According to Plan

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Go ahead and take out your Bibles, if you have them, and turn with me to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1 this morning. If you don’t have a Bible there handy, a printed Bible, then there are several apps, several websites.

Blue Letter Bible is great. Bible Gateway is good. YouVersion is great just for reading along with.

Any of those will do. But this morning, we’re going to be in 1 Peter 1, and we’re going to continue on this series that we’ve been doing about our living hope. As Peter wrote to a group of believers who were refugees, a group of people who were struggling, many times just struggling for daily survival. And he writes about God’s plans, writes to them about God’s plans.

Now, plans are important. My wife, I tease my wife from time to time about planning because my wife is a planner. I always thought that I was a planner and a detail person, but my wife is really a planner and a detail person in every sense of the word.

I tease her because we’ll be getting ready to go to bed and she’ll sit down on her side the bed and she’ll say, well, what time are you planning on doing such and such tomorrow? I don’t know. Well, what time are you planning on doing this?

I don’t know. There have been times, what time are we leaving on vacation tomorrow? Whenever we get around.

There are things that I plan, but there are not things that she doesn’t plan. And that’s the difference. As a matter of fact, last night we sat down as we were getting ready to go to bed.

I’m climbing into bed. She’s climbing and she said, now what time Monday are you going to do such and such? And I looked at her.

I leaned over the bed. I offered my hand. I said, hi, I’m Jared.

Have we met? I said, I don’t know why you keep asking me these questions. You know that I don’t plan all of that down to the last detail because I know you’ve already thought about it and you’ve probably already come up with a better plan because whatever time I say.

And guys, I’m not being ugly when I tell her this. Whatever time I say, I know she’s probably going to say, well, what about this? Because she’s thinking three steps ahead.

I’m playing checkers and she’s playing chess, at least when it comes to the schedule. I said, so I just kind of plan out the big picture of what I’m going to do, of what we are going to do on any given day, and I let her worry about the schedule. But she likes a plan.

She likes a schedule. And a lot of people are that way. I’m not putting my wife down by any stretch of the imagination.

Plans can be very comforting to us. As a matter of fact, it’s comforting to me, too. I find comfort in my plans.

I just don’t plan, and my plans just aren’t ever as detailed. But I think most of us find some comfort in plans, especially when things come up and we’ve already planned for them. And we can say, well, this is going according to plan.

What we don’t like is when things come up, when things come up unexpectedly, and our plan goes out the window, and it feels like everything is out of control now because our plan won’t work. We didn’t plan for this. You know, and I know a lot of us feel that way right now with everything going on around us.

But even when we’re not in the midst of a pandemic, we feel this way because any number of things can come up that we didn’t plan for. I remember last October, my family and I were about ready to leave on a short vacation, just a few days. And the evening before we were supposed to leave, my grandmother had a stroke and I had to drive to Oakland.

Not had to. I went to Oklahoma City to see her in the hospital and check on her. We weren’t sure, are we going to stay, are we going to go, because she looked like she was in bad condition that first night.

We had not planned for that. All sorts of things. That always seems to happen when we’re going on a trip or something.

Things come up that weren’t according to plan. We find it comforting. As human beings, we tend to find it comforting when there’s a plan.

And we tend to be disturbed when things don’t go according to plan. And I think Peter understood this as he was writing to these early Christians who are realizing that life is not going according to their plans. But he wrote to them to reassure them that there was hope, because even if our plans get upended, even if things don’t go according to plan as far as we understand the word plan to mean, God still has a plan, and God’s plans can’t be thwarted.

So look with me at 1 Peter 1. We’re going to start in verse 10, and we’re going to look at verses 10 through 12 this morning. He says, starting in verse 10, Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, who was in them, was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

To them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which the angels desire to look into. All right. If you’ve been with me the last two weeks, hopefully you remember some of what I’ve talked to you about.

These people that Peter was writing to were refugees. They had fled for their lives from the persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities and the hands of the Jewish community around them. They were in grave danger.

And so they and their families had to uproot and they had to run. He calls them pilgrims of the dispersion in 1 Peter 1. 1.

Pilgrims of the dispersion. dispersion meaning they were scattered, but pilgrims meaning that there was a godly purpose to this. It wasn’t just an accident.

Even in their scattering, they were serving God. They were pilgrims. They were on a religious, they were on a sacred journey. So he calls them pilgrims of the dispersion.

They were going along, they were running for their lives, and yet he writes to them, reminding them of the salvation they have, reminding them of everything that that God has done for them, that God has done in them, and that God has done through them. And really, the focus of this passage, these few passages that we’ve looked at in the beginning of 1 Peter 1, the theme has been hope here. That as their world looks dark around them, as their world looks chaotic around them, there is still hope for all the reasons that he outlines.

