Investigated Grace

Everyone again, it's good to be with you. Uh whether this is your church home or you're exploring faith for the first time or visiting from out of town or whatever it is, we we're blessed to have you uh join in with us and just want you to know you're not a spectator here. Uh you belong and we're blessed to have you. Um here at the district, we are a community that treasures Jesus and we help others follow him. Um that's why we exist. That's what we do.

The way that we do that is by opening God's word to learn and also opening our lives to love others. And as we do that, the more we open his word, the more we study his word, the more we meditate on his word, the more we memorize his word, the more we get the essence of who God is into us. Uh it changes us. It transforms us. It causes us to treasure Jesus above anything and everything else. And then at the same time that same treasuring of Jesus is not something that all of a sudden we become selfish and don't want anyone else to have it.

It actually changes you to become selfless so that you now consider the interest of others and you start moving and leveraging everything in your life for them in order to help them come to know this Jesus whom you have grown to love. And so what that ultimately does is it helps reach others by you being multiplied. And so that's one of the things we say is we want to multiply everyone every year because we want more people coming to know Jesus in all that we do. And since treasuring Jesus is part of our mission as a church, I love it when we come to passages in our scriptures um that highlight this reality that kind of give us a glimpse into the fact that this Jesus, the spirit of Christ, is not just some new idea that people discovered and started worshiping, but is literally been the tale told from all of history from beginning to now. It's the main central story. He is the central figure.

And what you're going to be seeing today as where Peter goes in a very unique three verses in his introduction still in first Peter, he's going to say something that that literally is taking the message of Christ and transcending time and territory and showing that it's immeasurable that the value that we have in this salvation does not compare to anything else in all of life. And so I want to show you this today. We're going to be in First Peter. We're walking through First Peter verse by verse as a church. Um I don't know what week this is now, fourth week maybe. Um and we are going to be looking at verses 10 through 12 in the first chapter of First Peter.

And so if you're there with me, 1 Peter chapter 1, we're going to look at verses 10 through 12. Here's what he says. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that have now been announced to those or to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things into which angels long to look. I love these three verses because they are so interesting.

it it's not usual things that you tend to see that just are all throughout all the epistles or even the gospels. And again, we we there are so many scriptures that talk about the prophets and the role of the prophets. And there's there's scriptures that talk about the church and the role of the church. And there are scriptures that that talk about angels and the fact that anytime an angel shows up, they literally say, "Don't fear." Because they look terrifying. And in this one or these three verses here, this one passage, Peter lumps all three of those characters together in talking about one central thing, which again just goes on to show that when you read the Bible, this is literally a way of saying that the past, the present, and the future are all longing for looking and beholding the same thing.

It's one story. It's one message from Genesis to Revelation. It's one revelation of God for us about the work of Jesus and all that he is accomplishing. And so he starts off with this idea concerning this salvation. I want to briefly touch on this because I'll actually come back to it at the end. But he's connecting what he's about to say to what he's already said.

So, he's connecting what he's about to say to what he's already said. And so, in other words, I want to give you a little summary. So, if you missed the first three uh sermons, here it is in one run-on sentence. according to the mercy of God, the one true God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he has caused you to be born again to a living hope and inheritance that has been brought about by the blood of Jesus for those who love him, believe in him, and rejoice in him through faith that obtains for them a salvation that is kept and guarded by God. So that's all packed into the first four the first nine verses of first Peter. And I'm going to come back to that.

But that's what he's referencing when he says concerning this salvation. It's everything he's already said. Now when he says concerning this salvation, that means he wants you to think about it for a second. Don't move on from it. Dwell on this a little bit longer. He's not going to move on from it just yet.

concerning this salvation, there's something he wants you to know about it. And he begins by saying, "The prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, they searched and they inquired carefully." Now, I love I love this. I I want to expand our view a bit on what the prophets were doing and in retrospect, what's also been happening now for thousands of years. And so the first thing that I want you to see here is that Christianity, this is the first point, Christianity is the most investigated religion in all of history. Christianity is the most investigated religion in all history.

Imagine you were about to step onto a bridge that's, let's say, 2,000 years old. It's been standing for 2,000 years. You might, before you get on that bridge, think it's 2,000 years old. but I'm not going to walk on it. But before you cross it, you learn something about the bridge. You learn that that bridge has been measured.

