Gospel in Life

Guest (Male): Each year Gospel in Life offers a daily devotional during the season of Lent, the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday. You can sign up to receive these daily devotionals by email at gospelanlife.com/lent. That's gospelanlife.com/lent. Now, here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching.

Tim Keller: We're just doing a consecutive exposition of the gospel according to Peter. 1 Peter, and I'm going to read to you the same passage we read last week and just open up what it says. It's 1 Peter, chapter 1, and we're going to look at verses 10 to 12. Let's read it.

"Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but serving you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things."

Into which things even angels long to look? This is God's word. Actually, we started looking at this last week, and this week we're going to conclude our look at these three little verses, which I'm pretty certain are a kind of tangent, an addendum. As we said last week, good pastors and good communicators anticipate people's questions.

In the first few verses of Peter, he says that if you're a Christian, if you have received salvation, which means deliverance, if you have received this deliverance from your sin, from your brokenness, if you've received this salvation, then when you go into times of trouble and suffering, instead of that suffering breaking you, it'll refine you.

Just like putting metal through a furnace just refines and purifies it, so if you have this great salvation, Peter says, you will find as you move on through these sufferings, it'll just make you better. We talked about this as I was preparing people for worship. You can see this in so many ways and so many places in the Bible. In the book of Mark, chapter 1, we see Jesus Christ has an experience at his baptism of the Holy Spirit coming down from above.

As he receives the Holy Spirit, he gets this assurance that he belongs to the Father. He hears the voice of the Father saying, "This is my son whom I love, in whom I am well pleased." Something people forget and some people miss is that the fullness of the Spirit is always linked to an assurance of your adoption. The fullness of the Spirit isn't a kind of naked power, it's not a kind of electricity where here it comes and now I'm able to do more things. No, it's the power that comes from the realization and the assurance that the great King of heaven is my Father who loves me and is completely pleased with me because Jesus Christ is my righteousness, my goodness, my record, my advocate, and my priest.

The power is not an artificial power, it's not a mechanical power, it's a personal power that comes just from the excitement, the thrill, and the freedom of knowing God is your Father. The minute he experiences that, what are we told? He's driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit and he's with the wild beasts. But as soon as he goes through that terrible experience of temptation in the wilderness, he is prepared for preaching.

He then begins to preach in a powerful way. An experience of your salvation, an experience of being adopted, and an experience of God's love plus an experience of trouble in the wilderness and wild beasts equals power to serve others. It's the same thing as Peter's saying. If you understand you received your salvation, then going into the furnace actually doesn't turn you into a cinder, it turns you into pure gold.

Now, we get to verse 10 and suddenly Peter does a little bit of a digression. I think this is the reason why: because I think he anticipates somebody saying, "Okay, I'm a Christian. I believe in all this salvation and I believe in Jesus and he died for me and all that, but I'm not rejoicing in my trials. I'm not moving on through my suffering feeling like I'm being purified like pure gold. Not at all. I'm not rejoicing in my sufferings. What's wrong with me?"

What Peter actually does in these little three verses is say that the reason a lot of us who do believe in the good news and do believe in the gospel still are not able to handle our troubles is we do not know how to look into the gospel. At the very end, it says, "It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who preached the gospel to you, into which things even angels long to look."

First of all, the word "long" is an extremely strong word. It's a Greek word that means passion and obsession. The word "look" is usually used to mean to gaze. For example, in James chapter 1, it talks about an illustration used where it says, "If a man sees, beholds his face in a mirror." Behold is a good English word. It's a better word even than the word gaze. To behold means that you're not just looking at it, but it holds your gaze, it holds your attention, or that you hold on to it and you look at it, you study it, and you examine it.

What this is saying is the angels are obsessed with the gospel. It's a present tense. It's not saying back then when the prophets were speaking the angels were intrigued because they wanted to know too when the Messiah was coming. No, this is a present tense and what it's saying is the angels are obsessed with the gospel. They continually look into it. They long to look into it. They gaze into it the way you'd look into a beautiful fire, a beautiful person, or a kaleidoscope. They're obsessed with the gospel. They look into it all the time.

