← Back to sermon library

[Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] today [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what is execution getting dry 18 at verse 19 the high priest asked Jesus about cycles that always meet in secret [Music] [Music] the Jews to your own nation recent Liberty to me jesus answered my kingdom is not of this world [Music] [Music] in Jesus [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] because he is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Jesus Christ that they would receive the forgiveness of sins [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] it is truly a joy and delight for me to be here I'm very grateful for this opportunity to share with you all the Word of God and to enjoy your fellowship here in a fellow reformed cradle Baptist congregation I'm very very grateful for that our text is in 1st Peter chapter 1 the First Epistle of Peter chapter 1 and verses 10 to 12 and before we read the text and let us pray Oh sovereign majestic and glorious king of heaven we do bow our hearts before the majesty of your presence and the majesty of this your holy word and we do pray for grace to tremble before this word not in the crowning fear of condemnation but in the filial and reverential fear of true grace please open our minds and our hearts to understand the scriptures for we confess that we are ignorant by nature that our minds have been blinded by the noetic effects of sin and the hardness of our hearts but we do thank you that you have mercy on us and transform us so that we can truly receive the things of your spirit which are spiritually discerned and so we approach you sovereign Lord with hungry hearts desiring to be fed with the bread of life we pray that Christ Himself would minister to us of his fullness as it says in the first chapter of John's Gospel that of his fullness we have all received in grace for grace we long to receive more of that fullness please feed our hungry Souls this day with the milk and the meat and the fatness of your word nourish us and build us up with the sound words of true doctrine and above all ho Lord we pray that you would show us Christ we would see Jesus please help us to appreciate him more to have more affection for our Lord to be enthralled with the greatness of his glory and we do pray in his name amen first Peter chapter 1 verses 10 to 12 of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully who prophesied of the grace that would come to you searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow to them it was revealed that not to themselves but to us they were ministering the things which have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things which angels desire to look into amen well Peter of course writes these words to churches in six Roman provinces that spanned over more than a quarter of a million square miles a territory covering most of what we now know as modern-day Turkey it was primarily Paulene territory to be sure and just a portion of the terrain in which the apostle to the Gentiles planted churches during his prolific missionary career Peter is writing primarily to Gentiles and this epistle Tiles who were suffering persecution for their faith in christ he wants to encourage them to persevere in their tribulations so he employs a number of deeply impressive truths in order to stir up their faith and to Kindle the earnest expectation of their hope in a glorious future and the whole epistle the whole of this epistle is infused with the christological eschatology by Christological we mean that it pertains to the person and work of Christ and by eschatology we mean that it pertains to that epoch of time which was foretold by the Old Testament prophets as corresponding to the day of the Lord and the last days the end of times the events surrounding the eschaton and the end of the world as we know it christological eschatology permeates the whole of this great letter and Peter informs his recipients and us by the inspired Word of God that just as Christ suffered and that entered into his glory that those who are in Christ for that is the most central identity of the believer he has one who is in Christ those who are in Christ must conform in fact are made to conform by the sovereign God to this christological pattern of suffering and then glory he wants us to know that our suffering as believers bear a decisive Christological significance and so as we are conformed to Christ and abide in Christ even having been deposited by the Spirit of God in Christ being clothed with Christ just as Christ followed this divine pattern of suffering and then glory we in this world as we walk in the footsteps of Christ must suffer before glory and it is necessary that we first compare the cross and then we shall receive by the grace of God the crown that is a great pattern that he sets forth in this epistle and if we are to understand the significance and the divinely appointed meaning of our suffering and persecution and tribulation as believers it is vital that we grasp that christological significance Peter also encourages his recipients that their trials know very real our temporary and transient and that Christ will soon come and put an end to all their pain all of it and if they remain steadfast under affliction then at the coming of Christ their present predicament will give way to great glory and in fact before and after the text that is our text this morning the Apostle speaks of a coming cosmic Cataclysm that will incinerate the wicked even as it torments them and a conscious eternal flame and burn up the world and the things that are in the world even as it simultaneously brings the deliverance of a full and final climactic consummate salvation to those that are sanctified by grace Peter speaks of this coming eschaton the end of the age in verses 6 to 7 in the first place notice what he says here in this you greatly rejoice though now for a little while you see that for a little while if need be you have been grieved by various trials that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to praise honor and glory and note these words at the revelation of Jesus Christ that again verse 13 therefore gird up the loins of your mind