Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, #3, Int'l Day of Prayer: With Persecutions

I. Introduction
A. This is the Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken series finale.
B. It is also the Int’l Day of Prayer for Persecuted Christians, which we heartily support. As it says in Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”
C. That’s why the subtitle of this sermon is With Persecutions, which comes from Mark 10:28-31: Peter began to say to him [Jesus], “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
1. This theme is also mentioned in 1Peter 1, where it says in v.6-7 “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
D. However, both passages, though acknowledging the reality of suffering, are focused on something greater. If we think persecutions are the big story, we’re missing the main thing.
E. “Glorious things of thee are spoken” Those words are taken from a hymn by that name by John Newton. It is based on Psalm 87, a psalm about the specialness and glory of Jerusalem. Why is Jerusalem so special? Because it is God’s city, because “the LORD loves the gates of Zion.” (V.2)
1. One of my favorite parts of Psalm 87 is v.4-6 “This one and that one were born there,” they say.
2. In other words, the most special thing about you, if you are Christ’s, is that you are one of those who are from God’s city.
3. Hebrews 12:22 “You have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”
II. 1Peter 1:10-12
A. Here we’re told that the OT prophets who predicted the coming of the Christ were straining to try to figure out what their own prophecies meant. They were not being given enough information for them or their contemporaries to figure out many details about the coming messiah.
1. It turns out that God didn’t want it all to be clear at that time.
2. It turns out that OT prophets, NT apostles/evangelists/missionaries, and even angels have been mainly called to serve us, that is, those who have been and are being saved by Jesus.
3. Ultimately, their words were really primarily for us, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1Cor.10:11).
B. “Prophets labored their entire lives to present the true gospel to us. Preachers have traveled around the globe to ensure that it has gained a hearing before us. Angels would like nothing better than to gaze into what God has done for us.” (Helm, D. R., 1 & 2 Peter and Jude) We don’t realize what those people went through — for us.
1. “All these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised.”(Hb11:39)
2. Their aloneness
3. No visible sign of fulfillment for hundreds and even thousands of years
C. Again, we are the ones who have what many could merely long for.
1. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (Matthew 13:16-17)
D. 12 “things into which angels long to look”
1. The Greek word here translated “look” is interesting. “The verb PARAKUPTO means ‘to stoop over to look.’ It implies willingness to exert or inconvenience oneself to obtain a better perspective.” (Blum, E. A.)
2. The angels know God so intimately. They see Him face to face. They are privy to ongoings of the very throne room of God.
3. They are also perfectly righteous so that their perspective is not clouded by sin.
4. But there’s one thing they don’t get, one thing which blows their minds: “Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should be the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their sakes?” — Maclaren
5. We marvel at what a great athlete can do on the court or field. We marvel at some person’s cleverness or some new technology. We marvel at the beauty of some model or movie star.
a. Do angels marvel at these things? It doesn’t seem so. In fact, this must seem almost silly to those creatures of far greater glory and power than ours.
6. What do angels marvel at? They marvel at our salvation! Why?
a. They know better God's righteousness and hatred of evil and sin.
b. They know the requirements of the law of God. (The law was given through angels - Gal.3:19; Acts 7:38,52-53; Heb.2:2.)
c. They understand better how wicked man is.
d. They know far better the love that God has for His people: they can see it in the reason they exist and in the jobs they are given. They see what zeal God has for His precious children.
e. They know that though mankind is inferior to them, that through Christ, they are being exalted to glory.
f. They know that grace is not a given, for they know that this grace was not made available to their kind. There is no hope for their fellow angels.
g. And so they marvel!
7. Think about this historically. Angels straining to figure out what God is doing: they knew the Son but apparently didn’t know about the coming incarnation/crucifixion/resurrection. They knew that God was forgiving of His people but didn’t understand how He could do so and also uphold His justice.
a. And then they’re called to a meeting before the throne of God (Job 1:6; 1Kings 22:19). And it is explained to them that the Son of God is going to be born in human flesh. And the things which they had always long to understand begin to revealed to them.
b. And then a large body of them are told to show up on a given date at a certain place on the hills outside Jerusalem where they would be revealed in glory to a few shepherds in order to praise God and announce peace between God and man through this newborn Baby.
c. We often ponder what that must have been like for the shepherds. But what was it like for the the angels who had so longed for this. This is the moment they had been waiting for since the creation of the world. This is probably the most exciting thing they had ever done (and angels do some pretty exciting things). This was the climax of their ministry.
d. They must have said "Glory to God in the highest" with enormous power and sincerity.
e. They had been created to serve those men who would inherit salvation, and now the divine man was born to be the Savior, to bring salvation.
E. The NT says over and over again that Christ is God's mystery.
1. What does this mean? It is along the lines of how we go to great lengths to prepare a surprise party or special gift.
2. His coming is “the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages.” – Romans 16:25
3. Is. 49:1-2 “Listen to Me, O islands, And pay attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called Me from the womb; From the body of My mother He named Me. He has made My mouth like a sharp sword, In the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me; And He has also made Me a select arrow, He has hidden Me in His quiver.”
a. He is the big mystery now revealed, God’s secret weapon.
4. And yet the agonizing perplexity and murkiness that existed before He came was part of God’s plan to increase the glory of His coming. The people of God, the prophets, even the angels (1Pet.1:10-12) were staring into the fog straining to see Him.
III. Application
A. I don’t know if those who have gone before us can see us here or not. But if they can, what do you think they are thinking?
1. How can you feel sorry for yourselves? Don’t you realize what you have? You are so rich and yet you act like you’re poor!
2. Think about Jesus.
a. He stretches out His hand to a wicked and stiff-necked generation. (Rom.10:21)
b. “How often I have longed to gather you together as my children, but you would not have it!” (Matt.23.37)
c. He is knocking on the door eager to come in and fellowship with us (Rev.3:20).
3. I recently read a little article by RC Sproul Jr., who recently lost his wife, and wrote about how he wished he had held his wife’s hand more often. As I was preparing this sermon, I thought, Isn’t that the way we’ll feel about our relationship with the Lord. I didn’t hold His hand enough. I didn’t walk hand-in-hand with Him enough.
B. Let us not slide into the pernicious sin of being ho-hum about Jesus Christ, the sin of joylessness, the sin of self-pity.
1. As I was thinking about this during the week, I thought “I don’t worship enough!”
2. It reminded me of the line in one of our hymns: “Such guilty silence!”
3. Mankind is divided in all sorts of ways between the haves and the have-nots. But in the most important way, my good friends, we are haves.
C. The goal of these three sermons has been to help us to see how blessed we are to have Christ. Let me end by reminding us of one of Jesus’ parables: the pearl of great price (Matt.13:45-46), a story about a merchant in search of fine pearls, who found a pearl of great value, and went and sold all that he had in order to buy it.
1. There is Something so wonderful that it outshines everything else. We’ve been given a great treasure! And nothing else in our lives can compare with that. “Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also. The body they may kill. God’s truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever!” (Martin Luther)