The Trinity . . . At Work

Start with the headlines if you want, but the deeper story is bigger than outrage. We explore how scattered believers can live with courage and clarity by seeing salvation through the lens of the Trinity: the Father who foreloves and places us, the Spirit who sanctifies and empowers us in the present, and the Son who commands our obedience while cleansing our failures. Instead of treating exile as an accident, we reframe it as assignment.

We walk through 1 Peter’s opening lines and draw out what foreknowledge really means, why it’s more than prediction, and how that truth transforms fear into assurance. From there, we get practical about the Spirit’s daily work—opening Scripture, fueling worship that doesn’t depend on mood or music, prompting prayer when words fail, and exposing the folly of trying to run a life or a church on human power alone. If you’ve felt more foreign in your own city, we show why that ache can be a signal of grace: you’re being set apart for a different kingdom.

Finally, we center on Jesus: obedience not as legalism but as loyal listening, paired with the strong comfort of His sprinkled blood. Old Testament echoes—covenant, priesthood, cleansing—come alive and point to a joy that guilt can’t mute. The result is not escapism, but steadiness: grace and peace multiplied, not because the world calms down, but because our reconciliation with God holds firm. If you need a framework to stand steady in a shaky moment, this conversation offers it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Salvation And The Trinity
• 1:51 Cultural Decline And Moral Clarity
• 4:51 Exiles Across The Ancient World
• 6:16 Questions From A Marginalized Church
• 7:16 Three Phrases That Frame Hope
• 9:01 Chosen And Planted By The Father
• 13:11 Foreknowledge Beyond Mere Foresight
• 17:21 Scattered According To God’s Plan
• 20:36 Sanctified By The Spirit’s Present Work
• 25:01 Powerless Without The Spirit
• 28:41 Obedience And The Son’s Cleansing
• 32:31 Old Testament Sprinkling Pictures
• 35:31 Forgiven Guilt And Joyful Surrender
• 37:41 Grace And Peace Multiplied

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:38

Peter here has written a truckload of truth, hasn't he? The point of his declaration is again simply this: every member of the Godhead is involved in the salvation of every member of God's family. You are chosen by God the Father, you are inhabited by God the Spirit, you are under orders and constantly cleansed by God the Son. Salvation comes to us through the Trinity, it happens through the Trinity, it will one day bring us home to the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit. In the wake of recent writing in the UK, coupled with uncontrollable looting and violence, I found it interesting to read an article in the Wall Street Journal by Great Britain's chief rabbi. He decried what he called the moral disintegration of the Western world. In other words, he took the events and he said, it's really bigger than this. It's kind of interesting to hear coming from the leading rabbi of the UK, but I thought you would, as I did, resonate with his words as he provoked a number of responses. It wasn't all that appreciated. In fact, I was rather surprised the Wall Street Journal published it. In his remarks, he said that what we're seeing is the tsunami now of wishful thinking that has washed across the West, saying that you can have sexual activity without the responsibility of marriage, you can have children without the responsibility of parenthood, you can have social order and liberty without the responsibility of morality, and that you can have self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement. He went on to say, what has happened morally in the West is what has happened financially as well. Sensible people were persuaded that you could spend more than you earn, incurred debt at unprecedented levels, and consume the world's resources without thinking about who will pay the bill. He concluded, there are large parts of Britain, Europe, and the United States where religion is a thing of the past, and there is no countervoice to the prevailing culture of buy it, spend it, wear it, flaunt it because you're worth it. The message today is that morality is passe, a conscience is for the weak, and the single overriding command of life is now thou shalt not be found out. End quote. Like I said, I was a bit surprised that it would be published in such a conservative newspaper. And it is true, by the way, everything he said. But the greater point for the believer isn't so much how the darkness has grown, but how do we demonstrate the light, right? How do you live as a believer in a world that is returning to the times of the apostles? When they wrote, they were writing to disenfranchised believers, marginalized followers of Christ who had lost many of them their careers, their credibility, any semblance of compassion from their world around, then they were simply no longer wanted. Peter writes one of those letters, and I invite your attention back to his letter, 1 Peter and chapter 1. And in his opening comments, he addresses these believers and he describes them as scattered like seed throughout Pontius and Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. He's