be sober and rest your hope fully a word that has no small importance rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you and notice again these words at the revelation of Jesus Christ and so in both cases and verse 7 and in verse 13 the Apostle uses precisely this same phrase to speak of precisely this very same event the revelation of Jesus Christ the Greek word that he uses as a word with which many of us are familiar it's the word apocalypses in the Greek from which we get our word apocalypse the term literally means an unveiling or an unfolding it means to lift up lift off the veil to disclose what was previously hidden to our sight or comprehension the Apostle is saying that one day and one day very soon the sky will be split open and the heavens as isaiah said will be rolled back like a scroll at the glory realm will burst forth upon the earth even as it melts the mountains like wax at the consuming fire of the lord's presence you remember Peter explains this in more detail at the end of his second epistle when he speaks of the passing away of the present heavens and earth and the burning and purging of all things Christ Christ who has currently veiled to our eyes will one day soon be fully Disko disclosed to us and we shall see him as he is as he is so verses 7 and 13 both refer to the full and final manifestation of the Son of God and blazing glory at a second coming and what will that bring to the suffering st. how does this fit in with the purpose of the Apostle in writing this epistle why does he stress so much the coming of Christ well what will it bring to persecute it in suffering Christians verse 7 says that it will bring praise honor and glory to the Christian verse 13 says it will bring grace so putting them together we can say that it it will bring by the grace of God praise honor and glory and consummate grace this of course will result in the radical reversal of the current situation in which Christians who suffer in this present evil age find themselves it is the radical antithesis the precise opposite of what suffering Christians receive at the hands of this wicked world and this present evil age Christians are denounced and slandered we are spoken evil Dov Peter says but at that final day we shall receive praise from God and this current age Christians are dishonored and shamed by the world but in that day they shall receive honor from the Lord and this present age we are afflicted and castigated by the world even as the world unjustly punishes us for our stance on the truth of Christ and for our identity in Christ but in that day Peter says we shall receive the direct opposite glory and grace and so it is this eschatological hope which to which Peter exhorts us in this passage and it is this endtime hope that sandwiches our text the verses before it and the verses after it even as all of this surrounding context of our text sheds forth its light and illuminates the meaning of verses 10 to 12 and so what Peter wants us to see is that it's all about Christ the revelation of Christ verse 7 the revelation of Christ verse 13 it is all about Christ and what is coming with Christ and in Christ the revelation of Christ must be the defining reality of our worldview the revelation of Christ must govern our minds the revelation of Christ must burn in our hearts as a Living Hope that causes us to spurn the fleeting nature of this present world how differently would we live if something more of the conscious sense of this soon-coming reality burned in our hearts as it did in the heart of the Apostolic and primitive Church of the first century we sadly often speak as if the second coming of our Lord were a great and far-off distant thing coming in the future and not so much an imminent expectation upon which we fully set our hopes in the words of Peter and I think that's a tragedy I think our current absorption with the things of this world in many ways and present times and present circumstance and present cultural trends and present anxieties in this life that absorb our attention and draw our minds off of the coming eschaton with Christ is a deviation from the Apostolic mentality to which our text exhorts us when it comes to the revelation of Christ verses 10 to 12 being pervaded by this context our informing us of the fact that even though this is our great future imminent expectation and we wait for it and we are to wait for it we are not left merely waiting we're not left merely waiting because our entire hope is not entirely a not yet anticipation because there is already an already aspect to it Christ will be revealed in the near future yes but there is a real sense in which he has already been revealed in which he is even now being revealed to the eye of faith by the supernatural instrumentality of the Spirit of God through his inscripturated revelation in the Word of God verses eight to nine say whom having not seen you love we don't currently see him but he's not entirely a future Christ to us and he's not entirely a past historical Christ to us either he is a present living Christ and though we do not currently behold him with the physical eye we do contemplate his glory by the eye of faith and we do love him and we do commune with him and yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory receiving the end of your faith the salvation of your souls and so we commune with the present Christ and we love a present Christ and we confide in a present Christ so here's Peter's point as he comes to verses 10 to 12 our privilege and our current contemplation of Christ is one that exceeds the privilege of all the great Old Testament prophets and that dear brethren is something very significant because we are in a more privileged position when it comes to the outworking of God's redemptive purposes on earth all of the prophets spoke of the salvation that we enjoy in Christ and all of the prophets point us to the realities of the salvation that we currently have and that we also anticipate in Christ so Peter writes suffering Christians and infused with eschatological hope that centers on the future revelation of the glory of Christ he points them to the prophets why does he do this why does he point us to the prophets he does this because the