Really, what Peter's actually saying is you'd better too, or else you will not be able to handle your troubles. That's the reason why you can't. That's the gist of the passage. But having told you the gist of the passage, he gives you a few how-tos in here. What does it mean to gaze into the gospel the way the angels do? Think about this. The angels are not idiots. The angels are pretty smart. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They're probably smarter and overall more disciplined people than us.

Therefore, the gospel cannot simply be a body of information. You can only look into a body of information so long. You get a book and you have to study it and master it. So you read it and you master it and you master it and you master it. Let's say finally you memorize it. Well, at a certain point you know it. And if the gospel was nothing but a kind of set of information, well then you've got to figure that their mental prowess and capacity is much greater than ours. They'd say, "I know the gospel."

Is there anybody out there that feels like they know the gospel? "They know it. Let's talk about something else. I want to go beyond it. I want to talk about deeper teaching." One of the giveaways of what a childish attitude that is if you ever watch children. We baptize our children, we try to raise them in church, we try to teach them things. But it's so typical. If you try to teach a child a Bible story, if you go into a sixth-grade class and you start to tell them about the parable of the sower or Jesus healing the blind man, if the kids have been in church for a while, they say, "I already know that. I know Jesus died for my sins. What are you telling me about that for? Everybody knows that."

But isn't that true of us? We think we know it. If you know it, why are you living the way you are? If you know it, why are your troubles overthrowing you? If you know it, why do you still take your identity from what people say about you, take your identity from your accomplishments, take your identity from your dress size? Why, if you really know the gospel? You don't know it. It's not just a body of information, but it's truly a kaleidoscope of endless insights into how it applies to you and the multi-dimensional richness of it. Endless insights into what God has done.

The angels are not dummies. If they are always obsessed with looking at it, this must be bottomless. Do you know the bottomlessness of the gospel? They do. Now, if you want to learn how to gaze in the gospel, let's just take a look at this. There's really three things that it teaches us. First of all, you'd better understand what the gospel is inside the Bible. Notice it says, "Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow."

This is telling us that the Old Testament prophets knew about Christ coming. They knew that someone would come to save us. Jesus said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day." Christ was saying that Abraham knew I was coming, but had no idea about when or where. The important word here is the circumstances. The first thing, and I'll try to be brief because we mentioned this before, but it's very, very important: the gospel is a report of a historic event. The gospel is not simply wise sayings. The gospel is not simply depictions of virtue.

The myths of the Greeks and the Romans depicted virtue. Here's Hercules and he tells us something about virtue and we listen to the story and we say, "Ah, that's how we should all be." Is that the gospel? Absolutely not. In fact, it says that the prophets knew that there would be circumstances, there would be a historical moment in which this great salvation happened. Later on, it actually says in verse 12 that the things the prophets predicted, the apostles spoke of, which have now been reported to you by those who preached the gospel.

The word "told" there in the old King James Bible is the word "report." The gospel is a report. What's a reporter do? Well, some reporters do philosophize and some reporters do interpret, but the main job of a reporter is to tell you what happened. The essence of the gospel is it's not a teaching, it's not a lot of wise sayings, it's not ethical. The gospel leads to ethics, wisdom, and wise teachings, but the gospel primarily is a report of an event.

The word gospel comes from the word that meant good news, which means the heralds would come into town and say, "Good news, something has happened." Heralds did not come into town and say, "Good news, a penny saved is a penny earned." The herald did not walk in and say, "Good news, crime does not pay." The herald did not come in with wise sayings. The herald came in and said, "Something has happened in history that changes everything and you must respond to it." The herald might come in and say, "Crime does not pay because the King has triumphed, because he's landed." But the difference is the wise sayings are based on a gospel, on a fact, on a report.

