Good Morning. Let’s continue meditating on what Peter wants us to know and understand. This morning we are still thinking through First Peter 1:20-21.
“He [Christ] was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
Last time we looked at the first part of this passage. Today let’s focus on “who through Him believe in God.”
The core truth I want us to grasp today is that it is Jesus Christ who brings us to God. You might think, “Well, yes, of course. It’s so obvious, why are we even talking about it?” Sometimes it’s the obvious things that we take for granted and don’t think about. Jesus said, “No man comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:8). Our faith in God comes through Christ. He is the mediator between God and man, and it is through Him we come to know the Father. Jesus said, “All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27). Jesus is the revealer of the Father. In fact, Jesus said, “…He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). It is through Jesus that we believe in God.
There is a sequence to this series of verses. Our passage ends with the phrase, “so that your faith and hope are in God.” That statement gives you the purpose of the truth Peter is explaining to us.
Perhaps we could look at the flow of this passage like this:
Before the world began, God planned to send Christ.
God revealed Him in history “at the right time.”
God raised and glorified Christ.
People come to believe in God through Christ.
Resulting in believers placing their faith and hope in God.
Good Morning. It’s time for another Morning Devotional thought from First Peter. This time we’ll think about chapter 1, verses 20 and 21.
“He [Christ] was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
To foreordain means to determine, appoint, or decree something in advance. It is a synonym for predestine or predetermine. It means that an event or outcome is unalterable having been decided before it happened.
This is what it means that Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world. It has always been God’s intention that He would send Christ into the world to be a sacrifice for our sins and those events were unalterable and happened at a time and place of God’s design.
“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
“…the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13.8).
“Who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling…according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Timothy 1:9).
“According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11).
It should be encouraging to all of us to know that with God there is no Plan B. Nothing could prevent God’s plan to redeem us through Christ. Even the free decisions of men could not thwart the plan of God occurring at the appointed time and place:
“Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death” (Acts 2:23).
The disciples prayed, “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27-28).
The Bible says there is great success in meditating on the Scriptures (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2-3). Take some time this morning to think about, consider, and meditate on what it means that God purposed and carried out this amazing plan to redeem us from our sins.
In our study of Genesis, we have come to chapter 3 and the account of the fall of man. This is where Satan, working through the serpent, tempts Adam and Eve to follow his counsel rather than God’s command.
The passage opens with these words:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’”
That first question is important. The serpent’s purpose was clearly to introduce doubt into Eve’s mind. He wanted her to reconsider what God had actually said. Notice also how he framed the question. He made it sound as though God had forbidden all the trees of the garden, as though God were withholding everything from them.
Eve immediately corrected him. She replied that they were free to eat from the trees of the garden except for one. Concerning the tree in the midst of the garden, she said:
“God said, you shall not eat from it, and you shall not touch it, lest you die.”
That raises an interesting observation. God had not said anything about touching the tree. Eve had not been present when God originally gave Adam the command regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam had received that instruction directly.
I have sometimes wondered whether Adam, in explaining God’s command to Eve, may have added something similar to what parents often say to children. When something is dangerous, parents sometimes tell a child not merely to avoid it but to stay completely away from it. Perhaps Adam had done something like that. Or perhaps Eve herself concluded that avoiding the tree entirely would be wise. Scripture does not tell us, so we cannot be certain. What is clear is that the serpent approached the woman with his question and began to challenge God’s word.
The Tree in the Midst of the Garden
When Eve refers to the tree in the midst of the garden, it is worth remembering something from Genesis 2.
There we are told:
“Out of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree that is desirable in appearance and good for food, and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
The tree of life was in the midst of the garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there as well. Yet Eve’s attention had become fixed on the forbidden tree rather than on the tree of life.
The serpent then directly contradicted God:
“You surely will not die.”
In Hebrew, emphasis is often created by repeating a word. Rather than saying “surely,” the language intensifies the statement by repeating the idea. In English it might be written like this: “Dying you will not die!” The serpent was emphatically denying God’s warning.
Then he added:
“God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
At first glance, that sounds like a complete lie. Yet later in the chapter, after the fall, God says:
“Behold, the man has become like one of us to know good and evil.”
