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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty: The Book of Peter

Norman McNulty

1 Peter 1:1-7 “Sanctification and Salvation”

Welcome to Advent Hope to our lesson study time.

And we've been using our study time here to go through different books of the Bible and we've gone through Daniel, Revelation, and Hebrews.

And now we're going to take a look at the book of 1 Peter.

And 1 Peter is of course written by the Apostle Peter and there's 2 epistles so we may, we'll probably do 2 Peter after we finish 1 Peter considering that it's sort of a continuation with some similar themes.

Before we get into our study for this morning, why don't we bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath day that we can come together and study your Word.

We pray for a special blessing as we start the study of a new book, of 1 Peter, that we will have special understanding, and that you will give us guidance to help us to understand the message for the times in which we live now.

So how many of you here have made a study of the book of 1 Peter and also of 2 Peter?

It's an epistle that we sometimes read for devotional value, but as we're going to see as we go through this book, there's a lot of meat here for us as Seventh-day Adventist Christians in the last days.

If you look at the big theme of the book of 1 Peter, and it's sometimes helpful to do that as we start the study of a book, if you look at the theme of 1 Peter, Peter starts off with a greeting like most epistles do, and then in the first 10 verses or so he talks about the wonderful salvation that has been given to us, and then starting about verse 13 through the end of chapter 4 is a call to encourage us to live steadfastly in the Christian faith.

And The examples he uses, chapter 1 we have, hey, we have the trial of our faith, so gird up the loins of your mind and be sober, be obedient.

Chapter 2, he gives us the example of Jesus, who was steadfast in his experience here on the earth.

Jesus, in 1 Peter chapter 2, was the 1 who when he suffered, he threatened not, when he reviled, he reviled not again.

And so we see the example of Jesus, how to live steadfastly here on this earth.

Chapter 3 gives us some examples, some counsel to husbands and wives, talks about being ready always to give an answer for the hope that is in us.

And chapter 4 again talks about, hey, Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." And the idea that's being painted here is God has given us a great salvation, we'll see that here in chapter 1.

We have this great salvation, But while we live here on this earth, we may suffer through very severe trials, the trial of our faith.

So learn to look to Jesus and arm yourselves with the same mind.

And that is the hope of salvation that we have, and Christ has given us an example of how to live.

Then chapter 5, he ends with some counsel and exhortation to the elders and the members of the Christian church.

So that's sort of an overview of the theme of 1 Peter.

So why don't we go ahead and get into 1 Peter, and I'd like a volunteer to read verses 1 through 3 of 1st Peter, 1st Peter chapter 1.

Of Jesus Christ, who was born of the Father, and is now the Son of God.

Blessed be the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Okay, so here's sort of the introduction to 1 Peter, and Peter is introducing himself here in verse 1.

He was 1 of the 12 who lived with Jesus and learned from him for 3 and a half years.

So here Peter, under the direction of the Holy Spirit is going to share with us the Word of God, and he was an apostle who lived directly with Jesus.

Now of course there are other Bible writers who didn't live directly with Jesus, and that doesn't make Peter's word more important than theirs.

All I'm saying is, here is someone who was an eyewitness to Jesus, so it's a privilege to study the Word of God from someone who was inspired by the Holy Spirit and was an eyewitness to Jesus Christ.

So that makes this a very powerful book to study, because Peter, as an apostle of Christ, was an eyewitness to Jesus Christ for 3 and a half years.

He saw the miracles, he saw how Jesus lived his life, he was the 1 who denied Jesus, he was the 1 who repented, he is the 1 who Jesus gave him a chance to redeem himself by saying, do you love me, Peter?

3 times, for the same 3 times that Peter denied him.

And Peter is the 1 who was the apostle to the Jewish nation and who eventually was taken to Rome and was crucified upside down.

So we know that Peter, after his conversion, and Jesus said, when you are converted, strengthen your brethren.

And so what he says in this epistle is a message from a converted man under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which will give us an understanding of how to live a converted life here on this earth.

So Peter is an apostle of Jesus Christ to the stranger scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

If you look at the map, and you can look at it actually in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary, you can see the names of all these towns.

The 1 name we're probably most familiar with is Galatia, and of course the word Asia is familiar as well.

This is what we would call Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey would be the region that Peter is addressing.

So this gives us the idea that Peter also went beyond Jerusalem and Judea into other places to minister.

In verse 2, as we've read, Peter says, "...elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now do you know what the word elect means?

So Peter is writing to a group of people who are elect, or the chosen of God.

And how are the people that he is writing to elect or chosen of God.

According to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit.

