Peter the Man (1)

Introduction to the Series and the Man Peter

0:03 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, December 7th, 1997, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:15 Now may I urge you to turn with me in your Bibles to the opening words of the first letter of Peter to believers scattered in various parts of what is now Turkey, then called Asia Minor, 1 Peter. And I shall read the opening paragraph in your hearing. 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect who are sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace be multiplied. Let us unite our hearts again in prayer before our God. Our Father, we again bow in your holy presence, thanking you for the promise that your ear is open to the cry of the righteous. And we therefore call upon you in the name of your dear Son, in the name of our Father, our Son and our Holy Spirit, in the name of our Father, our Holy Spirit, our Holy Spirit, our Holy Spirit.

1:43 would give to us in this hour in your presence the sense that you are present by the spirit taking the things of your truth and bringing them home with light and power to each of our hearts we pray that the spirit will rest in copious measures upon preacher and people alike to the good of our souls and to the glory of your name amen now i'm sure that many of you are familiar with the words of proverbs 13 and verse 12 in which solomon observes that hope deferred makes the heart sick but when the desire comes it is the tree of life and a number of you were present a couple of years ago when i indicated that i had every intention of beginning a series of expositions in the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of the book of first peter and quite a few of you have asked in that interim period when are we getting first peter mr wells who organizes and directs the work of scripture memory at an organized level in our assembly had sections of first peter as the memory work for a number of you and for some of you perhaps hope has not been deferred but killed and you said well we'll have to wait for another place

3:09 and a better time well in the providence of the Lord we'll have to wait for another place of God I do trust that hope has only been deferred and I trust and pray even more that the last part of the verse will be realized as God would bless us in our studies of the book of first peter that though hope deferred made the heart in some little measure sick that together we will know the fulfillment of the promise but when the desire comes it is a tree of life now as we pick up this letter it is quite a lot of work to do but i do trust that hope has only been deferred and i trust that hope is the one who will be with us and that hope will be with you in our fellowship that we promised to you in this day and again as we get closer to this life as we get closer to this day and again so please keep on believing that we have to get people to show grace and to give them the blessing of the word of the word of God because we are living in the word of God so that we are able to take this word of God in life to the taste of the word of God in many different ways now it is obvious that the first words that confront us direct our attention to a specific individual whose name is Peter we opened our Bibles and if you had a Greek testament you would find the same confrontation with the name of a man called Peter who identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ and it is evident that this man Peter has come after him and he is a disciple of Jesus and he has started Peter, who is an apostle of Jesus Christ, is writing a letter to believers scattered in these various parts of Asia Minor. Now, if you have an inquisitive mind at all, the moment you confront these words, Peter

4:28 an apostle, to the elect sojourners who are in this place and that, you ought to begin to ask certain questions. Questions such as these, who is this man, Peter, who takes upon himself to write a letter to these believers in these various places, these regions of Asia Minor? How was he prepared to write such a letter? What were the perspectives out of which he wrote?

5:00 In what way was he uniquely suited, if at all he was, in order to write to these believers? Now, it is important for us to grasp some of the answers to these and similar questions before plunging immediately into the letter itself. It would be a great delight for me to unpack these opening two verses. I have spent many, many hours in seeking to understand them, to be able to preach them, but the more I have studied the letter and the more I have pondered the letter, it has become clear to me that it is only the letter that I have studied.

5:38 It is only the letter that I have understood. It is only the letter that I have understood. It is only the letter that I have understood. It is only when we have an appreciation for what the Bible tells us about Peter the man that we will have adequate insight into what Peter the apostle writes in this and in his second letter.

The Principle of God's Word in Human Words

5:53 And so it is critical for us in these two opening introductory studies this morning and, God willing, next Lord's Day morning to consider Peter the man so that when we pick up the actual epistle and begin to understand it, we will be able to understand it. And so it is critical for us in these two opening introductory studies this morning and, God willing, next Lord's Day morning to consider Peter the man so that when we unpack it, we will understand more of how God prepared him in a very unique way to be the author of this portion of the Word of God. Now, it is vital that we grasp this relationship between the man who is the human author and his circumstances, his background, his formation, because of a very vital principle that by way of introduction I want to lay before you this morning. If I were to ask you the question, what is Scripture? What are you holding in your hand when you hold your Bibles? Well, the simplest answer I know and the most accurate is this. The Bible or the Scriptures are the words of God given to us in the words of men.

7:02 Scripture is the words of God given to us in the words of men. Scripture is the words of God given to us in the words of men. Now, we know they are the words of God because we have such passages as 2 Timothy 3.16.

7:17 All Scripture, Paul says, is God-breathed. Scripture is the out-breathing of the mind and will of God in words that we can read. All Scripture is God-breathed. In its very essence, it is the out-breathing of God.