That does not mean Satan was telling the truth in a righteous way, but it does show that there was a sense in which Adam and Eve gained a knowledge they had not previously possessed. They came to know both good and evil. The tragedy is that such knowledge was not a blessing.
The Pattern of Temptation
Verse 6 describes Eve’s response to the temptation:
“Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise.”
Three observations are given.
The tree was good for food.
It was a delight to the eyes.
It was desirable to make one wise.
That reminds me of what John wrote in 1 John 2:16. There he describes the world system and the ways in which it appeals to fallen humanity:
“The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.”
The same pattern seems to be present here.
The fruit appeared good for food. That relates to the desires of the flesh. Desire itself is not necessarily sinful. God created us with desires. We see food and want to eat. That is normal. The problem comes when those desires are stretched beyond God’s boundaries and become sinful.
The fruit was also a delight to the eyes. Satan regularly works through what we see. The world system Satan has constructed constantly appeals to our eyes. Advertisements, entertainment, and countless other influences are built around that reality.
Finally, the tree was desirable to make one wise. There is an appeal to pride there, a promise of gaining something, becoming something, rising above one’s present condition.
We talked about how Satan later tempted Jesus in the wilderness. One temptation involved food after forty days of fasting. Another involved offering Him the kingdoms of the world. While we may not be able to fit every detail neatly into categories, the same kinds of temptations appear repeatedly throughout Scripture and throughout life.
These are things worth recognizing as we face temptation ourselves.
The First Response to Sin
After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, Scripture says:
“The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”
Immediately they became aware of their condition. They felt vulnerable. They knew they had disobeyed God, and their first instinct was to cover themselves.
Then came one of the most striking moments in the chapter.
“They heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”
The expression literally refers to the breeze of the day, likely the morning breeze that comes as the day begins. When they heard Him coming, Adam and Eve hid themselves among the trees. I suspect this was not the first time God had come to meet with them. God has always desired fellowship with His people. He wanted to be with them.
That is important to remember. When sin entered the world, God could have immediately destroyed Adam and Eve. Instead, He showed mercy. He allowed them to live. He allowed them to have children. He continued His purposes through them.
The same pattern appears later in the days of Noah. God judged the world, but Noah found grace in His eyes.
God is merciful, and He desires fellowship with His people.
“Where Are You?”
God called to Adam and said:
“Where are you?”
Obviously God knew where they were.
One possibility is that He asked the question for their benefit. He wanted them to know He was seeking them.
Another possibility comes from the way we sometimes use similar language. Suppose you always hang your car keys on the same rack. One day you place them somewhere else. When you go looking for them, you say, “Where are my keys?” You do not mean they are lost forever. You mean they are not where they are supposed to be. Perhaps there is something of that idea here. Adam and Eve were not where they ought to have been.
Adam answered:
“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
I find it interesting that he did not say he was ashamed. He said he was afraid. Fear had entered the relationship.
God had warned them that death would result from disobedience. Adam and Eve had never seen death. They may not have fully understood what it meant, but they knew they had violated God’s command and they feared the consequences.
God then asked:
“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten the tree which I commanded you not to eat?”
Immediately the blame-shifting began.
Adam answered:
“The woman you gave me to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate.”
He managed to point in two directions at once. The woman was responsible, and God was responsible for giving him the woman. We do that sometimes, don’t we? We blame God for the circumstances we’re in, and those circumstances may have been caused by our decisions.
God then turned to Eve.
She answered:
“The serpent deceived me and I ate.”
She acknowledged that she had been deceived, but she also shifted responsibility to the serpent.
The Curse on the Serpent
God then addressed the serpent.
Because of what he had done, he would be cursed above the animals and would crawl on his belly and eat dust all the days of his life.
Then comes a remarkable prophecy:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
There would be hostility between the serpent and the woman’s offspring.
Ultimately this points forward to Christ, who would come as a descendant of Eve.
In Hebrew the same word is used in both parts of the statement – the bruising of the head and the bruising of the heel. The difference is not in the action itself but in where the blow lands. A crushing blow to the heel is not normally fatal. A crushing blow to the head is.
Satan would strike at Christ, and Christ would ultimately crush Satan.