Guest (Male): Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world, and how do we handle it in a way that won't destroy us but could actually make us stronger, wiser, and more hopeful? All month long on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller is teaching from the book of 1 Peter and looking at how Peter encouraged early believers who were facing intense suffering and pain. In his book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Dr. Keller takes a deeper look at how, with God's help, we can face life's most intense challenges and confront the hard questions on suffering.

Through deep pastoral insight and real-life stories, Dr. Keller explores how we can face pain and suffering in our own lives. This month, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering is our thank-you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the message of Christ's love and compassion with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: Now, if you happen to believe that gazing at the gospel means looking at the Sermon on the Mount and looking at the way we're supposed to live and love thy neighbor as thyself, if you're the kind of person who says, "I want to be a Christian, but I don't know whether I believe that Jesus was God, I don't know whether I believe that he died on a cross for my sins, I don't know whether I believe the accounts of the gospels. I'm not sure about that. But all that matters to me is that Jesus is a wonderful model of compassionate living and I want to follow that model."

Think. You think that Jesus Christ's model is good news? My friends, Jesus Christ is so wonderful, his example is so great, and his wisdom is so wonderful that he damns us with every word. He's nothing but depressing if he didn't come to die for your sins and to do something in history. If he's simply a model, if he just comes with wise sayings, live like this, obey the golden rule, if that's the good news, we're lost. We're lost. Think about it. There's nothing encouraging about Jesus Christ if he comes as a teacher, as a wise person, as a philosopher.

No. You don't have to believe that Jesus is God come in the flesh. You don't have to believe that he died on the cross for our sins to change us forever. You don't have to believe that he rose physically from the grave and now stands at the right hand of the Father and he represents us before the Father. You don't have to believe that. But if you want philosophy instead of that, go to other religions. They're all about that.

If you just want a teacher, if you just want an example, go to them because that's what they are about. But Christianity never has been about that. The gospel is he has done something for you. Your sins are forgiven, death has been broken, he died in your place, and he rose triumphant over the grave. That's the gospel. The Bible is full of how to win over worry, how to deal with guilt feelings, how to raise a happy family, how to overcome bitterness, how to face grief. Of course. But only because there's a gospel. Otherwise, everything else the Bible says is babble. It's nonsense. There's no help for your worry, there's no way to deal with grief unless these things actually happened.

That's very, very important to realize. All the great things you see in the Bible—the philosophies, all the wisdom, all that stuff, how to handle worry and deal with grief—don't you dare think that that is the gospel. That's a consequence of the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus Christ, at a certain moment in circumstances of time, suffered and died for us. That's the first thing. That's the gospel. That's what you have to look at: what he's done for you. If you just gaze, if you think what it means to gaze into the gospel and be obsessed with the gospel is just to look at what he says: turn the other cheek, be generous, give and don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, forgive everybody seventy times seven, read all that stuff. If you think that's what it means to gaze into the gospel, all that stuff is wonderful to read if you first understand that he's actually done something. What you're gazing into is what he's done for you.

Secondly, the way to gaze into the gospel is to read the Bible. Maybe that's pretty obvious, but I guess we'd better lay it out here. Peter is saying that the place you find this wonderful gospel that the angels are obsessed with is to read the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament. In verse 10, it says the prophets foretold it in a kind of shadowy way. They yearned to see when it was going to happen. But they never were really able to tell all the details. However, the same Spirit that told the prophets that Jesus was coming now guides the apostles who preach the gospel to you.

Now, here's what this teaches us. Secondly, you have to read the Bible. You have to gaze into the Bible. One of the things that's wonderful here is this is giving us a doctrine of the scripture. The doctrine of the scripture is that the things the prophets and the apostles said are actually the words of the Spirit of God. You have a wonderful doctrine of the scripture and I can only mention it very briefly.