7:38 Peter, in his second letter, said in chapter 3, in verse 21, concerning those who are the instruments of bringing the word of God to us, holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. There was the direct, the unique, all-pervading influence of the Holy Spirit so that right to the very words by which they expressed the thoughts that God implanted in their minds, Paul said, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 12 and 13, that the very words are guided by the Spirit. We receive not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches. So to the very words in those original manuscripts, God gives us His words. And because they are God's words, they are all true. For He is the God who cannot lie.

8:56 He is the God who has as an unchangeable attribute His truth. So that Jesus can say in John 10, 35, the Scripture cannot be broken. In Matthew 5, 18, not one jot or piddle, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and as well in the Greek alphabet, or just a little stroke that makes the difference between one letter or another, not one jot or piddle shall pass from the written revelation, from the law, till all be fulfilled. So that what Scripture says, God says.

9:35 Scripture is the words of God. But it is the words of God. It is the words of God in the words of men. When God was to reveal His mind in words to His ancient people, He did not send an angel out of heaven with a book that contained a special language for biblical revelation, and then preserve that book through the ages, pass it on into the New Testament age, so that our Bible would be composed of some special, heavenly language sent down by an angel.

10:13 No, God does not do that. When God is going to give us His words, He gives them to us in the words of men. So that if the one through whom He is going to give us His words, thinks and speaks in Hebrew, or in Aramaic, then the words of God will be given to us in that Hebrew, in that language, in that Aramaic. If they are the words of someone who thinks and speaks in Greek, and God is choosing that one to convey His words, then He will write in the Greek with which He was familiar, so that the words of God come to us in the words of men. But that's not only true with regard to the particular linguistic form, but if the man God is using has an agrarian, background as a farmer, when the words of God are being conveyed through that man, and being the words of God in the words of men, God will lay hold of the imagery, and the experience, and the perspectives of that farmer, in order to express His will to us. If that particular organ through which God is going to give His words is a statesman, if he is a brilliant, well-trained scholar, such as Paul was,

11:40 then God, in giving us His words, gives them to us in the words of men. And in conveying those words to us, He is not at all embarrassed to let something of what that man was, in the way God put him together, be reflected in the words which He writes, which are the very words of God Himself. In other words, we have, in Scripture, something that has some very strict parallels with what is true of the Incarnation. When the eternal Word of God, the second person of the Godhead, in God's time, that which Paul calls the fullness of the times, was made of a woman, how did He come to us? Well, the Scriptures make it very clear, and our confessions and our catechisms articulate, with great precision, that when the second person of the Godhead chose to take to Himself a true humanity, He did not cease to be God.

12:53 John 1.14 says, the Word, that Word described in the first three verses, ever with God, by Him all things are made, the Word became flesh. He did not cease to be what He always had been, the eternal, the eternal Word, the second person of the Godhead. He began to be something He never had been, the God-man.

13:20 So that when we point to the Lord Jesus, as we had occasion to do a couple of weeks ago by way of illustration, and ask the question, who is He? We say, in the language of the Confession, He is very God of very God. But He is also very man of very man. And when the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit brooded over Mary, and that which is conceived in her is called Son of God, what is conceived in Mary's womb?

13:53 Something that is half God and half man? No. Something that is holy God and holy man. As much man as though He were not God.

14:07 He takes to Himself a true humanity in the mystery of the Spirit's brooding over Mary, in the mystery of the Spirit's brooding over Mary, in the mystery of the Spirit's brooding over Mary, so that of her substance He receives a true, real, ordinary, albeit sinless, humanity. When Jesus was a little baby, and mothers were gathered in a circle, sharing their maternal experiences, had you come into such a circle, you would not have looked around and suddenly said, oh, that baby has a different texture of skin, has a glow about its face, has a halo about its nose. There would be nothing to cause you to suspect that Mary was holding incarnate deity. Not a thing.

14:49 When He grew up and was a little toddler, and He was learning how to talk and how to walk and all of those disciplines, there was nothing about Him but the ordinariness of a little Palestinian Jew. He was as much man as though He were not God. As much God as though He were not man, and again in the language of the shorter catechism, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? The Redeemer of God's elect is the Son of God, who became man, and so is and continues to be both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.

15:32 Now, what in the world does all that have to do with 1 Peter? Well, this is what it has to do with 1 Peter. As surely as the Lord Jesus, took to Himself a humanity that reflected all that was true of real humanity, and yet did not cease to be God. So when God gives His words through human instruments, the human instrument is not pushed into the background and neutered.

16:05 God gives us His words smothered with the very fingerprints of the humanity of the instrument. 2 Peter 3.43, 3-7. through which that Word comes to us, and yet wonder of wonders like the incarnation of our Lord, utterly without sin, is the theanthropic person, the God-man, so utterly without error is the Scripture, because it is the Word of God.