It's been tested. It's been It's been photographed. It's been analyzed more than any other bridge in human history. Engineers have tried to prove it's unsafe, but they can't. Historians have examined its foundations and found consistencies with uh wi with with how it was made. Skeptics have searched for cracks and not found any.

And after centuries of storms, earthquakes, and traffic, it's still standing stronger than ever. Now, walk across the bridge. You don't call that blind trust. It's wellested confidence. Might even be the most confident bridge to actually walk across. Christianity is a lot like that.

Just in our last 2,000 years, it has been investigated. It has been examined. It has been tested more than any other worldview on earth. even across various faculties of academia from historians, philosophers, archaeologists, scientists, theologians, biblical scholars, critics. Its central claim that Jesus lived, that Jesus died, and that Jesus rose from the grave has been challenged, scrutinized, attacked, and defended more than any event in ancient history. So in other words, in all the events that have ever occurred, the one event that gets the microscope put on it is the person of Jesus Christ.

The person of Jesus Christ. What these prophets were searching for and inquiring about has gripped more minds and hearts than any other subject or any other person in all of the world. Which is why today we are able to say things like there there as far as the person of Jesus. More books have been written about Jesus than any other person in all of history. More songs have been written and sung about Jesus than any other person in all of history. across time, across cultures.

He is the central subject that is always brought up regardless of whether you believe in him or not. He gets talked about. He gets investigated so much so that I want to give you a bit of an insight um how reliable this investigation is into Jesus. If I were to give you a quote right now from Plato, you would probably just completely accept that that quote is from Plato. But if you actually do a bit of investigation into the reliability that Plato actually said it, well, Plato was alive between 427 BC and 327 BC of his writings. We have seven copies.

Seven copies of Plato's writings just so everyone knows. And this is from uh actual historians, archaeologists, um ancient manuscript scholars. There are no original texts left of any ancient manuscripts that have existed. All we have are copies of everything that exists. That's all we have are copies. So, we're comparing copies for the consistency among the copies to determine validity of whether or not they are the originals.

Of Plato's seven copies, the earliest one that's found is in 8900, which means there's a,200year gap between Plato's original writings and the first known copies that we have. 1,200 years between that gap and we only have seven copies after that. But yet Plato said it right. Aristotle the disciple of his was alive 384 to 322 BC. We have 49 copies of Aristotle. The earliest known one is AD100.

A 1,400year gap. So when we say Aristotle said fill in the blank, that's faith, right? And not the kind of faith scriptur is talking about. I'm saying the kind of like I think he said it. Maybe let's get a little bit closer to Jesus's time. Julius Caesar 144 BC.

We have 10 copies of his original writings. 10 copies. The earliest known one is in 8,900. 8,900. So, a thousand-year gap. And yet, people have literally built Western empires based off of Caesar's ideas.

How do we know it was actually his ideas? There's a thousand-year gap between the copies and the originals. Now, examine the New Testament scriptures. around that same time as Caesar. Again, Caesar, emperor of Rome, who's really the one that they claim built Rome. A thousand-year gap between original copies.

I thought he was the guy. Don't you think they if he's the one building the thing? Don't you think they're like, "Hey, let's get as many copies and manuscripts as possible and preserve them because he is building for us a way of life." Around that same time, New Testament 8050 to 100 is when we get the New Testament scriptures written by the apostles. Again, Caesar 10 copies. You want to know how many New Testament copies we have?

25,000. It's a bit of a jump. Ancient text 25,000 copies. You want to know the earliest copy we have? 130 AD. That means there's less than a 100year gap between the original writings and the first copies that we have know of.

Christianity has more opportunity to be examined and even scrutinized. And here's the most amazing thing. when you go through and this is what smarter guys who have done this work I don't have to do it but when they have gone through and have tested and scrutinized and compared the 25,000 copies you want to know how close they are in being literal translation or literal word for word copies 99. 5% across the board accuracy that's incredible That's incredible. And you're like, "What about that 0. 5 percent?