writing to believers that are in a region covering 750,000 square miles. This is no little postcard to a half dozen friends. And the question on the minds of tens of thousands of believers in his generation who would read this circulating letter all the way down to us would be what in the world just happened? That was what they were thinking. What just happened? How did I get here? How did I become a foreigner in my own generation? Is God in control of all the chaos around us? And what in the world does God want us to do? What do we do now? Peter's letter will do nothing less than provide instruction. J.I. Packer once gave an illustration of the Christian life by imagining someone in a helicopter dropping somewhere in the Amazonian jungle, picking up willing tribesmen who'd never been out of the jungle before, flying him immediately to London or New York, dropping him off in the middle of the city, and then telling him, you're on your own, now make the best of it. He goes on to write, we're cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who happens to run it. Disregard God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life, blindfolded as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. So it's a little surprise that in the beginning of this letter, as he begins to address how to live for Christ in an unwelcoming world, Peter begins by describing God, who is our refuge and our strength. And more specifically, Peter will describe how each member of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit intersects your life and mine. He's going to do it in three statements. He's going to do it a lot more, but we're just going to take time for three. All right? You might want to number them in your text because they don't necessarily follow the verses. The first statement begins with verse 2, according to the foreknowledge of God. That's the first prepositional phrase. The second phrase follows, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and then the third phrase, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. That's sort of the long way of making the theological point that every member of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, is involved in the gospel. Every member of the Godhead is involved in the salvation of every member of God's family. That's the primary point. And it is more than that. In fact, when you read on at the end of verse 2, you discover that on that basis, that is of each member of the train God investing and redeeming and sanctifying and cleansing us. The believer, then in any generation, in any country, under any government, at any given time, through any season of life, in the first century, all the way to this 21st century, grace and peace can be multiplied to you in the fullest measure. So it doesn't end with this sour, oh, so I guess we just pack up and go hide. We'll get there eventually, but let's just go back to these three phrases and break them apart and get to the heart of why this would be so encouraging. And let me just take those three phrases and turn those into three points of an outline in good Baptist fashion. All right. Number one, the first point is this the believer is saved and scattered by God the Father. The believer is saved and scattered by God the Father. Let's go back and get a running start with verse one. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen, now notice, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. God the Father did the choosing. In fact, Paul will pick up on that as well, and he'll write to the Ephesians that God the Father chose the believer before the foundation of the world. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 4. God the Father, by the way, is portrayed in Scripture as the initiator of salvation. He's the first one to make the first move. He is the first mover in the movement of redemption. In fact, John writes in 1 John 4.19 that we love him because he first loved us. The scriptures reveal that God's love for us actually precedes the creation of the universe that from eternity past God the Father foreknew His beloved. And I put it that way because it's important to understand that foreknowing in the Bible carries much more than mental awareness. It involves a deep, intimate love for God to foreknow us, is for God to forlove us. Redemption isn't some cold contract, it is a love relationship. The Apostle John again defines God's saving initiative as an act of love for us before we ever knew him or chose to love him in return. He writes this: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the satisfaction for our sins, 1 John 4, 10. Now that that idea and everything I've just said in the last five minutes has caused an awful lot of heartburn in the church over the generations. And there are those that would respond by saying that, well, this phrase in Peter's letter means that God elected those whom he simply foreknew would believe. It kind of sounds like that, doesn't it? Chosen, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God. And they would say it, they would say that God, in his omniscience, simply looked down the corridor of time and he saw all who would believe the gospel, and he then called them his elect and chose them for salvation and guarantees them for