prophets define reality according to the mind of God the prophets define reality according to the mind of God what defines ultimate reality is not our current sufferings in this world and we need to be reminded of that because when we are in the midst of sufferings even as the recipients of this letter were in the midst of intensive persecutions what happens when one is in the midst of such sufferings and trials as that present circumstance tends to turn us in word and earth word it tends to consume us with cares and with worries and with anxieties of what we're currently experiencing when we're experiencing such sufferings we are so tempted to think that our sufferings are what define true and abiding an ultimate reality and often we can't see much beyond our suffering we can't comprehend how we can how we can possibly bear up under our suffering how can we support this how can we persevere in the midst of this how will we ever get through this so Peter points us to the prophets in order to exhort us that we would not place our faith and our hope and our expectation and define these things in terms of our present sufferings but by the prophetic word which is more certain than any fleeting and temporary suffering the prophetic word that is more enduring than heaven and earth themselves we need to be reminded of this and our day as well because observing our present culture and the way things are going in this increasingly what so sociologists are calling a post-christian culture what appears to be coming unless there is tremendous providential intervention to the contrary is increasing antagonism to the truth claims of Christianity and to the Christian faith as Christian business owners face persecution for their stance on biblical truth and Christian fathers and mothers are faced with trials that are occasioned by the undue Authority and control of this state that seeks to impede on issues such as sexual identity and other issues that they are seeking to dictate to Christians this is a very real reality times appear to be coming upon Western civilization that parallel in many ways the ancient Roman world in which the recipients of the Epistle of 1st Peter lived in which they experienced and there is one thing that is going to get us through this as we stand on the truth of God in the Holy Scriptures and it is our hope in Christ this burning reality of eschatological hope it needs to govern our worldview that is what is going to strengthen us and the onslaughts of a persecuting culture the Word of God tells us woe to the inhabitants of the earth for Satan has come down to you having great wrath because he knows that he has but a short time and if we study the Word of God we also know that God does not sit idle in the heavens but he is the judge of all flesh and he will pour out his wrath on the nations that forget him and so as culture in the Western civilization and our countries face not only the wrath of Satan who has come down to us but also the fury of Almighty God these great truths which we have so often neglected and forgotten in our comfortable prosperous Western culture need to again come to the forefront of our minds and continual meditation so as to infuse us with strength and hope as we face these things the prophets define reality the prophets define what's coming the prophets spoke the truth of God and the focal point of their testimony to truth all centers on Christ it all centers on Christ that's what our text says so let's consider this let's consider this great Christological reality to which Peter calls our attention and as we do that as we do that let us ask ourselves two questions first of all what is the nature of this Christological reality to which the prophets bear witness and second of all what implications does that have for our understanding of Scripture and how does it inform our approach to the Word of God so as we consider the nature of this Christological reality of the writings of the prophets I want us to realize something of the source of this Christological reality and the content of this Christological reality and then the relationship between the source and the content because it is of vital importance again verses ten to twelve say of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully who prophesied of the grace that would come to you searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow and to them it was revealed the Apostle says stop there notice the source of this Christological reality of the prophetic testimony the source peter identifies this source as the spirit of Christ and the Spirit of Christ engaged in personal activity that Peter describes by the words indicating he says the Spirit of Christ was indicating the Spirit of Christ testified beforehand and the Spirit of Christ revealed to the prophets what they received so there is an extrinsic Lee initiated inception to this prophetic testimony that has its source in the divine it did not arise anywhere within the sphere of mere human activity it is extrinsic in its source to all that derives from mere human intelligence actually when it says to them it was revealed the Greek word is Apocalypto which is the verbal form of the substantive for the revelation of Christ that is found in verses 7 and 13 so in 70 speaks of the revelation of Christ and 13 he speaks of the revelation of Christ and here in verse 12 he speaks of revelation to them it was revealed here he's specifically referring to the personal divine revelation of certain transcendent mysteries that are unknowable to the mind of mere man and as a result of their revelations the prophets concluded that they by the Spirit of Christ were speaking to future generations that would experience the fulfillment of what they predictively uttered and the prophetic revelation and view is supernatural it is supernatural what the Prophet said did not originate in the minds of the prophets it was not a result of the prophets merely contemplating the things of God and then reflecting on their meditation on the things of God and then writing down their own thoughts about that I don't say that it necessarily excluded that but the inscription process of the writings of the prophets was not limited to that it was due to the