Can we believe the Bible's true?" It's grammatical errors. It's not content differences. Generations have tried to prove the events of this life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Instead, what they've actually done is they've produced libraries of evidence confirming its validity. Because when you look at the prophets and the fact that they searched and they inquired carefully, there was a bit of an obsession with the content in which they're searching out.

So much so that that transpires over and over and over again from generation to generation to generation. So much so that God can go 400 years from when you talk about Malachi to Matthew. that gap between Old Testament, Old Covenant, New Testament, New Covenant, 400 years. We call it the silent period where God did not speak anymore and say, "Thus says the Lord, but he closed that gap with the prophets and then ushered in John the Baptist, ushered in Jesus and the birth, ushered in the angels." And in that 400 year silence, how did they know when to know when where Jesus was going to be born? How did they know what to look for?

They were so captivated by what the prophets spoke and what the prophets wrote and what the prophets searched out and studied. Not because it was just good ideas for a way of of establishing a new kingdom in Jerusalem, but because they were looking for something and longing for someone that was going to radically change everything about their existence. It mattered. You spend your resources on what matters the most. And because we have so many copies, it's also just proof that this mattered the most. These prophets didn't just receive God's word, they investigated it tirelessly.

I love it when you actually look into the Greek words that Peter uses for these prophets who searched and inquired. They're defined best as investigated and searched out anxiously. Anxiously. I love that. I mean, it's like they can't get enough of it. It reminds me of those detective shows where where a a police detective is trying to solve a case and he actually like just becomes obsessed with it to where, you know, unfortunately in those shows like the rest of their lives fall apart, but they're like, "We're going to find this one thing.

We're going to solve the case. We're going to crack the code." The prophets were obsessed with searching out and inquiring, "What's going on here? What is God telling us? Who is God sending to us? It consumes your life, your thoughts, your time and resources.

So when the spirit of Christ, as as Peter tells us here, when the spirit of Christ visits the prophet, let's say for example, the prophet Isaiah 700 years before Jesus is born, the spirit of Christ visits Isaiah and he tells him this in Isaiah 53:5 and 6. He was pierced for our transgressions. Again, spirit of Christ showing up to Isaiah, telling him, "Write this down. This is going to be important. Write this down. Study what I'm about to tell you."

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. When when the spirit of Christ tells Isaiah to write that, Isaiah would anxiously ask who, oh Lord, whose wounds will heal us? When how long, oh Lord? I mean when David is writing his songs, I mean that's the cry of his heart. How long until this king comes? Verse 11, Peter says this to him, inquiring what person or this is why Peter says in verse 11 that the prophets, they're asking these questions, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ, which I you just got to stop and look at that for a second.

There's so many other religions who want to say of Jesus that man just a man that was born and lived for about 30 years on earth and yeah he died to death but he was just another prophet of God. When you see a verse like this, what Peter is ultimately saying is, "Yeah, Jesus went 700 years back in existence in time and visited with Isaiah and told him to write about himself when he comes 700 years later." Or elsewhere you see David say, "The Lord said to my Lord," Well, hold on a second. How does that work? It's because Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. Jesus is God.

So Jesus didn't start his life in a manger and he didn't end his life on a cross. The spirit of Christ visited the prophets and indicated to them, help them predict the future sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories that would come from that. And Peter tells us that Jesus responded to them. So they're asking those questions. All right. When is this suffering Christ coming?

When is this Messiah going to arrive? Who is it? What are the glories that we are going to receive when that happens? Because you got to remember, I mean, the way we operate as human beings is we always think that God's kingdom is coming right now for every single one of us. So the prophets when they're receiving Isaiah 53, they're thinking, "Sweet. Send the one who's going to take our iniquities from all of us.

when they're on the road to Jerusalem in Jesus's day and it's Palm Sunday, they're saying, "Sweet, the new king is coming and arriving and he's going to usher us in. He's going to deliver us from Roman rule and he's going to restore Israel to its rightful place as the city on a hill for all others. And we're going to have our rightful king who's going to defend for us. And he's going to wipe out everyone else that's oppressing us. and we're no longer going to be a scattered people. We always think it's for us here and now.