And the reason that he outlines in verses 10 through 12 that we see today, the reason they can have hope there is because God always had a plan for it. Not one bit of what they were going through took God by surprise. And I’ve told you this before, but one of the most comforting things that’s ever been prayed over me was this affirmation of God’s plans.

I remember sending a text message one time a few years ago to Brother Tim, who is my friend and our local director of missions. Sent him a text message about something that my family was going through. And he called me and he said, can I pray for you over the phone?

I said, absolutely. And he prayed for me and one of the things that he prayed was, God, we thank you that this did not take you by surprise. You did not wake up this morning and say, whoops, I didn’t see that coming.

But you knew this was going to happen and you have a plan for it. And he may not even remember saying that, as a matter of fact. He may not remember praying that for me, but I remember it.

And it was one of the most comforting things that’s ever been spoken over me in prayer. This affirmation, this reminder that God has plans and that he’s always working those plans out. And so Peter identifies here that there are these plans.

As a matter of fact, he begins to explain to them, to remind them, because I think they knew, but they needed that reminder. Sometimes we need reminders of God’s truth even when we know it, because we get in times of difficulty, and all we can see is the situation in front of us, and we forget about the context all around us of everything that God’s done and that God’s doing. We need that reminder.

So he reminded them that God had foretold his plan of salvation through the Old Testament prophets. He said, there’s a plan here that God has had and that God has been working out for centuries. Before you ever came on the scene, you pilgrims of the dispersion, you Christian refugees, before your circumstances ever went south, before, in fact, you were ever even born, God had a plan and has been working that plan all along.

And he foretold that plan through the Old Testament prophets. And Peter said these prophets, they inquired and searched carefully. They were seeking God’s will and they were seeking God’s wisdom.

They were wrestling with God, if we can use that terminology from God’s encounter with Jacob in the book of Genesis. They were metaphorically wrestling with God, trying to understand what God was doing in Israel at that time, and seeking a word from God about what He was going to do among His people. they diligently inquired they searched carefully verse 10 tells us and verse 11 gives some added context to that what they were searching and inquiring to find he says it was to find out what or what manner of time the spirit of Christ in them who was in them was indicating so they were seeking to understand the plans of God as they applied to the salvation of his people you know they knew that the Messiah would come but they were struggling to understand what kind of person the Messiah was going to be, what manner he was going to come in, when he was going to come.

They wanted to understand all these things that applied to the salvation of God’s people. They wanted to understand. And so they sought diligently to understand what God’s plans were.

And a lot of that work was not done through their intellect. gee, if I just sit down and reason really hard, I can figure out what God’s up to. A lot of that work, a lot of that wrestling was done in prayer, calling out to God to reveal His truth to them.

And so they sought diligently to understand. They knew that God’s plans were out there, and they sought to understand them. They wanted God to speak to them and reveal His plans to them.

And as a result, some of these men God did speak to and God did give special revelation to. And as a result, it says in verse 10, they prophesied of the grace that would come to you. Peter is telling these Christian refugees, he’s saying these prophets, they struggled and they studied and they prayed and God spoke to them.

And as a result, they foretold the grace that you would receive. He’s telling these people in his day that God has been talking for hundreds of years about what he was going to do for you now. And he says in verse 11 that this grace was prophesied.

Verse 11 says, as the Spirit testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. So he said these Old Testament prophets, they filled in some of the information about what was going to happen when the Messiah came. how he would suffer and yet how he would be glorified as a result of that suffering.

And part of his glorification was not only the fact that the Messiah, Jesus, would suffer and die and that he would rise again from the dead, but also that he would be glorified in his people as God makes us more like him. So there’s this whole plan of salvation and sanctification that’s been foretold for centuries. And Peter said, and they were writing about what God was going to do in you, about what God was going to do in you in this moment when everything feels chaotic and everything feels out of control.

It’s just God working out his plan that he’s been saying all along was going to happen. These prophets had written hundreds and hundreds of years ahead of time about the things that God would bring to pass for the people that Peter wrote to. Think about that.

Imagine being in that situation where it feels like everything is out of control in your life, and then to have have the apostle Peter write to you and say, everything is not out of control. God has a plan for what’s going on in your life right now. God has a plan that he’s working out in your life.

And we know this because he’s been talking about that plan for hundreds and hundreds of years. Imagine if you were told that today, what reassurance that would be. And Peter said to them, it was revealed to those prophets, To them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us they were ministering.