Through the foreknowledge of God, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

So when God considers us elect or chosen, the people who are elect or chosen are going to have an experience of sanctification and obedience.

So To say that you are a Christian, to say that you are elect or the chosen of God, and to live apart from Christ in every way in your life or half of the way of your life would not be a demonstration that you're the elect or chosen of God.

The demonstration of being elect is through sanctification of the Spirit.

Notice it's through the Spirit, it's the Holy Spirit who gives us power to be sanctified, unto obedience.

Now I want to just cross-reference the word elect in Romans chapter 8, and this is probably 1 of the famous passages that uses this word.

And we're looking at verse, starting in verse 31, Romans chapter 8, sorry.

Paul says, What shall we say then to these things?

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Verse 33, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?

So notice, who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect?

Who can lay anything to the charge of those whom God has chosen, because it's God who justifies.

Now notice, in Romans, Paul says, those who are elect have been justified by God.

In 1 Peter, Peter says those who are elect or chosen of God live a sanctified life of obedience through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And in both instances, Paul is saying in Romans 8, hey, the elect are God's chosen ones who are saved.

In 1 Peter, Peter is saying the elect are God's chosen ones who are saved and they live sanctified lives of obedience.

1 Peter 1:8-25 “Incorruptible Seed”

Welcome to our class on the book of 1 Peter.

And this week is our second class in this book.

So we started 1 Peter last week and we got through the first 7 verses last week of chapter 1.

Before we start today, I'd like to have a word of prayer, and we'll get right into our class.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath day.

We thank you that we can study from your word.

We pray for a special blessing as we study from the book of 1 Peter.

May it enlighten our minds and give us understanding about your plans for our life.

So, just by way of review from last week, some of the high points that we touched on, if you look, Just starting even in verse 1, Peter identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Peter was an eyewitness for 3 and a half years to Christ's ministry.

So his perspective of Bible truth was shaped in some degree by the fact that he was an eyewitness to Jesus for 3 and a half years, and of course he had his conversion experience at the end of that period.

Then we saw In verse 2, he describes how that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit.

And if you go to Romans chapter 8, the famous verse, who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect, and then the very next phrase is, it is God that justifieth.

So it's interesting, the word elect means chosen of God, and in 1st Peter, to be chosen of God or elect describes having the experience of sanctification, and in Romans, being elect or chosen of God, describes having the experience of justification.

So 1 of the key points that we described last week is that the Bible writers do not differentiate between justification and sanctification in the salvation process.

Justification and sanctification are part of the salvation experience, and of course you know the verse 2 Thessalonians 2.13 which says, God has chosen you from the beginning to salvation through sanctification.

So then we went on, verse 3 talks about how we've been begotten to a livelihood by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

I'm not going to really spend much time on that other than to say if you link that to the book of Romans, a belief in the resurrection is linked to justification by faith, and you'll have to study that on your own.

And then we continued on all the way down.

So we see in verses 4 and 5 that we have salvation.

Verse 6, we rejoice even though we may go through a period of trial because we have salvation.

And verse 7, of course, the famous verse, that the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found into praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." And of course, this was written in 66 AD, the first century Christian church was going through severe trials of their faith.

And so what Peter is telling them is that, hey, you are going through trials because of your faith, but just as gold is tried in the fire and it's purified, the trial of your faith brings forth even better fruit, or it's more precious than gold that is tried with fire.

And so we're going to look at the rest of the chapter, verses 8 to 25, today, how the experience of salvation and the experience of the trial of our faith are related to each other, And we'll see that there is a connection.

So picking up in verse 9, or verse 8, sorry.

So verse 7 talks about the trial of our faith and the hope is that we will be found unto praise, honor, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

And then in verse 8 it says, Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

So it's interesting in verse 8 Peter starts off speaking of Christ saying, whom having not seen you love.

Now Peter did see Jesus, so he's speaking to people who didn't have the privilege that he had of being with Christ for 3 and a half years, but he's saying even though you haven't seen him, you love him.

And the reason being is that because of Jesus Christ, and we saw that in the first few verses, because of the sprinkling of His blood, because He has been resurrected, He has prepared for us, reserved for us, the experience of salvation.

So even though we haven't seen Jesus, we love Him, because we've experienced righteousness by faith.

So because we have faith in Christ, we love him.

And continuing on, in whom though now ye see him not yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." And again, for the early Christian church who was going through severe trials, and remember these were people who because they professed the name of Christ, were putting their lives on the line.

It wasn't like you could just say, hey, I'm a Christian and just go about your business like you can here in our country.