On the one hand, you've got a kind of stenographer approach to the inspiration of the scripture. Many people seem to think that God just sort of zapped the prophets and the apostles and the prophets and the apostles in a kind of stenographic way just wrote things down. When actually you see here that they were involved. They searched out, they were looking. They said, "Gosh, look, God's showing us something that the Messiah is going to come." But they searched intently to know when it was going to come.

What an interesting statement this is. It means that they were human beings. They didn't lose their cognition, they didn't lose control. And yet, what was coming to them they knew was not a product of their own wisdom. Their words were God's words. If you want a perfect example of this, in Acts chapter 4:25, Peter says, "The Lord God who by the mouth of David did say by the Holy Spirit..." and then he quotes Psalm 2.

That's how the biblical writers understand what else is happening in the Bible. They know that David wrote Psalm 2. But they know that the Holy Spirit so moved David that whatever David says, God says. And that's how you have to read the Bible. You have to look at it that way. How can you have that kind of view of the Bible? How can you have a view of its authority?

There's really only two ways to read the Bible. You can either accept what Jesus said about it, because this was Jesus' view too, and I don't have time to go into it. You can accept what Peter and Jesus and all those folks said about it, and you can let the Bible have authority over your thinking. Or you can decide that you're the authority and you know best how to go through it and sort out what's right and wrong and you can let yourself be the authority over what the Bible says. You can either let your own reason be ascendant over the Bible, or you can let the Bible be ascendant over your own reason. Those are the only two possibilities.

As a result, if you are unwilling to take this view of the scripture, it's very hard to gaze into the gospel. I'm not saying that in order to be a Christian you have to believe every word of the Bible. I'm saying that if you want to be a consistent Christian, you do. Because it's really silly to say I believe what Jesus said, I believe he died for me, he's my Lord, but I don't believe what he taught about the scripture. What Peter says is the same thing that Jesus said. Peter was Jesus' apostle. He looks at the scripture and says it's the work of the Spirit of God. You've got to trust the Bible or else you will never be able to see it as what it is: a letter from God to you about the gospel.

Last of all, it says the only way you're going to ever find the Bible making sense to you is if you see it's all about the sufferings and glory of Christ. Everything is about the sufferings and glory of Christ. According to Peter, all of the Old Testament is about the sufferings and glory of Christ. Well, somebody says that's not right. Well, sure, look at the prophecies. The prophecies are all about Christ. We're told in Genesis 3 that the Redeemer will be human. We're told in Isaiah 9 he's a mighty God, he's Immanuel. In Isaiah 7, that he'll be God. We're told that he'll suffer and be killed in Isaiah 53. We're told that he'll rise again in Psalm 16: "You will not let your holy one see corruption." And so you go through and you see the prophecies are about Jesus.

Well, somebody says, "What about Leviticus? What about all that stuff that's so hard to read about the sacrifices, about the Tabernacle?" That's all about Jesus. Jesus was the sacrifice that the Old Testament was pointing to. Jesus was the bread on the altar. Jesus was the lampstand in the holy place. Jesus was the Temple itself. He's the place where you meet God. Well, somebody says, "What about the law?" Oh, look at it. The law is all about Jesus.

When you read the Ten Commandments, when you read the Proverbs, when you read any part of the Old Testament, what are you looking at? It's about the moral excellence of Jesus and what he has done for you. He did this for me. He fulfilled this for me. All of the moral perfection of Jesus, because he's the only one who ever loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. He's the only one that ever loved his neighbor as himself perfectly. He fulfilled the law and the law is all about the righteousness that has been imputed to you when you receive him as Savior. Do you read the law like that? It sure makes you feel good if you do it that way.

That's not all. One last thing. Even the history of Israel is all about the sufferings and glory of Jesus. Jesus was the true prophet. Jesus was the true priest. Jesus was the true king. And so all the history of all the other prophets, priests, and kings just point to Jesus. But more than that, do you know what Israel was? God, out of all the nations of the earth, chose one nation and said, "I want you to be faithful to me and keep my commandments." But a lot of them didn't. And so, out of the 10 tribes, they eventually were pushed away and they were punished and they were lost.

