A Salvation Magnified Three Ways

The point: Continually reflect upon that which we are and have in Christ if we are to continue to worship God and make any progress in being and doing what is pleasing to Christ.

Martin asks the audience what they would write in a letter of encouragement to young Christians facing opposition, setting up Peter's actual approach in 1 Peter.

I want to begin this morning by asking each of you a very simple but rather strange question. If you, you personally, were asked, to write a letter of encouragement to a group of relatively young Christians who were facing increasing opposition and seduction from the pagan world around them, what would you choose to write as the foundation of your letter of instruction and of encouragement?

4:27 - 5:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Continually reflect upon that which we are and have in Christ if we are to continue to worship God and make any progress in being and doing what is pleasing to Christ.

The structure of Peter's letter (and the Ten Commandments) is used to illustrate the theological principle that statements of what God has done (indicatives) precede and undergird what God requires (imperatives).

He has many detailed apostolic commandments and mandates to lay before them. Why does he begin with a eulogy that has no command, no directives, but simply takes off in blessing God for his great and glorious salvation? Well, I answer that question by saying that Peter understood, as do the other biblical writers, that the indicatives, that is, the statements of what God has done for us, precede and undergird the imperatives, that is, what God requires of us. In thus structuring his letter to these elect sojourners of the dispersion, Peter is reminding them and reminding us that we must with a...

6:27 - 7:47 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Now, if you ever hear this nonsense that Old Testament believers only have the Holy Spirit upon them, New Testament believers have the Holy Spirit in them, just take them to this text and show how utterly ludicrous that …

A quote from Fox (likely John Foxe) describing God's people as a 'five-ranked army of descending human weakness' is used to characterize the humble nature of the first-century believers Peter addressed.

Not many noble. Not many wise. Otherwise, Fox said God's five-ranked army of descending human weakness.

23:23 - 23:31 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The fourth question is 'What was the nature and focus of their searching?' Martin explains their 'diligent' and 'earnest' searching was to understand the 'time and circumstances'…

A story of a woman diligently searching for her lost engagement ring is used to illustrate the rhetorical device of using two synonymous verbs ('sought and searched diligently') to emphasize intensity.

There may be a fine shade of meaning, but what Peter is doing is using a rhetorical device. Let me illustrate. A woman loses her engagement ring. And she's all in a tizzy.

35:38 - 35:49 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The prophets spoke and wrote things that were revealed to the world. That were revealed to them by God and that they faithfully conveyed on behalf of God that they didn't have a clue what they were saying and writing.

Isaiah's prophecies of the suffering servant (highly exalted yet despised) are used as an example of a prophet faithfully delivering God's word while scratching his head, not fully understanding the 'person or time' of fulfillment.

No, they were fully conscious. They knew what it was to have the word of the Lord come to them and to know that they were under an influence of the Spirit that took them beyond their mere natural God-given faculties of insight and understanding. And they wrote and spoke of things that afterward they scratched their heads and said, what in the world was I talking about? I have spoken of one concerning whom Jehovah says, behold my servant, he shall be highly exalted.

38:21 - 38:56 Read in full sermon