Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning - I want to welcome you today to Involve Church and let you know that we are excited to have you here in the second week of our new sermon series called Recruited: Out of our mess to make Him known.

Last week Pastor Ryan did an incredible job of showing us how, as people that are recruited by Jesus, our faith is as tough as nails - not because of anything of substance in ourselves, but because of Jesus who lives in us.

To a degree Peter carries on that theme in the passage we are covering today, but before we start lets go ahead and pray together.

Pray

As you’ll remember from last week, this letter was written by the Apostle Peter.

This guy knew Jesus well - He was in the inner circle of Jesus.

He spent a lot of time with Jesus over the course of His three-year ministry.

And now, in the life of the church at the time that Peter wrote this letter, we are encountering a time period in history in which Christians are severely persecuted.

If you were around for our Taboo series and heard the message on government, you’ll remember that the tyrant emperor, Nero, severely persecuted Christians and tradition holds that Peter himself was crucified in Rome, upside down, during this time of persecution.

I bring this up because I want you to understand that Peter was not unacquainted with suffering.

Close friends and family were daily being persecuted for their faith.

Many were dying horrible deaths.

Pastor Ryan talked last week about how, while there was suffering, their faith did not waver because they understood there was a reason for their grief and suffering - to refine their faith and to bring praise and glory to Christ as they continued to stand firm in their faith.

And having just talked about the faith that is refined by suffering and grief, Peter goes on to say this:

As we read these words in verses 8-12 we see this concept continue surface:

Our Recruiter is now unseen, but we still believe in Him, we love Him, and we rejoice in Him.

Let’s unpack these verses together this morning.

As we look at verses 8 and 9, we will see how Peter emphasizes the fact that

I.

We Believe in an Unseen Savior (vv.

8-9)

We will start by looking over verse 8, where we see that

A. We Love Jesus, our Unseen Savior (v.

8a):

“Though you have not seen him, you love him;”

At first glance this statement seems relatively simplistic, and we could gloss over it without giving it much thought.

But there are a couple of concepts here to consider.

First, the way this word “love” is used implies a continual state of loving Jesus.

It is ongoing, continuous, and without ceasing.

It is the kind of love that marches forward regardless of the current circumstances.

Second, Peter is talking of this kind of love shown by believers for Jesus - but He’s someone they’ve never even seen.

Now let me ask you something - is it very common for a person to have ongoing, never-stopping love for someone they’ve never met?

The ability to love in this way is given to us by the Holy Spirit Himself, but let’s take it a step further - how often do you hear of people loving someone they’ve never even met and also suffering for someone they’ve never even met?

This kind of love is unheard of - and is further refined and made possible by God.

Paul talks about this in Romans 5:

So it is the Holy Spirit who we turn to that gives us strength in suffering and affliction, and as we endure suffering and affliction it gives way to character and it builds our hope.

And Peter talks about that hope, calling it a living hope that grows as God works on us and as we walk through life.

The hope that we have is rooted in the love of God which has been poured into our hearts.

This love He has given us is a love not only for one another, but a love for Him that will endure the most difficult of challenges that life can send our way.

B. We believe in Jesus and rejoice (v.

8b)

Not only do we love Jesus, our unseen savior, through all of life’s suffering, affliction, and hardship, but we also believe in Him.

And this word “believe” doesn’t just mean something like “I mentally agree that Jesus was a person - that He lived, died, and rose again.”

The bible talks about how the demons know the truth of and agree with that statement.

But this word “believe” means a lot more - it means that you place your entire trust and hope in the person of Jesus.

It means you’ve come to the point where you don’t put your faith in something you do, but rather in a person - and that’s the person of Jesus Christ.

And a true trust and hope in Jesus isn’t without feeling - it has a result as Peter points out…he says we:

“rejoice with inexpressible glorious joy.”

This verb “to rejoice” literally means “to feel joy.”

So let me ask you - when you think about Jesus - all of who he is and what he has done for you - do you feel joy?

