We acknowledge that apart from it we could not know you in a personal way, but because of this book and the person that it reveals, Jesus Christ, we may know you. To whom to know is life eternal. Forgive us though for not taking time to know you as we might. Forgive us of the busy lives and reorder us.
Cause the priorities in our lives to be such that we might know you better, more deeply, and that through that knowledge of you we might be changed, transformed in the inner man by the work of the Holy Spirit from glory to glory, being changed in the image of the Savior. I pray that as we come around the communion table and focus upon your eternal plan, you will cause us to conduct our lives differently because of having been here.
Give us repentant hearts where we stray and determined wills that we might obey. Open to us now the word as we prepare ourselves for this holy time of fellowship with you and with one another. In Jesus' name, amen. Good morning. We open our Bibles together to 1 Peter chapter 1 as we think about the Father's eternal plan. God is not a god of chance or coincidence, but he is a god of plan and purpose. Because ways are not haphazard, random, arbitrary, impulsive, or capricious.
But rather the ways of God might be described as intentional, designed, purposeful, rational, conscious, deliberate. Whatever our feelings or experience may suggest otherwise is actually a lie. I suppose that many of you have been to Epcot Center in Florida, that part of Disney World that is for grown up adults, or grown up children I should say. In Epcot Center there are several exhibitions that involve films. Some of them 360 degrees around you.
Widescreen film that causes you to be lost in the experience that you're in. It's fun to be there observing the film around you. I remember at least in one of the pavilions it was a scene of flying. And as we flew across the Canadian Rockies, the plane turned and everybody shifted with it because we felt that we were right there. That was our experience. But we really knew better. We just didn't keep it in mind as we ought to.
There are times when in our lives we think that God has taken a turn on us, but we know better. Our theology, that is what we know about God, must regulate and master our feelings and our experiences. We must not allow our human intuitions or perceptions to pervert what we know to be true about God. In all God's sovereign plan, the matter of salvation is to us sinful creatures the most wondrous and glorious of all. He the Holy One, provided that we the unholy ones might call upon Him as Father.
And that privilege brings sobering admonition to us in our text. We begin reading in 1 Peter 1 verse 17. And if you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. We see something here about the eternal plan of the Father. The Father's plan is that by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, His Son, sinners might be cleansed from their sin and made right with Him, so that they might dwell with Him forever.
There are several facets of the plan that seem to be uncovered in our text. The first is that this is a plan that is rooted in past eternity. Keep in mind that before God ever created the world or Adam and Eve, God knew what would happen. God knew what would happen when He created creatures with the freedom to choose to obey or to disobey, so that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey, God was not surprised.
God did not scratch His head in amazement at what had taken place in His perfect creation, but God knew ahead of time what would happen. He gave the ability to obey or to disobey, but man's choice to disobey does not make God responsible for that decision. For God is not the author of sin, yet somehow in His absolute righteousness, He has made the existence of sin possible, even though that sin offends and blasphemes Him and all that He is.
God knew what would happen, but God also knew from before He ever created what He would do in response to man's choice. He would take the opportunity to reveal the glories of His attributes by the way that He would respond. You see, the heart of everything that God does is to make Himself known. There is no greater action on His part for the benefit of His creatures than that we might know Him.
And so in response to what He knew man would do, God provided that through something that He would do, He would make Himself known to us. So what He did even before He created was to appoint the Son, to come into the world to be the sin bearer for man who was yet to be created and who was yet to make his choice to sin. That brings us to the second facet of the plan that we see here. Not only is this a plan that is rooted in past eternity, but this is a plan that is revealed in the present age.
For this plan was realized in the coming of Jesus Christ. His appearing through His incarnation, through His sinless life, culminated by His sacrificial death, His appearing, resulted in the shedding of what is termed here precious blood, as of a lamb that is perfect without blemish and without spot. And it was the shedding of that blood of Christ that provided redemption for us. That is the plan of God revealed. Now we might ask, what about those people who lived in previous ages?