Analogy of the Composer and Instruments

16:34 But it is the Word of God given to us in the words of men. Now, as I was fishing about for an illustration, only one came to my mind, and I tried it out on my wife, and it seemed to be helpful to her. I tried it out on a preacher last night, and it washed with him. And I tried it out on one of my fellow elders this morning, so I'm bold enough to say at the mouth of two or three witnesses it may be helpful to you.

16:58 Here's a composer who hears a tune in his head. Now, this always fascinates me when I listen particularly to a marvelous, all-encompassing Beethoven. And I think he heard all that sound in his head, and he knew what part of it was coming from the first violins, and the second violins, and from the trombones, and from the horns, and oh, it's amazing. All that is in his head, before he can put it in notes.

17:25 But the tune that's in his head finds expression when he sits down with his pen or his pencil, and he has a graph, and he puts a note here, and he puts a flag on that note to say, how fast, how slow it should be played, or he writes it like a goose egg. He puts a note here, he puts a note there, he puts a note here, he puts a note here, until what is on paper is the perfect expression of the tune that was in his head. So that when you look at the score, that is the precise tune that was in Beethoven's head. His thought is now concretized in specific notes that, when properly understood, and rendered by an instrument, be it the human voice, a wind instrument, a brass instrument, will reflect precisely the mind of Beethoven. Now, a question.

18:23 When a trumpeter takes his trumpet, and he looks at the score, and he sees the notes, and he plays them, how do those notes come out of his trumpet? You say, well, that's a no-brainer, pastor. They come out sounding like a trumpet, precisely. But now, what happens if someone who's playing the violin looks at the same score, and plays the same notes?

18:50 The exact same notes will be played. The same time and tonal equivalence will be given to them. But now they sound like the notes emanating from a what? From a violin.

19:03 And if you were to take a trombone, what happens? Precisely the same notes. All of which accurately reflect the mind of Beethoven. The tune that was locked in his brain.

19:16 As they are conveyed through the different instruments, they take to themselves the quality and the characteristics of the differing instruments. So that you expect that tune, when played by a cornet, to sound like a cornet. If it's played by a trumpet, by a violin, by the bassoon, by a clarinet. Well, you have a little analogy of what we have in Scripture.

19:42 God. God has in his infinitely wise mind all that he wants to say to us in the notes of Holy Scripture.

19:53 And God has revealed those notes to the various pendent of Scripture. But in bringing them through to us, he does not do so with one simple, one uniform instrument. When his notes are played through Moses. They are notes.

20:15 Played through a man. Trained and disciplined and widely and broadly educated in the court of Pharaoh and in the universities and military schools of Egypt. And when God is going to sound his notes through the rugged agrarian prophet Amos, they come through with the trumpet blast of that farmer prophet preacher. And when God is going to play his notes of his mind to us.

20:45 Through. Paul. They come through sounding like Paul. And when he speaks to us through Peter.

20:54 It is the word of God in the words of men. It is God's words through Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ. And God so super intends the whole process that every note that is played is precisely what it ought to be. Down to its very placement and its timing, every word of God is tried, purified as in a furnace seven times.

21:26 Now do you see why, if the Bible gives us some basic information about Peter the man, it will help us to have insights when we read the letter of Peter the apostle. Because when Peter sits down under the inspiration of the Spirit to write a letter, he's going to write it as Peter. God's going to give his words, they are God's words, but he's going to give them as the words of a man. Not a man generically, but a man specifically, the man Peter.

Peter's Background: Birthplace and Upbringing

22:06 So for the rest of our time this morning, what we're going to do, and there's been no question, there's been no collusion with Pastor Carlson. I sat there this morning and said, well, anyone who's in the adult class is going to think, surely we compared notes in the way we approached these matters, but we didn't. And we're going to look this morning at the major facts concerning Peter's background. What God made him as a man in virtue of his place of birth, his upbringing, some of the things that Scripture tells us about this man.

22:36 And then God willing, next week, we'll look at the major facets, or factors in his spiritual development that prepared him to be the man who could write the kind of letter that we will be studying together, God willing, over the course of the next year. What are the major facts, then, about Peter's background that can be gleaned from the Scriptures? Well, the first thing we know is that when he's introduced to us in John chapter 1, he is described as a native of Bethsaida. John chapter 1, perhaps you want to turn there with me.

23:14 And as you know from our study in the adult class,

23:19 John gives us some details of our Lord's ministry at an earlier period than we find in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And here we read in John 1.43, And on the morrow he was minded to go forth into Galilee, and he finds Philip, and Jesus said unto him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida.