heaven. That, by the way, happens to be a very reasonable explanation. In fact, I can understand that one. Which does give me pause. The problem is, among other problems, it strips away any biblical concept of God choosing you and me first. Of God loving you and me first. It makes God simply respond to us, which is tantamount to making us the author of our salvation, the initiator of our salvation, and not God. So we really have to move beyond what seems reasonable into the depths of eternity past and things we can't quite understand. When Peter used the word here for foreknowledge, prognosis in verse 2, he wasn't simply talking about God knowing in advance what would happen. That word refers to God planning, predetermining by his loving and saving intention to redeem his beloved. Peter in fact uses the same word in verb form later down in verse 20 to tell us that the death of Jesus Christ to redeem sinners was foreknown by God the Father. Now that cannot mean that God the Father looked in, you know, down the corridor of time and saw that Jesus would be willing to die, and he said, okay, let's make that the way it works. No, in fact, Peter, when he preached on the day of Pentecost, uh, that the death of Christ was, in fact, here's what he said, and I'm gonna quote him, that the death of Christ was according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. God did not, you know, call an emergency meeting after Adam and Eve sinned and said, Oh no, what are we gonna do now? You know, we're up a creek. No, this is all actually discover part of his plan. How amazing is that? From eternity past, the plans of God were made, and that defies our comprehension because we're talking about eternity past. If you're thinking, man, this okay, this staggers my thinking, then I think now we're on the right path. And I think it's consistent with Scripture. God the Father chose you and me in a way that is beyond our comprehension. God the Son paid the penalty for our sin in a way that is beyond our comprehension. I mean, how did he do that? How did he pay the penalty for a sin nearly 2,000 years ago that you're gonna commit two weeks from tomorrow? You figure that one out? And while we're at it, the Holy Spirit indwells us in a way that is beyond our comprehension. He, an eternal person of the Godhead, indwells us. Well, that's understandable. Oh, and by the way, while we're at it, our triune God has destined us and prepared for us an eternity and an immortal body to go with it in a way and in a place that staggers our comprehension. Here's where it immediately mattered to these believers scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and Raleigh and Apex and Morrisville and Holly Springs and even Chapel Hill. To these Christians who are foreigners, who are in their own country but now lost, they're marginalized, they're maligned, they're unloved, they're unwanted. Here's where they could breathe a deep breath of hope. And really? Peter is telling them that the foreknowledge of God, the Father, doesn't just relate to their salvation, but to their situation. You can just as easily understand Peter to be saying here in verse 2, you have been chosen by God to not only be saved, but to be scattered. Don't miss that. To these scattered elect ones, that's all by means of the foreknowledge, foreplanning, for loving of God the Father. It's all according to the plan of God from eternity past. Nothing could ever happen in your life where God says, Well, I didn't see that happening, and now what are we gonna do? Just come up with plan B. Listen, if before the creation of the world God chose you, he isn't about to lose sight of you now. Like seed from the hand of the gardener, you haven't just been scattered. Peter wants to reinforce the concept that you have been planted according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. His for-loving, for planning, predetermining counsel in eternity past puts you here right now in that seat, going through whatever you're going through. And in that, then you find in him your refuge. The chaos of the Roman Empire is not caught God by surprise for these believers. God is in control of the chaos. As I said in our last session, the world is never falling apart. According to the foreknowledge and foreplanning of God, the world is always falling into place. The believer is saved and scattered by God the Father. Number two, the believer is sanctified and set apart by God the Spirit. Look again at verse 2, where Peter writes, according to the knowledge of God the Father, now notice, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Now watch this. Peter is moving us from the foreknowledge of God the Father in eternity past to the work of God the Spirit as he intersects our lives in time present. The word Peter uses here refers to the Spirit's work in your life, which is sanctifying. It is making you holy. It is making you a separate people unto God. This is the sanctifying activity by means of the Spirit of God that starts and it never stops. And by the way, it'd be easy just to camp here for a while, but we dare not. But the Holy Spirit, if I can make a couple of points, according to Scripture, it is the third person of the Godhood who actually drew you to a saving relationship with God the Father. That was the Holy Spirit who opened your eyes so that you could say yes to Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who resonates in your heart regarding the truth of Scripture. You happen to be odd. You happen to believe odd things. You're strange. You're more and more a foreigner in the world around you. Why do you believe this stuff? It's the work of the Spirit of God within you. For the unbeliever cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because they are discerned by means of the Spirit. And to them it is foolishness. 