And yet he tells them in verse 12, Peter tells us that Jesus, I love this, Jesus responded to the prophets when they're asking those questions, when they're searching out and they're anxiously wondering when is this going to happen for us? Verse 12, he says, "It was revealed to them, the prophets, that they were serving not themselves, but you." They were serving not their generation, but a different generation, a future generation, a different time, a future time. They were serving in Peter's day the elect exiles in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the hol hol hol hol hol hol hol hol hol hol hol holy spirit sent from heaven everything builds upon itself one after another serving one another and that's why the second thing I want you to see here is that Christianity is the most proclaimed religion in history. Number one, it's the most investigated religion in history.

Number two is that it is the most proclaimed religion in history. Peter's telling us that not only has this grace and salvation been investigated thoroughly by the prophets of old, it has also been announced, proclaimed, and preached to those in the first century with the same level of commitment and careful attention. maybe more than the prophets. And here's where we don't have to be arrogant about it, but we have to be grateful and confident and hopeful because those who announced it, those who proclaimed it, those who preached it did so with the utmost efficiency, dedication, and determination. Here's what I mean by that. I already mentioned the 25,000 known copies we have uh with the earliest copies dating to less than a hundred years within the time frame of the original gospels that were written.

The majority of these copies were produced by poor exiled homeless Christians and churches who saw the need to preserve and spread the word of God. So it it wasn't they didn't have the printing press yet. These are people who have now seen what the prophets have been talking and predicting. They've now received it because the news has been preached to them. They're now receiving the same value, the immeasurable grace that the prophets were longing for and searching out anxiously, they've received it. And just as much attention as they've put on it, they're now taking that same attention that that same immeasurable grace and value that they're ascribing to this good news and they're saying, "We've got to invest everything we have into making sure that this good news gets to as many people as possible."

Which means in their day when people are declaring or decreeing for them to say Caesar is Lord, no one cares in all honesty, no one actually cares about Caesar. If they did, we'd have more than 10 copies. No one's going to continue writing about it. It's one of the things that like what when we say yeah you can write a book and yeah people might read your books for for a few years this and that but you get forgotten. People that don't matter in all honesty they get forgotten. And it's actually one of the most grace that you can have is to actually be forgotten.

Someone once said, "We're we're just a bunch of nobodies telling everybody about somebody." Somebody. They did not care about Caesar, but the people cared about Jesus, and they invested everything they have in order to get him out to everyone. As we used to say in the south, get them out to the hollers. You don't even know what that means. It's a good question.

In a city, it's an alleyway. In the country, it's a road you don't want to go down. When we think about the Bible and proclaiming the good news, we're always going to think about it in regards to this. it it's a collection of 66 books. It's a library in our hand. This is not what the early church had.

The early church would be flabbergasted with what we possess in our hands right here. You got to understand is that first of all the many of them could not write. Many of them were illiterate. It was an oral tradition. So they would speak it to one another and they would pass it down that way. At the same time, they had professional scribes who would actually write and actually study and actually pass on information from one generation to the next.

And one of the most fascinating things about the scriptures is that again they invested everything they had in order to have the writings of the apostles and their writings of of of of Paul as far as the New Testament is concerned. They would have it collected and written, but most of them would not have it in all collection. They might have a page from something Peter wrote that they're passing around. They might have a fragment of something that Paul wrote and they're trying to take it from one group to this to the next. It was very rare for them to have one book of the Bible in one like because only the wealthy. It it took so much money to put together because these are written on animal skins.

They're written on papyrus. They're written on parchments. And so in order to make a manuscript, and one of the things that Wes Huff talks about in in his um apologetics on um ancient manuscripts is he talks about how what was fascinating in their finds in the first and second centuries is that they would actually find the the gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John gathered together and bound in one leather thing. So they were actually starting to put things together. And then secondly, they would find the the letters of Paul written and and and concoct it together, the the 12 13 depending on your uh whoever you think wrote Hebrews. Um but they would combine these together.

But he said they started studying how much did it cost for them to actually put those together. And to even put like the four gospels together or the epistles together would take anywhere from 50 to 350 sheep and goats in order to pull this off. And then once you actually get the the the the parchments and and just the the the paper essentially to then hire scribes to actually come and record on all of them with such detail to make sure that it's 99. 5% accurate to the original manuscripts. It would cost anywhere produce one codeex, that's what they called it, a codeex to produce one codeex would cost anywhere from 70 to $250,000 in today's money. And the people this are broke Christians who are homeless and scattered.