The attempt made against Christ did not succeed. Christ’s victory did.
The Woman and Her Husband
God then turned to Eve and said:
“Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.”
To understand that statement, it helps to compare it with Genesis 4.
There God warned Cain:
“Sin is lying at the door and its desire is for you, but you shall rule over it.”
The structure of the language is essentially the same.
Sin desired to control Cain, but Cain was responsible to rule over it.
In Genesis 3, the woman’s desire is said to be for her husband, and he is said to rule over her.
I understand this in light of the relationship God originally established between man and woman. Earlier in Genesis, the woman was created as a suitable helper for the man. I compared that idea to a stepladder. One side supports the other. The support stands opposite the climbing side, yet it exists for the benefit of the whole structure.
A wife was created to help and support her husband. Sometimes that support may involve disagreement or caution. A husband may be moving too quickly in some direction, and a wise wife may help him think more carefully. A husband can do the same for his wife.
The problem described here is not healthy support. It is conflict within the relationship.
The man may abuse his role by becoming harsh, bossy, or dictatorial.
The woman may push against his leadership in ways that undermine and subvert it. In doing so she may step out of her legitimate role as a supportive helper and become competitor for leadership.
That tension becomes part of the curse.
God had given leadership responsibility to the man, but now the relationship would be marked by struggle instead of harmony.
Pain, Childbearing, and the Effects of the Fall
Before speaking of the relationship between husband and wife, God said:
“I will greatly multiply your pain and conception.”
I had not thought much about that phrase before studying it. One possibility is that the language simply combines conception and childbirth into a single idea. The whole process would now be marked by pain and difficulty.
Another possibility relates to the dramatic changes brought about by the fall.
Before sin entered the world, people were apparently intended to live indefinitely. Even after the fall, the earliest generations lived extraordinarily long lives.
There would have been no need for childbearing to be concentrated into a relatively brief span of years. But once lifespans began to shorten, the command to be fruitful and multiply had to be fulfilled within a much narrower timeframe.
The fall also introduced sickness, miscarriage, and death into human experience.
Whether the phrase refers simply to the pain associated with childbirth or to the broader difficulties connected with conception and bearing children in a fallen world, the point is clear: the whole process would now be harder because of sin.
The consequences of the fall would touch every area of life, including marriage, family, and the bearing of children.
The next section of Genesis turns to Adam and to the curse placed upon the ground itself, but that takes us beyond the passage we considered during this session.
*Some articles on this publication or website are adapted from my recorded Bible teaching. I use transcription and editing tools (including AI-assisted editing) to convert spoken lectures into readable written form. The ideas, interpretations, and theological conclusions are my own and come directly from my teaching.
We’re still meditating on First Peter. Today let’s think about 1 Peter 1:18-19:
… knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
Peter focuses on the fact that we are a redeemed people. Then he describes what we were redeemed from and what we are redeemed with. To “redeem” means to gain or regain possession of something by means of a payment. If your car gets towed because you were parked in the wrong place, you often have to pay to get it back. One time we were parked overnight at our son’s apartment building and we had failed to get the proper permit. Late that night we heard some commotion outside and a tow truck was getting ready to tow our car away! Tim hurried out there to find out how much it would cost to have them put the car back down in its spot. He redeemed our car. Christians are redeemed people. Peter tells us that it was Christ’s precious blood that was the redemption cost. He paid it willingly and graciously to buy us back. He loves us that much!
The redemption of our car got it back from a potential lockup in some impounding lot somewhere. Peter tells us our redemption is from our aimless conduct we inherited from our forefathers. Peter was writing primarily to Jewish believers who had inherited the traditions of Judaism. Some of us received godly, basically Christian traditions from our ancestors. Some of us received the traditions of lost, non-Christian ancestors. Either way, we are all born in sin having inherited the lost condition that every human being is born with. Every one of us, no matter our traditions, needs to be redeemed from our lost and fallen condition. Peter is letting us know that our natural state is one of lostness and aimlessness. We need to be bought back and brought back into the right relationship with God. It is the precious blood of Christ that was the payment God made to accomplish that redemption. For that we all ought to be exceedingly grateful. It might seem like a trite comparison, but if my car had been successfully impounded, I would not have been able to have the right relationship with my car as its owner until I had paid the redemption price. For God and us to have the right relationship with each other, God also had to pay a redemption price, but it wasn’t with money (i.e. silver or gold), it was with the precious life-blood of His son.