23:42 Bethsaida of the city of Andrew and Peter. So the Spirit of God playing his tune upon this instrument called John records something that is not recorded elsewhere. So it must be for our profit, for all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. We are informed that he was a native of the town of Bethsaida.

24:10 Now those who spend their time, digging up ancient places in Palestine, trying to identify Bible towns and places with current places of geography, are uncertain as precisely where this Bethsaida was, except we know that it was somewhere on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and most likely very, very close to the city of Capernaum. Now remember your Bible geography. If this is the land of Palestine, and over here you have, the Mediterranean Sea,

24:46 then always think in terms of the two bodies of water. Sea of Galilee up here, and then a nice wiggly ribbon coming down the Jordan River some 60 to 70 miles, and then the Dead Sea down here. Well up here, way up here, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, somewhere on the northern rim, was Bethsaida. Maybe north and a little bit east.

25:09 Now that's where he came from. According to this text, he was of, this city of Bethsaida. His given name was Simon. Sometimes in the Bible called Simeon.

25:24 His father's name was John or Jonah. We know this again from John 1 in verse 42, when the Lord Jesus said, You are Simon, son of John, and you shall be called Cephas. In Matthew 16, 17, you are Simon bar Jonah. Bar simply means son of, Jonah.

25:46 Now it's clear that this man, Peter, who hails from this village of Bethsaida, was born and reared in a strictly Orthodox Jewish home. They were kosher from A to Z.

26:04 And how do we know that? Well, if you turn with me to Acts chapter 10, you have Peter's own testimony of this in very practical terms. Here in Acts 10,

26:17 God is dealing, with Peter to prepare him to go and minister in the home of a Gentile.

26:25 And knowing that the very concept of sitting and having a meal with a Gentile dog would have been repulsive to Peter, the Lord had to give him a vision and interpret the vision and make known his mind that Peter would go to the household of Cornelius. Well, in the vision, we read in Acts chapter 10, verse 11, and he beholds the heavens, and opened, and a certain vessel descending, as it were a great sheet let down by four corners upon the earth, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts, and creeping things of the earth, and birds of the heaven. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter said, Not so, Lord.

27:09 I don't know how anyone can read that and not chuckle. Whatever Peter was, he was brash, outspoken, impulsive. He knows it's a voice from heaven. He knows there's no demon talking.

27:20 He knows it's the Lord of heaven and earth talking. He said, Not so, Lord. No way, Jose. No way.

27:27 Not so, Lord, for why? I have never, never eaten anything that is common and unclean. I have never eaten, never eaten. My whole lifetime has been marked by a strict adherence to Jewish dietary laws.

27:45 Verse 28, When God breaks down his stubbornness and he ends up in the household, Cornelius, this is what he says when he's there. And he said unto them, You yourselves know how it's an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to join himself or come into one of another nation. And yet God has showed me. But you see, up to this point, this was a first time for Peter.

28:08 He was reared in a very strict, orthodox, Jewish home. Now what does that tell us about Peter? Well, it tells us from the outset that from the very dawning of consciousness, Peter's mind was steeped in some of the most elementary perspectives of the Old Testament biblical revelation. In that home, he would have had the scriptures impressed upon his mind.

28:35 He would have spoken with his own parents in their various rituals, portions of the Word of God. Very early, he would have accompanied his own parents to the local synagogue. And there, he would have had, as it were, worked into the very fabric of his very sense of identity, I am a Jew. I am part of the elect nation.

29:02 I am part of the nation separated by God from the Goyim, from the nations of the earth, from the Gentile dogs of this world. He could not think of himself as Peter growing up without thinking of himself as Peter. Peter, the Jew. Peter, with Hebrew blood in his veins.

29:26 Peter, with an identity that was inextricably bound up in all that pertain to being a practicing Jew. Now, most likely, and we can't affirm this from the scriptures, but here we're dependent upon a consensus of secular insight. Most likely, he went to the elementary school, that would have been conducted in conjunction with the synagogue life and ministry. So that growing up, he would have been steeped even further in the scriptures, and also, would have known something of the rabbinic influence that had dominated the current understanding of the scriptures. We are told that in this Galilee region, the messianic hope burned very brightly among the Jews in that region. In that region. In that region.

30:20 However, as you'll find out later when we look at Peter, as God begins to mold him in his distinctive spiritual preparation, he had these skewed concepts of how the Messiah would accomplish his mission. So that when the one he's just confessed to be Messiah, son of God, says, alright, and as Messiah, I'm going to die, Peter rebukes him. Now he doesn't just say, not so, Lord. He says, no way, Lord.

30:51 You're not going to be an immolated, crucified Messiah if I have anything to say about it. At that point, the Lord calls him Satan, adversary, opposer of me. Well, where did he get those notions? They were bred into him, as it were.