It's phenomenal. I mean, just when you do the study on the value that early Christians placed on scripture and multiplying the scripture and spreading the word of God so that it's pronounced to those who need to hear it, it's staggering. Uh, a book we're reading right now, Spiritual Disciplines by Donald Whitney says, um, I'm going to butcher the quote, but I'll paraphrase it. We would see the largest dust storm sweep across America if people picked up their Bibles. like something has happened over the last 2,000 years where maybe because it's so easy for us to have access to it that that the value of it has gone down. Is skin in the game?

Is that is that does that come from the animals parchments thing? I don't know. But they had skin in the game. And I don't think it was just because they were just trying to start something new. I think it's because again they focused on the central figure in which they are proclaiming and teaching about and that's why I want to bring you to the third thing. Christianity is the most marvelous religion in history.

Peter shows us something very fascinating here. the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things into which angels long to look. I love this. We've covered prophets. We've covered the early church, the apostles preaching and proclaiming the good news.

They're they're they're searching. They're inquiring anxiously. They're investigating into this good news that's going to come. they have received the good news and and it's so amazing that they're wanting to spread it to as many people as possible and get it out and multiply it as much as possible. And then he closes it with this almost future oriented out of time little phrase that it would be easy to just run past things into which angels long to look. What's fascinating about this is that angels, the ones he's referencing, have never sinned.

These angels have never been redeemed. These angels have never needed forgiveness. And yet, when you study the original text, it says they stoop down to study salvation. I mean, they're looking at it like, "Can you believe what is happening here? This is the most amazing thing we've ever seen." Why?

Because grace is something angels can observe but never experience themselves. They're on the edge of their seat watching as it plays out. the incarnation of Luke 2, the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4, the cross of Christ in Luke 23, the resurrection in Matthew 28, the spread of the church in Acts two. And as the angels are watching this, I mean, it's almost like they're getting to watch the greatest film that's ever been written and produced by God. They've got a front row seat watching this history play itself out and they are marveling. It reminds me of the parable of the lost coin in Luke 15 8-10 where it says, "What woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one coin does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?"

That's like the prophets. And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost." That's the apostles in the early church. Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. That's the angels marveling, looking down on what's going on among us. Why?

because it's concerning this salvation that we've received. This salvation has been anxiously searched out, investigated, inquired upon by prophets. It's been then proclaimed and spread at incredible costs by the apostles who searched and preached the good news. It's been capturing the attention of angels who lean in and are captivated every time a sinner turns from sin and trusts in the Savior, Jesus. As we come to the close of our time this morning in God's word, Peter points again to this salvation. This salvation like it's it's if if what you walk away with is man, could you imagine the prophets like just doing that type of investigative work?

Man, that's awesome. or if you even just walk away with, can you imagine like how much money and time it took for the early church to produce manuscripts and copies of the original writing so that everyone else gets to be able to see it? Or I'm now down the rabbit trail of what's an angel? How many eyes do they have? Why are they tell us to not fear them? What are angels?

What are fallen angels? If you walk away and any of those three things are what captivated you, you're actually still going to miss the entire point. You're going to miss the entire point. What's so amazing about all three categories is the point that captivated them, the salvation and revelation of God and what he's doing to fix and redeem all of human history to be in right relationship with him. And so the fourth thing I want you to see here is that salvation, this salvation, what he started off with when he said concerning this salvation, salvation saves us from sin and for our savior. Salvation saves us from sin and for our savior.

Saved from what? I want you to hear this. I want you to meditate on this. I want you to think about this. And not just for yourself. I want you to think about it in regards to those who are in your life around you as well.

Because what you are saved from the early church also understood, but they understood it in such a way that they said, "We've got to get this out to everybody. We got to let everybody know we are saved from the disease and guilt of sin. We are saved from the disease and guilt of sin. Sin is like a terminal illness that would destroy us utterly. And yet the wounds of Christ become the cure. Become the cure.

We are saved from the righteous judgment of God which our sin rightly deserves. But because Christ bore that judgment in our place, we don't receive it. We're saved from it. We're saved from the roaring, devouring power of the devil whose schemes are real, relentless, and deadly. And he's also been utterly defeated by the son of God. We're saved from death and evil.