1 Corinthians 2 14. The Holy Spirit fuels genuine worship. You know what makes good worship isn't necessarily, well, I like those songs and that choir number and the people were nice around me, and boy, that was great worship. What makes good worship is the indwelling work of the Spirit of God. That even if you didn't have a 45-piece orchestra and a wonderful choir and people who were smiling around you, you could leave the assembly saying, That was a great worship service. Connected with the truths about God. That's the work of the sanctifying Spirit of God. Within you. The Holy Spirit, one more thing. The Holy Spirit also provokes true prayer in your life because the Spirit helps us, Paul writes. Because we don't know what to pray. There are many times we don't know how to pray, and so the Spirit intercedes for us. Romans 8.26. A lot more. But all of Christianity, the beginning and the middle and the end of the Christian life is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Now there are two different ways to think about the fact that he's always present. And you can say it with just a little different emphasis, and you can catch what I mean by that. You can say it one of two ways. You can say, God's Spirit never leaves us alone. Or you can say, God's Spirit never leaves us alone. Both are true. In fact, one of our biggest mistakes is to think that we can somehow get through today much less life without the indwelling, sanctifying Spirit of God who gratefully doesn't leave us alone. One of the tragic mistakes of the church is to think that our programs and our plans and our strategies can produce lasting fruit independently of the work of the Holy Spirit. That somehow you can disciple someone into maturity without the work of the Spirit, that somehow you can share the gospel with someone who will believe in it. Really, you know, it was a great presentation. The Spirit had nothing to do with it. I remember one class where Howard Hendricks asked us this question with great passion. He said it this way: if the Spirit of God checked out of the average church in America, how long do you think that church could operate before they figured it out? There are churches today that are meeting without the Holy Spirit because he's bound to the truth. The lights are on, climate control set, nice chairs, had the offering, nice singing. And the Spirit is absent. Well, let's personalize it. How long would it take you and me in our own lives to discover we're doing it on our own? We've had some thunderstorms lately and a couple of very brief, temporary times when the power went out at our home. You know, it's amazing to me how primitive life becomes when you lose power. You begin thinking thoughts like, I should have dug a well and I really ought to have a real fireplace instead of that gas thing. And a kettle and a, you know, whatever. When the power in your house goes out, it doesn't matter how much you paid for your washing machine or your dryer or your refrigerator or your microwave or your new LED lights or your cell phone that you now can no longer charge or your computer, they are all worth less than the cardboard boxes they came in without power. Our lives are like those appliances. There's not one function we can fulfill with God's pleasure and according to his purposes without God's power. And the Holy Spirit, by the way, is of ethereal power, you know, source. He is a person. And by means of a relationship with him, he has given us then the power to live and work and disciple and evangelize and stand and function for his glory. And I think Peter would be encouraging these believers to not only know that God hadn't left them alone, but he's at work because they would think, are we alone now? I mean, I mean, we're at it, we just feel so alone. It would be terribly encouraging to them. And I don't really know what nuance Peter had in his mind, even from the language he provides us, but I can't help but believe that he knew it would be incredibly encouraging for his scattered believers who, listen, who were feeling so separated from the world to discover that the work of the Spirit was to make them separated from the world. Feeling more like a foreigner these days? If you feel more separated and different from your world, guess what? It is the Spirit of God at work reminding you that you belong not to the kingdoms of earth, but to the kingdom of heaven. And like all these scattered believers in Pontius and Galatia and Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia and our world today, the believer is saved and scattered among those locations by God the Father. And in the midst of it all, the believer is sanctified and set apart, and that never ends by God the Spirit. Thirdly, the