It's like if you professed the name of Christ in the first century, you were putting your life on the line.

So clearly people who profess Christ must have loved Him very dearly to be able to put their lives on the line.

And they knew that even though they hadn't seen Him, that this was a being who came to this earth and died for them so that they could have eternal salvation and that He's been resurrected again and is in heaven interceding on their behalf.

And of course we should have the same experience.

So even though we haven't seen Christ, we love Him.

Even though we have not seen Him, we believe and we rejoice with unspeakable joy.

Now do we, ask yourself this question, when you think about Jesus Christ and the salvation He has given to us, does that cause unspeakable joy in our hearts?

Or is it, yeah, I've known that my whole life.

And if you have the experience of putting your life on the line for your faith, and I'll have to be honest, I don't have to put my life on the line to profess the name of Christ, not to this point.

But the issue that will eventually come to pass in this country will come, and we will have to have had an experience that is preparing us for that.

So for example, How do you do around associates at work or school who don't believe what we believe?

Do we minimize our distinctiveness and just try to fit in?

Or are we Confident of our walk with God that we stand firmly and kindly for what we believe so that everyone knows where we stand.

If we're not having that experience now, what's going to happen when things get even worse?

So the first century Christian church, these people professed Christ and they were putting their lives on the line by doing so, and they had the experience of when they would think of Jesus Christ, they would have unspeakable joy.

When we think of Jesus Christ, we should have unspeakable joy.

Verse 9, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your soul.

So faith, and that's pretty obvious, faith and salvation go hand in hand and that is connecting the concept of righteousness by faith.

So Peter is just sort of getting an introduction into these concepts but clearly we can see that trials and faith and salvation go together.

And in verse 2 again, going back to that, the word that Peter used to describe the salvation experience was sanctification.

Now you may ask, why did Peter choose to use the word sanctification instead of justification when he was describing the elect who are sanctified.

Well, if you continue through the chapter, it's talking about the trial of our faith and the salvation that we have.

How is, I guess what Peter is trying to demonstrate is how is it that we determine who has saving faith?

And the answer is those who allow the trials of their faith to purify them or to grow them in their process of sanctification are demonstrating they have righteousness by faith through the salvation experience.

So this is another point of self-examination.

It's the nice thing about studying the Bible is we just ask ourselves, what do I do?

I'm not thinking about, hey, you know, brother so-and-so needs to be hearing this.

It's like, no, what do I do in this situation?

So you have a bad experience at work or at home with your spouse or with a sibling or your roommate or whatever.

Do you allow that experience to cause you to surrender more completely to God and to allow His Spirit to come forth from you, or do you just kind of snap off and have the human experience?

Those are the little trials of our faith that are building us for the bigger trials of our faith.

And so when we pass through those trials, it purifies us and we will be more precious than gold.

And again, the end of our faith is the salvation of our soul.

So Peter's saying, look, the trial of your faith may not feel so good, but it's purifying you and the end of your faith is salvation.

Now continuing on in verse 10, and I'm going to read verses 10 through 12 here.

Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." Verse 12, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into you." Now there's a few points that I want to spend a little bit of time on in these 3 verses.

The first thing is, it talks about the salvation in verse 10 that the prophets have inquired and searched diligently.

And if you just want to write this down, in Romans chapter 1 verse 2, Paul makes a similar point, and I'll just read verses 1 and 2 of chapter 1 where he says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated under the gospel of God, which he had promised to for by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures." So a basic point, Paul in Romans 1 and Peter in 1 Peter 1 is saying that the prophets in the Old Testament testified of this gospel experience.

And so if you read the New Testament, because people say, well, the Gospel's in the New Testament, and it is, if you read the New Testament, the New Testament authors tell you that the gospel was also found in the Old Testament.

So don't let a theologian tell you that the gospel is only New Testament theology when the very authors of the New Testament are saying the gospel is also found in the Old Testament.

I think we already know that, but I just wanted to make that point.

So the salvation that we experience was written about, and notice the prophets inquired and searched diligently.

And it's interesting, Peter's saying, look, they searched and inquired of it, but this grace has come unto you, or it's unto us.

We are living in the time after Christ's death on the cross.

So everything in the Old Testament that pointed to that, all of the authors who were writing about that, they were writing for us who would live after that period of time.

And in verse 11 And 12, Peter sort of summarizes that by saying, and we already read verse 11, and so it talks about how they testified of the sufferings of Christ.

I mean just read Isaiah 53, that's a clear example of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.

But notice verse 12, and this is an important point that I want to make.

