of Peter and James and John and the New Testament writers. These came later but were not separate from them. No man is an island and no part of the body of Christ is completely apart from any other part. There would be no New Testament as we know it had there not been the Scriptures that were before it. The Holy Spirit was poured out and the renewed church preached with power and illuminated the world with the mighty light in the sufferings of Christ and the glory followed. It permeates the New Testament. It is part and parcel of our faith today.
Angelic Interest
All this brings us to the last phrase in our passage: “which things the angels desire to look into.” What things? The things that the Holy Spirit testified to beforehand: the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Yes, all the angels who have watched from that terrible moment of rebellion in the garden and then the bold challenge of God in His promise to “put” enmity toward evil into His people through Jesus, “desire to look into” the development of the final generation. They want to see the glory that should follow.
You cannot separate God’s purpose for His people in the end-time from His purpose for Jesus in the Calvary time. Jesus was crucified then so that you and I could be buried with Him in baptism and raised to live new life right now (Romans 6). The sufferings of Christ remain. If we have Christ in us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1:26), if no longer we live but Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20), then in us the mystery of godliness is to be revealed (Revelation 10:6, 7. The goodness of God leads to repentance (Romans 2:4), but this goodness is seen where Christ is seen. If He is seen in us, then our lives will have evangelistic power. They will draw; they will demonstrate; they will convict. Sons and daughters made in God’s image will also become interested in the things that the angels desire to look into.
There is a Great Controversy, there is a war. Heaven has a purpose in allowing it to play-out as it has. Just as there is a progress in God’s revelation of truth to men, there is a development of possibility. As the 12th grader can read and write better than the first, the end-time Christian should be able to react to the clarified understanding available to God’s people since 1844. Jesus lived the law, He was the law living; in the end-time God has raised up a people whom He intends shall live the law. The law and the gospel go together, and come together at last in that generation willing, even desiring, to follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Revelation 14:4). The Bible confirms that there is a special message and mission and development of character for Christians who live at the end, in the time of clarification.
Yes, in our day many seem to have lost their way. They follow the doctrines, the commandments, the fads of men. They make popular teachings and trends their emphasis. But God will have a people who will build up the old waste places, raise up the foundations of many generations, repair the breach, restore the paths that God has marked out. These will not forget the sufferings of Christ, but participate in them. These will not venture off into absurd paths, but will walk with Jesus. And His glory shall go with them. He will be their God and they will be His people. His name will be seen in them. And humanity will return home at last. GCO
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