believer is surrendered to and sprinkled clean by God the Son. The believer is surrendered to and sprinkled clean by God the Son. Notice the last part of the verse, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Now notice, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. To obey Jesus Christ, the word used here conveys the picture of listening to and coming under, submitting to that which is revealed. It refers to daily practice, though imperfect, of reversing, by the way, the attitude that characterizes the unbeliever who doesn't care what God says. I don't care what God says, they would say to you. Well, God says this. Well, I don't care what God says. See, that is the characteristic of the unbeliever. They are in rebellion to what they hear from God. This is the reversing of that. You are in submission to what you hear from God. That's why the word of God is so precious to you. And we care. Peter is going to stress this kind of obedience in his letter. In fact, down in verse 14, he challenges us to be like obedient children. How different is that? That's unique, isn't it? Right? Maybe you've seen that in your children from time to time. Down further in verse 22, he uses the same word again to challenge us to be obedient to the truth. In other words, the work of salvation that was determined in eternity past by God the Father, brought about by means of the Holy Spirit, ought to somewhere along the line show up as obedience to Jesus Christ. Peter then goes on to reference the cleansing we have by the blood of Christ. And I think that's a timely place to put that, a timely reminder, because we do not obey Christ perfectly. Sometimes not at all. But our assurance is based on the blood he shed and the payment he made on our behalf. Now, you've got to go back into the Old Testament, and for the sake of time, we're not going to turn there, but let me just review for you that Peter is actually alluding back to the book of Exodus, where Moses gathered the people at the base of Mount Sinai and delivered to them the commandments and the ordinances of God. And the Israelites heard God's word and said, quote, everything the Lord has said, everything we've heard the Lord say, we will do. They were brought to obey the word of the Lord. And then Moses sprinkled the people with the sacrificial animals' blood. This is the picture here. In fact, if you dig around in the Old Testament, you'll find there are two other occasions where people are sprinkled with blood. When Aaron and his sons were dedicated, set apart for their ministry and the goddess priests, the sign of them being set apart was they were sprinkled with blood. So also, by the way, the New Testament picks up on that analogy because you happen to be a priest. You don't have to go through anybody, you can go directly to God. As priest, Peter says, You are a royal priesthood. You've been set apart. You've been sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb, the final sacrifice. Secondly, I discovered that when a leper was healed, he was to go to the priest and be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrificial animal to symbolize that he was now cleansed. So the writer of Hebrews picks up on that illustration as he encourages the New Testament believer to draw near to God with a true heart and full assurance, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Hebrews 10, 22. We were once leprous. We were once terminally infected with sin. We listened to the gospel. The Spirit of God opened our eyes to the truth of it, and we obeyed its command to call upon the Lord and be saved. We did that. And the Spirit came into indwell us. And the result of the Spirit's indwelling is we're cleansed forever from that point forward by the blood of Christ. But we are now becoming obedient to Jesus Christ. And we do it with joy. Why? Because the penalty of all of our sin, and every time we do fall short, and every time we do have to have a fresh, you know, bath, as it were, our feet get dirty. But we know the penalty of all of our sin has been forgiven forever. We know that all the guilt of our sin has been swept away forever. Imagine that. I just read recently an article about George Washington. It seems that when he was in his first term as president of the United States, he borrowed a book. The book he borrowed was entitled The Law of Nations, and he borrowed it from New York, the New York Society Library, and then George Washington promptly forgot to return it. Ever. And the library never brought it up when he was alive. I mean, he was a national hero. He was the first president. You don't just, you know, ask people like him for their book back, your book back. So for the next 221 years, it sat on a shelf at Mount Vernon until a staff member evidently noticed it and in 2010 returned it, sent it back. The overdue book fine was$300,000. Fortunately, the head librarian chose to forgive it. Can you imagine the fines against us? Having been forgiven, what more can we do than turn around and obey Jesus Christ? The one who graciously said, we're going to forgive that fine, that penalty. By my blood, I'm going to sweep it away forever. To do then what George Whitfield did, that Puritan theologian, and in fact, he was the spokesman of the Great Awakening