Verse 12 says, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." Now notice, the things that were revealed to the Old Testament prophets, and you could say now in our day and age, even the authors of the New Testament.

It was revealed and they minister, but they are specifically to us.

The messages are specifically for us, living after the time of the death of Christ.

Again, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you." So there are certain theologians who utilize what I would describe as the method of higher criticism that say if you want to understand a passage of scripture, you have to understand the original intent and the context and the time period for which the author was writing, because that was his purpose.

And you know, there might be an application to us today, and some will even say, no, there's not even an application for us today.

It's only when that passage was written for that time.

And what Peter's actually saying is, look, when the Old Testament prophets, and I'll say even the New Testament prophets, wrote the Word of God, it was primarily for us at the end of time.

In Peter's time it was for the Christians of the first century.

So for a first century Christian to look at the book of Isaiah and they'll read Isaiah 53 and they say, well, you know, maybe Isaiah was just talking about, you know, someone during his time that was going to be persecuted for living a good life.

1 Peter 1:18-2:2 “Incorruptible Seed - Part 2”

And just so all of you know, this class here we're going through the book of 1 Peter.

We've been doing different books of the Bible in 1 of the 4 classes here at Advent Hope.

And we're doing the book of 1 Peter during this quarter.

And I'm actually going to just cover a couple of things from the end of chapter 1 that I didn't have time to cover last week.

Before we start, let's have a word of prayer and we'll get started.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the Sabbath day.

We thank you for the opportunity to study from your word.

We pray as we study 1 Peter that you would bless us and guide us.

Alright, so we have covered the first chapter And 1 of the things that we saw in the theme of chapter 1, we see that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God through sanctification unto obedience.

And that in Romans chapter 8, the elect are described as being justified.

So under inspiration, the Bible writers equate being elect or chosen of God to being justified and sanctified, thus putting justification and sanctification together in the salvation process.

There are some other things that we talked about, the trial of our faith and how in verses 11 and 12 it talks about how the prophets wished that they could live in our day and that the things they wrote were especially for us.

And then the last half of the chapter, we covered a lot of it last week, and I just want to hit a couple of high points.

1 of the things that we studied last week was the concept of being, this is verse 23, where it says, being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever.

Now we didn't, we had about 10 minutes to talk about the incorruptible seed and really that should have been the majority of the class and we kind of ran out of time.

So I want to spend a little bit more time talking about being born again of incorruptible seed.

And if you look at chapter 1, this comparison between corruptible and incorruptible begins in verse 18.

And We talked about this a little bit last week, but in verse 18 it says, For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers." So here's the corruptible, silver and gold, vain traditions from your fathers.

He's speaking to the Gentiles who were accustomed to the pagan traditions of their time.

And he's saying, you know, you're not redeemed through anything that is corruptible, that is earthly, that is of human tradition.

Well, verse 19 tells us, with the precious blood of Christ.

So the obvious comparison is, look, silver and gold in the traditions of men are corruptible, but the blood of Christ is incorruptible.

Corruptible, silver and gold in the traditions of men, incorruptible the blood of Christ, who as a lamb without blemish and without spa offered himself." And then we go through and we see we believe in God who raised him up from the dead.

And we're going to see how that ties in again here in a little bit.

And we see that we've purified our souls in obeying the truth.

And then verse 23 says, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever." Now, what does the concept of being born again have to do with incorruptible seed?

Now, what we've already seen is corruptible seed would be that which is silver and gold or that which is human from the traditions of men.

Incorruptible comes from the precious blood of Christ, which is without spot.

And we are born again of incorruptible seed.

So what is it, how does incorruptible seed tie in with being born again?

Is there any, do you see any connection with the concept of the new birth and an incorruptible seed?

Well, just to get your minds thinking along those lines.

If you go to the next verse, verse 24, it says, for all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass, the grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away.

Based on what we've discussed so far, what's 1 word you would pick to describe grass or flesh?

So incorruptible seed means we're born again.

But human flesh or grass withereth and fadeth away.

So what happens is you plant a seed of grass and it comes up out of the ground and it looks really good.

You plant the grass, maybe you go to a golf course and you see really perfect grass at a golf course, or maybe you plant flowers in your garden and it comes up and it looks really great.

What happens though if you don't water the grass or you don't water the flowers and here in Loma Linda it's 115 degrees.

Like the Bible says, the grass and the flower withereth and fadeth away because it's coming from a seed that's corruptible.

It's not a seed that will sustain the heat or the trials of life so to speak.

And it's interesting earlier in this chapter Peter talks about the trial of your faith.

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Norman McNulty: The Book of Peter

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