What about Moses or Abraham or Enoch or even Adam and Eve? What about them if God's plan wasn't revealed until the coming of Christ? Well the fact is that God revealed portions of His plan to them. He gave them certain promises and through their faith in the promise of God, they were saved, saved in anticipation of the plan's ultimate completion. Today we are saved because the plan has been fully revealed. Peter says we are not saved by earthly things.
Silver and gold cannot purchase our redemption. Nor are we saved by traditions handed down to us from our forefathers. We are not redeemed by the rituals of religion. We are redeemed by one thing and that is the plan that God Himself put into motion, the sacrifice of His Son. He calls here the age in which we live these last times in verse 20. These last times, that's because everything else that came before was preparatory for the period in which you and I live.
This is the culminating period of the plan. This is the time after the sacrifice has been made. This plan of God, this eternal plan that He might save sinners was rooted in eternity past but realized in our present age. The third facet of the plan is also revealed to us in our text and it's this, that this is a plan resulting in a promised future. He says that the plan was fulfilled for the sake of you and me who through Christ have come to believe in God.
He says that your faith and hope are in God. That's the result of the plan. Our faith is in Him not in some general sense like those who say they believe in God as more than nine out of ten Americans confess. It is believing in the God of the Bible, the God who says He is a holy and righteous God who judges sin. The God who says He is gracious and merciful in providing for sinners a way of redemption. The God who has revealed His Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We have come to believe in a saving way in this God. Our trust and our dependence for our eternal well-being rests upon Him. Our faith has been placed in His plan, not in our own concoction, not in our own thinking, not in the way that we think will lead us to God, but in the plan of God rooted in past eternity and revealed in this present age. Our faith is in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ which was given as a payment on our behalf to God to deal with our sin.
But this faith brings us to a hope, for our faith is not only in God, but our hope as well is in God. If faith is our reliance upon God, our hope is our expectation that rests in Him. Our hope rests upon Christ's resurrection from the grave and His ascension to glory, for God raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory so that our hope might be in God.
This hope is mentioned earlier in the chapter that we're looking at in verse 3 where Peter blesses God who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
There he explains what our hope is, it's a living hope. It's not a hope that is based upon some dead artifact of history, some meaningless writing of human creatures, but ours is a living hope that is based upon a living person, Jesus Christ. For though He is a person of history, He is a person of eternity and He lives now forever. By His resurrection we have a living hope and we as His people are being kept and preserved for that future hope that we will realize.
He says in the last time when our salvation is revealed. There of course He's talking about the second coming of Christ. Again in verse 13 He points to this hope when He exhorts us and says, Gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Talking about the second coming of Christ, the fullness of His revelation when He comes again.
And so this plan of God while rooted in past eternity and revealed in the present age is a plan that results in a promised future for us. This eternal plan He says is so wondrous that it should lead us to obedient living. He says if in fact you call upon this God as your Father and thereby by implication you claim to be His child, His son or His daughter. If you dare to address such a God as this calling Him Father, then you should conduct yourself with fear.
He does not mean they're terror but He means with a certain reverence. We are to live our lives in this world with an awe of God. He says conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon the earth. An interesting phrase. It is a picture of a pilgrim, of one who resides in a land that is not his own. One who is an alien. Your stay upon the earth. You see the earth is not our home. As the old chorus used to say, this world is not my home, I'm just a passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. We are an alien people in this world. Oh, in a certain sense, of course we have responsibilities here as human beings, as God's creatures and as citizens of an earthly nation. Yes, there are obligations but our primary residency is not in the United States or in some other country of this world. Our primary residency is home. Our homeland, heaven. We are a people who belong to the future. The time when heaven will be revealed.