Peter's Background: Education and Galilee of the Gentiles

31:06 He breathed them in the early days of his development as a boy and as a man. But to gain the notion that Peter was utterly illiterate and couldn't speak decent Galilean Aramaic or speak Greek or other languages is, and to base it on Acts 4.13, is simply to push the text beyond what is said. When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and took knowledge that they were ignorant and unlearned, they took knowledge that they had been with Jesus.

31:36 Ignorant and unlearned meant they're not university graduates and they haven't gone to our seminaries. They've not been steeped in the intensive training under our rabbis. They were not saying that they were not effective and skilled speakers. They were very persuasive.

31:53 That's why they tried to shut them up.

31:56 But they said they haven't come up in our categories of gaining a classical education. Now, what's the significance of Peter being a native of Bethsaida, being reared in northern Galilee under the influence of his strict Jewish parents and under the influence of the local synagogue? Well, if you look at Matthew 4 in verse 15,

32:24 perhaps we have a finger pointing in the direction of the answer.

32:30 Catch the context. We back up to verse 12. Now, when he heard that John was delivered up, that's Jesus heard, he withdrew, now notice where, into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, which was in south Galilee, leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which was in north Galilee, on the northeast, I'm sorry, the northeast, northwest rid of the shore of the sea of Galilee.

33:00 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea and the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali toward the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, Galilee of the nations. Now that's very significant. They called that region Galilee of the nations. Now why?

33:34 Well, for the simple reason that that was an area in which there was a great mixture of races. There were considerable numbers of Jews, but there were Gentiles of mixed races as well. And because of that, there was a bilingual climate. There would be the first cousin of Hebrew, Aramaic, which was spoken by the Jews there in Palestine.

34:03 But there would also be Greek-speaking people in that area, so much so that these Galileans didn't speak the best of Aramaic or the purest of Aramaic. For you remember in Matthew 26, 73, when Peter is there at the trial of our Lord Jesus, they say, your speech betrays you. We know you were with him. You all sound like Galileans.

34:27 They spoke Aramaic with a northern accent. And people could pick up on that accent and perhaps contributing to it was their bilinguality. Now why has the Spirit of God given us these little hints about the influences that molded and shaped Peter? Well, we'll see that in a little bit.

Peter's Background: Occupation and Family Life

34:47 Now it's most likely that in keeping with the social and domestic customs of the day, somewhere around puberty, Peter was taught his life's trade. No Jewish father could hold his head high thinking he had half fulfilled his duties as a father if he did not secure for his son a gainful, honorable trade. And he learned the honorable trade of a fisherman. And it's clear from the biblical record that as a mature adult, Peter and his brother Andrew had a working partnership in a local fish business with the two sons of Zebedee, James and John.

35:25 Matthew 1, verses 18 to 22 establish this along with the parallel passages. I'm sorry, Mark 1. Matthew 1 is the birth of our Lord Jesus.

35:37 Matthew chapter, Mark chapter 1, verses 18 to 22.

35:44 And straightway they left their nets and followed him and going on a little further he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother who were also in their boat mending their nets. So James and John, sons of Zebedee at this time are called into some level of relationship to the Lord along with Simon and his brother Andrew. And that they had a partnership is clearly indicated by Luke 5 and verse 7. That these four had some kind of a joint business endeavor in their occupation as fishermen.

36:20 And they beckoned unto their partners in the other boat that they should come and help them and so they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. Now when we think of the task of a fisherman and what the Bible tells us and what is confirmed by those who have studied the topography and the weather conditions around Galilee this was not like going to Lake Kapatkan on a lazy Monday afternoon to kill a few hours throwing a bobber out and hoping a little sonny will catch hold of it. To be a fisherman in the Sea of Galilee was hard work. Remember it is said on a couple of occasions we have toiled all night and have caught nothing. Not only hard work dangerous work. Storms would come down because of the configuration of the mountains in that area and from the sea being calm as glass it could be a turbulent sea that would terrify even a seasoned mariner. These are the influences that are flowing into Peter's life fashioning the man whom the Lord Jesus will eventually call and shape and mold and fashion into Peter the Apostle and then Peter the one through whom he will give us this blessed letter written to the strangers and sojourners

37:48 of the dispersion in Asia Minor. Now by the time our Lord engages in his own Galilean ministry Peter has been moved from Bethsaida and is now living in Capernaum. And as we have already indicated Capernaum is right there on the north northwest rim of the Sea of Galilee and we know he had a home there again Mark chapter 1 verses 21 and 29. Here are the very clear clues given to us in Mark's gospel record.