We're saved from all those things. And that that should cause us to start looking at the gospel, this good news, as good news, but as the most valuable news that you're ever going to receive. But it's also not just what we're saved from. It's also what we're saved for. We're saved for relationship with the shepherd of our souls, God. We're saved for God who leads us to green pastures and still waters, which means we're saved for rest.

Rest. Like true rest, not like a Saturday nap or maybe a Sunday afternoon nap. would be nice. But we're saved for eternal soul level rest. No more anxiety, no more worry, no more stress, joy. We're saved for eternal glory.

An inheritance that will never fade. Honor that will never be stolen. A joy that will never diminish. We're saved for exaltation and everlasting delight. The kind of joy that will fill our hearts at the revelation of Christ's glory. So in other words, we are saved from the worst thing you could possibly ever imagine.

And we're saved for the greatest thing you could never imagine. This salvation is what is accomplishing this for us, producing this in us. So Peter's reminder in verse 10 concerning this salvation, it's an invitation for us to see the infinite worth of what we have in Jesus. Why? because they're elect exiles who are dispersed and scattered without home seemingly at the time without nation because that's coming. He tells them basically Israel Jerusalem and it does it happens in AD70 it gets ransacked and it ceases to exist.

So they are seemingly a people without a king, without a country. And yet Peter's encouraging them to be the most joyful people that exist on the face of the earth. Why? Because you have a king and because he has a kingdom and you're a part of it. You're a part of it. This salvation has been examined and longed for by the prophets.

It's been announced by the apostles. It's been testified by the spirit. It's been marveled at by the angels. It's infinitely valuable. And knowing what we are saved from and what we are saved for should fill us with gratitude, strengthen our hope, and awaken worship in our hearts. There's no other response that is a right response than that alone.

And so, church, the word of God is clear. We do need to be saved. And we have been. We have been saved by the blood of Jesus. We've been saved from sin, Satan, and judgment. We've been saved for relationship, glory, and everlasting joy.

And I want that truth to sink deep into your souls this morning. When you walk away from this place today, this week, I want you to recount. I want you to journal about the salvation that God has done in your life. Recount your story. What has he saved you from? What were the addictions of your life?

What was the lack of hope in your life? What was the loss in your life? What what did he save you from? And then what has he also saved you for? What's he brought you into? I want you to think about that.

I want you to dwell on that this week. I want it to shape your prayers. I want it to shape your courage. I want it to shape your worship this week. Why does Peter tell us all this to kind of tease next week a little bit? Verse 13, he goes, "Therefore," there's always put therefore a reason.

Therefore, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So he goes, "Concerning this salvation and everything that was the first nine verses, according to his great mercy, he's caused you to be born again to a living hope and inheritance that's unfading, that's kept for you by the blood of Jesus through faith. You get to receive it. And God's never going to let it go away from you because of that salvation. that salvation that the prophets investigated tirelessly, that the apostles invested everything they have in order to multiply it and get it out and spread it to as many people as possible. And that angels are on the edge of their seats watching this movie play out and they want to replay it over and over and over again.

And every single time, even though they know the punchline, every single time they see another sinner get saved, they start rejoicing again and they start celebrating this salvation. Set your hope fully on that grace. Set your hope fully on that grace. Don't set your hope on anything else. And also don't let it be partial hope, divided hope, or backup hope. It's full hope.

All of your hope, all of your life, all of your confidence. Like what when you think about the hard things in your life and you're thinking, man, if I just do this, well, that's me hoping in whatever I can do. Or if this just happens, well, that's me hoping that another thing will work out. set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you. Again, brought to you. You don't manifest it.

You don't bring it to him. He brings it to us. And so as we come to the Lord's table, we are touching symbolically, we are touching the very grace Peter describes to us. The prophets long for this day. The angels marvel at this redemption. They still celebrate in heaven every time someone's born again.

And we now At our time in the historical timeline, prophets looked forward. Apostles received it. Angels are marveling at it. We are remembering it. We're remembering it. We're a part of the team.