Then you're down to one tribe, Judah. Will you keep the covenant? But a lot of them didn't, and they were sent away into exile. And so only a remnant came back after the exile to Babylon. Will you do it? Down, down, down. In the end, how big is Israel, according to the New Testament? How many people have been faithful to the covenant? How small is the remnant? I'll tell you who Israel is. There's only one person left according to the Bible.

In the book of Hosea, it talks about the fact that when the Israelites were called out of Egypt, when God led them out under Moses, in Hosea it says, "Out of Egypt I called my son." And yet, in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew is able to apply that to Jesus himself because Jesus is the true Israel. He's the only one that fulfilled the covenant and that means that all of the blessings promised to the children of Abraham belong to Jesus alone. He alone inherits the promises. He alone inherits the blessings. He is the true Israel. All of the history of Israel is about him. All the ceremonial law is about him. All of the law and the wisdom is about him. All of the prophecy is about him.

Do you know how to read the Bible? That it's all about the sufferings and glory of Jesus? If you don't, the Bible is going to be to you like it was to Mark Twain. Mark Twain used to have nightmares at night about the Bible. He used to dream about this huge Bible put on his chest, crushing him, breaking his bones, suffocating him. He couldn't breathe. If you read the law except as about the sufferings and glory of Christ, if you read the ceremony, if you read the history of Israel, it'll crush you. That's not how you gaze at the gospel. You have to read everything as if it's about the sufferings and glory of Jesus.

Until you learn how to read the whole Bible through the gospel, so that you see actually the gospel is enshrined in the Bible in a thousand different ways, it's like a glorious kaleidoscope. There's a never-ending different number of ways in which the gospel is laid out there for you so that you get the richness of it, you get it over and over again so it permeates you and saturates you and changes the way you do everything. But it only happens if you read everything in the Old and New Testament through this one thing: it's all about the sufferings and glory of Christ.

In Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus after his resurrection meets these two downcast disciples. And of course, they don't recognize Jesus. And he says, "What's the problem?" And they say to him—get this—they say, "You know, we thought that Jesus Christ would redeem Israel. We thought he would redeem us. And yet he died on a cross." We thought he'd redeem us, but instead, he died on a cross. Jesus looked at them and he said, "O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken."

And then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all scripture concerning himself. And he said, "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Jesus said if you don't understand what's going on in life, it's because you haven't learned to see everything through the sufferings and glory of the Messiah. He proved that every part of the scripture is about his sufferings and his glory.

Have you learned to read the scripture that way? There's some people out here who don't believe the scripture is a coherent body. I challenge you, I charge you, I dare you to start reading the Bible carefully, start reading the Bible systematically and comprehensively and say, "Is it all about Jesus?" If you begin to read the Bible like that, I'm sorry, you'll never gaze into the gospel simply by reading John 3:16 every morning. You'll never gaze into the gospel and get obsessed with the gospel and have your life changed by the gospel unless you start to actually look into the words of the prophets and the apostles. Read the scripture all through the suffering and glory of Christ.

Do you understand the bottomlessness of the gospel? He can make your joys to weep and your griefs to sing, the hymn writer says. And your own sufferings, you'll begin to see why they are there. You won't be confused like the people on the road to Emmaus. "We thought he was going to redeem us, but instead he died on the cross." O foolish of heart, don't be like them. Gaze into the gospel. Let's pray.

Our Father, we ask that you'd now help us to be disciplined enough to read the scripture, to be smart enough to trust the scripture, to be obedient enough to come to it and seek to read it through the sufferings and glory of your Son. We ask that you'd help us to look into it just the way the angels do until we become as full of Christ as they are. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Tim Keller here at Gospel in Life. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel in Life would like to email you a daily Lent devotional. You can sign up to receive these daily emails at gospelinlife.com/lent. That's gospelinlife.com/lent. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.