38:21 Mark chapter 1 and verse 21 and they go into Capernaum and straightway on the Sabbath they go into Capernaum and that day he that is Jesus entered into the synagogue and taught and when he is done doing what he did in the synagogue look at verse 29 and straightway when they were come out of the synagogue they came into the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. So that there in Capernaum Peter has either a jointly owned or a privately owned home which is now his regular dwelling place. We've got to further know from the next verse verse 30 that he was married at this time. Now Simon's wife's mother his mother-in-law lay sick of a fever and straightway they tell him of her. So he knew the experience of sharing this home either with some of these others who are mentioned but definitely he had a live-in mother-in-law. Now that can raise all kinds of questions about what that may have done to mold and shape the character of Peter. But on that issue the Bible is silent.

Significance of Peter's Background for His Letter

39:32 Now these are the major facts about the background of Peter. The major facts relative to who he was as a man apart from the grace of God coming to him in saving power. We've looked at none of the data that marks out the stages in his spiritual pilgrimage. Those are the issues we'll address God willing next Lord's Day.

39:59 But what he was at the time he sat down to write or possibly to dictate to Silas who may have written on his behalf this letter that we call First Peter who is this man? Well one thing is clear. He didn't begin to be that man when the Lord Jesus first called him. He began to be that man when he was conceived in his mother's womb.

40:22 In a very specific domestic setting. In a very different domestic setting. In a very different domestic setting. In a very different distinctive geographical and cultural setting.

40:32 In a very distinctive religious setting. In a setting which eventually was occupational and interrelational. And the man Peter who within a short time will be martyred for the cause of Christ at Rome who sits down to write and writes Peter an apostle he is everything he has been becoming from his conception in his mother's womb. And there therefore we need to ask the question is there anything about Peter the man in terms of his general background stripped of his distinctive spiritual experiences that will help us to grasp the significance the emphases the nuances that are found in his letter. Well that moves me now having looked at the basic facts of his background much more briefly now the significance of these facts with reference to the book of first Peter. And I want to suggest three things by way of the significance of these facts with reference to the book of first Peter. Number one because his mind was so impregnated with Old Testament facts language and concepts he cannot help but express new covenant realities in all Old Testament

42:00 language. If from your dawning of consciousness you have thought of life in terms of the Old Testament revelatory data given by God and you know that your identity is a Jew that you are part of the chosen people and you know the history of your forefathers that the patriarchs were sojourners in a land not their own. And you understand something of your heritage and that many of your relatives have been scattered among the nations in the dispersion that occurred in conjunction with your national history and you are going to write a group of believers up there in Asia Minor is it surprising that he says Simon Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to elect sojourners of the dispersion? No because you see God is giving us his words in the words of this man and that man whom he has fashioned and formed was a man whose mind was impregnated with Old Testament facts language and concepts so that he cannot help but express new covenant realities in those categories. He gets into the second the very first paragraph the last part of it

43:29 again he speaks of being elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ concepts taken right out of Exodus 34 in the initial institution of the laws we shall see when the people swear their allegiance to Jehovah and the book of the law is spattered with blood and the people are spattered with blood why does Peter express himself that way? He isn't trying to be clever he's just expressing the sponge going into the sponge of his whole consciousness from his infancy was the language the facts the concepts of the Old Testament and God placed him in that Jewish home that he might absorb all of those things for God foreseeing and predetermining an hour would come when Peter in fulfillment of the commission from his Lord would pen a letter that would be an instrument of pastoral strength and instruction and exhortation and therefore as we work through the book you will find us going back again and again to Old Testament passages that are directly quoted Old Testament incidents that are alluded to and even when we come to what is one of the most phony passages in the New Testament

44:58 1 Peter chapter 3 some of you might tell yourself now Peter can you remember what you remember yesterday when you were reading the new Testament when you read the New Testament the Bible the old chapter the Old Testament and you remember it the old chapter of the New The words of God. God lays hold of this man. This man steeped in the Old Testament. But blessed be God, he wasn't born and reared close to Jerusalem. He was not down in what's called lower Palestine.

45:46 You have your three main divisions. Judea, Middle Palestine, Samaria, and then the Galilee region. Had he been reared there, he would not only have been exposed to the scriptures, but a much more intensified pressure of all the overlay on the scriptures by the tradition of the scribes and the Pharisees. And you see, there would not have been that freedom in his mind to think with such liberty in terms of those perspectives.

46:17 Had he just been encrusted in the midst of lower Palestinian perspectives on the word of God. So there we see one indication of the significance of these facts with reference to the book of 1 Peter. Secondly, because his mind and tongue were taught to think and speak in Greek, the universal language of the Roman Empire, because of this he was able to communicate to the people of God in the far off provinces of Asia Minor. Yes, he was reared in a home where they no doubt spoke Aramaic, but who knows, his parents may have been bilingual.