agency of God that reminds us of what Peter says in his second epistle in chapter 1 verses 20 to 21 what he says that knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation and when he says that he's not referring to what the Roman Catholic Church has often interpreted by those words especially during the time of the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church would appeal to this text in order to insist that the private Christian has no right to interpret the scriptures and that the soul final authority of the interpretation of the Scriptures resides and the Magisterium of the church and in the seat of the papal beast authority and so they would insist that no scripture is of private interpretation no Christian has a right to interpret the Bible for themselves and that is definitely not what Peters saying the Word of God does teach it's sufficiency it's clarity and by the Spirit of God any sincere Christian can understand the basic gospel of Jesus Christ and the truths of Scripture that are necessary for life and godliness doesn't mean that we are to do theology and isolation from the historic church I'm not saying that we were to do theology and conversation with the historic church and being informed by the historic church but we also have direct access to God through the mediation of Christ by the illumination and empowerment and grace of the Holy Spirit of God and we approached the scriptures in light of those realities as well so what Peters saying what he says that no scripture is of any private interpretation what he's referring to as the act of the revelation process itself and the act of the inscription of special revelation in the prophetic Oracle's what he's saying is that the prophets themselves did not reflect on the truths of God and then interpret it from themselves and write it down and merely human words he goes on to explain that in verse 21 when he says for prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit as they were carried along and borne up by the Holy Spirit of God as the sovereign spirit providentially and specially governed the entire process of the inspiration and inscription of the word of God such that the final product that results in our holy Bibles is an infallible and inerrant Word and that all the words of the holy scriptures are the very word of God and so Peter appeals to the prophets as God's authorized agents of special revelation God's super intended everything they wrote and there is a divine and supernatural element that governed and continues to govern the meaning and the significance of the Old Testament text there is a supernatural element that governs the meaning of the Old Testament text and the revelation that they received as supernatural conveyed truth and redemptive reality that would even override and supersede the finite human understanding of the prophets themselves how can we be sure of that we can be sure of that because of what our text says in verses 10 to 11 when it says that the prophets themselves searched you see that in the text searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was speaking of searching the Greek word that the text uses there is a precise same word that's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures that was in existence in the days of the Apostles it's known as a Septuagint and that very same Greek word is used in psalm 119 when the psalmist speaks of searching the law of God and loving the law of the Lord this speaks not of a mere have hazard or half-hearted searching of the book of God but this speaks of a diligent searching of an enquiring into of an earnest desire to know the prophets in other words were serious students of their own writings of their very own writings isn't that amazing they search their own writings to learn about the things of God the source of their revelation as supernatural caused them to understand even that the full meaning of what they wrote transcended their human authorial intent and would only be fully understood by later generations who would study their writings there was a decisive eschatological trajectory that by this supernatural element of revelation permeated and continues to permeate the Old Testament text governing its significance and brethren if we are to understand the Scriptures correctly it is essential that we come to grips with this supernatural element of the book of God this was written by human instrumentality yes it's written in human language yes but it is a divine book and that supernatural divine element is determinative for its meaning that's determined by the source so that's the source of the prophetic revelation now what can we say with regard to the content of the writings of the prophets the content or the subject matter of the revelation they received is none other than Christ verse 11 says that it's the person of Christ in the first place the word translated here what searching what or what manner of time it's a word that in the original can mean either what or who depending on the context and I think that here in this particular context a better translation would be who nuance that the new American Standard Bible brings out explicitly searching who they knew the Messiah was coming they looked forward to the Redeemer and they knew that he would be a who and so they're searching their writings in order to find out about him the person of Christ and Peter also says and what manner of time so the coming of Christ the the time of his coming the time of his revelation and also the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow so this is the person of Christ and the coming of Christ and the sufferings of Christ of the glory of Christ and tailing his resurrection and ascension and ascended glory in his session at the right hand of God and his second coming elements of all this are found in the holy scriptures of the Old Testament prophets in other words Christ is the grand focus of all of God's redemptive revelatory activity just as all the planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun and find the focal point of their gravity in the Sun all of God's revelation revolves around Christ and of course God's revelation revolves around Christ because the unrivaled supremacy