Their messages, the messages of the prophets, even though they were written to people in their time, their ultimate fulfillment was not about their time. Their ultimate fulfillment was, Peter says, in our time because of Jesus Christ. So God had foretold his plan of salvation through the Old Testament prophets, and this was a message to the people in Peter’s day that no matter what life threw at them, God was working out his plans. It was a reassurance that God had had a plan all along, that he’d had this plan from eternity past. He’d been working his plan out all throughout the history of Israel, and he had brought it to fulfillment because his plan, his plan was to give grace to them, to the people Peter’s writing to, to give grace to them through Jesus Christ. This message was intended to comfort believers, when they felt like life was just absolutely out of control.

Because they needed to understand, these first century Christian refugees needed to understand that God not only knew where they were and what was happening. They might feel like God’s abandoned us, God doesn’t see, God doesn’t know, God doesn’t understand. Peter’s telling them, not only does God know where you are and what is happening, He’s telling them God has always known where you were going to be and what would be happening.

He had always known. Not one bit of the suffering, of the struggle, the difficulty that they were going through, not one bit of it caught God off guard. Not one bit of it took God by surprise.

He had always known. He had plans for them. He had always had plans for them.

And he had been revealing aspects of those plans through the prophets for centuries before they were even born. And here’s the point of that. Here’s the point of that as it applied to their suffering and their struggle.

No matter what they felt like, no matter what circumstances looked like around them, things can’t really be out of control when they’re unfolding according to God’s plans. Now I want to say that again. Make sure you get it and let it sink in.

Things can’t really be out of control when they’re unfolding according to God’s plans. They may feel out of control. It may feel like the world is spinning out of control.

It may feel like there’s no rhyme or reason to it, but our feelings get things wrong all the time. No matter how it feels, it can’t really be out of control when God’s working it out according to His plan. And so you and I need to understand the same principle that applies to us as what applied to them.

Just as God had a plan for them, he has a plan for us. Now, I know he wrote to them. I think I just talked about this Friday night in my online devotional. We want to be careful and not interpret everything as though it was written directly to us.

The Bible was written for us, but it was written to a specific audience. And we have to figure out what God was saying to them and then figure out how it applies to us. But God’s plans, God’s ultimate plans for them are the same as what God’s ultimate plans are for us.

Now, the circumstances and the way he works it out may be a little bit different. I don’t at this point see us undergoing the same kind of persecution, at least not here in America in 2020, undergoing the same kind of persecution that these early Christians underwent in the Roman Empire. I don’t see that happening.

And so the circumstances of God’s plan may look a little different. But the ultimate goal of God’s plan is the same, to give us grace through Jesus Christ. This plan of salvation that he began writing, well, this plan of salvation that he had in place before the world began, And this plan of salvation that he began explaining and revealing and unfolding through the Old Testament prophets, that plan of salvation is the same for us as it was for them. God’s plans for us, just like God’s plans for them, revolve around Jesus Christ. Let me say that again, maybe a little clearer.

God’s plans for them revolved around Jesus Christ. And in the same way, his plans for us revolve around Jesus Christ. His plans for them did not revolve around their circumstances improving. For some of them, life might have gotten easier. For some of them, life might have gotten harder.

For some, it might have gotten harder before it got easier. For some of them, life might have ended before it ever got any easier. God’s plans for all of His people don’t necessarily revolve around our circumstances getting better.

And I’ve said all along through this series, if that’s where we find our hope, in the chance that our circumstances might improve, then we’re not really understanding God’s plans or the hope that he offers us. God’s plans for us and the hope that they bring do not revolve around some hypothetical future possible improvement in our circumstances. God’s plans for us revolve around Jesus.

Now, sometimes people will ask a question like this, maybe not worded this exact way, but a question like this. Okay, so if God is in control, you’re saying that God’s in control of all of this, and God’s got a plan, and God’s working it out, I get that. But if God’s really in control of this, why is everything so hard?

And the answer that I think Scripture points us to is that God is taking us, God intends to take us someplace better than a place of ease and a place of comfort. See, sometimes we look at things like where God talks about our good, where the scriptures talk about him working things out for good for us. And we just assume that good means everything’s going to be pleasant, and our circumstances are going to improve, and it’s going to be a place of ease and comfort.

We sort of conceive of this easy, comfortable life as the greatest possible good. But God sees infinitely more than we do, and God sees from an infinitely broader perspective than we do, and he understands things better than we do. And in God’s calculus on the issue, in God’s calculations on the issue, there’s a greater good than just ease or comfort.