Life as it is now, Peter says, is a pilgrimage. It's not an arrival. Life now is a temporary situation that leads to our final destiny. Someone said to me this last week, we're not going to get out of this world alive. Well, there's a certain point to that, of course, but the fact is we don't expect to. Because the basis of our life, the essence of who we are is not found in this world. It's found in the next. We are a people of the future. Peter says we're to live like it.
We're not to become accustomed to this world. We are to be different. Just as God is different than anything that exists apart from him, he is holy. So we are to be holy. We are to be different than those people that we live around. We belong to another race. We belong to a new humanity, if you please. We belong to a humanity that is being conformed to the image of the perfect man, the last Adam, the Jesus Christ. And our time is not yet in this world. Our time is in an age to come.
Humans who live in their land live in a place that is designed to make them comfortable to feel at home. But for pilgrims, there is a strangeness about where they are. The customs about them are unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable. God does not intend for us to settle down and to be comfortable in this world. There is to be a certain unfamiliarity about it because we are pilgrims here. We are just staying here for a little while.
One who is a citizen of a land recognizes that he's under the rule and the law of that land. But we are under the rule and the law of heaven, our homeland. And we don't really fit in this world. A citizen of a land lives for the possessions that are currently his and his grasp. What he owns, what is his, are there with him. But that is not true of us. We are aliens here. And what we really own, what our possessions really are, are somewhere else. They are being kept for us.
Nothing can steal them. Nothing can cause them to be diminished or to fade in their glory. They are being kept there for us. But because we are not there and we are here, we are aliens without what really belongs to us. I'd like for us to keep all of this in mind as we come to this table today. Keep in mind first of all that it celebrates a plan that goes far beyond our own lifetime, brief as it is. Indeed, it goes far beyond Calvary, though it reflects the wondrous work of the Savior there.
It stretches back before Adam and Eve into past eternity when the Father planned out how He would pay for the disobedience of the creatures that He was yet to bring into existence. Obviously, we remember that this plan was realized in this age as we come to the table which pictures the blood and body of Christ. And as we come to this table, we are reminded that we are pilgrims, that we belong to a promised future that is ours through the plan and purpose of God.
We are celebrating an eternal plan that promises us a heavenly destiny. We will not always come to a table like this. Heaven is only for this life, for our stay upon the earth. Someday we're going to sit down to a banquet table and we're going to enjoy the supper with the Lamb, the great feast of our gathering together with Him. But all of that's to come yet. That's when we get home. That's part of our possessions.
That's our hope, our living hope for which we have been born again as a new humanity. As we come to this table and partake of the elements, let's remember that we are to conduct our lives in this world in fear. That we are to feel a certain strangeness about life. That there is unfamiliarity about it. But here we come together to things we share in common as the family of God. Out there we don't belong, but here we belong. And we remember that we are His creatures, called holiness.
And so if there is unholiness in our lives, it's time to confess that. If in our pilgrimage we have become accustomed to what's out there, it's time to acknowledge that in repentance. If we have become familiar to what is truly alien to us as the children of God, it's time to acknowledge that in confession of our sins. So that we might partake of these elements as a freshly cleansed and renewed generation.
May I say to you, if you do not belong to our church, but if you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, and you are seeking to walk in obedience to Him under His Lordship, we invite you to partake with us of this table, for it's His table that He gives to us to share in common as the people of God. Let's bow in gratitude for this plan, this purpose of God that He might bring us to Himself.
Oh Father in heaven, grant to us, I pray, that we may come to this table today in thoughtful humility, recognizing as much as we ever have or more so that we are the objects of grace and mercy. For upon us, your plan has been poured out so richly. What you purposed in eternity past and realized through the coming of your Son, you have done for us, for our sake, who have come to believe in you. Because we partake, may we partake with holy hands and holy hearts.
And may our hearts anticipate that glorious future that is promised to us. May we anticipate what is to come. May our eyes be taken off of this passing world with what it offers. May we not be caught up in the passing fad of things. May we be a holy people. May we be your faithful pilgrims. In Jesus name, Amen.