The following post was written in commemoration of Memorial Day 2026. It was part of my series on First Peter because of Peter’s reflection on the death of Christ on our behalf.
The Apostle Paul wrote the following words in Romans 5:7-8: “For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Memorial Day was set aside as a day to remember — to remember those who sacrificed their lives for us and for our freedom. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” This is what Jesus Himself did for us, isn’t it? While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!
The Apostle Peter wrote: “…knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, … but with the precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” In this passage, Peter reminds us that Jesus did this for our redemption. We human beings came into this world lost and without God and without hope. We don’t keep God’s commandments, and most of the time, we don’t even try. But even when we were in that condition of rebellion, Jesus redeemed us for Himself. He bought us back and offers us full pardon and reconciliation with Himself. He simply asks us to believe it, and accept the pardon. John wrote, “And we have known and believed the love that God has or us” (1 John 4:16).
As you celebrate Memorial Day and remember those who gave their lives that we might live in freedom, don’t forget The One who died for you and rose again to save you from eternal damnation. Believe His promise and believe the love He has for you. There is no greater love than this!
So, last time I left you hanging with prophets and angels trying to figure out what the gospel was all about. That’s kind of an interesting picture to me visualizing prophets trying to figure out what they are writing about. But let’s see if there are a couple of things that can encourage us personally today. I’d be interested to hear if you thought of anything.
The first thing for me is that the prophets were writing about our salvation. The text says they realized that it was not for them, but for us. Verse10 mentions prophesies about the grace we would receive. When one reads the Old Testament, the sense is that there is a lot of law there and not too much grace. After Saul was converted and became Paul, he wrote abundantly about grace, and we sometimes wonder if that was something new that he just made up. His background was in the Old Testament law, and so when he was converted, he had new eyes to see the manifold grace of God revealed in the Old Testament by the prophets.
In verse 11 the Bible calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Christ. It’s interesting to visualize Jesus’ spirit inside of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah pointing out and predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow from that. The whole of the Bible is a unified narrative of God at work to accomplish His purposes.
And finally, in verse 12, we find that the gospel that has been proclaimed to us by a pastor, or parent, or someone else, are the very things that the prophets were writing about so long ago. And that gospel that we hear that draws us to Christ was proclaimed by the Holy Spirit. When the gospel is preached, it’s not just another kind of lesson like you might hear a lecture on World War I or how to solve algebra problems. When the Word of God is preached, the Holy Spirit is at work along with the Word He inspired to bring salvation to people. It is a powerful thing that Peter is describing here – something that spans the centuries and millennia of time just to reach you.
Last time we looked at 1 Peter 1:9 where we discovered that as we love and rejoice in a Savior we have never seen, we are receiving the purpose and goal of faith, the salvation of our souls. Today we are going to begin thinking about verses 10-12. Here is verse 10 of that section:
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully…”
In order to really grasp what Peter is saying here, you should read verses 10-12 several times. I don’t want to go too deeply into this, but I do want to draw several important truths from it. Since I don’t want to make this too long, I’ll give you the gist this week and draw the lessons from it next time.
What Peter is saying here is that the prophets of the Old Testament – people like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, etc. – these prophets tried really hard to figure out what kind of salvation they were prophesying about. The Spirit of Christ was inspiring them to write, but they didn’t understand what they were writing about, and so they took out their imaginary magnifying glass and tried to dig deep to understand.
What God revealed to them was that they were not writing about something related to them, but they were writing about the things you and I would be taught centuries later. And at the end of verse 12 we find out that even the angels really wanted to look into this as well to figure out what this teaching about the suffering of Christ was all about.
Lord willing, next week I’ll share a few things that I took away from thinking about this. In the meantime, you read this section many times over the next week and see what thoughts you come up with.