46:54 That area was a bilingual area. And what was God doing by making sure that Peter was born and reared there? God was making sure that his little boy, his ear, would hear the sounds of the Greek language spoken. That he would acquire a working knowledge of this language.

47:15 And God was fitting and preparing. This man, so that he would under God be an instrument not only to bring a message of pastoral instruction and comfort and exhortation to distress Christians in Asia Minor around the middle of the seventh decade, somewhere around 63, maybe 64 A.D., but that from that point till now, over a course of 1900 years, the people of God would be inspired.

47:47 They would be instructed and blessed and edified and challenged as they would read this letter. This was part of God's preparation of the man. But then thirdly, the significance is this, because his cultural roots were that of a common man as opposed to an aristocrat or an academic egghead, his perspectives on the Christian life are unusually broad and highly relevant. Peter was not an ignoramus, but he wasn't an academician.

48:19 Peter was not an aristocrat. He was a man reared amongst the common people. One author has said in First Peter, we have a microcosm of Christian faith and duty, the model of a pastoral charge. And here in this one letter, we have in condensed form some of the most profound doctrinal and the most intensely practical directives to be found in any epistle of the New Testament.

48:48 Well, how was Peter prepared to think in those not only theological and glorious concepts of God's salvation in Christ, but to think about how a slave should respond to a nasty master, and how common citizens should respond to kings and to governors that are over them. It's interesting that only Peter, in giving directions to husbands, says, dwell with your wives according to knowledge. Indicating that he knew something in his experience of a married man that caused him under the guidance of the Spirit to urge husbands to give themselves to understanding what makes a woman a woman, and one's particular woman, one's wife, who and what she is, and to dwell with her according to knowledge, giving honor unto her as unto the weaker vessel. Well, I say it's because his cultural roots were that of a common man that he is given to set before us this unusually broad and highly relevant pastoral letter. Well then, in closing, we may ask the question, well, we've looked at the basic facts about Peter's background. We've considered briefly three aspects of the relevance of that to our study of the letter.

Application for the Unconverted: God's Goodness in Preparing Peter

50:17 But, Pastor, I thought preaching... I thought preaching was supposed to say something to us, where we sit and where we live today.

50:22 Well, it does.

50:25 And may I suggest that all that we've studied this morning has something to say to you and to me as well. To you who sit here unconverted, what does all this say to you? Well, consider, consider God's goodness and God's mercy in the way that God has mercifully prepared Peter that he might write to us a letter which, because it is part of Scripture, fits to the description of Scripture that Paul gives in 2 Timothy 3.14, referring there to the Old Testament.

51:04 But it is true of all Scripture. From a child you have known the Scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation. If you're an unconverted man, woman, boy or girl, how thankful you should be that God went to the pains to prepare a man called Peter 2,000 years ago that sitting here, leaving this place and going to your own home and pulling the Bible off your nightstand or out of your bookshelf, you would have another five chapters in which Almighty God comes to you as a sinner and says, there is salvation in Jesus Christ. A salvation through the sprinkling of His blood.

51:47 A salvation that will bring you into life. Helping bonds of obedience to Jesus Christ. A salvation rooted in His own death, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. A salvation validated by His marvelous resurrection from the dead.

52:06 He's begotten us unto a living hope by the resurrection from the dead. A salvation that will enable you to turn aside from the lifestyle of your peers. For Peter says, Time past has supplied, suffice to live in the way you once lived. What a mercy, my unsafe friend, that Almighty God cared enough to prepare a man to give us five, what we now have as five chapters of God's Word.

52:37 If you might have another sounding board calling you to repentance and to faith and to the blessings of God's almighty grace. And then consider the goodness of God's, Here are some of the things he did fashioning and preparing Peter in order to call him into fellowship with Christ and eventually into a close association with Christ that he might be prepared as an apostle of Christ to have a ministry that was unique to the apostles. But though God's providence is not preparing you for that, it's nonetheless real in your life. Almighty God has given you breath to this hour.

53:22 He's sustained your life. He's kept you sane. You're not sitting in an institution somewhere staring at the wall thinking your name is Napoleon.

53:32 The God who wisely and gently and carefully prepared Peter for his task, that God has watched over you in his providence. You're breathing his air. You're eating the food from his earth. You are here this morning because God himself gives you life and breath and all things.

53:52 And what do you give that God in return?

53:58 My friend, as we behold the providence of God in the preparation of Peter, let it be a reminder that a kind providence is spared you to this hour and that God calls you to stack on, to repent, and to flee to his Son, the Lord Jesus. But then it says something to us as the people of God. It calls us to two things, at least. First of all, it calls us to rejoice and to admire God.