And so God is orchestrating history to enable people to find salvation in Jesus Christ and to enable people to become more like Jesus Christ, because that’s the ultimate good. More so than getting to a place of easy or comfortable circumstances, what’s the ultimate good for us is that we would find salvation in Jesus Christ and we would find the sanctification, the holiness that the Holy Spirit produces in us that makes us more like Jesus Christ. That’s the greatest good. Whether our circumstances ever improve or not, God’s plan for us, God’s desire for us, is for us to find salvation in Jesus Christ and then grow to be more like him.

So that’s why things might still feel hard. That’s how we can say God’s in control, even though the circumstances don’t seem to be getting any easier, because God’s ultimate good and his plan for us is not necessarily to make our circumstances easier. If he does, great.

Hey, rejoice in that. But realize that’s not the end game here. That’s not the goal. The goal, what’s best for us, is to find salvation in Jesus and grow to be more like Him.

And so His plan works in that direction. God’s plan for us is not that our lives would be improved through better circumstances. It’s that our eternities would be transformed through Jesus Christ. God’s ultimate desire is not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

And so the prophets didn’t talk about our happiness or our convenience. Now they did talk about some improved circumstances for Israel, but that wasn’t their message to us. It’s not about happiness.

It’s not about convenience. It’s not about ease or comfort. Peter says in verse 11, they prophesied of the grace that would come to you.

God’s plan was to show us grace. God’s plan was to work through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ so that you and I could be offered forgiveness that we have never earned and can never deserve. To offer us grace so that we could be forgiven.

It was to orchestrate things so that God the Son would come and be a perfect, sinless sacrifice. To take responsibility for our sins when He had none of His own. and bear those sins to the cross where he was nailed to that cross, where he shed his blood and he died right there to pay for all of our sins in full so that all of that sin could be forgiven, so that our slate could be wiped clean, so that we could start a relationship with God, and so that we could experience eternal life with him in heaven.

God’s plan was for that to happen. God’s plan was to orchestrate circumstances then, the good circumstances and the bad circumstances, so that more people could come to hear that message, so that that message could convict more of us, so that we would understand our need for Jesus, and so that we would find salvation in Him and Him alone, and then that we would grow to be more like Him. And I find a lot of times it’s in those valleys, it’s in those places of difficulty where those things are most likely to happen.

People don’t tend to cry out to God when everything’s going great. But in those moments where we hit rock bottom, that’s when a lot of people cry out to God for salvation. That’s where the prodigal son realized his need for forgiveness was when he was eating out of a pig trough.

A lot of times that’s when we recognize the need for salvation in Jesus Christ is when those circumstances get so difficult and we hit rock bottom and we see our sin for what it really is and how offensive it is to God, and we seek Him, and we trust Christ. And even once we’ve trusted Christ and become believers, it’s in those times of difficulty many times that we experience the greatest spiritual growth and become more and more like Jesus, that God works in us through those times of difficulty. It’s been in some of the most painful experiences of my life that I have learned the most about what it means to receive God’s grace and then to reflect God’s grace. I don’t claim to be, man, I certainly do not claim to be a perfect Christ-like individual. But I can tell you I am a much more gracious and Christ-like person than I used to be.

And I can also tell you I would never have gotten to that point if it hadn’t been for some times of extreme suffering that God used to teach me about grace. And so we say, God, if you’re in control, if you’re working out a plan, why are things still so hard? It’s because he’s working out his plan and because the end goal is not.

The end goal is not for us just to be comfortable and have an easy life. The end goal of God’s plan is for us to come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and then to grow to be more like him. This morning, if you’re a believer, I’d say look around you and if circumstances are difficult, first of all, take heart that God has a plan.

Now, it may not be that plan for the wonderful life that you thought it was, but God does have a plan for you to make you more like Jesus. And instead of fighting those difficult circumstances, instead of kicking against his plan, we need to start seeking, God, how are you going to use this to make me more like Jesus? And we need to embrace that.

But this morning, if you have never trusted in Christ, you need to understand God’s plan was for people to come to find salvation in Jesus Christ. Not be saved because they tried harder, not be saved because they lived a good life, not be saved because they went to church either in person or online, not to be saved because they gave money. God’s plan, and God’s plan was also not for everything to be easy. God’s plan for us, God’s desire is that we find salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died on the cross, bearing responsibility for your sins so that he could pay for your sins in full, so that he could die in your place so that you can be saved.

And if this morning you recognize that you’ve sinned against God and need a Savior and you know you can’t save yourself, if you’ll believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins, you believe that he rose again and you’ll humble yourself to acknowledge that sin before God and acknowledge Jesus Christ as your Savior and ask God for forgiveness, you have the promise of God’s word that he’ll hear that prayer and He’ll answer and He’ll forgive you and save you.