Last time in our meditation on First Peter, we saw that 1 Peter 1:8 focused on the fact that even though we haven’t seen the Lord, we still love Him and are filled with inexpressible joy filled with glory. But of course, the end of verse 8 was not the end of the sentence. Verse 9 goes on to say, “obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
As I think about this, what that short phrase is telling me is that my possession of the faith Peter speaks about in verse 7 – the faith that is more precious than gold – is the evidence of salvation. Here’s what I mean by that: Verse 9 begins with the word “receiving” or “obtaining.” This is a present tense verb. That means that through faith we love one whom we have never seen, and we rejoice in that, and in so doing we are presently receiving the outcome of our faith. That outcome is the salvation of our souls.
“Outcome” is another interesting word. Some translations use the word “end.” The Greek word is telos. A telos is the goal and purpose of something. Our English word “end” is not quite the right word because “end” often means the stopping point. A potter might be working on a lump of clay with the intent of creating a beautiful vase. The telos of his project is a beautiful vase. But the actual end of the project might be when the vase falls from his tongs after it has been fired. A broken vase was not the potter’s telos but it was the end of the vase.
The goal, target, purpose, and outcome of faith is the salvation of our souls. As we have faith in the Christ we have never seen, we rejoice with inexpressible joy. In doing so we are presently receiving the telos of faith which is the salvation of our souls. Take some time this week to let that sink in.
Good Morning! It’s that time again when we take the opportunity to take a few minutes to meditate on God’s Word. We’re thinking through Peter’s encouraging message to those who are scattered throughout their known world. Today I want us to think about the first part of 1 Peter 1:8.
“And though you have not seen Him, you love Him.” That’s true of us too, isn’t it? We haven’t seen Him. Why would we love someone we have never seen?
Peter, of course, saw Jesus and spent three years with Him. He knew Him well. Probably Peter could say what John said, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1). The things Peter could share with the people he ministered to are many, and because we have the entire New Testament, we know some of these same things even though we have never seen Christ or met Peter:
Jesus loved Peter even though he had betrayed Him, and He made sure Peter knew it. Remember, “Simon … do you love Me?” (John 21:15-21).
Peter saw that Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed,” and he testified to that in his preaching (Acts 10:38).
He knew personally that Jesus was “meek and lowly” and offered rest (Matt. 11:29).
He could testify about Jesus’ death and resurrection (John 20:4).
He could tell people firsthand about the transfiguration (2 Peter 2:16-18).
He could share about the miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5)
Out of love and compassion, Jesus healed Peter’s own mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31).
He saw Jesus’ ascension and heard the promise of His return (Acts 1:11).
… and so much more.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to hear Peter share these personal experiences? What excitement and certainty we would have heard in his voice! Peter was able to tell people that even though they had not seen what he saw, he could assure them that they could experience this same Christ by faith. We hear this excitement in the letter he has written, and through the generations this same message has come down to us. As a result, we can love the same Lord Peter loved even though we have not seen Him in person.
Last time we thought about 1 Peter 1:6. My intention had been to put verse 7 with it, but that made it a longer read than I really wanted. It’s like eating. Sometimes we need to take smaller bites and chew them longer.
Peter reminded us to rejoice because of the tremendous promises of God even when we are faced with difficult trials. Those trials are often necessary because God uses them to trim and prune us into greater godliness.
Verse 7 says, “so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
The “so that” at the beginning of verse 7 tells us there is a reason for the trials. The trials and testing we go through are the proof, the genuineness, the trial of our faith. Those three words are from three different translations. The Greek word behind them is similar to our word documentation. The trials and difficulties document the genuiness and reality of our faith. Just like a metal is tested by fire to make sure it is actually gold and not some counterfeit material, our faith is tested by trials. And the metal, even though it might be genuine gold is still perishable, whereas true faith is not.
As our faith gets tested, we ourselves have some clue as to how we are doing. If we don’t do well on one of life’s tests, we know where we need God’s work in our lives to make our faith stronger. After Jesus gave the disciples some instruction in Luke 17, the disciples replied, “Increase our faith!” That’s the request we need to make often in life.
The end of 1 Peter 1:7 tells us that this documentation of our faith will result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. The kind of documented transformation of a man or woman that remakes us and renews us into Christ’s image is only something that Jesus Christ Himself can accomplish as He works through us. The praise, honor, and glory goes to Him on that day!
