Week 1 Video

hardly listened, but Simon did obey one voice, follow me. Jesus soon gave Simon a new name, Petros, Greek for stone, Peter the Rock, one of Jesus' closest disciples. Three years Peter followed Jesus side by side, then one evening Peter stood at a distance and watched a harrowing scene. His rabbi, his leader, his best friend, everything looked lost, felt like a failure. But the cross was not the end, it was the beginning. The cross declassified God's plan for the world, and Jesus commissioned Peter to spark a movement, a resistance, a new world order, the church. In this new world order, followers of Jesus find hope and suffering, a kingdom with no borders, people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, a new temple, a new purpose, resurrected life. 30 years after the cross, Peter wrote a letter to tell God's story and declassify heaven's planet. First Peter reveals the conspiracy of the cross. For generations, prophets searched the scripture for scattered clues. He seemed to gather God's promises like a puzzle. Peter says even angels long to know how God would restore creation. Finally, with the birth, life, death, and resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth resolved the riddles. When Jesus showed up, everything changed. God's purposes became clear. God was never absent, he was right here, and his plan was hidden in plain sight all along. This is the cover up, the Messiah and the cross. The early followers of Jesus began to unravel the cover up, and what we now have as our New Testament. One of those books is first Peter. Originally, it was a letter, and the author, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter is a strange choice for the first church leader, isn't he? But in Matthew 16, Jesus singles Peter out as the Rock, the foundation of the church,

an uneducated, impulsive fisherman. An awful pick at first glance. But maybe that's the point. If Peter was flawless, the message would be about Peter. Instead, the same man who denied knowing Jesus the very night of his death, he becomes the boss. You know something else interesting? If you were starting a religion from scratch, you'd want a heroic leader. But those failures and flaws of Peter, the early church, does not hide them. That gives first Peter and Christianity a real credibility. Now, critics might say, "Oh, Peter could never have written a letter." He was in a literate fisherman. But in Acts 2, we hear people shocked at how eloquent this uneducated fisherman is speaking. Even better, we have some awesome historical evidence. Polycarp quotes 1 Peter. He was a bishop in Smyrna. The same city mentioned in 1 Peter 1. Papius talks about 1 Peter and Peter's writings. Both Papius and Polycarp are living within decades of Peter. Most interestingly, though, is this. It's how Peter's story ends. Eusebius, a church historian from the early centuries, describes Peter's death, crucified, upside down, and Rome. That's ironic, the man who denied Jesus became one of the first to die for him. So Peter wrote the letter, "But who was his target audience? He tells us, 'Believers scattered across five provinces, and what is today Turkey. Peter calls them chosen exiles.'" The word "exile" is real important to the Jewish people. And Peter's audience were part of the Jewish dispersion, which scholars call the diaspora. After families already scattered from their homeland for generations, they're permanent

outsiders and someone else's empire. Now in Christ, they're displaced a second time, strangers even among their own neighbors. Peter says these exiles were "sprinkled with his blood." So what does he mean? So sprinkling of blood reaches back to Exodus 24. God seals a covenant with Israel, and Moses takes the blood of the sacrifice, of the animals, and sprinkles it on the people. It was like a stamp, a seal, to bind the agreement. Peter is saying that these "scattered believers" have been brought into a new covenant the same way, marked, claimed, bound, but now by the blood. The blood of Christ, not the blood of bulls and goats. Scholars think Peter was written around 64 AD, a time when the Roman world was on edge. Within months, a great fire will spark a wave of persecution. The target? Christians. Rome was growing skeptical of these Christians. They talk about a mysterious resurrection. Are they witches? They eat the body and they drink the blood of Jesus. Are they cannibals? They don't worship the gods and the temples. Are they atheist? The situation seemed dire. The apostles scattered. Church leaders like James were executed. Paul in prison. By every measure, the Jesus movement should be falling apart, but it didn't stop. The church grew. The movement was multiplying. But to Rome, Christians were looking

more like a rebellion than a religion. The first century BC was a very turbulent time in the Roman world and the Roman authorities who were running the empire, which had swept around eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, et cetera, as well as the West, were very concerned about anything that would be disruptive. They had laws against people meeting in groups of more than just a few, a handful. I was thinking about this as I was flying on the airplane that they don't let you get together with four or five friends up near where you go through to the cockpit, because they're still frightened about 9/11 about conspiracies. Now, that's how it was in the Roman Empire, that they didn't want subversive elements getting together and plotting things behind closed doors. Christians at a crossroads follow the way or surrender to the opposition. First Peter opened the file and declassified the mystery. The prophets found the pattern in books like Isaiah and Daniel, a son of man, a suffering servant, a messiah. But when, who, how, the mystery was sealed? Prophets weren't only predicting the future. They were searching, cross-examining the scriptures. Peter says the spirit was pointing ahead to the sufferings of the messiah and the glories that would follow. The prophets were like investigators who never really got the timeline. The believers reading this letter

are the ones holding the answer key. And with that key, Jesus, you can connect all the evidence laid out centuries before. In first Peter, chapter one, verses three through nine, the cover-up is unveiled. Praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this, you greatly rejoice. Though now, for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled in an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Salvation is here.

The long awaited salvation has been confirmed, and so has the suffering that comes with it. But genuin faith makes joy possible even in the fire, because the suffering is temporary and the purification is eternal. That is the hope Peter is rallying his readers to hold, a hope that will at last the persecution to come. When you feel hopeless, when the world is full of uncertainty, when life feels meaningless, remember, you're chosen, you're not hopeless, you have a living hope, you're not suffering without purpose, your faith is being refined. Peter's message isn't simply that Jesus saves you, it's that Jesus explains everything. So if Peter is right, then the question isn't whether God has revealed his plan, the question is whether we'll live like we've seen it.