and preeminence of Christ was his plan from eternity before the foundation of the world the preeminence of Christ was God's goal in creation the supremacy of Christ is God's golden Providence the absolute exaltation and supremacy and preempt preeminence of Christ is his goal and redemption as well and therefore the preeminence of Christ absolutely saturates and firm and infuses the totality of the special revelation of God found in the Holy Scriptures including the Old Testament so consider the relationship as well between the supernatural source of this great christological reality being revealed to the prophets and the content of that prophetic revelation the relationship between the two what is that relationship well the source as we have seen is God the Holy Spirit but if you notice in this text Peter does not use his most common New Testament title Holy Spirit to refer to this personal subsistence of the Godhead he uses another title a divine title to refer to the very same person but he uses it to refer to whom we call the third person of the Godhead Trinity in order to highlight his very close and intimate relationship with the second person of the Godhead Trinity because he calls him the Spirit of Christ the Spirit of Christ now why does he call him the Spirit of Christ he does so because there is a close relationship and mutually shared identity in a certain sense between the person of Christ and the person of the Holy Spirit and when I say that there is a mutually shared identity I do not mean that the person of Christ is the person of the Holy Spirit because there are personal in communicable properties that distinguish eternally the person of the son from the person of the Spirit and that is never too be confused or conflated but there is a very close relationship and mutually shared identity and a number of specific senses and the first place in the eternal Godhead due to the mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Godhead each of the three persons of the Godhead is fully God right it's not that the father is a portion of god the son apportion and the spirit apportion of God no the one ineffable glorious infinite incomprehensibly glorious divine essence is undivided li shared in its fullness by each and every single personal subsistence of the Godhead father son and spirit father's fully God's son is fully God spirit is fully God so there is a mutually shared identity as God and there is a mutual indwelling of the person's in one another that's what Jesus said in the Gospel of John but he said don't you know that the father is in me and I am in the father and in the same way we can say that the Spirit is in him and he is in the spirit and the Spirit is in the father and vice versa because each person mutually in duels the other and that is the underlying basis of the reality of the fact that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the son as well as the spirit of the father because he proceeds eternally from the father and the son but also in the outworking of redemption there is a close relationship between the two because in the Gospels historic accomplishment Christ as the divine recompense for his perfect finished mediatorial work upon his resurrection from the dead was endowed with the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the out working of redemption and its historical accomplishment Christ was so clothed and infused with the fullness of the Spirit that first Corinthians 15:45 says that he was made life-giving spirit there became a functional redemptive identity and relationship between the Sun and the spirit as the Sun is clothed with the spirit as a mediator and so the Holy Spirit of God and the out working of God's redemptive purpose takes on a new fullness in terms of his not in terms of his nature but there comes a new fullness to his revelation to us in the world as he becomes known to us as particularly the Spirit of Christ Christ descends and pours out on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit from on high and there's another sense there's a close relationship and mutually shared identity and that other sense is the particular sense in which Peter speaks in this text as he grounds that sense on what we've already mentioned and that's this there is a close relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit and the dynamic of God's self-revelation embedded and ingrained in the Holy Scriptures the Spirit of Christ was personally present and revealing to and through the prophets the saving truths of the gospel and this is where it gets glorious Peter says searching what or who or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating what he testified beforehand the Spirit of Christ testified beforehand he bore witness about the gospel about the gospel and that is what saturates the Old Testament texts Christ and the gospel and so what's the relationship between the source of the revelation and the content of the revelation and and what does that mean well that means this the source ultimately is Christ and the content is Christ the source is Christ the content is Christ so the source gives rise to the content that the source generates the content according to its own nature and the source determinative ly influences the content so that the content reflects the reality of the source and the content exhibits the truth of the source and the content manifests the reality of the source in other words the content which is the text of the holy scriptures and Christ set forth in the scriptures the content opens up a window through which we may peer as it were into the glory of the source or to put it another way the Spirit of Truth bears witness to Christ because he is the Spirit of Christ and as we study the Holy Scriptures to contemplate Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit what is mediated to us as nothing less than the personal presence and glory and majesty and grace and power of Christ himself through the witness that the spirit bears to Christ we are saving li apprehended by the truth of Christ prominent biblical theologian who specializes in Christ in the Old Testament by the name of Edmund clowny sent said this and I quote Christ is the end of prophecy the goal