Is it more than mental agreement with what He has done?

Does your heart soar at the thought of what He has done for you?

And its not just any kind of joy - its a joy that is inexpressible.

Have you ever been speechless?

Here’s an example of speechlessness:

When Captain Darren Herring Jr. returned to New Orleans, Louisiana after serving nine months in Iraq, he knew exactly who he had to see.

His 9-year-old nephew, Jayden’s reaction to seeing CPT.

He walks into the school office to see Jayden for the first time - take a look at Jayden’s reaction.

(Play video)

We rejoice with a joy that cannot be put into words.

Peter also says that it is a glorious joy.

You know - in Jesus’ time they had something called the septuagint which was simply the Old Testament translated into Greek which was the commonly spoken language at the time.

So just like we now have an English version of the Old Testament so that we can read it ourselves without having to go to someone who knows Hebrew, so also they had translated it into Greek.

And this same word for glorious is used in Exodus.

Let’s take a quick look:

You see - every time Moses came face-to-face with God his face was literally glory-filled.

It was radiant with the glory of God.

And guess what?

When we believe on Jesus, we rejoice with a glorious joy.

This isn’t just any glorious joy, though.

It is the joy that is placed in our hearts by God Himself.

Literally, we come face-to-face with our sinfulness and the realization that all is hopeless for us, but then our eyes turn to Jesus and His righteous life, His death in our place, and then His resurrection on the third day.

Our eyes are opened and we realize that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life - that He is salvation and we begin to rejoice with the joy of God because He has saved us!

And that leads us to the third point we draw from verses 8 and 9:

C. Why we rejoice: Jesus, our Salvation (v.

9).

The reason that Peter gives for the Christians to rejoice in the midst of great suffering is because they are receiving the goal of their faith (or another way to translate it is the outcome of their faith), which is the salvation of their souls.

What Peter is talking about here is not just liberation from sin in this lifetime.

He is talking about the ultimate salvation, the day when you finally die and come face-to-face with God.

He says that the reason we can rejoice even in the midst of suffering is because of the ultimate end of our salvation - the worst that could happen is that we could die…but guess what?

Our souls have been saved!

No one can really touch us because if we die, we end up face-to-face with our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Up to this point, we have seen that...

Our Recruiter is now unseen, but we still believe in Him, we love Him, and we rejoice in Him.

At this point, Peter begins to shift gears a little.

We see some interesting contrasting of ideas as he writes regarding those that believe but haven’t seen Christ (that includes us, by the way), to others that somehow saw or continue to see Christ.

And when I say “see” I don’t necessarily mean face-to-face, but that they saw or see His importance.

He starts to talk about four other groups or categories of persons that have a unique role and perspective on God’s plan of salvation.

And this is where we start to get a broader picture of what Peter is trying to tell the suffering Christians of his time - he’s trying to broaden their perspective as if to say - “look at God’s BIG plan, and you are a part of it.”

That same message is for us today, too.

Our Recruiter as Seen by Others (1:10-12)

Let’s take a look again at what Peter says starting in verse 10:

A. The Prophets saw the Day and the One (vv.

10-11).

So the first category of people that played a unique role in predicting the coming savior of the world are Old Testament prophets.

And this is a good point to pause to discuss how God’s revealing of future events tends to unfold.

There’s this concept called prophetic telescoping and I know it sounds strange, but listen for just a minute because its important to understand that there is quite a bit of criticism surrounding the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Why?

Because it appears that, while they got some fairly major events correct, it seems there are some details missing and time periods that sometimes don’t feel quite right.

For example, all throughout the Old Testament you’ll have someone talking about the coming Messiah in one statement and then talking about how peace is going to rule the earth in the very next sentence.

Now, the question is this: why didn’t the prophets reveal to us that there was a large gap of time between Jesus’ ascension and when He returns to wipe away every tear from our eyes and completely do away with sorrow as it talks about in Revelation?

Well, the answer is relatively simple: because God did not reveal those details.