in the 1700s. He once said, I have put my life as a blank canvas into the hands of Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, and I desire him to write upon it whatever he wishes. Now, Peter here has written, you know, a truckload of truth, hasn't he? But the point of his declaration is again simply this every member of the Godhead is involved in the salvation of every member of God's family. And we don't tend to think of all three members of the Godhead at work on our behalf. It's how much he foreknew and for loved you. You are chosen by God the Father. You are inhabited by God the Spirit. You are under orders and constantly cleansed by God the Son. Salvation comes to us through the Trinity. It happens through the Trinity. It will one day bring us home to the Trinity where we will worship our true and living God, the Father, Son, and Spirit. I love the way John Phillips summarized it. He, you know, brilliant British theologian now with the Lord, but he summarized this text so simply and so wonderfully with three very short statements. It is the Father who thought it. Peter concludes his opening thoughts by writing in verse 2. Look at the end there. May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. And I thought about doing just a sermon on this, but I want to get to the end of his introduction, okay? This isn't a throwaway line. This is wonderfully deep truth. Peter's writing to both Gentiles and Jews. I'll try to be quick. He's writing to both Jewish and Gentile believers here. And in this greeting, he very wisely combines together expressions from the Gentile and Jewish custom as they greeted one another. Gentiles would say hello to each other with an expression that involved the word curse or grace, and Jews, when they would greet each other, would use something with the word shalom in it, and it basically had shallow meaning. Wishing grace in the first century was kind of like saying, good luck. You know, I hope your day goes great. You know, best wishes. Wishing peace or shalom was really nothing more than sort of saying, hey, I hope everything's peaceful. Hope everything's smooth in your life today. Hope everything's, you know, rose petal covered. Peter uses those and gives them deeper meaning. The peace that Peter has in mind isn't the lack of conflict or trouble. He's writing to people who are in trouble. For the believer, peace is internal. It is the conscious awareness by means of a relationship with God that the peace treaty's been signed. We're not in conflict with him. And he's in charge of the conflict we face. And the grace that Peter has in mind isn't good luck. It's living with eyes clearly seeing the fact that God, in his providence, is lavishing us, is demonstrating to us enough grace to get through today, and we have no way of calculating how much it took to get through today. We just had it. Even hardships have the purposes of God behind them, the one who foreknew and for-loved us. And Peter, by the way, wants it to be multiplied. Did you notice that? Not just a little, you know, a little shake of the salt shaker. I want the truck to back up and unload grace and peace. By the way, he uses the passive voice, which is a kind of a gentle reminder that Peter isn't telling us, okay, now if you're fast enough, you can catch up with grace and get a little peace. You know, if you're quick enough or you're clever enough, you can create it, you can work for it and get it and all that. No, he's saying you just receive it. These are gifts for the beloved. Grace and peace. Who's the giver? Who's the multiplier? Who's the donor here? Again mentioned. Not immediately mentioned. It's obvious in this context that the donor and the multiplier is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. So Peter concludes his introduction by reminding us of who God is and what God does in and through the gospel. That every member of the Godhead is deeply invested in saving and sanctifying and setting apart and cleansing every member of the family of God from eternity past into eternity future. Warren Wearsby was a former pastor of Moody Church and for years a Bible teacher on the radio, radio Bible class, or I'm sorry, back to the Bible. He writes on this particular verse in 1 Peter, and I'm enjoying his little commentary. He has a wonderful way of sort of giving you an aerial view of truth. But he writes on this from his own experience. And I want to close with this because I want to leave you with this question. Is this your testimony as well? Is this your testimony? Some of the particulars might change, the date might change, but I can tell you that this is my testimony. Is it yours? Wearsby writes on this text. As far as God the Father is concerned, I was saved when he chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world. As far as the Son is concerned, I was saved when he died for me on the cross and paid the penalty for all my sin. But as far as the Spirit is concerned, when he came to indwell me, I was saved one night in May 1945. Then it all came together. It took all three persons of the Godhead to bring me to salvation. And if we separate these ministries, we will either deny divine sovereignty or our human response. We cannot explain it, but we can experience it and rejoice in it.