Peter Barnes | 1 Peter 1:1-2
SERMON NOTES
THE WORK OF THE TRIUNE GOD
1 Peter 1:1-2
1 Peter is about Christians who are suffering as pilgrims in a hostile world. Peter is writing as an apostle, to whom he calls ‘elect exiles of the Dispersion’ – read 1 Peter 1:1. That echoes the exile of Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587-6 B.C. Christians are strangers in a strange land:
We are travelling home to God
In the way the fathers trod;
They are happy now, and we
Soon their happiness shall see.
1. Christians are chosen by the Father.
– 1 Peter 1:2. This foreknowledge is not God’s foreknowledge of anything and everything; it is His particular love for a people, these elect exiles.
– Deut.7:7-8; 1 Cor.1:26-31; Rom.8:29. The Father planned what would take place – 1 Pet.1:20.
2. Christians are set apart by the Spirit.
– here ‘sanctifies’ means ‘set apart’, or ‘separated’. The Spirit sets apart those whom the Father has chosen, and brings them to Christ, and then works on them – Rom.6:19, 22; 2 Thess.2:13.
– when we sin, the Spirit is grieved – Eph.4:30.
3. Christians obey the Christ who saved them.
– Ex.24:4-8; 1 John 1:7. We are not literally sprinkled with the blood, but we are literally saved by Christ’s shed blood.
– also obedience. Robert Leighton calls this our ‘imperfect perfection’. See Ex.24:3, 7. Then 1 Peter 2:1, 16; 3:1, 7; 4:17.