His body broken. His blood poured out. Suffering before glory, cross before crown. This is the only way that it could be accomplished for you and I to receive this salvation. And as we approach Easter, we always talk about Good Friday. When you experience Good Friday, it doesn't feel like there's anything good about it.

a perfect savior, a perfect person, the second person of the trinity. Jesus who's never had a bad thought, never done anything wrong, never hurt anybody, never said anything bad of anybody. Like, we look around all the time when we look at when we open up our social media and and there's people we're like, "Yeah, crucify that person. Get rid of that person. That'd be great if they did not exist anymore. We make terrible gods.

We make terrible gods. But when we come to Good Friday, we look at Jesus. And the hard part is like when I look at the story, I always think, how in the world could they do this to him? How could they do this to him? And I just always forgot. I always forget that it was me that did it to him.

It was me. It was you. It was all of us. Our sin placed him there. Our sin put him there. And so may we be like the angels today and stoop in and look at this event that happened 2,000 years ago.

This perfect person. this God man, Jesus Christ, who did not deserve what happened to him, but wanting to give you what you don't deserve, he took what he did not deserve. And he exchanged your sin for his righteousness. He broke his body so that you don't have to. He shed his blood so that you don't have to. He took the wrath of God so that you don't have to.

That whole list, everything that we are saved from, he became and took and had it placed upon himself so that we could re thing we're saved for which embodies everything that he is. Would you go and stand with me? This salvation is written by God. It's written by God. It's not written by man. If it was written by man, we would have had a 12step process on how to get saved.

We'd have figured it out. Here's how much money you need to give. Here's how many good things you need to do. Here's how many things you need to stop doing that are bad things. Here's what you need to think intellectually. Get your way in there.

Here's who you need to avoid. Here's who you need to associate with. I mean, every other world religion, that's what they're doing is they're figuring all those things out. And God writes a different story for us. He writes a different religion. He writes a different belief system.

He writes a different faith. He says this is something you can put fully all of your hope on is that you don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything. Jesus has done everything for you. He's done everything for you. He's done everything for you.

You get to receive it by faith. If there's anyone in this room this morning who have never received the message of Jesus Christ, the fact that God calls you to be perfect and you're not. And so therefore, Jesus comes and lives the perfect life that you could not in your place. Everything's a substitute. He substitutes your perfect life, your imperfect life for his perfect life. And then because you're imperfect, the wages of sin is death.

We're we're headed towards death because of our sin. And Jesus comes onto the scene and says, "I'm also going to take that for you as well. I'm going to take your death in your place. I'm going to substitute myself for you and I'm going to take death and I'm going to give you life." And because the wrath of God towards Jesus was satisfied with his sacrifice for our sins, Jesus three days later resurrects from the dead. He comes back to life.

an event that is the most scrutinized and investigated event in all of history. And from a world view, no one has an answer for it. But from a Christian view, from a biblical view, we know exactly what happened. He came back to life. And he's guaranteeing for all of us new life to be born again to receive grace and mercy to be born again to a new and living hope that is an inheritance forever. This is salvation.

And we receive it by believing that Jesus is who he is and that he did what he did and that right now he's ruling and reigning in heaven alongside of God on the throne and he's calling us to him. Bend your knee to me and I'll save you. If there's any anyone in this room who has never done that and today they want to put their hope fully on Jesus and not themselves and not this world, then I want you to do that right now. This prayer doesn't save you. It's it's the work of God, the spirit of Christ in you bringing you from death to life. You just pray something similar like, "Lord, I I am a sinner.

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I have no hope in myself. I have no hope in others around me. But all I know right now in hearing the word preached and hearing the good news proclaimed, all I know is that the work of that man on that cross somehow accounts for me and it forgives me of my sins. And I want to submit my life to him. I want to follow him.

I I believe in him. I trust him. I don't trust anything else in this world. I want Jesus. And I want to be with him forever. Lord, save me.

For the rest of us in this room who have already made that profession of faith in the past, the wonderful thing that Jesus does for us at the Lord's Supper is he gives us an opportunity to never forget it. To never forget it. To overflow and be filled up with the goodness and the joy that comes from remembering what he did for us. And so if you prayed that prayer for the first time, if you are a believer and you've been a believer for a long time, I want to invite you to come down and grab these elements. I want you to bring them back to your seat and at the end of the song, we will take some time and we will remember all that Jesus has accomplished for us. Come on down.