Application for Believers: Rejoice in God's Wisdom

54:26 For his wisdom and forethought in the preparation of Peter to write the letter from which we will derive, I trust, under God such benefit. The scripture says the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all those that have pleasure therein. Do you have pleasure in God's works? Well, then take pleasure in God's work, in the way he fashioned and prepared this man, Peter, in the very home in which he was brought into the world.

54:56 The sociological, and cultural surroundings by which he was molded, the religious influence by which his thinking was shaped and fashioned. We as the people of God ought to magnify and glorify God for his wisdom seen in the preparation of this human instrument called Peter. And then we ought, likewise, in the second place, to cheerfully submit afresh, having the confidence that the same providence that prepared Peter for his work, even in these, quote, non-spiritual influences by which he formed him, that providence has been operative in our lives as well. Pastor Carlson touched on this at the end of the class in the previous hour.

Application for Believers: Submit to God's Providence in Our Lives

55:42 The older you get and the more you realize how much you don't know, and you realize how much you haven't done that you wish you had done, and you see what others have been able to do because they've had certain advantages, the temptation increases to say, Oh, I wish that. Oh, I wish that I had. Oh, I wish that there were. That's a waste of mental and spiritual energy.

56:08 Anything in our past that is fueled for repentance, confess it and trust God to cleanse by the blood of his dear son. And whenever the past comes to remember and say, Would the psalmist remember not against me the sins of my youth? But when it comes to the things that have molded and shaped us, there was a kind providence at work in our lives, long before the Lord Jesus drew us to himself with the special, effectual call of his grace. As surely as Paul could say, When it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb, God separated you from your mother's womb.

56:46 And his hand has been upon you, shaping and molding and fashioning you for just precisely that place that he desires you to have in his kingdom. Ephesians 2, 8-10. By grace have you been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, that no man should boast.

57:07 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which he before ordained that we should walk in them. And in his foreordination that we should walk in certain good works in the sphere of the will of God for us, the preparation did not begin when by grace, he saved us. Any more than it did with Peter. It began in your mother's womb.

57:35 Psalm 139. David celebrates the fact that his mother's womb was like a subterranean cavern. And he said, You fashioned me in the lowest parts of the earth. God was fashioning you there in your mother's womb.

57:53 Giving the baseline of your fundamental intellectual capacity. Giving you your own distinct, temperament. Giving you those inclinations to like this area of pursuit and not another. God was fashioning you, knowing what he would do in you, when in time he would call you by his grace.

58:14 And rather than bemoaning what we didn't have, and what we were not, let us bow in reverent, trustful, thankfulness to God and say, Lord, your hand has been upon me. I can't figure out your ways, but you're not accountable to me. Now, Lord, help me to take what I am and what you have given, refine it by your grace. Remove from it all that is sinful and self-centered and a reflection of the thinking of this present age.

58:44 But take what I am, which is what I have been becoming, which in great measure is what I was constituted in my mother's womb. And Lord, I offer it to you to be used for your purposes, in your will, for your glory. Little did Peter think, when he was out upon that turbulent sea as a young man, plowing his trade as a fisherman, that God was preparing him to be a fisher of men. So that he never entered the ministry thinking this was some kind of soft-handed, easy, intellectual task.

59:20 When the Lord says, I will make you to become fishers of men, Peter couldn't think of fishing in any other context but that which he knew. Here in the Sea of Galilee. So that when you come to his letter and you find him giving instructions to pastors and elders, you see how it's colored by his own understanding of the task as he was prepared for it in the background which God tailor-made just for Peter. So may the Lord bring a new sense of liberation to us as his people and a fresh sense of joyful submission to the ways of God with us, that we might not be a people looking back over our shoulder wistfully and constantly mourning and wishing this were so and that were so, but joyfully embracing the grace and power of God for the present and pressing on to bring glory to him who loved us and gave himself for us. Let us pray.

60:28 Our Father, we do indeed thank you for your holy word. We thank you for your grace and for your grace and for your grace. We thank you for your kind providence in molding and shaping the man, Peter, that he might be an instrument upon which you would play the notes of your truth, notes that have brought joy and gladness, encouragement, rebuke, incentives to holiness to countless millions over nearly two millennia. How we thank you, our Father, and pray that you would stir up within us a renewed hunger, a renewed thirst for yourself, a renewed submission to your dealings with us, a renewed sense of expectancy that in all of our individuality you purpose to use us for your glory and you call us to be no one other than that which you have made us. We pray for those who sit here, the constant care of your providence, and yet who return nothing to you. O Lord, may your goodness lead them to repentance, that even this day beholding your kind providence may break their hearts and cause them to fall down at the feet of the Lord Jesus. Seal then your word to our hearts and be with us through the remainder of this day, we ask in Jesus' name.

61:52 Amen.