of history he is not one example of sufferings and glory among many his is the suffering that brought salvation his is the glory that brings the new creation Jesus is therefore not simply the one of whom the prophets speak he is the one who speaks through the prophets and Cloney said this the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy not only does prophecy bear witness to Jesus but Jesus bears witness through prophecy the Incarnate Lord is the true witness the eternal logos is the source of the prophetic testimony that title logos is used in John's Gospel chapter 1 verse 1 the word it's the greek term behind the word translated word he has the logos the revelation of God he is the word he is the one testifying through the prophets he is the one disclosing himself fruit through the prophets he is the one who will be unveiled in the final day when he comes again but he is the one who is even now in part but truly and really revealed to us through the prophets and so this means that Christ was revealed to the prophets proleptic Lee through supernatural divine disclosure proleptic Lee and no it's a difficult term but I'm going to define it it means proleptic means to be represented as existing reality before the thing represented actually exists Christ was represented to the Old Testament prophets as existing reality before the historic incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Christ and so Christ was represented savingly and manifested beforehand to the prophets in the very medium of the revelation they received so what they received was not just information or a mere data about Christ it wasn't just an informative cognitive revelation to the human brain but it was a supernatural spiritual revelation and manifestation and even effectual application of this saving truth and grace and power of Christ to them through his personal presence because it was a spirit of Christ Himself operating redemptive lis in and through the prophets causing his saving truth and presence to be known and that is the case with us as well as we study the Scriptures and as we expand upon the scriptures and the Church of God this is not merely a human activity but as the Spirit of God is pleased to bless this to our understanding and to our salvation and sanctification this is not merely that we're laying of information oh the church is not one in the same thing as the school what we receive in the church is not the same thing that students in a university receive as they are being taught the information that pertains to natural revelation or the sciences and the arts but what we receive in the church as the Word of God is expounded in the power of the Holy Spirit as the personal mediation of the Grace and presence of Christ himself to our souls to our hearts to our minds and to our consciences and so just as all of the New Testament is intrinsically christological centers on Christ so does the Old Testament Christ as a central focus of both the New Testament and the Old Testament all Old Testament revelation in other words is of Christ from the Spirit of Christ through Christ through the testimony by which he reveals himself and to Christ leading to his saving knowledge it's of him and through him and to him and therefore it is all to his glory to the praise and honor of the triune God so the Old Testament text is altogether saturated with a christological element and that brings us to our second point and this one very briefly what implications does this have for our understanding of Scripture and how does this inform our approach to the Word of God brief summary here it impacts our understanding of the message of the unity and of the goal of the scriptures it impacts our understanding of the message the unity and the goal of the scriptures first of all with regard to the message of the Scriptures understanding the source the content and the relationship between the source and the content of the prophetic revelation of the Old Testament text impacts our understanding of the message of the scriptures in that it causes us to know that Christ is the main message of all the book of God every prophet every book of the Bible and I would even dare to say every per Ricka P of the Holy Scriptures has its ultimate fulfillment in Christ it points to Christ it is saturated with this it is intended to reveal Christ actually this is what the author of our text said in the book of the Acts chapter 3 verse 24 when he said yes and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow as many as have spoken have also foretold these days all the prophets Peter's Peter says testified of Christ so as the Old Testament was centered primarily on Israel that's what the pervading popular theology of much of contemporary Christianity in in the world is teaching that the Old Testament is primarily centered on Israel and that the New Testaments about the church Israel know as a prominent subject to the Old Testament but why is it a prominent subject that's the question it's a prominent subject because Israel is the type of Christ and a type of the church the Old Testament is not Israeli eccentric but Christocentric the prophets of the Old Testament understood the primary point of their own writings to be about not Israel but about Messiah because why did they search the scriptures why does Peter say they search the scriptures to learn about Christ and so they understood that the great focal point of their revelation was Christ was Christ that has profound implications for our own interpretation of the biblical text our Lord Jesus rebuked the Jewish leaders of his day when he said you search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me but you are not willing to come to me that you may have life and all their study and in all their scholarship over the Word of God they miss the main point but as Christ says all the scriptures testify of him he is the main point so this impacts not only our understanding of the message but also the unity of the Scriptures because the whole book of God and both Testaments bear a unified witness to Christ a unified witness to Christ the chorus of the prophets sees the same song of glory to the lamb as that of the New Testament apostles there is one way of