A Heritage of Faith

Study of First Peter • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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Walking by faith is an adventure…can feel like a singular road. No one has traveled the way I’ve traveled. Peter roots spiritual advance for the believer firmly in the soil of the past. As believers, we need never forget we have….

1 Peter 1:10-12

The Quandary for the Prophets

Who were the prophets anyway?

OT is story of God’s preparation for the reception of the Messiah. Brings it through a family that turns into a nation. Nation: Israel.

Administratively: Israel has various leaders

Religiously: Israel has a system of approaching God given by God’s direction. Law. Law operated via a system of priests and sacrifices.

Problem: Possible to turn a sacrificial system into nothing more than ritual…

True for Israel: went through the motions, but the motions had little to do with the heart. Went through the motions, but the motions had little to do with morality.

Into these vacuums, God sent his messengers – their message? Thus saith the Lord. Here’s what God says: they were the prophets.

Subject that gripped the prophets?

That same salvation that we investigated last week.

Salvation of your soul

Quandary? What they didn’t know…

Did not know the time or circumstances that the Messiah would arrive – similar to our quandary about the second coming, isn’t it.

Did not know the things about salvation that we do know

The Answer for the Prophets

What did they know?

Grace was coming

Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.

E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973)

Prophets were gripped by God in order to deliver the message; that same grip signaled the character of God within their spirits…knew what God is like.

Do you?

Short poem: Nancy Spiegelberg

Lord

I crawled

across the barrenness

to you

with my empty cup

uncertain

in asking

any small drop

of refreshment.

If only

I had known you

better

I'd have come

running

with a bucket.

Need God? Can come running with a bucket this morning and He will fill it to overflowing…

Messiah was coming

God’s champion. Little by little knew more; in the midst of the more, they knew less. Couldn’t reconcile the real One when He arrived with the picture in their minds….

Messiah would suffer

Couldn’t understand it, but knew it.

Glory would be the result

I loved our Easter pageant. One night I sat behind a 5 year-old boy who was enthralled. When the crucifixion scene took place, he got real quiet. But then Jesus came back from the grave and there was a song of celebration and his eyes lit up. He looked at his mother and said, "He's alive, Mom. He's alive!" and began to clap. And he hugged her around the neck. It was fun to see somebody understand the resurrection for the first time.

I told that to a youth minister from another church. He said, "I want to tell you what happened in our church. We showed a cartoon video of the crucifixion and resurrection to our kindergarten students. When Jesus was buried, one little boy who knew the story pretty well turned to a buddy and said, 'He's dead now, but he'll be back.' "

-- Robert Russell, "Resurrection Promises,

Spiritual sensitivity in the prophets….he’d be back.

Knowing what their ministry was about: it was about us…not for themselves, but for the future.

Christians who make their faith only about what they get…we are to demonstrate a heritage of faith…to our children…to the future….I don’t get my needs met….. a whole lot of the time, as believers, it isn’t about you…it isn’t about what you need….it’s about Him and what you do for Him…