T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 4

Chapter 1

"Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matthew 21:43). "Ye are... a holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9).

Reading: 1 Peter 1:1-4.

We are going to be occupied at this time, with the Lord's help, with the significance of the person and ministry of the Apostle Peter. The Apostle Paul occupies such a large place in the New Testament that we are perhaps in danger of losing the great values of the Apostle Peter. This may be partly due to the fact that so little is on record as to the life and ministry of Peter. He passes out of view almost entirely, so far as the history of the Church is concerned, after the council recorded in Acts 15, and Paul seems to eclipse everyone else from that point onward, right to the end of the Book of the Acts, which is the historical record of the growth, the development and expansion of the Church. Peter, while he has not gone by any means, does cease to occupy the place that he had, once Paul comes in.

I must confess that I have often been a little puzzled as to why, seeing that there were twelve Apostles called, appointed and commissioned, only three or four of them are on record. The rest are hardly mentioned at all until you get right to the last chapters of the Book of the Revelation, and then they are only spoken of as the twelve apostles of the Lamb. They are not in view at all in that great gap in the New Testament, and you do not know very much of what is happening to them. You do not know very much, so far as the record is concerned, of what Peter was doing during all that time.

Of course, here, when Peter opens his Letter, he lets us know that he has not been inactive, and the elect in all these parts of the world have come under his influence. However, it is strange, is it not, that the history of the Church, so far as the New Testament is concerned, is very largely confined to Paul.

But we have to think again about this matter, for there are very great values indeed in Peter, and we shall do very well if we give ourselves to a consideration of these values.

Of course, in the first three Gospels, Peter always has the first place, and is the most prominent of the twelve disciples. I have made a list of some thirty-eight incidents in which Peter figured most prominently. I am not going to trouble you with all those thirty-eight, but there they are, and that does not cover the whole ground by any means. I am simply saying that, right up to the time of that council in Jerusalem concerning what had happened over the Gentiles, Peter occupied the foremost place, and it is quite evident from his Letters that something very deep and very real was wrought into this man.

I have been tremendously impressed - I cannot tell you how much - as I have carefully read through this comparatively short first Letter of Peter with my eye on one thing, and that one thing is: Where did Peter get that? How did that come to Peter? Why is Peter saying that? As I have looked I have found that the Lord Jesus wrought Himself into this man, that you can trace the Lord Jesus in this man so deeply and so richly, and I have no hesitation in saying that this first Letter of his is full of spiritual riches. We shall, of course, only be able to touch the surface, but let us begin with some little consideration of the significance and the value of Peter's ministry.

We shall at once discover how Peter has come to understand the Lord Jesus. What was Jesus doing? Peter did not understand in the days when the Lord was present in the flesh, but He was doing something. The wonderful thing is this: that while the Lord Jesus was working, teaching, living and moving right under the eyes of this man Peter, Peter was not grasping it, was not understanding it, was not seeing it, but here in his Letter he has it all. That, I think, contains something we should lay hold of. We can hear, see, have under our eyes and ears even for years, the Lord Jesus in what He is saying and what He is doing, and He being really present, and we not grasp the significance of it all. That is a terrible possibility. It is one of the problems that we may come up against. It is almost disconcerting to see Christians who for years have been receiving all the teaching about the Lord Jesus, before whose eyes and ears He has been brought over a long period, and then, when you really come up to practical matters, they do not know it, they have not got it, it is not in them. Or shall I say: the Lord Jesus is not there in a way commensurate with all that they have heard. They have missed it. That is a possibility, and it is one of the big tragedies in Christianity that it is so, and that, like Peter, at a certain crisis point, after all they have received, it can be demonstrated under trial that they are not really in the good of the teaching. They break down, after all, in the hour of the ordeal.

But that, of course, leads to this: How important it is that what we have heard, what we have seen and what has been brought to us shall be put right into us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Is that not necessary? That we have not only been where it is, but it is in us by the Spirit.

And that is the tremendous change from the Gospels, with all the place and prominence that Peter held there, into his Letter. Something has happened to the man, and that is what it is.

That is the first thing about his significance, his person and his ministry: that he is not retailing things that he has heard. He is not 'dishing up' (if I may use the expression) that which has come to him secondhand. Here is a man who, through a deep crisis and experience, has himself moved right into the spiritual meaning and value of the teaching and the work of the Lord Jesus. That is a very important thing, and it is the first thing about his significance.

The New Israel

But I ask the question: What was Jesus doing when He was here? Of course you would answer: 'Well, He was doing this... that... and a whole multitude of things.' Yes, but what was the comprehensive thing that He was doing? What was it that embodied all His teaching, all His work and activities, signs and parables? What was it that comprehended the Lord Jesus when He was here?

We have answered the question in the passages which we have just read together: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof... Ye are... a holy nation." What was Jesus doing? He was building, constituting a new Israel, a spiritual, heavenly Israel in the place of the old one.

Jesus - The Messiah

Who was Jesus? His name is Messiah, which is the Hebrew form of the Greek 'Christ'. It is the same thing in two languages. It might help you, and throw light on things, and make something quite real if, wherever you find the name "Christ" in the New Testament, you put there "Messiah".

Now think what Messiah meant in the Bible! Both "Messiah" and "Christ" mean 'the Anointed'.

The Old Testament had just one Person in view. It was moving toward, looking for, longing for, the day of the appearing of the Messiah. What was He going to do in their expectation? He was going to save their nation. You remember the words of Simeon, when he took the babe Jesus in his arms? He spoke of Him as being for the salvation of God's people, Israel. Messiah would save the nation. Of course, they had their own ideas as to what that would mean, for their whole conception of the coming Messiah was that He would constitute and establish the Kingdom of Israel. From the beginning of Genesis, right up to the end of the Old Testament, the one Person in view was the One who was coming, whom the Jews called the Messiah.

You remember even the woman of Samaria, when she got to that point of discovering something of the truth of who He was who was speaking to her, went back to the city and said: "Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: can this be the Messiah?" (John 4:29). This showed that even in the Samaritans there was this deep-rooted hope and expectation: the coming Messiah, who would establish the kingdom of Israel and save it - and much more, of course.