salvation one intertestamental gospel there is one unified universal church there is one communion of saints there is one Lord there is one thing and the whole book of God bears witness to it and so we must beware that we do not unduly bifurcate the Old Testament from the New Testament have you ever heard fellow believers make disparaging comments toward the Old Testament the Old Testament was for the Jews but the New Testament is for the Christian they might say or the Old Testament is abolished and has no relevance or no pertinent or direct relevance for the New Testament Christian you ever heard things like that listen the Old Testament text does not diminish in relevance due to the coming of Christ it does not diminish in relevance in any way shape or form to be sure the Old Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant have been fulfilled and the Mosaic Covenant has passed away with the introduction of the New Covenant and there is a significant and important degree of continuity there that we as cradle Baptist believers unashamedly confess according to Jeremiah 31 but the relevance of those scriptures do not diminish to the contrary as we read the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament that text now has for us due to the coming of Christ a clearer richer deeper fuller significance for us than it did for the Old Testament believer much was much of what was black and white to the eyes of David and Daniel in Isaiah now comes to us and living color and so we can profit even more from their writings than they could do and their generation isn't that not what our Lord said think of this dear believer think of your privilege in Christ as we sit with the book of God open before our very eyes for our Lord told us blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear for assuredly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it and then the Gospel of Luke adds and Kings also desire to see that so prophets and righteous men and Kings all longed to look into this fullness of Revelation that has been poured out upon us by the Spirit of Christ what unspeakable privilege we had we have to consider job had no Bible he had revelation to be sure but he had no Bible and we have this wonderful wonderful fullness let us never take our Bibles for granted and I say throughout the historic church through the centuries many righteous men have even shed their blood for the sake of the availability of the biblical text in common translation among modern populations let us never take it for granted and finally in the last place understanding all this impacts our understanding of the message the unity and the goal of the scriptures the goal of the scriptures what's the goal the source of the source is Christ the content is Christ Christ unites the whole Bible he's the main message of the whole Bible what's the goal what do you think I'm gonna say it's Christ it is him understanding the Christological and Christos scopic nature of all of Scripture helps us to appreciate the glory of the supernatural character of receiving the Word of God properly as we receive the Word of God in order to receive more of Christ the Scriptures are a supernatural phenomenon and truly receiving the scriptures as a supernatural work of grace entailing supernatural transformation by the supernatural agency of the spirit of christ and that is the goal he saturates this text he comes to us savingly through this text and he transforms us by this text so that we would become less like ourselves and more like him so that we would decrease and he would increase that's the goal 2nd Corinthians 3:18 but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and what's the mirror what's the mirror in which we see him the mirror in the context of 2nd Corinthians 3 is the Old Testament Scriptures and by implication and extension the New Testament Scriptures the mirror is the scriptures in the mirror we behold the glory of the Lord and it says we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the Spirit of the Lord and he says the Lord is the spirit and the Lord is the most common title applied to Christ in the New Testament I think what he says the Lord is a spirit he's referring not only to the holy spirit but also of the close relationship that the Holy Spirit has to Christ the Lord the Lord is the spirit Christ has become so closely related to the spirit and the work redemption that as we are being transformed by the Spirit of the Lord we are being transformed into the image of Christ himself that is the goal of all our study of the Scriptures not merely to learn heart knowledge must be grounded upon head knowledge but that is not the goal the goal is godliness that's the goal and that's what ultimately matters that's what ultimately matters you see that is ultimate reality it may be invisible to the physical and naked eye but that is ultimate abiding transcended eternal reality to which the prophets bore witness and so what mattered was not temporal circumstance what matters is not our current suffering what matters most is loving Jesus Christ seeing him marveling at his beauty abiding in his presence being changed into his likeness and that's what it's all about seeing him in the scriptures and holding out that expectation and earnest hope that our present apprehension by faith well soon give way to a full vision in glory are you reading the scriptures that way I hope you are I pray you are are you seeing in this book the face of Christ the beauty of Christ don't rest content with anything else let's pray gracious king glorious Christ we do thank you for your word we thank you that it comes to us with such clarity that you've given us such a rich deposit of truth such a sufficient scripture and such an all sufficient Christ please father give us more faith helped us in our unbelief that we may pretend more of the fullness of the whole Christ that of His grace we may receive all the more and grace upon grace moment after moment day after day as you by your spirit open our eyes to see what we cannot see by the natural mind thank you Father for this Lord's Day and please be with us in the remainder of it help us to grow and likeness to Christ in his name we do pray amen [Music] [Music]